The barracks had been in existence for more than a month. Every morning
we went through our drill in Down Street before hurrying off to our
various jobs. One day the Captain announced that a military ball was
taking place, to which all of us had been invited.
That evening we were all loaded onto trucks and carried across
blacked-out London. As we bumped along, Jacqueline regaled us with tales
of the formal balls she had attended before the war, dressed in white
tulle. She remembered the family limousine, with the chauffeur in
uniform, bowing as he opened the door for the young lady. I suppose she
could not help feeling her superiority to most of the girls in the
truck, who behaved with a good deal of vulgarity. And I suppose that
Jacqueline really had no desire to go to a dance at a training camp,
where she might be pawed by any soldier from anywhere. But neither did
she want to remain alone in Down Street. Besides, it might be amusing to
see what a soldiers’ dance was like, just once.
The truck made a few too many sudden stops. The driver must have found
it amusing to jolt our bunch of girls so that we fell all over each
other. Most of us laughed, but Jacqueline protested for her back was
again giving her trouble. One of the women called her a snob, and told
her to cut out her mannerisms.
When I really came to know Jacqueline, I understood that she suffered
from a perverse need to impress everybody. That night, she hoped that
she would faint, so as to make that woman regret her words. But it
didn’t happen, and she didn’t quite feel like feigning a loss of
consciousness, as she sometimes did by letting herself slide into a kind
of feebleness that readily took hold of her. But the bouncing truck
brought tortures to her back. She had been suffering these odd spells
ever since that night of her flight and her accident. I knew the pain
was real enough, but I sometimes wondered why she had jumped from the
roof of the house in the first place. Was it really because of that pair
of perverted drunkards whose children she was taking care of? Was it
really to escape from them? Or had she done it because of some need she
carried within herself, a need for drama and for disaster?
I was astonished, and filled with admiration for her honesty, when
Jacqueline told me once that she often asked herself the same questions.
“There seems to be a tradition of melodrama in my family,” she said.
“One of my first memories is of being surrounded by people, all of them
talking about the airplane crash that killed my father.”
Soon after that, Jacqueline told me, there had been a stepfather,
elegant, attentive. She recalled the household scenes, later on, between
her mother and her stepfather, because he would kiss her when she came
home from school. She spoke of the attempted suicide of her stepfather.
She had left home to escape this concentration of hatred and misfortune,
veiled by riches and good manners. But her fate followed her wherever
she went. Or was it perhaps that she carried it with her? Jacqueline
wondered.
A week after her arrival in England, in the first family to which she
had come on an exchange visit, the husband had died of a heart attack.
After that she had lived with a couple, a man and his wife, who came in
turns each night to knock on her door. She hated them. She wanted to
punish them, to bring about some sort of explosion, to provoke a drama.
Yes, she said, she knew now that it was drama that she wanted most of
all. She could just as well have left quietly. No one would have kept
her back by force. But she had preferred to stage an escape—to jump. She
had had visions of herself as a beautiful corpse beside their house.
But instead, Jacqueline had howled in pain under their windows all night
long and no one had come. In the morning she had dragged herself to her
room. It was finished. The drama had failed.
Soon afterward, she had read a newspaper item about a feminine
contingent being formed in the Free French Forces. That was her
salvation. All the history of France passed before her eyes—pictures
remembered from her childhood: the parades of July Fourteenth, Jeanne
Hachette, Ste Geneviève, the queens of France, the _Marseillaise_,
Verdun—she was going to become part of all that! To save France! To
avenge the armistice, the great shame! Her father would have been proud
of her—that legendary father who had fallen from the sky like Icarus.
As soon as she was well, she had volunteered. And now she was a soldier,
mingled with the women of the people. There were indeed several girls of
good family—Ursula, Mickey, a student of pharmacy, the daughter of a
consul—but they were the exceptions. Most of Jacqueline’s comrades now
were women of an entirely different sort from any she had ever known
before.
