Not So Quiet...

by Helen Zenna Smith

Queer to have Roy, suddenly grown-up, smoothing up and down the back of my head, caressing my ears, calling my hair “kid’s hair.”

  He asks me something, I hold my face up to reply, and he kisses me, shyly, half-afraid, gently.

  Queer to be kissed by Roy—our lips resting gently together in the half-light while someone sings a ragtime song.

  “You don’t mind, Nell? I love you; I expect I’ve always loved you, only I didn’t know till you came down the stairs last night in that summery thing covered with flowers. I wish you loved me, Nell.”

  Roy wishing I loved him. . . .

  But I do. Of course I do. I’ve always loved Roy. Queer that I’ve just discovered it. Who else should I love but Roy? Oh, the infinite peace of loving Roy, like a ship coming into harbour after a stormy voyage. Tears roll down my cheeks; he comforts me, puzzled that I cannot tell him why they are there, because I do not know myself.

  In the taxi going home he begs me to marry him quickly, but I cannot; it is all too sudden. After the war, yes, but not now. I will be engaged to him . . .

  “Oh, Nell, you do love me, don’t you?”

  I do. I do. I love him—Roy I have squabbled with and romped with, Roy, grown up and sunburned and suddenly a man.

  “I do love you, Roy.”

  He kisses me again, not as he kissed me in the theatre, boyishly and half-shyly, but as a man kisses the woman he is going to marry.

  God, how happy I am!

  “I’m happy! I’m happy! I’m happy!”

  He thinks it’s beautiful to hear anyone say that. “How seldom people say ‘I’m happy’! ‘I’m miserable’ or ‘I’m ill” or ‘I’m lonely’ or ‘I’m depressed’—but seldom ‘I’m happy’! Rottenly ungrateful for happiness, human beings, eh, Nell?”

  How adorable he is, this grown-up Roy! He holds me protectingly and my head tucks into his khaki shoulder as he paints our peaceful future when this mess of war has been cleared up. A little cottage in the country somewhere—an old-fashioned oak-beamed affair brought up-to-date; a crazy pavement leading to the little green front door. . . . “It must be green, Nell; I’ll paint it myself—jolly handy with a paint-brush I am” . . . a big brass knocker . . . lupins and roses and sweet peas and high marguerites in the garden . . . a smooth green lawn . . . “I’ll roll it myself to keep in condition. Can’t you see me on a hot summer afternoon puffing and blowing?” . . . Inside cool rooms with lattice windows . . . “You’ll have the furnishing of those, Nell.”

  “Green-leafed chintz,” I stipulate. “I know the very place they sell it; only one shop in Town does. And a white piano; once I saw a white piano in a cottage, and it was just right. I’ll build a whole room round that white piano. . . .”

  He gives me the white piano. We furnish downstairs, then upstairs, the bedrooms, our bedroom, a big one with a dressing-room each, says Roy.

  “This is a cottage, Mr. Evans-Mawnington, not Buckingham Palace. If we each have a dressing-room, where is the nursery going? I suppose we do have a nursery?”

  We deliberate with mock gravity the important point, then Roy says we must consider the garden. “For what cottage garden is ever complete without a perambulator on the lawn?” he demands. “But,” he adds, “into the kitchen garden he goes quick if he yells.”

  “He? You mean she,” I argue.

  We compromise on one of each. Oh, the fun and peace and cleanness of the life we plan after the war, Roy and I. Oh, the sweetness of the playmate I have surprisingly found I love. Happy, happy taxi-ride that ends in finding ourselves at Father’s doorstep before we realize we have left central London behind.

  The scent of the flowers floods our nostrils, the rays of the summer moon bathe us in gold. So they should, we think, on this night of nights. What are scents of flowers and golden moons for if not the exclusive use of lovers? It is a long parting, this doorstep farewell. Our first. We cannot tear ourselves apart. At last the romance ends on a note of farce. Father comes to the door. It is long after midnight and time all decent people were in bed, he says tersely.

  “Just like a comic paper,” whispers Roy. “In a minute he’ll talk about the gas-bill and introduce me to the toe of his boot.”

  We go into fits of laughter, to Father’s annoyance. Am I or am I not coming in? I am. What would happen if I refused?

  “Good-night,” says Roy formally, “I’ll telephone you about that matter we were discussing in the morning.”

  “Yes, do,” I reply. “Good-night.”

