I had been given more interesting work to do. Every day our contacts
with France grew better, and some of the resistance reports came to me,
to be adapted for use in propaganda. I became deeply absorbed, excited
by my work, and it was perhaps because of the excitement of my task that
I felt less need for a personal emotional life than so many of the
girls. Or perhaps I was only slower to develop, emotionally.
Jacqueline, doing the same sort of work, nevertheless was soon
personally enmeshed. She was in an office next door to mine, for her
chief, Lieutenant De Prade, was working on establishing more contacts
with the resistance movement.
From the day when she had been assigned to his office, Jacqueline had
told herself that she was fated, and that it was her fate always to be
unlucky. For here she had discovered the man of her life. He was
intelligent, elegant, cultivated, handsome, and they had the same tastes
in everything. But he was married, and he adored his young wife and
children, whom he had had to leave in France. Moreover, De Prade was a
devout Catholic, and he treated Jacqueline like a young sister.
Nevertheless, she was certain that he was desperately attracted to her.
As for De Prade, he struggled against Jacqueline’s attraction with all
his strength. He knew that she was in love with him, but he tried to
persuade himself that this was only a youthful infatuation, and that she
would find another man to love. She was so pretty, and she was so much
sought after by all the officers at GHQ, that things would certainly
arrange themselves.
De Prade had rented a little house in Kensington where he lived with
three other officers and a servant. Every weekend Jacqueline visited
them. She had become a sort of mascot, a symbol of home for the group.
Jacqueline knew how to manage a house, and the men had grown quite
accustomed to having her take charge of their servant. She played the
lady of the house, arranged all the menus, and acted as hostess when
they had guests.
With her distinguished grace, with the beautiful manners of a young
Frenchwoman of good family, Jacqueline reminded De Prade’s comrades of
their sisters, their wives, or their daughters. All of them were more or
less in love with her, and they deluged her with flowers and candy.
But Jacqueline loved De Prade. Beneath her air of pampered urbanity, she
had a will of iron. She wanted De Prade; in spite of and against
everything, she wanted him. During the course of weeks, she had been
working on him, playing the innocent young girl, calling him Uncle Alain
(he was twelve years older than she). And every day she felt that she
was gaining ground, that he was slipping closer to intimacy in their
seemingly innocent relationship. She had her own room in the house in
Kensington, and slept there on Saturdays and Sundays. De Prade would
come to say good night, tucking her into bed and kissing her cheek. Then
he would leave.
He was still a young man, and each weekend this game grew more
unendurable. But he too was stubborn. He was determined to remain
faithful to his wife. For some time the struggle continued. Inevitably,
it had to come to an issue.
* * * * *
While for Jacqueline and for most of us there was a growing life outside
the barracks, in our jobs or in love affairs, Ursula was still there at
her little table in the hall, on duty, and all her life seemed to be
enclosed in the switchboard room with Claude, only a few steps away.
One afternoon Ursula was seated with her check list as we went back to
our jobs from lunch. It was not long after the famous night with Claude.
We hurried past her. Most of us got into one of the trucks that were
waiting outside, but the richer ones went to the corner to take the bus,
and the most ambitious marched off on foot for the exercise.
Ursula wrote down the names of the last to leave, as they hurried past,
running because they were late.
The Captain walked rapidly by. Ursula rose to attention. The Captain
gave her a condescending little nod, and went into her office.
Ursula could hear Machou yelling in the kitchen; she was probably
cursing out one of the girls on K.P. The poor things! Of all the
punishments, this was the one Ursula most dreaded. She preferred the
heaviest labor to spending five minutes in the presence of Machou.
She couldn’t understand how the regular kitchen helpers could bear their
slavery. There were several little girls from Brittany permanently
assigned to Machou, and somehow they seemed to have adjusted themselves
well enough to their kitchen tasks, and also to life outside the
barracks, in London. On their smooth round cheeks their newly employed
rouge appeared almost obscene, and their heavily reddened lips seemed to
be bleeding. Ursula wondered about them, and she talked to me about
them, for they were girls of about her own age, and they seemed to find
this life agreeable enough, while she learned so painfully.
