One day in January, in the midst of drill, Jacqueline fainted. Ginette,
who was near me, said, “There she goes again, our fancy lady!” Others
were saying, “Jacqueline must have something wrong with her heart. She
ought to be discharged.”
As soon as Jacqueline had regained consciousness, Corporal Ann told
Mickey and me to take her back to the barracks to rest. The doctor
happened to be in the building just then, talking to the Captain. The
Captain asked us why we had left drill, and we explained that Jacqueline
had fainted. This was a wonderful occasion for the Captain to display
her concern for “her dear girls,” and she had the doctor examine
Jacqueline right away.
We took her up to the infirmary. The doctor was in a hurry. He thought
Jacqueline must have had a simple attack of vertigo. But in examining
her he touched her back, and she let out a cry. Then he realized that
there was something wrong with her, and sent her to be X-rayed.
Two days later Jacqueline was taken to a hospital, where she was put in
a plaster cast for several months. She had a spinal fracture.
Jacqueline’s cot in the barracks was at once occupied by a new recruit,
a student, whose only passion was chemistry. Every evening, amidst the
noise of the dormitory, our newcomer, Monique, calmly devoured her
chemistry manuals, just as some of us read novels. During the first days
the noncoms regarded her with suspicion; then they classified her as
crazy but harmless, and left her in peace. After three days, we talked
no more about Jacqueline. No one mentioned her. The hospital to which
she had been taken was too far away for us to visit. The girls said,
“She’s just unlucky,” or “How did she manage to do that to herself?”
Only a few of us knew the history of that melodramatic night, before she
entered the Army, when she had fled from her too ardent hosts. It was
true that she now was gossiped about, like the others, for her weekend
ménage and her numerous suitors, but this other matter seemed to touch
upon the more remote and mysterious areas of life, and it was left
undiscussed. Indeed, Jacqueline was soon forgotten. Each of us had her
own worries, her own preoccupations, her own problems, and then came
those of one’s closest friend. There was no time to think about anyone
who was gone.
* * * * *
Ursula had received a letter from her little soldier, Michel, filled
with apologies, in which he begged to see her again. She had not
replied. Just now, Ursula was happy, for Claude was in a good mood these
days. Whenever Ursula was free and Claude was off duty, Ursula went to
Claude’s place.
The little room was on the fifth floor, reached by a narrow stairway.
Civilian dresses, blue silk sets of underwear and stockings were
scattered over the chairs. Claude made toast in front of a gas radiator.
On those days Claude wiped off her make-up, and then her face took on a
touchingly youthful look. As soon as she was relaxed, there was a kind
of childishness that returned to her face, which became fresh and clear.
Despite all of her habits, her lovers, her opium, her women, her whisky,
one had only to scrape off this veneer of debauch in order to uncover in
her a simple little bourgeoise, filled with a foggy remainder of
“principles.” She had been born to be a good wife and a good mother in
some provincial town, and at bottom her lack of equilibrium was due to
her having been turned away from this life by a series of circumstances.
She was religious, superstitious, and fairly well cultivated. She
considered that a girl ought to be a virgin when she married. Another of
her principles was that a decent woman would never permit a man to come
to her place to make love. She preferred to come home alone from her
lovers in the middle of the night, rather than to allow a man to sleep
in her room. All the perversions seemed acceptable to her in love, but
this one thing she could not allow. And why that one rather than
another? Perhaps only to preserve for herself a sort of token of
rectitude.
In the afternoons, when Ursula came to her room, Claude busied herself
with little womanly tasks, mending her dresses, repairing stocking runs,
washing her clothes, knitting pull-overs for herself. If she had had a
kitchen, she would have cooked excellent dinners. Claude was nearing
forty and she had been leading a dissolute life for twenty years.
Nevertheless, one felt that all that was basic in her came from her
peaceful childhood and from her provincial adolescence. She was not a
good drinker—even one drink went to her head right away—and yet she
drank a great deal. Then she would do anything, scarcely knowing what
she was doing.
* * * * *
In the evenings, in the dormitory, Mickey kept us posted on her affair
with Robert. She was seeing him fairly frequently. She told us that he
had several other mistresses, but she wasn’t jealous. Despite her
excitement at the beginning of the affair, her senses were slow in
awakening. She found it agreeable to make love with him, but the
experience aroused no particular feeling in her. It was a sort of game,
with a touch of gymnastics in it. And she practiced this sport mostly to
be able to say that she had a lover.
* * * * *
When spring came, everybody began to say that the second front would not
take place that year either, and a wave of depression swept through Down
Street. We would have to spend still another winter in London. Our exile
was thickening on us like a crust. Every morning we marched through our
drill, commanded by Petit; we marched around automatically, dreaming of
our families, or of the landscape at home.
