Not So Quiet...

Home > Other > Not So Quiet... > Page 14
Not So Quiet... Page 14

by Helen Zenna Smith


  Fortunately I spot Aunt Helen staggering under a heavy tray of food and make my escape. The B.F. does not amuse me to-day. My sense of humour has departed.

  Aunt Helen is just as pleased to see me as I expected. She cannot imagine my having anything to say of interest to her, and she is too busy to bother now. I can sit at her table and wait—if I must wait.

  I seat myself and watch Aunt Helen dispassionately. It takes exactly one minute to discover that as a waitress she is the world’s hall-marked washout. The war workers, having deduced from my welcome that I could not possibly know Aunt very intimately, make no effort to conceal their disgust. “Silly old blighter,” “Doddering old messer,” “One-foot-in-the-grave-Gertie,” “Mercury”—I should like Aunt to hear a few of the flattering descriptions.

  She certainly is the last word in incompetence. She mixes up each order systematically, and has to make return journeys for things she has forgotten in practically every instance. If roast beef and baked potatoes are wanted she will bring the roast beef, and the baked potatoes materialise with luck any time after the beef is stone cold. Once the bread basket is emptied it remains empty, despite frenzied pleas. One girl asks six times for water and then doesn’t get it. It is a pitiful exhibition, and the war workers have no false ideas of gratitude towards their voluntary waitress. They are hungry and in a hurry. Aunt knows she is messing things up, and the fact that I am a spectator does not help. She becomes hot and bothered and flustered. Her grey hair is hanging in wisps from under her dust-cap—a vivid pink. All females with complexions like my aunt’s should be prohibited by Act of Parliament from wearing crude pink dust-caps. She flutters aimlessly to and fro like a foolish hen. If only she used a little method she could save herself seven-eighths of the trouble. Vague old fool. Why doesn’t she devote herself to the small jobs of her own home, dusting and filling flower vases, washing china, answering the telephone—then she could release one of her competent maids to wait on the war workers; but, of course, that would not be spectacular enough for a red-hot patriot such as Aunt Helen. What a godsend the war is, coming just as Spiritualism was beginning to bore her!

  All around I see similar exhibitions of incompetence; Aunt is one of many.

  At last the twelve o’clock batch is fed and the doors closed while the tables are put in order for the “one-o’clocks.” Aunt ungraciously permits me to fill her water jugs and bread baskets.

  “Well?” she barks at last.

  “Do you still want me to go to France?” I am as curt as she.

  “Do you imagine it pleases me to see a niece of mine slacking about Town?” she counters.

  “I’ll go back if you give me a hundred pounds.”

  Her eyes light up with an unholy light, but she is still suspicious. “A hundred? Whatever for? It’s a lot of money.”

  “I must have a hundred.” I repeat doggedly. “Father’s cut my allowance off and the last time it cost a hundred for my outfit. . . .”

  “Oh! M-m-m-m.” She tries to be casual. “When do you propose enlisting?”

  “To-day. As soon as I cash the cheque.”

  “M-m-m-m.” Suspicious again. “Your Mother isn’t influencing you, by any chance?” She is not paying for Mother’s fun.

  “No, Aunt, as a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking of the things you said. . . .”

  Ah, I have hit the right nail on the head. She smiles. A wintry smile; she must not thaw too soon, that would not be dignified; but still a smile.

  “I’m glad the seed did not fall on stony ground.” She smiles again, a real smile this time, a positively arch smile—oh, very arch is Aunt Helen now that she has won a smashing victory. “No stopping you once you’ve made up your mind, eh, Helen? Ha, ha, ha!” A rippling laugh. “Well, come along, impatient girl, into our office. . . .”

  All eagerness now is Aunt Helen, almost running in case the prey may escape even now. She opens her cheque-book with a flourish.

  “Shall I cross it, Helen?”

  “She won’t take a cheque in case. . . .”

  “No, leave it open, Aunt,” I reply.