  Father bangs the door—puts up the chain—I run upstairs.

  My face in the mirror is flushed, happy, laughing.

  How lovely life has become all of a sudden, how lovely!

  “God, I’m happy! I’m happy!”

  For the first time my ghostly procession does not parade in the early hours before the dawn.

  CHAPTER X

  “YOU’RE wanted on the ’phone, Miss Nellie.”

  I sit up with a jerk. Eight o’clock. Who on earth is indecent enough to telephone at this ungodly hour? Not Roy. . . .

  No, not Roy; Roy went to France last night.

  I refuse to think of Roy and France. Eyes half-closed, I stumble out of bed, downstairs—why can’t Father have the telephone put in a decent place. . . .

  “Hello?”

  “Is Miss Helen Smith speaking?” A woman’s voice, husky and unknown to me.

  “Yes, speaking.”

  “Prepare for a shock and don’t say my name at the other end. Ready?”

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “Trix speaking. Quiet now, Cis. I’m in England on leave and I don’t want the family to know. Got that?”

  Trix in England. . . .

  “Yes.”

  “Cis, something awful has happened. I must see you at once. Will you take the address? I’ll wait in all the morning for you. You won’t fail me, will you?”

  Fail you, Trix. Fail you, the little sister I love?

  “Tell me the address and I’ll come.”

  She tells me.

  “I’ll be there in an hour or two.”

  “I shan’t go out till you come.” She cuts off abruptly.

  Trix home on leave. Trix home secretly. “I don’t want the family to know.”

  I go slowly into the bathroom and light the geyser.

  ·····

  All the noises of the world have stopped except for Trix’s voice, sobbing, terrified, rising in hysterical cadences, failing into tear-choked inaudibilities. . . .

  “A hundred pounds—you’ll get it for me, Cis, somehow. She won’t do it for less—Sunny gave me the address—quite safe she says; she knows lots of girls who’ve been. . . .”

  All the noises of the world faded into uncanny silence—the clang-bang-rattle of the trams, the newsboy’s raucous shout—“Latest Cazz-yew-allit-eess,” the honk-honk of the taxi-cabs: all hushed as though listening to Trix. . . .

  “Rotten mess—just my luck—others can play merry hell and nothing happens. Cis, I swear it isn’t dangerous or anything; you needn’t be afraid of anything happening to me. You’re the only one I’ve got to turn to; don’t look like that, Cis. . . .”

  All the noises in the world stopped while Trix weeps helplessly like a forlorn baby, heartbroken, waiting for me to speak.

  What can I say? What can I do?

  “Cis, you’ll get the money for me?”

  “Trix, don’t ask me. I haven’t anywhere to get it, and even if I had—girls die—I’d be responsible if you died; they do die, you know they do. . . .”

  She springs to her feet, her eyes mad, words tumbling out of her mouth, no longer a forlorn baby, but a desperate woman.

  “Listen. I nearly ended the whole thing crossing over. I prayed for a torpedo, and when it didn’t come I nearly chucked myself over the side. If you hadn’t been at this end I would have gone overboard and finished it—you at this end saved me. ‘Don’t be an ass, Cis’ll save you. Don’t be an ass, Cis’ll save you,’—I told myself t
hat over and over again. If you turn me down I’ll chuck myself in the Thames; it’s quite the conventional thing to do, isn’t it? . . .” She laughs.

  “Trix, for God’s sake . . .”

  “I will, I will. Can’t you see I’m nearly off my head? For nearly five months I’ve been slowly going mad, and one night I plucked up courage and told Sunny, and she gave me this address. I’ve got a chance this way to start all over again. . . .”

  “What about the man? Won’t he marry you?”

  We are both panting like wild animals, glaring into each other’s eyes.

  “Marry me?” she cries defiantly. “I don’t know who it is; it might be any of three. . . .”

  The floor, patterned in faded green squares, rises up to hit me—Trix, my little sister, my little sister—any of three. . . .

  “Now perhaps you’ll talk sense.”

  I sink to the couch, a red velvet couch with a worn seat. The springs have gone in two places, I notice. I feel as though I have been hit by an icy wave—too numb to recover my breath—floating out to sea. . . .

