Not So Quiet...

by Helen Zenna Smith

  But Blimey does not hold with this view. “No bloke wants a girl wot ain’t pure,” is her contention. “A bloke likes to be first, don’t ’e? If ’e can get wot ’e wants without marriage, why marry?”

  That is why Blimey is as chaste as a nun. She is the most rigidly virtuous woman I have ever met. Not even a kiss on the lips, says Blimey, till the ring is on her finger and the lines tucked in her bosom. A terrifying chastity, that of Blimey.

  Misery is engaged to be married to a young man in England exempt from military service on the grounds of “indispensable.” She comes from a good home with a piano in the parlour and lace curtains at the front windows. She’s not used to this sort of rough life. She came out to save money for the wedding. Her grouse is as permanent and perpetual as her catarrh. She crochets fiercely on every opportunity at a crochet bedspread destined to cover herself and Fred at some remote date.

  “Garn, yer’ll be too busy blowin’ yer nose to need a bed,” gibes Blimey. “In between sneezes. I ’ope Fred’s nippy.”

  ·····

  The Unit Administrator wants me in her private office. I have only had this special summons once before . . . when Mother wrote to her the month I arrived with a request that I should be recommended for a commission on account of my previous war service at the convoy. The Unit Administrator reminded me forcibly of Aunt Helen in her manner. She was breezy, she was jovial, she was energetic, she was determined and dreadfully, overwhelmingly charming. The interview might be described as a succession of surprises. On her part, that is. She was surprised I had not spoken of my excellent record. She was surprised I had not confessed to being the driver who was with the well-known Georgina Toshington on the occasion of her sad death on active service. She was surprised I had not tried for a commission in the W.A.A.C.’s. She was surprised that if I had not tried for a commission in the W.A.A.C.’s I had not joined up as an ambulance driver. All these things surprised her. But not to the extent that my refusal to budge from my assistant cook’s job surprised her.

  I knock on her door and enter indifferently in reply to her invitation. She has a letter in her hand. I recognise the hand-writing instantly. Mother. I have not answered her last half-dozen letters.

  “You wanted me, ma’am?”

  “Sit down, Smith.”

  I obey. It is an uncommon request. The Unit Administrator does not usually request the rank and file to be seated in her presence.

  “Smith, I have an unpleasant task before me. I want you to prepare yourself for some rather sad news. Your mother thinks it would be better for me to break it to you than have you open a letter and receive a shock.”

  I wait patiently.

  “It has to do with your fiancé, Captain Evans-Mawnington.”

  Roy? Killed, I suppose? I am not surprised. Everyone else is killed. Trix was wiped out in an air-raid on the hospital five months ago, Etta Potato was torpedoed crossing the Channel within the last three weeks . . . everyone is killed. If the submarines, the aerial torpedoes, the poison gas, the liquid fire, the long-distance guns, the hand grenades, the trench mortars, and all the other things injure without killing them, they are sent back again and again after being patched up until they are killed. It is only a question of time. Why should Roy expect to escape? He is better dead. I am glad he is dead—because once he brought romance into my life and I loved him for a little while.

  “He has been wounded, badly wounded.”

  Roy is not dead. He is wounded. Well, that is nothing. He has been wounded before. This will be his third wound-stripe. He will be patched up and perhaps next time he may have more luck and be killed and out of it for good.

  “Your mother writes . . . I hate having to tell you this, Smith, it is so unfortunate . . . she writes that he is blinded and has had a leg amputated from the hip.”

  I watch her stolidly.

  “But he behaved with conspicuous bravery and is to have the M.C. Smith, let that console you. The M.C. It helps, doesn’t it? The M.C.”

  “Sometimes I think Mother would rather have a decoration than me.” Roy said that the night we became engaged, the night we dined together in the little restaurant with the pink lights. The night I was so happy I kept on saying it aloud—“I’m happy! I’m happy! I’m happy!”

  “The M.C., Smith. A great, great honour. If you want to weep, Smith, weep. I understand, my dear.”

  She waits for me to do something. She expects me to speak, I think.

  “His mother will be pleased about the M.C., ma’am,” I say quietly.