  ·····

  Trix has gone with the hundred pounds—where I do not know. She will telephone me as soon as—or if—she can. I must wait. Useless arguing. I must wait. I will not have to wait long one way or the other. What do a few days matter? I am strangely apathetic. Useless struggling. I was never a strong swimmer, and now I must float along with the current until it casts me high and dry or carries me further and further out of my depth. My one big effort to get back to dry land has been a failure. Caught up like a piece of driftwood, all the struggles in the world are futile. I have no fight left in me.

  I cross slowly into Trafalgar Square, along Hay-market into Piccadilly, past Hyde Park . . . on and on until I reach my objective. I find myself at last in the entrance hall of a solid-looking house. Someone directs me to a big room on the ground floor.

  Two women are sitting at a large desk; girls in khaki are bustling about. There are printed bills tacked neatly on the walls—

  WANTED

  WOMEN FOR THE DURATION OF THE WAR

  W.A.A.C.

  One of the girls in khaki approaches me. “I hope you’ve come to enlist. Good pay, uniform found, no expense. . . .”

  “Yes.”

  They are galvanized into immediate action. The elder of the two women pulls a business-like form towards her, the other importantly dips a pen in the ink, one of the uniformed girls bustles about encouraging me, until I tell her, to save her breath, I have every intention of enlisting. I’ve come specially to do it. She looks offended, but relapses into silence. Service abroad, I stipulate, that is the only condition under which I am enlisting. They put it in writing at my request.

  “Name and address?”

  I give them.

  “What are you enlisting as? Driver, Cook, Clerk, Domestic Worker. . . .”

  Aunt Helen’s smug face rises before me, Mother’s ladylike voice: “My eldest daughter, Helen, an ambulance driver in France; oh, a most exclusive class of girl, most exclusive, all ladies—they stipulate that, you know. Most exclusive; Georgina Toshington is out with her, you know, the niece of the Earl of . . .”

  “Domestic worker, please.”

  The last claw of the cat before it is put in the sack and drowned!

  “Domestic worker. Probably a cook’s assistant. That all correct? Sign here.”

  Domestic worker. If I had a laugh left in me I would split my sides with vulgar mirth. “My daughter a common W.A.A.C., a domestic worker, mixing with dreadful people out of the slums, some of them really are, you know. And I’ve even heard some of them are immoral—babies and all that kind of thing. My daughter not even an officer, and she could have enlisted with the very best people. . . .”

  Domestic worker.

  Put that on your needles and knit it, my patriotic aunt.

  Tell that to the titled ladies on your committee, my snobbish mother.

  “You’ll get your calling-up papers in a day or so.”

  I turn on my heel.

  ·····

  It is five days before Trix telephones. Everything has gone according to schedule. I see her off by the leave-train. She is miserably thin and white, and there are lines about her mouth that are not good to see in a girl of nineteen. For a minute we hold one another closely. “Cis, I’ll never forget to my dying day. . . .”

  After that we say little. I ask for no details, nor does she offer any; neither do I tell of my sleepless hours waiting for the telephone to ring. She knows.

  She is apologetic about her abstraction. Her mind is a blank . . . she has nothing to talk about—nothing seems to matter . . . she doesn’t know whether I understand. . . .

  I understand, but I say nothing.

  Instead, I break the news that I am returning to France. Her comment is brief: “Bit of a damn fool, aren’t you?”

  As the train goes out of the station my last emotion goes with it. Nothin
g will ever stir me again. I am dry. Worn out. Finished.

  ·····

  Evidently there is no preliminary training necessary for a cook’s assistant. They are needed too urgently.

  Two weeks later I entrain with my draft for France. No one of my family sees me off this time.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE months pass, each day a replica of the last, time on and time off, work and rest and recreation. I have had no leave, at my own request. It was early autumn when I came out and now spring is here—nearly seven months since I started peeling potatoes and onions at the trestle table outside the camp kitchen alongside Misery, Cheery, and Blimey. We are known as “the Four Whys,” our nicknames all ending in the same letter—for, of course, I am again Smithy, the inevitable fate of all Smiths in the Army since ever there was an Army.