  “You don’t understand what it’s like out there—the atmosphere. You can’t call your soul your own. Nag, nag, nag, from the sisters—all day bullied about and given the bird by everybody. The V.A.D.’s were the first to volunteer, and they’ve been snubbed and treated like dirt ever since for it. Make you scrub your washhouse floor in a clean, starched white apron with a big red cross on the front and tick you off if they come in and find you’ve dirtied it—that’s the sort of thing. My God, it makes me laugh to think I paid to do it, too, out of my own pocket, I was so keen. Paid for my own uniform, my own training, even paid my own doctor’s fee to be signed medically fit. And what do I get out of it. Damn-all. Doing the work of a scullery-maid—only a scullery-maid would be off like a rocket if she was spoken to as I get spoken to. All very well for girls with no guts—insults and things roll off them like water off a duck’s back—but for people with a spirit. . . . I’m not blaming Matron; she’s a good old sort; she can’t be expected to have eyes in her behind, but some of those ward sisters want tarring and feathering. Bitches—no other word. I’ve always stuck up for women when men called them cats—but never again. If you’ve got any spirit they deliberately set out to break it, and they pass the good word on to their pals. Talk about a trade union; I’ve never struck anything like these nurses. And if they can’t break your spirit, what happens? You bottle it all and get keyed up, and when you do get loose you go mad, like me and Sunny and a few others. I wouldn’t care if we were paid for it—but we’re giving our youth and the good times we ought to be having free of charge; we’re like kids out of school when we get loose—pity our games aren’t as harmless. The boredom and the rules, rules, rules . . . no wonder we go a bit mad off duty . . . don’t know what you’re doing half your time. . . . And the men, making love to you one day and dead the next. I’ve been on leave twice with different subs and they’re both dead: Jerry was one. I liked Jerry awfully, but he died—they don’t think anything rotten of a girl who sleeps with them nowadays, just that she’s a fool if she doesn’t. Cast-iron virgins they call those who won’t. There aren’t many of them knocking about by all accounts; a lot of them swank they are, but they’re not. Easy for the plain ones, the men don’t worry them much; but I’ve got to the stage of wondering what’s wrong with my appearance if a sub doesn’t ask me to sleep with him—that’s what the war’s done for me—pretty, isn’t it? Here to-day and gone to-morrow, that’s what they tell you, and it’s true, it’s true, people dying all round you. Makes you determined to get a bit of enjoyment out of life while you’re alive to take it—you’re not alive very long nowadays if you’re young, are you? Are you?”

  She begins to laugh again. I take her by the shoulders. “Someone will hear you, Trix. . . .”

  She calms herself in a few minutes, weeping again, pleading—my little sister whom I have never seen weeping in my life—my laughing little sister. . . .

  “Cis, get it for me, get it for me—all my life I’ll be grateful, get it for me. . . .”

  What shall I do? What am I to do? Three or four pounds in the bank at the most. Yesterday I spent eight guineas on a new coat to see Roy off to France—last night. Was it only last night Roy went back? Silk stockings another guinea. Yes, no more than three or four pounds in the bank at the most.

  “Cis, get it for me—get it for me. . . .”

  Aunt Helen cutting me out of her will for refusing to go back to France. Father stopping my allowance. Trix down on her knees to me, oh, no—no. . . .

  “Get up, Trix, I can’t bear it, darling, get up. When must you have it by?”

  “To-day if you can; the sooner the better. I’ve only got seven days’ leave. I don’t know how long . . . she won’t do anything till she gets the money . . . she won’t take a cheque in case. . . . Oh, Cis, get it for me, save me——”

  “I’ll get it, darling; don’t cry any more, I’ll get it somehow.”

  We cling together for a moment, desperately, as two terrified passengers on a sinking ship might cling—then part. She throws herself face downwards on the red velvet couch. Poor little sister. Poor little sister I would willingly die for.

  “Oh, Cis, get it for me, save me. . . .”

  I close the door quietly.

  ·····

  Aunt Helen.

  Out of the chaos of my mind the name disentangles itself.

  Aunt Helen.

  It is curious that I can sit in the Corner House and sip coffee quite calmly on this summer morning, when my world is toppling about my ears. Outside in the streets people are leisurely basking in the sunshine or walking in twos and threes, chatting amiably. Who would imagine that such a short distance away guns are thundering, and men are engaged in murder on a mass scale? France is very near to me this morning. All in a brief hour the Channel has changed from a tract of sea wider than the Atlantic to a narrow neck of water. Despair swamps me like a tidal wave—to recede and leave me petrified with a numbing coldness. I shall never be warm again.