  The Unit Administrator looks disappointed. She expected a big emotional scene and feels cheated. She would have fussed over me with a smelling bottle and personally supervised my removal to the sick bay. She prides herself on the personal touch she introduces into the love affairs of her girls.

  “Perhaps you would like me to arrange urgent leave, Smith?”

  “No, thank you, ma’am. I’d rather carry on.”

  She smiles. “Devotion to duty, Smith. Private griefs must be set aside when duty calls, mustn’t they? I am proud of you. You have set a fine example to the Unit.”

  She shakes my hand emotionally.

  I go back to my trestle table where the onions and carrots are waiting.

  CHAPTER XII

  WHEN the air-raids come, as they do every night when the moon shines, a whistle blows, we collect our blankets and mattresses and are marched about a mile out of camp to the trenches that have been built since the time a bomb fell on a wing of the camp hospital and crumpled it to powder. Now the weather has improved the raids are increasing in number and violence. Each becomes more daring than its predecessor.

  The rumour is flying around that we are losing the war, and our army is recoiling before the big advance of the enemy. Every day we are losing ground, they say. Soon we expect to strike camp and retreat. It is a curious feeling, as though a terrific landslide were sweeping down and we, in the valley, were doomed to be engulfed unless we run. Daily the guns grow nearer, more menacing, almost deafening. We can distinguish between the different ones now . . . we know the lines must have dropped back if only for that reason. A queer tenseness is in the air. And nightly the raiding aeroplanes grow in numbers and daring.

  ·····

  Three letters lie open on my bed before me . . . Mother’s, Mrs. Evans-Mawnington’s, and Roy’s.

  “MY DEAREST GIRLIE,

  “Isn’t it wonderful that Roy has had the M.C.? Wonderful and sad. Our poor blinded hero. And my little girlie is to marry him and be his eyes. I am proud of him. I gave my youngest girl to England, my little Trix, whose medals I always wear on official occasions. But, in the midst of my grief, I can still smile and thank God she died in the service of her country—a country that will never forget. The brave boy is in hospital in Brighton, and his poor mother is with him. She is grieved at his affliction, but, as she says, how much worse if he hadn’t been recommended for an M.C. It really is a great compensation. I’m sure the dear boy thinks so too. Dear boy, I feel already that he is my own son.

  “I think a quiet wedding, don’t you? as soon as he is strong enough. Just a few relations and friends by the hospital bedside. Perhaps a reporter, for your example ought to do a few of these appalling creatures good who have refused to marry their wounded heroes.

  “And, darling, you really must give up that absurd W.A.A.C. job. The wife of a Captain and M.C. can hardly go on peeling vegetables, can she? I have written to your Unit Administrator and suggested it. What a charming woman she seems; she wrote me the sweetest letter re Roy. Mrs. Evans-Mawnington said it was a great comfort.

  “Darling, what an inestimable privilege you have, marrying one of England’s disabled heroes, devoting your life to his service!

  “No orange blossoms or anything like that—I think it would be bad form—but a smart grey frock and hat; and I think Father might be persuaded to give you a nice squirrel coat for a wedding gift . . . such a pretty fur, I think, so soft and suitabl
e for young girls.

  “Your ever-loving,

  “MOTHER.”

  “MY DEAR NELLIE,

  “I am grief-stricken, but I feel I must write to tell you of Roy’s splendid achievement—how he got his M.C. He held a trench under machine-gun fire when three-quarters of his men were dead, although one of his legs was blown off. Just as relief came a piece of shrapnel caught his face, and his eyesight was ruined for ever. My poor brave son. But they gave him an M.C. As soon as he is strong enough he goes to Buckingham Palace for the investiture—a great honour—and the King will personally thank him for his bravery. You and I will go—his mother and his wife, for I hope by then you will be his wife; the doctor says he needs an incentive to get well, and that should do it. He is, of course, a trifle depressed, but that will wear off once he is out of hospital and has been decorated.