  I have become accustomed to being a machine, to living by the clock, to having my amusements and my religion set before me in carefully-measured doses, to sleeping certain hours, to working certain hours, to exercising certain hours, to taking aperients on certain days whether they are necessary or not, and to donning the cheery indomitable personality of a member of the women’s army each morning with my uniform, and discarding it only when the bugle signals “Lights Out.”

  I am a slot machine that never goes out of order. Put so much rations into the slot and I will work so long, play so long, and sleep so long. The administration is perfect. Everything is regulated. Even my emotions. I am serious at given moments, such as church parade; I laugh at given moments, when there is a visiting commission, or at any entertainment where the programme tells me the item is comic in order that I may not register incorrectly. I am not unduly happy, neither am I noticeably unhappy . . . I would not dare be either. If I were over-happy I should be sent for—as Cheery is often sent for—and be kindly chided for lack of dignity and control. If I were noticeably unhappy the Unit Administrator would tactfully put me through the third degree and, if unable to trace the cause of my state of mind, would make a determined effort to restore me to a standardised state of mental elation. Amusing books would be selected for me. I should be invited to tea and talks—a pleasant form of confession with a chocolate biscuit accompaniment that is highly popular; or I should attend special concerts and be roped in for a course of vigorous Morris dancing, as Misery is. But I am neither over-happy nor noticeably unhappy. I am the most equable disposition in the unit. The Administrator says so. My companions like me because I am “always the same.” There is no hanky-panky about me, I am told; you can neither shock nor surprise, please nor displease. I never complain, I have no grievances, and I never argue. The Unit Administrator is fond of upholding me as an example. I never request a pass. There has never been one black mark against my conduct or my work. I have never even broken a rule. I do not tell her I am not interested enough in the rules to break them . . . for she would not believe it. She is determinedly kind and tactful, and takes a personal interest in every member of her unit, whom individually she knows by name. She calls herself our “Mother Confessor.” I have heard her privately described as “Nosey Parker,” but not often, for my comrades revel in pouring confidences into her willing ear. Besides, they like the chocolate biscuits that go with the maternal advice. She tells our mothers, with whom she is fond of corresponding, that the minds of her girls are as open books to her. Naturally, the Rabelaisian pages are reserved for the dormitories.

  I live in a Nissen hut, with a number of companions. Once this communal life would have stifled me, but now I am quite content that the details of my body, my personal habits, and my underclothing should be common knowledge. Outwardly I am Smithy, assistant cook; inwardly I am nothing. I have no feelings that are not physical. I dislike being too hot or too cold. My body is healthy, my mind negative. I have no love or hate for anyone. Long ago I ceased to love Roy; long ago I ceased to hate my mother. Both processes were gradual. I am content to drift along in the present. The past has gone; I have no future . . . I want no future. With this mental atrophy my physical fear has vanished, for fear cannot exist when one is indifferent to life. The droning of the enemy planes that make the nights noisier than the days leaves me unmoved, where once it petrified me with a senseless horror; the ceaseless pounding of the guns has no more effect on me than the hidden drums of an orchestra . . . for I have no nerves. Automatically I bathe my body, automatically I converse with my fellow-workers, automatically I write letters, obey orders, eat and sleep . . . a flesh and blood case containing nothing save the machinery that keeps Smith, assistant cook, alive.

  Spring. . . . Cheery and Blimey singing over the vegetables as though they were primroses and daffodils. Even Misery not grousing for once. And I do not care.

  Spring. . . . Soft breezes on our wet hands instead of cutting winds that chap and crack our skins. Tender sun forcing its way through white, impudent clouds . . . slits of blue widening and widening. And I do not care.

  “’Ark at that soppy little bird,” says Blimey, “singin’ its guts out over there. Makes yer feel like a new ’at some’ow.”

  “Wisht I ’ad a new chap,” says Cheery. “Blow the new ’at.”

  “I’ve finished the third corner of my crochay bedspread,” says Misery. “Turned the corner last night.”

  ·····

  Cheery and Blimey are sprucing up. Blimey has discarded the issue hat which has never suited her little sharp face, and has become the proud possessor of a softer, more becoming shape.

