Our aristocratic Jacqueline was the first to receive a secretarial post.
She would always be first everywhere, with her enchanting face and her
air of being owed the best, and yet this was so natural to her that we
could not resent her manner. She returned at noon, absolutely delighted
with her office. Her lieutenant was a man of excellent family, she
announced to us, highly cultured. And he had already invited her to have
lunch with him tomorrow. Of course, he had a wife and children in
France.
Soon most of us were assigned to work in various offices at GHQ. I
became, for the time being, a file clerk and the operator of a
mimeograph machine in the Information Bureau. But the Captain had no
idea what to do with Ursula. Most of us could type, at least; Ann could
drive a car; but Ursula had no accomplishments. Finally the Captain put
her down as sentry for the barracks.
Ursula remained seated all day long at a little table by the entrance,
keeping a registry book in which she noted down all of our comings and
goings. Opposite her was the switchboard room, where Claude was
stationed. Through the half-open door she could glimpse Claude’s
glistening blonde hair. From time to time, Claude came out of the little
room for a chat. She still wore that same wonderful perfume. But with
tender dismay one night Ursula asked me if I had noticed that Claude had
little creases at the sides of her mouth, and white hairs mingled with
the blonde. Indeed, Claude could have been her mother. And in those
first days I felt that this was what drew Ursula to Claude, the wish
that she had had a mother as gay and amusing as this woman, with her
inexhaustible store of gossip about all the celebrities in Paris.
But soon the stories Ursula brought back from Claude were less innocent.
Ursula was fascinated and yet a little puzzled by the ease with which
Claude related her bedroom experiences; she had slept with most of the
currently fashionable actors and writers of the capital, and she kept up
a continuous stream of intimate chatter about her lovers to the girl.
Ursula would repeat Claude’s gossip, somewhat in awe, and somewhat as
though wanting reassurance that there was nothing wrong in her adoration
of Claude. Claude would tell her, “I absolutely adored that boy, and
then suddenly I had enough of him. My only love was always my husband,
but he’s a dog. He drinks too much, and he’s a fairy, damn him! As soon
as we’re together, we fight. Luckily, I had Jacques. He was my great
consolation. He was still a child, a high school boy. He used to come to
me after school. I trained him. I made him my best lover.”
Ursula couldn’t get over her astonishment at this woman who adored her
homosexual husband but fought with him, and who had so many lovers, and
who was so much at ease about it all. The world of grownups had always
seemed distant and mysterious to Ursula. With Claude, that world became
even more distant, and all the values that Ursula had so painfully
established for herself were overturned.
But one thing was certain: Ursula felt that the one person who really
cared about her was Claude. Big Ann was pleasant and sometimes brusque;
the aristocratic Jacqueline irritated her, perpetually wanting to fuss
over her and take charge of her; Mickey was a clown who made her laugh;
and I suppose I was just someone who listened, someone she found it easy
to talk to. Ursula complained that the corporals scolded her endlessly,
and the Captain could scarcely remember her name. But Claude talked to
her, confided in her as in a friend, called her her little bird, stroked
her hair, smiled at her with her perfumed smile. Claude knew so many
stories, she was afraid of no one, and she had a way of looking at
Ursula with her black eyes, a way that made Ursula forget every desire
except to remain close to Claude as much as possible.
One night there came an order for the sentry to sleep in the switchboard
room with the telephone operator, so as to make sure that the service
would continue in case of a serious air attack. I helped Ursula drag her
iron cot into the little telephone room. Her heart must have been
beating with joy. What heavenly evenings she would pass with Claude!
That same evening, Claude decided to throw a secret little party in the
switchboard room. We organized it among a few of the girls, and sent
Ursula out to the corner pub to fetch some bottles of beer.
Ursula put on her cap and hurried out. It was the first time she had
been out since her arrival at the barracks. It was raining. Down Street
was narrow and dark. Ursula found her way to the pub, which was brightly
lighted and full of smoke, and crowded with soldiers in various degrees
of drunkenness. They called out to her, “Oh, Frenchie! Look at the
French girl!” Ursula told me later that she didn’t know what to do with
herself. The soldiers’ eyes shone and their lips were wet with beer.
They had thick red hands. Ursula’s heart fluttered. She kept her eyes
fixed at a point on the wall while she was being served. Finally it was
finished. The soldiers tried to catch hold of her arms, but she freed
herself and ran out. Ursula plunged toward the barracks as to a refuge.
I was standing in the doorway of the switchboard room when we heard
Ursula’s hurrying footsteps on the stairs outside. Claude brushed past
me into the hall and opened the door for her. She stood there in the
doorway, so shining, so blonde, with her khaki shirt partly open,
revealing her white throat. Ursula pressed herself suddenly against the
woman, and Claude held her in her arms. Her hands gently caressed
Ursula’s hair.
I can only suppose that Claude forgot my presence, or perhaps she
thought I had gone on into the switchboard room. But I remained in the
doorway, and I saw Claude gently press Ursula’s head against her full
breasts, separated from Ursula’s cheek only by the khaki shirt.
It was not hard for me, then or later, to understand Ursula’s feelings.
