The following evening we had gas mask practice. We were all assembled in
the dining room, and there was a great deal of whispering and laughing
and nudging back and forth while a handsome officer, young and blond,
solemnly explained how to make use of a gas mask, as though we had never
been told before.
Each of us had to put on her mask and keep it on for half an hour. There
were two hundred women in the large hall, and we might have been taken
for a school of monsters from beneath the sea. The rubber tubes slanted
comically in all directions. We talked to each other with our hands.
Inside the masks, we felt hot, and a fine haze covered the glass panes.
Claude was sitting next to Mickey. It was one of her days of remorse in
regard to Ursula. She had again decided not to have any more to do with
the girl, and she had not even looked at her all through the evening.
Behind the little window of her mask, Ursula saw Claude and Mickey
pressed one against the other on a single chair. Their rubber tubes kept
bumping, their masks had an air of laughter. Claude’s arm was around
Mickey to keep her from falling off the chair.
Ursula was sitting behind them, and it seemed to her that she was
entirely enclosed and locked in a huge grotesque mask that isolated her
from the rest of the world. She didn’t know what to do, but she had to
do something. She couldn’t remain abandoned like this. She was too
miserable. And then all at once, as she afterward confessed to me,
Ursula had the idea of pretending to lose consciousness. If she fainted,
the way Jacqueline used to faint, then Claude would be forced to notice
her, to run to her, to pay attention to her. At the thought of such an
action, she blushed in her mask. What if everybody understood that it
was a fraud? What if everybody made fun of her? Worst of all, what if
Claude didn’t even come to her?
It doesn’t matter, she told herself. I have to try. And overcoming all
of her inner resistance, Ursula suddenly caused herself to slip from the
bench to the floor. There was a turmoil around her. All the masks
pressed against her, pulling and pushing at her. Petit roared in her
commanding voice, “Quiet! Return to your places!” Ann had removed her
own mask and was pushing away all the women who were crushing Ursula.
Finally Petit leaned over and undid her mask.
Ursula immediately opened her eyes. Ann held Ursula’s head in her lap
and said, “It’s nothing, baby. You were too hot, that’s all. There, it’s
all over.”
And Claude, Claude was there, her anxious face bent over her. It was
marvelous. It had succeeded after all. Claude was there.
We helped Ursula upstairs to the dormitory. She lay down on her bed.
Claude followed us and sat down by Ursula, calling her Ursulita and
stroking her forehead. Ursula looked at her without saying anything. She
felt tranquil, almost happy, but with a tiny point of contempt for
Claude within her happiness. For it had been necessary to deceive her,
and Claude had let herself be taken in the trap.
But at least Claude was paying attention to her. Ursula sighed and
closed her eyes. For the first time in her life, she felt as though she
had accomplished a grown-up action.
* * * * *
Nevertheless, this brought only a short respite. Several times Claude
took Ursula out with her in the evening, but Ursula felt lost in the
night clubs. Unlike Mickey, she didn’t explode into laughter over the
jokes of Claude’s friends. She was not talkative. She didn’t know how to
drink. Men found her nice but dull. They rarely found her pretty. Her
pale little face with its huge brown eyes had a sort of style, it is
true. But in those years in London, what men wanted of women was to make
them forget the war, forget their problems and their nostalgia, and
Ursula, without wishing to, reminded them of all those things. They much
preferred Mickey.
And for Ursula, these excursions were a torture. One evening, in a bar
near Grosvenor Street, when a drunken soldier seized her in his arms and
tried to kiss her, she let out a cry of terror that brought laughter to
the entire club.
* * * * *
Summer had come, another rainy London summer. The only hope for breaking
the tension and the monotony was to go on leave. But where? Some of the
girls went as guests of English families. Ursula dreaded going to stay
with strangers. And Claude was becoming more and more nervous. Claude
had spells of violent rage for no reason at all. In the switchboard room
the atmosphere was always tense and stormy. She swore at the other
women. One day, in the middle of the dining room, Claude started an
argument with Ginette and called her a slut. Ginette slapped Claude’s
face.
Every day Ursula told me that she was going to ask for her eight-day
leave, and every day she held back, hoping there would be a change in
Claude.
One evening it seemed to Ursula that the change had arrived, and that
everything would be again as it had been. And as always, it was not
because of a sexual need in Ursula for Claude; it was simply a thirst
for tenderness, in which the sexual aspect was only incidental.