  Last night I kissed Roy good-bye at Victoria, but to my surprise there was no tragedy in the parting—a sweet sadness, a gentle melancholy at the temporary severing—nothing more. He would write every day; so would I. He was safely at the Base. Soon leave would come round again and I should be waiting at home for him. “I want you to smile me out of England,” he said. “Say ‘I’m happy!’ ” It was not difficult to say.

  “I’m happy! I’m happy!”—my last words before the train steamed out. “I’m happy! I’m happy!”—a magic formula that was not magic enough. “I’m happy! I’m happy!”—thankful am I to have whispered it from my heart, for fatalistically I know now I shall never mean the words again. The picture my lover painted for me on the palette of his fancy will be nothing but a dream picture of peaceful colours. “I’m happy! I’m happy! . . .” I should have known. There is no lasting happiness for this stricken generation of mine. Happiness past for the old ones, happiness to come for the young ones, but nothing for the race apart from whom youth has been snatched before it learned to play at youth. How sad is the sadness of a sunny summer morning when hope has died!

  ·····

  Aunt Helen is at the War Workers’ Canteen, Sanders the maid tells me. She waits there at table every lunch-time. Sanders is openly disapproving. One gathers that in her opinion a lady of Aunt Helen’s position is lowering herself many degrees socially by feeding Government clerks. However, she writes down the address and offers me a glass of sherry and the gratuitous information that I’m looking like death and ought to be lying down, instead of gallivanting over Town in this heat, Miss Nellie.

  The canteen is in the basement of a large hotel. I am obliged to tack on the end of an enormous queue of men and women of all ages who are impatiently waiting for the doors to open. They are all grumbling: “Do they think we’ve got all day? The doors ought to be open for us—not us waiting for them to open.”

 
Eventually the doors do open and the queue surges rapidly along. “Passes, please. Show passes.”

  Once through the barriers, the war workers scuttle like rabbits to their favourite tables.

  The lady at the turnstile is extremely suspicious of me. Where is my pass? I haven’t any? I feel criminally guilty. Miss Helen Smith’s niece? Oh, perhaps I’d better wait—this in a voice indicating that any attempt to steal the canteen cutlery will be made only over her dead body.

  The huge underground room is filled with long trestle tables, each laid with places for forty or fifty people. The tables are covered with clean blue-and-white check cloths, and there are vases of flowers everywhere. A slight difference from the ambulance convoy. A day or two in France would soon cure the war workers of their grouse.

  “Perhaps you’d better sit somewhere,” suggests the lady at the turnstile. “You look white and you’re rather in my way. I’ve sent word to your aunt.”

  I thankfully sink into a chair at the nearest table.

  “Pardon me,” interrupts a cold voice, “but this table is reserved for the despatch riders.” Had the speaker been referring to royalty she would probably not have been half as reverent. She is a musical comedy attired young woman with waves of golden hair escaping from her khaki cap with careful carelessness. I apologise and wearily remove myself, and the musical comedy young woman comments audibly on the cheek of some of these blasted slackers. All at once I am embraced ecstatically. “Smithy, darling. You’ve come to see me at last.”

  It is The B.F.

  “Let me introduce you, Smithy, to all the despatch riders.”

  The B.F. is a born showman. She proceeds to tell my life history, or what she knows of it, to the assembled despatch riders. “Smithy was at the convoy and was with dear Tosh when she was killed.” The musical comedy young woman appears considerably disconcerted. The other drivers murmur semi-audible “Reallys!” and The B.F. invites me warmly to luncheon and is so disappointed when I explain about Aunt. Oh, dear, and she did so want to chat about the dear old convoy, so happy—none of these dear girls have ever been to France, of course—all very loudly for the benefit of the dear girls who have never been to France, the said dear girls looking as fed up as The B.F. means them to. Whatever have I been doing to my dear self?—all white and drawn, quite old in the face, and, of course, I’m only twenty-one, everyone knows. Oh—catching sight of my engagement ring—a romance? But how thrilling! Why are your hands so cold, dear? Dead and numb they feel. Such luck catching her in, she babbles on—usually she’s terribly naughty, lunching at the Savoy or somewhere nice with some nice man. This is awfully unusual being here alone. The B.F. is most apologetic at being caught paying for her own lunch. In her eyes it is a confession of inferiority.