Hyde Park was covered with blossoms. In her strong, deep voice, Petit
called out her commands: “To the left, march!” We obeyed, expert
automatons now, though sleepy after the all-night bombardments.
And the bombardments grew in intensity. One night, as I stood fire watch
on the roof with Ginette, Ann, and two other girls, we decided to
relieve the monotony by telephoning down to Claude, who was on duty at
the switchboard, and asking her to sing something for us. Pressed
together around the receiver, we heard the distant melodious voice of
Claude as she sang:
“C’est toujours l’onde
Qui m’a charmé,
Vagues profondes
Aux flots legers.
Aussi toujours,
La nuit, le jour,
Je veux chanter
L’onde, mon seul amour.”
And all of us on the roof joined in the refrain:
“Bonsoir, Madame la Lune, bonsoir,
C’est votre ami Gerbault qui vient vous voir.
Bonsoir, Madame la Lune, bonsoir.”
One day, years later, I opened a newspaper and read that the poet Alain
Gerbault had just died. In the same moment, I saw all of us again on the
dark roof, and I heard myself singing, together with the distant voice
that rose to us from below:
“Bonsoir, Madame la Lune, bonsoir,
C’est votre ami Gerbault qui vient vous voir.”
On that small roof, weren’t we also afloat in a little boat, like the
poet? And this night-gray stormy sky that surrounded us—wasn’t it the
immense sea with which Gerbault was in love?
The noise of the planes became deafening, and the DCA sounded on all
sides. When we spotted a flare falling in our vicinity, Ginette
immediately telephoned down to Claude, giving the direction in which it
had fallen, and Claude transmitted the information to the local ARP. We
were by now so accustomed to these alerts that the bombardment at first
did not seem to us heavier than usual. But presently one of the Brittany
girls remarked that this time all the bombs seemed to be incendiaries,
and that they were all falling some distance away into a single area. It
seemed to be the part of London known as the “City.” Fires began to show
there.
On the roof, we had sacks of sand ready. Ann peered out into the night,
whistling the refrain from Alain Gerbault’s song. From below, Claude
informed us that the ARP had just come around to tell her that the
entire City was on fire, that bombs were falling there like rain. The
duty officer, Claude said, had ordered all the girls to get up and
assemble in the kitchen. Our kitchen was in the basement and served as a
shelter during the heavy raids.
Ann said she thanked heaven she was on watch that night. She had an
absolute horror of any sort of shelter. Such places filled her with a
mysterious terror and a sense of suffocation. She preferred a thousand
times to be out in the open where she could see what was happening; if
there was any danger, she wanted to see it.
The sky became dark red as though it were a lighted fireplace, with a
flame that increased in intensity every moment. The spectacle had so
extraordinary and horrible a quality of beauty that it filled all of us
with awe. We all left our sandbags and forgot every principle of defense
as we leaned against the railing of the roof, watching the scene.
London was on fire.
The sea of Gerbault was now all around us, a sea of fire. Not for a
moment was any one of us free of the agonized consciousness of all those
whose homes were collapsing and of those who were dying at this instant.
And yet we could not take our eyes from this immense pyre whose flames
seemed to be great enough to consume the world. Ann remarked that we
were like Nero watching Rome burn, and because it was so conventional,
her statement seemed somehow appropriate, with a historic grandeur that
matched the grandeur of the scene.
The holocaust continued all night long. And somewhere deep in that night
of flame, Ann began to talk to me. Though Ann was one of those people
who seem entirely explained by their very appearance, I realized that I
had known little of her until that night. It was as though the purgatory
all around us were the purgatory of her life.
I recalled that other night when Mickey had come up onto the open roof,
after her experience with Robert. But what Ann had to tell belonged to
this night when all was unreal. In her husky voice, held down to a quiet
monotone, Ann talked of her life as though she had to communicate it to
destiny itself, in the face of this holocaust. Like most of the girls in
the barracks, I had taken Ann and all Lesbians somehow as freaks, even
to be considered amusing. Listening to her in that tragic purgatory, I
wanted to weep.
Ann had spent her childhood in France, raised by her mother in poverty.
She was an illegitimate child. She had shown unusual sexual tendencies
when she was still scarcely grown. She had left her mother, and little
by little cut herself away from all her early connections as she entered
the spheres of her particular passion. She had come to England with a
woman. When she had broken with her, Ann had found herself alone and
penniless in London. It was just at the time of the defeat of France,
and Ann had volunteered for De Gaulle’s forces. As soon as she had seen
Petit, she had felt herself to be at home.
Ann could not live without a liaison. It wasn’t so much a need of love
as a need of an affair with all its accompaniment of intrigue, mystery,
and the consequent pleasure. By herself, she was not outside the normal;
she was only so when she had a partner. And yet this departure from
normalcy was necessary to her, as she had found out when scarcely more
than a child. She could not live otherwise. Without a partner she felt
as though something were amputated from her.