A woman like Claude offered no interest either to Petit or to Ann. They
rather disdained her, with the disdain of the true artist for the
dilettante. They never considered her a Lesbian. They said of her,
“She’s a pervert, a curiosity seeker.” And as to Claude’s Lesbianism,
this was true.
We had known so little of these matters when we came to the barracks,
and now we were able to distinguish between the various grades. Through
Ann, I realized that Claude made love with women not because of an
absolute physical necessity, but through snobbism, and in order to
excite her masculine lovers. She also felt that she was revenging
herself on them, through feeling that she was just as strong as they in
winning women. Several times in her life she had found men unfaithful to
her. As soon as she discovered herself in such a situation, Claude
sought out her rival and appropriated the girl. It was then she who
became the lover, the taker. This was her strength, in the face of men.
Moreover, she was fond of her role as a dangerous woman. Love-making
with women, opium-smoking, group love-making—all this was part of her
role. She had learned to be a Lesbian, just as she had learned to smoke
opium. For her it was the same sort of excitement. Claude had never
suffered from this condition as Ann and Petit had suffered. She was
married, she had numerous lovers, and she could have lived a normal life
as wife and mother if she chose. As for the rest, it was nothing but a
game that satisfied her vanity and provided her with amusement. She
played being the man. The women of her circle, before the war, all
played at that game. And the men of their acquaintance took them
seriously, being unable to perceive that it was only a game. The men
believed that they were making love with real Lesbians, and felt
flattered and proud. What a man I am! they would think. I can even
arouse a Lesbian! In the great comedy of love, in which everybody lied,
this was only one more lie.
But to Ann, the love of women was no game. Ann had memories of her
solitary childhood, when she had continually been reprimanded for not
conducting herself like a good little girl who plays with her dolls. She
remembered when all of her girlhood friends started going out with boys,
and her own shame at being always alone with nothing but a secret love
for her teachers, or for her mother’s women friends.
One summer she had visited Sweden, and there she had met a woman for
whom she had felt an instant adoration. Soon enough the woman had called
Ann into her room and explained certain things that Ann had not yet
known about herself. She had listened in fear, and yet with a terrible
joy. For at last she knew that she was not alone, and that there was a
way in which she too could love. The woman had become her mistress and
her lover. It was an exhausting love, compounded of jealousies, of
quarrels, of petty intrigue, but nevertheless it brought her the
possibility of loving someone.
Ann was then seventeen. She had her hair cut, and looked absolutely like
a boy. She had never experienced any desire for a man. For her, men were
good comrades; she felt herself their equal. She was never in need of
their help or of their presence.
Since that time, Ann had come to know well the contempt, the closing
doors, and the hardening faces of respectable people. But most intensely
she had known that exhausting love which dies of its own sterility
between brief flashes of passion. It was a love that circled on itself,
like a cat chasing its own tail. But that was how she was made. And
Petit also. And the childhood of Petit had been the same. And the youth
of all these women had been the same, and no one could ever change
things for them.
At Down Street there was never any question of a true Lesbian pursuing a
normal woman. Normal women were rarely interested in the real Lesbians.
Claude could play at such games, for the subject of her attachment was
of little interest to her. It was not the woman that she desired, but
her own self-excitement; or, as in the case of Ursula, it was the child
that she desired.
Ann and Petit enjoyed passing an occasional evening with Claude, for at
least with her everything was clear. They could be their own selves,
without having to hide anything. Claude served as a bridge between the
Lesbians and the other women. Only by this bridge could the Lesbians
approach other women, and in this way come to feel themselves less
isolated in the world.
There were several other Lesbians in Down Street. In their group, every
slightest incident became exaggerated into immense proportions, and
there were the most violent discussions of the smallest bits of gossip,
the mildest adventure. The taste for intrigue was the one feminine trait
that seemed to remain with them, and it was developed to the maximum.
There were also Lesbians from outside, Englishwomen, ambulance drivers,
women from the ARP and ATS, who came to visit the bar that had been set
up in the main assembly room of our barracks.
The rest of the girls, the “real” girls, dancing to the eternal
“Violetta” in the arms of sailors or soldiers from the Free French
Forces, laughed among themselves as they watched the Lesbians.
It was at the bar that Ann met Lee. We all saw this happen. A tall
Englishwoman, thin, long-limbed, with a very pale unreal white face and
yellow catlike eyes, she had the air of a young Oxford student. Lee
belonged to an aristocratic Scottish family. She was working as an
ambulance driver. She had come to Down Street that evening wearing
navy-blue trousers; her short hair glistened; her long hands trembled a
little as she raised one glass of whisky after another. Ann, too, was
standing at the bar, and it was plain to us all that she was intensely
attracted to the Englishwoman.