  Cheery and Blimey argue about most things . . . but on one point they agree emphatically . . . it’s a jolly good war, and they hope it goes on for ever. They will probably get their wish. They both derive from large families living in two small rooms in a crowded slum district, and they still revel in the luxury of a bed to themselves. At first they mistrusted the long rows of bathrooms, but now they are immersed at every available opportunity. Blimey has developed into a “Reg’ler K-Nut.” She has cut her hair in imitation of mine, her skirt is a fraction shorter than the others’, and her Burberry a few shades lighter. At church parade she wears yellow wash-leather gloves with the cuffs turned back from the wrists and a yellow crêpe de Chine handkerchief tucked coyly into her sleeve. Her stockings are well-fitting and her shoes as highly polished as those of the girl in a well-known boot-polish advertisement. Her teeth protrude slightly, but they are even and white. Until she became a W.A.A.C., she had never cleaned them, but now she does it several times daily. It is her staple topic of conversation.

  This personal cleanliness and extravagance of dress is not for mere show. It is a commercial proposition—the capital, so to speak, that Blimey is putting into her business . . . the business of marrying the first suitable Tommy she can ensnare. For, as Blimey shrewdly says, you get it all ways. . . . “If ’e comes through the war ’e works and keeps yer; if ’e won’t work an’ keep yer ’e gets sued for maintenance; if’e gets wounded ’e gets pensioned; an’ if ’e’s killed there’s yer widow’s allowance . . . yer can’t go wrong.”

  Which is why Blimey enlisted. At home she had no wages to buy clothes. Her father took every penny she earned. She is refreshingly frank about it . . . unlike most of the others who joined up in the sacred name of patriotism. “Dirty lot o’ liars,” Blimey calls them, and takes a fiendish delight in winning the confidence of the flag-waggers until she unearths their real motive, which she then discloses without the slightest compunction to the world. . . . “Joined up to help win the wa-wer me foot! . . . joined up to do it on ’er ma for wallopin’ ’er for comin’ ’ome at midnight with a soldier. Patriotic me belly!” . . . Or when she hears someone boasting, “ ’Ere, is yer trumpeter dead?”

  My sister W.A.A.C.’s are certainly not backward in blowing their own trumpets. The newspapers, the recruiting officers, and the Army out here have told them they are noble creatures, and they resent not being patted on the back all the time. The band must go on playing for the Mutual Admiration Society. When the music fades to a pianissim
o passage they help it out with a concerted chorus of self-praise. “We’re each releasing men to fight, don’t forget . . . each of us doing her bit for the country. . . . The slackers at home ought to see us. . . . Good job they’ve started tribunals for the men hanging back . . . pity they haven’t got them for the women too. . . .”

  Some of them don’t even know what the war is about. I met a canteen waitress the other day who thought the Huns were black and came from Africa and were on the side of the Allies. She knew the Germans as Fritz and was astounded that the Huns were the same. She had joined up to see Paris, and although she wasn’t exactly seeing Paris she was having the time of her life. The truth is, the greater percentage enlisted because of the pay, which was good, considering they are rationed and uniformed free. Incidentally, the change from home life is not to be despised. They had no idea there would be personal danger, but once in they stick it because they’re here for the duration. There is just as much danger from the air in England now, by all accounts, and the munition girls on high explosives are taking far greater chances. Incompetence or lack of discipline will always get you a free ticket Blightywards, of course.

  Cheery joined up in a fit of pique because her regular young man was billeted in a French village where there were “Mamselles.” “I told him two could play at that game,” says Cheery. She is a born flirt. Her motto is “Familiar to all, courteous to none”—a reversal of the routine order, “Courteous to all, familiar to none.” She is pretty and has a roving eye. Cheery off duty without her Tommy would be as strange as a meal without Maconochie. Her favourite recreation is “leading the boys up the garden.” Blimey openly questions this and accuses her of occasionally “lettin’ them into the summer-’ouse.” Cheery does not deny this. “I’m a grown woman an’ I can enjoy meself if I like an’ ’ow I like!”

 

‹ Prev