The little girls from Brittany had arrived in different ways, mostly
from Brest. Some had come on the fishing boats of their brothers or
cousins; others had arrived after wild adventures, stowed away in naval
craft. One of them had found herself running along the quay during a
bombardment of Lorient in 1940. She was deathly frightened. A sailor ran
alongside her. He told her to jump into his boat for shelter. The girl
had followed his advice, screaming as each bomb fell. The sailor had put
her down in the hold, and in the meantime the captain had raised anchor
for England. On arriving, he had been startled to discover his stowaway.
The little girl had been even more astonished, but there she was in
England, together with a number of French sailors, who advised her to
stay. She had wept, imagining that her mother would believe her to be
dead, but she had decided to remain, hearing the call of General de
Gaulle. A woman’s army was about to be formed—and at home there was the
Boche.
That was how most of these daughters of the fishermen and peasants of
Brittany had arrived, to be assigned by the Captain to kitchen work or
to the daily cleaning of the barracks. The little girls from Brittany
went out with the sailors from their own province, who took them dancing
in sordid little halls and slept with them in disreputable hotels.
Otherwise, they’d have been left alone, always stuck at the barracks.
With the sailors they could talk of home, of St. Malo, of Brest, of
Cherbourg. What else could they have done, in a London filled with
heretics who had never even set foot in Brittany?
As assistants, these girls had the women who were on punishment. The
penalties were posted in the hall. One could read:
Jeanne, 50 lbs. of potatoes to peel, for being drunk.
Louise, dishwashing, for painting her nails red.
Andrée, confined to quarters for a week, for disrespect to an
officer.
Two or three times, Ursula had been punished. Once she had appeared late
for morning roll call. Another time the corporal had found her hair too
long. Ursula peeled potatoes to atone for her long hair—it had reached
to the collar of her jacket, which was forbidden. This regulation was
relaxed later on, and Ursula again let her hair grow; but at first this
rule, like all the others, was rigidly enforced.
Seated on the kitchen stool, enveloped in a long yellow smock of rough
canvas, she had endured the jesting and the ribaldry of Machou and her
acolytes for two hours. No one spoke directly to her, but their voices,
which seemed to be purposely raucous, and their descriptions of their
affairs with men disgusted Ursula. She felt sick and dirty. There was no
feeling of superiority in her, as in Jacqueline. On the contrary, Ursula
was embarrassed by her own feeling of revulsion. She would have liked to
be able to hide it, as though it were some disability, and to laugh with
the others, and to be treated as one of them. She wanted so much to be
liked, but there was nothing to be done. Whenever she opened her mouth,
her voice seemed to come out false, strange, and forced, so that Ursula
herself couldn’t recognize it, and she was sure that the others were not
deceived. They called her a sissy, and gave their tales an extra
seasoning so as to make her blush.
All this was not purposely vicious; except for Machou, they weren’t
badhearted. But they were bored in the kitchen, and the presence of a
timid little girl who blushed was a diversion. Their cruelty was only
childish. Actually most of them were of the same age, or scarcely older
than Ursula. And they knew well enough what would be thought of them at
home if their mothers or fathers were aware of the life they were
leading in London.
At her table in the hall, Ursula heard the coarse voice of Machou, and
the voice of one of the Brittany girls answering in the same tone. She
sighed and opened a book that she had taken from the barracks library.
The door of the switchboard room was closed. Claude was angry with her,
and wasn’t speaking to her, for it was generally known how the news had
spread of their night together, even though Mickey swore that she hadn’t
said a word. And for Ursula there was another complication. The women
were no longer speaking to her. Claude, nevertheless, had lost none of
her popularity. She was admired and rather feared by the girls. It was
Ursula whom they all held in disfavor, and every night Ursula wept in
her bed.
For the first time in her life, she was aware of her body. It had a
special independent life of its own. It longed for the warmth of Claude
and for Claude’s hands. It twisted in every direction in the narrow
little bed, hungry and cold, in search of the other body that had
awakened it.
The evening before, a new order had been issued: The sentinel was no
longer to sleep in the switchboard room. Ursula thought she would fall
sick with frustration. If at least Claude would talk to her or smile....
But Claude didn’t even look at her.