She spoke with contempt for all the members of her self-satisfied
family—so sure of their prerogatives, so certain that it was a great
distinction for anyone to be invited to their table—and yet, was she
herself so different from them? Since she had come to live at the
barracks, I knew that Jacqueline had her doubts. It was true that she
accepted any sort of physical task without the slightest complaint, and
that she did her best to accomplish it through pride—just to show us
that she was perfectly capable of scrubbing the floor or peeling
potatoes. But there were so many coarse women, with the tales of their
cheap affairs with men already resounding through the barracks—she hated
them all. They permitted themselves to be taken to filthy little hotels.
They went to bed with sailors, copulating like animals. She, Jacqueline,
would never permit a man to take her at his will. When the others talked
of their cheap affairs, Jacqueline said nothing. But I knew she was
thinking of the lieutenant in her office, so eager to please her,
bringing her books and flowers and gifts, inviting her to the Mayfair or
to the Claridge. All the men were in love with her; Jacqueline had
become used to that, and she would have been astonished if it were not
so. She loved to watch the shine come into their eyes, and to provoke
their compliments. The other evening in a taxi, after being taken to
dinner, she had permitted a young officer to kiss her on the mouth, and
then had come running in like a child, her eyes sparkling, to tell me
about it. It was fun, it was really like one read in stories, like
playing with fire, to feel him burning close to her, and to be able to
put him off whenever she wished. Before the war, in France, she had been
engaged to a handsome lad, quite well-to-do, belonging to her own world.
Jacqueline had permitted him to kiss her and to fondle her breasts, and
she had found it amusing to hold him off after that, and to feel him
trembling with desire, a slave of his desire for her. It was as though
she had made a discovery, that in addition to being born to an
aristocracy in which one always was in the position of deciding how
other people should behave, she had been born into the aristocratic sex,
for it was the woman who could always decide, always command, in
relationships with men. It had been a pleasant discovery. Jacqueline had
been seventeen at the time.
* * * * *
The dance was in full swing when we arrived. The men welcomed us with
shouts and cries of joy; they were mostly French, though there was a
scattering of uniforms from other nations—Polish, Norwegian, and
Belgian. I liked dancing, and found myself in a little circle of swing
enthusiasts. Everybody was learning the Lindy, and I danced with one
after another in a strange exhilaration, so that I scarcely knew or
remembered with which boy the dancing went well. They were still all
boys to me.
Mickey was seized by a master sergeant of the Air Corps, who squeezed
her tightly as they danced. He was short and slightly bald, but Mickey
said he was nice enough. Mickey was never especially particular. She
liked to have fun and was willing to taste out of any dish, finding them
all pleasant. As she danced, soldiers called to her. They assessed her
with an expert air. Her mouth especially excited them—an arched red
mouth with the upper lip slightly advanced, as though the girl were
constantly ready to be kissed.
While they danced, the sergeant kissed her throat. For form’s sake,
Mickey pretended to be shocked. But even the sergeant could see well
enough that she was not at all offended.
I looked around for Ursula, but she didn’t seem to be anywhere in the
room. I learned later that, after having danced with a fat soldier who
was nearly drunk, she felt that she had had enough, and sought to
escape. The cigarette smoke was so thick that it stung her eyes almost
to the point of tears. She was afraid of these men, didn’t know what to
say to them, and was terrified merely at the idea of being touched by
any one of them. She saw a door and fled outside. There was a little
courtyard, and the fresh evening air made her shiver. Ursula sat down on
the steps. The cool air caressed her cheeks, and she shook out her hair,
relieved in her escape. Then she noticed that a soldier, quite young,
was sitting on a crate in the courtyard, and watching her. There it is,
she thought. I have to leave this place, too.
But in order not to appear ridiculous, she told me with her quaint
nicety, she remained for another moment, planning to get up and leave as
though she had just come out for a breath of air.
She kept her eyes averted from the soldier so as not to give him an
excuse to speak to her. The music came from the hall—muted, but reaching
them nevertheless. In there, a voice was bellowing “Madelon.”