  “It is a terrible calamity, but I refuse to weep for my son. I gave him to his country, my only son, he was all I had to give—the widow’s mite—but I would give him again if the call arose. I am proud of his blindness and his disability. The sight of him will be an object lesson to the men who have allowed others to fight their battles for them. If the sight of his blindness shames one of the cowards then he has not suffered vainly. As Shakespeare puts it:—

  “ ‘And gentlemen in England now abed,

  Shall call themselves accursed they were not here,

  And hold their manhood cheap whiles any speaks

  That fought with us,’ etc.

  “No, Nellie, I hold my head proudly, as befits the English mother of an English soldier, and I thank God for blessing me among all women for mothering a hero, an M.C. My brave, brave boy.

  “With love,

  “ETHEL EVANS-MAWNINGTON.”

  “DEAR NELL,

  “The nurse is writing this for obvious reasons. Mother will have told you about my eyes and my leg, but there is something she hasn’t told you because she doesn’t know. There will never be any perambulator on that lawn of ours, Nell. You understand? I couldn’t expect you to marry me. You’re brick enough to stand the blindness and the limp, but the other is too much to ask any woman. So I release you from your promise.

  “I suppose they’ve told you of the M.C. If I was writing this myself I’d tell you what they could do with it.

  “Don’t worry about me, Nell; I don’t really care. I haven’t cared about anything for a long time. I only wish to Christ they’d left me another five minutes in the trench.

  “Yours,

  “ROY.”

  I pick up my pen slowly.

  “DEAR ROY,

  “Don’t be a silly ass. I hate kids, anyway. Yours in haste to catch the post,

  “NELL.”

  ·····

  “Air raid!”

  I collect my blankets and mattress methodically as usual and don my coat and hat and muffler. It is the ninth raid in succession since the moon came this month. From a pale crescent she has grown into a rakish silver ball. She is the most aggressively radiant moon I have ever seen. The night is clear and cold and cloudless, without a breath of wind. An ideal night for a raid. Outside the girls are hastily falling in, ready for roll-call. Cheery, Misery and Blimey fall in beside me. They are laughing and chattering. We are so accustomed to this sort of thing that we regard it merely as an infernal nuisance. Familiarity breeds contempt. Our shelter is lined with sandbags and earth, and unless the man in the machine scores a bull’s-eye nothing can harm us. We know it is difficult to make a direct hit from the air. So let’s make the best of life. Cheery has a tin of toffee, Blimey and I have some biscuits and chocolate, while Misery has the inevitable crochet work which she can do as ably in the dark as in the light.

  “March!”

  We stagger forth, stumbling and giggling with our cumbersome loads. A mile is not a long distance, but Army biscuit mattresses are no joke to carry for any length of time. We arrive gasping. There is no sign of the enemy planes as yet . . . the warning has been given in excellent time. We settle ourselves comfortably. I find a cosy corner, and Cheery, Misery and Blimey drape themselves comfortably round me. They like being near me during raids because I am “always the same.”

  Misery immediately starts a frenzied assault on the bedspread, while Cheery and Blimey, sotto voce, in case a forewoman hears, begin to chi-ack her about the wedding night with Fred. They accuse her of “knowing all about it,” of having already had intimate relations with Fred. She ignores this. To their chagrin she is not to be drawn tonight.

  “I betcher Fred’s ’avin’ a good old ’ot time in the ole town to-night with some of them munition girls,” says Blimey, slyly digging me in the calf. “ ’Ot stuff, them munitioners. I betcher old Fred’s ’ot stuff w’en ’e gets loose, too.”

  This annoys Misery, as it invariably does.

  “Ere, you leave my Fred be,” she retorts. “ ’E’s never ’ad nout to do with no woman yet, ’as my Fred. ’E’s a pure man.”

  “Blimey! A ’e-virgin,” teases Blimey. “Fancy marryin’ a feller ’oo’s goin’ to practise on yer, Misery. I . . .”

  “Hark!” interrupts Misery. “Hark!”

  The enemy planes have come within earshot. Buzz, buzz, buzz . . . like a giant hive of giant bees.

  “Bigger fleet than ever to-night.”