It was a Saturday evening, and Claude was off duty. A group of us had
decided to go out on a hen party, just by ourselves, to have dinner
somewhere and then go to a movie. Claude had invited Mickey and Ursula
to come and spend the night at her place afterward. Ursula asked for
weekend leave. Claude was in excellent humor, and as always when a party
was in sight, she seemed to regain her youth.
The beginning of the evening passed well. We went to dinner at a place
called Rose’s, a little restaurant in Soho kept by a sort of witch—a fat
Belgian woman who never served anyone she didn’t like. At her place, the
only dish was horse-meat steak with fried potatoes. Fifteen people at
most could get into the restaurant. Most of the clientele consisted of
sailors of Free France; sometimes there were a few Belgian officers, and
occasionally there was a party of high society people in search of
exotic atmosphere. The radio played, and people yelled and sang. On the
wall there was a photograph of King Leopold, covered with grease spots.
Rose served everybody herself, growling continuously. Beer had to be
fetched from the pub across the street; it cost two shillings six. And
the meal was finished off with a dish of apple sauce. It was always very
gay there, and the food was quite good.
Claude performed imitations and sang “_Ah, que c’est done bête un
homme!_” and Rose’s large ill-tempered face wrinkled up in a smile. When
Claude was in this mood, there was no one on earth who could resist her
charm. Ursula ate with great appetite, and laughed with all her soul.
And Claude was full of attention for her, refilling her plate with fried
potatoes, asking her opinion about everything, treating her like an
intimate friend.
Then someone suggested that it would be dull to go to the movies after
this, so we decided to make a tour of the pubs and bars.
And then Claude began to drink.
At eleven o’clock all of us went off to the barracks, except for Mickey
and Ursula, who were to sleep at Claude’s. The next day, Ursula told me
what happened.
* * * * *
The alert had sounded. Alerts had been rather rare the last few months.
The searchlight swept the sky over their heads, but not a sound was to
be heard. The three women walked home along the length of Hyde Park.
Claude was no longer paying attention to Ursula. She had taken Mickey’s
arm in the dark, and she talked only to Mickey. From time to time she
stopped and kissed Mickey, and Ursula stopped too, not knowing what to
do or say. It didn’t occur to her to make a scene. It seemed to her that
Claude was free to kiss whomever she liked.
They arrived at Claude’s. Mickey went to take a bath. Claude followed
her, laughing, and Ursula undressed and slipped into Claude’s large bed.
Like a suffering animal, she could think only of closing her eyes and
burying her head in a hole. She rolled herself into a ball in the empty
bed, and little by little the laughter of Claude and Mickey became more
distant, and she fell asleep.
Ursula didn’t know what awakened her. She found herself still alone in
the bed. The room was dark except for a luminous circle on the floor, a
reddish illumination shining from underneath the lighted gas heater.
Ursula raised her head and looked about. Claude and Mickey were
stretched on the carpet in front of the fire. They were nude, and the
firelight gilded their bodies. They were extremely beautiful, both of
them. Both very blonde, one with her slender young body and tiny little
pointed breasts, the other with her womanly body and her round breasts,
heavy and firm. There was a strange plastic beauty in these two sleeping
women. Their arms and legs mingled until they looked almost as though
they formed a single monster with two heads.
At that moment, Claude opened her eyes and looked at Mickey. Ursula
clearly saw Claude’s face. It was directly in the firelight. Her eyes
seemed to be two dark holes, immense as chasms, and deep, deep within,
there was a red burning light.
All at once a horrible terror hit Ursula. She said to herself, It’s a
demon! From the deepest part of her being, a primitive comprehension
flooded her. This was a demon.
A kind of shiver mounted all through Ursula, shaking her. She slid back
under the sheet, covering her head, terrified, her heart beating wildly.
She stuffed her ears and bit the sheet, and for the first time since her
very early childhood, tears began to flow.
Ursula finally fell asleep like that, hidden almost at the bottom of the
bed, her face inundated with tears, all curled within herself, and
feeling her body filled with pain, as though she had been battered by a
demonic fist.
On Monday she asked for her eight-day leave, and left to visit one of
the many English families that kindly opened their homes to the troops
of other countries.