Suddenly the soldier said to her, “It’s better out here than inside,
don’t you think?” And as soon as she heard his calm voice, tinged with a
slight foreign accent, Ursula felt reassured. Now she looked at the
soldier. She could scarcely see him in the darkness, but he had a very
young air and seemed rather small in stature. She replied, “Yes,” and
didn’t know what else to say.
They remained silent for a long while. Ursula was suddenly quite
astonished to hear her own voice break the silence.
She said, “Have you been in England long?”
The soldier answered, “I’ve been here three days. Last week I was in
Spain, and it’s only about fifteen days since I was in France.”
Now Ursula looked at him with a kind of awe. He came from France! Only
fifteen days ago, he had walked on the earth of France and spoken to the
people of France and looked at the trees, the sky of France. It seemed
to her that she had been in London for years rather than months.
She raised her head and watched the searchlights sweeping the sky. It
was beautiful to see. The alert had sounded, just as it did every
evening, but there had been no sound of aircraft. The German planes must
have headed somewhere else instead of coming over London.
“Aren’t you cold?” the soldier asked. He spoke so nicely, with so much
gentleness in his voice, that Ursula said she was touched. She shook her
head. He was probably not French. He had an accent, but Ursula couldn’t
tell from what country. And yet he spoke perfect French.
He was silent again for a little while, and then he said, “I admire you
for joining the Army. It’s not much fun for the men, but for women it
must really be hard.”
And now Ursula began to speak. Whenever she knew she was to be in the
company of young men, she worried her head for days in advance to
prepare some conversation. And she confessed that her voice always
sounded affected to her own ears. Young men had always seemed members of
another race to her, mysterious beings with whom she had no point of
contact.
But this evening in the dim courtyard, Ursula found herself talking
freely to the unknown soldier. She told him about her life in Down
Street. She described Jacqueline, “absolutely ravishing, but a little
bit artificial”; Mickey, “a good comrade, and so funny”; Ann, “everybody
thinks she’ll be the first to get her corporal’s stripes”; Ginette, who
“talks nothing but slang, used to be a salesgirl, and can sew her own
uniforms to measure.” She spoke of Claude, “very intelligent, very
generous,” who was her protectress. Then suddenly she saw us all, all of
her comrades as we were in the mornings, tense, badly adapted to this
life, ready to find distraction in anything, hungry for love, each
hiding her homesickness at the bottom of her heart. Ursula saw the main
hall of Down Street, and her little sentry table. And all day long the
phonograph that we had just acquired kept playing the same records,
“Violetta” and “_Mon coeur a besoin d’aimer._” She spoke about our
captain, hurried and distant, a smirk always on her lips, calling us her
“dear girls,” always giving the impression that she was really going to
do something, that she was going to help us somehow, that she was going
to create an atmosphere of friendship in Down Street. She talked about
this at every opportunity, but after each of her speeches one found
oneself just as lonesome and empty as before.
The soldier listened without interrupting her, and when she had finished
all he said was, “I understand,” and Ursula felt herself to be truly
understood, although she didn’t really know what there was to
understand. It seemed to her that this boy comprehended things even
before she had grasped them herself. This comforted her, like finding a
schoolroom problem solved without having to trouble over it.
* * * * *
We were all ready to go home, and had been hunting for Ursula.
Jacqueline opened the door to the courtyard and called, “Ursula, are you
there? Ursula, where are you?”
Several voices shouted, “Blackout!” But we just had time to make out two
forms, like little children clutched together in the dark. They started
up, coming toward us.
“Hurry!” Jacqueline called. “What a relief! At last we can leave,” she
said to me.
Ursula came slipping through the door.
The truck was waiting outside, and we piled in. This time I suppose the
driver was too tired for his game of jolting us against one another. It
was far past midnight, and some of the girls slept, leaning their heads
on each other’s shoulders. Suddenly I heard Ursula murmur, “Oh. I forgot
to tell the soldier good-by.”
Just across from us sat Claude; she was holding Mickey’s head on her
shoulder. I could feel Ursula stir unhappily. It must have seemed to her
that Mickey had stolen her place.