  The gossip and the laughter die down to a murmur, then gradually fade away altogether. We sit there in the semi-darkness waiting. It is not the most pleasant sensation in the world sitting in a shelter waiting for bombs to drop. Even though the odds are a hundred to one against a direct hit, it is a nasty feeling . . . like anticipating a dentist’s drill, or making a speech in public, or hearing a burglar trying an insecure window-catch . . . apprehensive, uncertain what may happen next.

  Now the picnic has started. The bombs are falling thick and fast, each explosion nearer. Worse to-night than they have ever been, we whisper. We whisper the same thing every night. In the half-light I can see Misery’s fingers working rapidly . . . in and out she wriggles the crochet hook, her voice murmuring . . . “Two chain, three treble, two double crochet, four treble, turn, two chain. . . .” Her plain, gaunt, absorbed face bends over the work as though she can see the pattern plainly. She has been working on the bedspread for eighteen months . . . another six months and it will be ready for her and Fred. “If the war ends then, but wot ’ope?” says Misery, always the perfect pessimist.

  There is a terrific explosion, startling in its unexpectedness, like a frightful peal of thunder, followed by a rain of shots. We know what that is . . . machine guns aimed from the air at some target after the bomb has scored a hit. We sit up. Hardly have we recovered from the shock than there is another ear-splitting explosion . . . nearer. More machine-gun fire follows it. Now we see the machines overhead, outlined black against the clear sky. The bombs are dropping all round the trench. Our ears are ringing. We are all deathly quiet now, watching . . . all but Misery, who crochets for dear life. Another bomb and another hail of machine-gun fire. We stare at one another, not daring to ask what we are all thinking.

  Have they found our trench? Are they aiming at us? They seem to be concentrating dead on us. Usually they make for the soldiers’ encampment to the right or the woods to the left, but to-night is different. Another ear-splitting explosion. A flash of flame. That was very near. The noise of the engines is near, too. They are flying very low to-night.

  Ploo-oop. Crash! Through the half-light our eyes seek one another, startled. We listen. Four engines. We can count them distinctly. Four bombers flying low over our trench. Someone asks what our own planes are doing to let the raiders through like this, dropping their bombs like rain, deafening us until our heads are pounding and our ear-drums throbbing.

  “Put that blarsted crochay away,” whispers Blimey harshly. “Fair get on my nerves you do, crochayin’ as though they was playin’ marbles up there with them bombs; gettin’ on everybody’s nerves you are with yer rotten crochay. . . .”

  Ploo-
op. Crash!

  The end of the trench suddenly collapses with a roar. There is a flash of flame outside. The sandbags cave in slowly as though coming to a mighty decision before falling. The bomb has caught the end of the trench. Five feet to the left and the airman would have scored a direct hit. One of the girls is hit—bleeding. The others begin to panic and huddle together at the other end. The plane comes down in a swoop, lower, lower . . . engine roaring. We can see his bombs hanging below the wings. Lower, lower . . . another bomb is unleashed. It falls in the middle of the trench. There is a mighty explosion, a flash of flame, an ear-splitting percussion that knocks me flat on the ground. Something falls on me. I lose consciousness. When I come to girls are screaming all round me . . . the air is filled with the groans of the dying. Something heavy is lying across my legs. With difficulty I remove it. It is a sandbag. I stand up. My mouth is full of dirt, but I am not hurt. Beside me lies Cheery . . . she is quite dead. The top of her head is blown off and one of her hands is missing. She looks as though she has tried to shield her face. Blimey is bleeding from a wound in the arm . . . the blood is pouring from it. “Now see wot’s ’appened to me new Burberry, all covered in blood. Now see wot’s ’appened to me new Burberry, all covered in blood,” she keeps muttering, holding her arm out to divert the stream from her clothing to the ground. I cannot see Misery anywhere. There is a pile of earth and wood where she has been sitting. Madly I begin to dig, with bare hands. I find an edge of the crochet work—she is not far from it. I manage to get her out. I raise her head. She is alive . . . just. She cannot speak. Her lips open and shut soundlessly. She wants something. I hand her the crochet work. A look of content comes over her plain face. The crochet bedspread will never be finished by Misery. She dies as I watch her.