After her first, unnerving visit to a pub full of roistering soldiers,
she had hurried along a dark, alien street and found again at the end of
it Claude—beautiful, shining Claude—who at that moment must have seemed
to her the very embodiment of warmth and safety and gentleness.
Claude raised Ursula’s chin with one hand, drawing her face closer, and
suddenly, in the dimly lighted hall, she kissed Ursula on the mouth. It
was a quick light kiss, like a brush of a bird’s wing, a kiss so
discreet as not even to startle the girl.
Just then Ann and Mickey came along, with their drinking glasses hidden
under the jackets of their uniforms.
* * * * *
In the switchboard room, a little clock sounded nine. The corporal of
the guard had closed her eyes to our soiree, since Ann had given her to
understand that Warrant Officer Petit was invited, and, naturally, any
corporal reporting our little party would only be making trouble for
herself. (I had already noticed that Ann seemed to be born with a sense
of how to manage things in the Army.)
Petit was the last to arrive. The little room was filled with cigarette
smoke. Claude had taken off her uniform, and was now wearing a dressing
gown—blue with little white dots. She was seated on the bed with one of
her legs folded under her, and the other kicking a red slipper. A lock
of platinum hair fell over her forehead. A cigarette trembled in her
lips, while she was engaged in reading Mickey’s palm.
Petit surveyed the room, with her scrunched-up eyes of a man of the
world. Petit might readily agree that Claude was beautiful, but a woman
like Claude had no interest for Petit. To our warrant officer, Claude
was only a dilettante. One might pass a pleasant evening with a woman
like that, but nothing else. At bottom, to the Petits of the world,
Claude was a pervert, a perverted woman of the sophisticated milieu, but
a woman in spite of everything. As for Ursula, Petit scarcely glanced at
her, obviously summing her up as a nice little thing, but nothing
special. She looked at Mickey. Her expression said, “A little fool.”
Ann was standing against the table with her arms crossed. She had rather
thick muscular arms and broad masculine hands. Petit poured herself a
glass of beer, and drank it down without stopping; she was satisfied. It
was said that her last two intimate friends had remained in France on
the farm where the three of them had lived before the war. She was all
alone here, and felt herself aging. Soon enough she’d be fifty years
old. In Ann, she must have seen herself as she had been at
twenty-six—solid and robust, with a deep voice and a man’s hands. Ann
looked directly into her eyes, and from her relaxed and satisfied
expression Petit seemed to know that everything was going well. It was
probably then that Petit decided to use her influence to have Ann made a
corporal as soon as possible. That would make things a lot simpler.
* * * * *
Much was to happen between the women who were at Claude’s little party,
and when I traced back their stories, I found that the threads began to
be woven together on this night.
Mickey was laughing as usual and playing the little comedian. Claude
knew that she was making no mistake; she had wide experience with men,
with women, and with life: Mickey would go far for adventure, even
though she was still a typical _demi-vierge_. She was pretty, in her
gawky way, she was ready for anything, she was gay, a good comrade and
well liked by everyone. Claude predicted a rich lover and a long voyage
for her. Then Claude turned her gaze upon little Ursula, sitting
silently at the foot of the bed, and Claude’s face filled with
tenderness for the child. A girl still so young, so new, altogether
inexperienced and untaught. She must have thought of her own life as a
little girl, for despite her bravura manner of an adventuress and a
_femme fatale_, she was born of a provincial middle-class family. Ursula
had already brought me Claude’s story of how she had been lifted out of
her small-town shell when quite young, through marriage to an elderly,
dissipated Parisian who had initiated her into the city’s circles of
debauch. He had finally succeeded in completely disorienting a character
that was at bottom healthy. Claude had left him at last, and married a
younger man, an engineer by profession. But her second husband had his
special passion, and had taken a job in London so as to be near one of
his male friends. Claude had followed him in May, just before the fall
of France, for she was in love with him despite his habits. She was a
woman overfilled with love, and her love had to be dissipated. All the
love that she might have had for a child had to be used somewhere. And
here was this girl, this little Ursula. I think there was the same
mothering desire in her love for Ursula that she had felt when that boy
Jacques had come to her with his school books under his arm. And yet
there was with it a devouring avidity for something as delicious as a
slightly green fruit. It was strange, absurd, but when Claude talked of
Jacques one could see that it had seemed to Claude as though she were
carrying on in a motherly role, continuing a boy’s upbringing, just as
someone who had taught him to wash, to eat, to walk. She, Claude, was
also a mother in her way. She had taught him to eat of another sort of
food—and she was proud of his progress, with a maternal pride. And
little Ursula—how wonderful it would be to watch her little mouth open
for the first time, and to see her overcome with happiness, like a child
to whom one has just given a beautiful toy!
Even while she kept chattering with the rest of us, Claude studied the
girl through the corner of her eye. She smiled at Ursula, and drew her
nearer, putting her arms around her, living again the intimate moment in
the doorway.
Petit was watching, with a malicious and slightly obscene light in her
eyes. She had the air of saying, “I leave her to you. That one doesn’t
interest me at all.” But it was flattering to Claude that Petit
understood at once. Claude always enjoyed the idea of being considered a
dangerous woman.