Miserably, she tried to fix her attention on her book. She didn’t know
what she was reading. Then suddenly the half-open door of the barracks
was pushed open, and a soldier entered. He wore a Polish uniform. He was
a very young man, small in stature, a little chubby, not handsome, with
a round childish face, a thick mouth, and very large black eyes. He
looked all around, with his brows raised, and this gave his face the
expression of a questioning, astonished child.
Realizing that Ursula was looking at him, he asked in a foreign accent,
“Isn’t this the barracks of the Free French—the women’s barracks?”
It was only then that Ursula recognized him, and she felt a rush of joy
in her heart, as at recovering a friend.
“Yes, it’s me!” she cried, and at the same moment she grew very red, for
there was really no way for her to know that it was she whom he sought.
But the young soldier smiled and approached her.
“Now, that’s really lucky! I was wondering how I would manage to find
you, because I only knew your first name.”
“But how did you know my first name?” Ursula asked.
“Why, when you were leaving, your friend called you Ursula.”
Ursula gave him a chair and he sat down beside her. Once he had got that
sentence out of him, he fell silent again, and Ursula found him a little
dull. Claude, for instance, always had something to say. She kept you
continuously hanging on her words.
The young soldier asked her what she was doing and whether she was free
for dinner that evening. Ursula said she was. It would be better than to
stay in the barracks when Claude wasn’t even speaking to her.
Then he arose, and asked her pardon for having come without warning, and
left.
Nevertheless, Ursula felt more cheerful because of his visit.
Her turn of duty was over at five o’clock and it was still daylight,
gray and rainy as usual. Ursula went up to the empty dormitory. It was
cold; the window was open. The cots were made up as in men’s barracks,
with the sheets and blankets carefully folded at the head of the bed in
a square packet with no overhanging edges. The mattress was folded
double, so there was nowhere to sit except on the bedsprings.
Ursula stood in the middle of the room. Although the women were still
forbidden to put things on the empty shelves around the walls, the
officers had relaxed their attention to this regulation during the past
few days, and little by little, photographs, holy images, little vases,
and books had appeared next to the beds. But there was nothing at all by
Ursula’s bed. She had no mementos. She decided that she would buy
herself a bunch of violets to put in the toothbrush glass above her cot,
as Jacqueline had done. She would go out right away for the violets.
In the street, Ursula bought the violets for sixpence, and suddenly she
had the idea of giving them to Claude. As soon as the thought came to
her, she couldn’t wait. She began to run in the street, holding tight to
the little bouquet, which consisted mostly of leaves around four or five
violets. She arrived at the barracks out of breath and knocked at the
door of the switchboard room. Claude’s melodious voice said, “Come in.”
Claude was seated in front of the switchboard, manipulating the plugs.
She kept her back erect, as always. The blonde hair was brushed back.
She turned her head toward Ursula, slightly contracting her plucked
brows in an annoyed manner. Ursula, her head lowered and her heart full
of uncertainty, held out her little bouquet to Claude, without saying a
word.
Claude’s frown dissolved in a smile. “Oh, how nice!” she cried. “What
lovely violets! Come let me kiss you!”
And drawing Ursula to her, she kissed her eyes. In that second Ursula
came back to life. Her brown eyes were once more alight, her heart was
like honey. She felt happy and light. Everything was beautiful,
everything was perfect, her life, the barracks, London—since Claude
still liked her, since Claude didn’t hold anything against her. She sat
down on the camp bed, and between two telephone calls Claude recounted
her woes—she had seen her husband again, she was desperately in love
with him, she would never love anyone else. Claude drew a photograph out
of her pocket and showed it to Ursula.
Claude’s husband had an air of self-confidence and cruelty. Claude began
once more to relate how she had met him, and how they had married after
years of quarreling and love-making. Her voice became feverish as she
spoke, and all at once she seemed almost an old woman; a woman showing
age, filled with agitation, with dark reflections in her eyes, with
bitterness against everything—against herself, against her husband,
against the barracks. And suddenly she began to quarrel with Ursula,
complaining that the evening before, in Claude’s absence, Ursula had
failed to note down a telephone call from Ann. Then it was finished.
Ursula could never again be happy for more than a few seconds with this
strange and ever beautiful woman. The dinner bell sounded. A voice
called Ursula.
She went out sadly, trying to hold back her tears. In the hall, the
young soldier waited for her.