Jacqueline now had moved all her civilian clothes to De Prade’s house in
Kensington. Every Saturday evening she went to the house, changed into a
civilian dress, undid her little bun, brushed her hair; she became once
more a civilized young lady, and went to give orders in the kitchen,
supervising the menu. She loved this role, and luxuriated in the
respectful attention that she received from De Prade’s officer friends.
Here, at least, she could forget Machou’s curses, Ginette’s vulgarity,
the curt commands of her superiors, and the common atmosphere of the
dormitory.
Every Saturday night De Prade came to her room to say good night, and
then went off. Every Sunday morning Jacqueline, in her pretty flowered
linen nightdress, went to sit on De Prade’s bed and to wake him by
tickling him. This had become a ritual. Each of them pretended to ignore
the obvious; each played the innocent. Jacqueline would say that she was
cold, and slip into bed beside him, while discussing literature or the
weather. De Prade, feeling her warm body next to him, behaved as though
it had no effect on him. There was a tradition of honor in him, a
tradition of hardened generations of strong-willed men who did not
readily accede to any desire that they could not control with their
minds. And in his mind, De Prade had decided that he would not be
unfaithful to his wife; because of honor, because of religion, because
of a sense of duty—a mixture of reasons whose force arose out of his
very blood.
As both of them were from the same sort of world, neither of them spoke
of what was going on within them; of desire, of violence contained, of
home, or of love. Jacqueline still called De Prade “Uncle,” and De Prade
treated her like a young niece, a virgin, and the more warmly he felt
her body against his the more persistently he set himself to speaking of
politics and to pretending that everything was quite natural.
But the intensity of Jacqueline’s desire was as great as De Prade’s will
to resist. Soon their struggle was to reach a decisive point. In a
subterranean way, I felt that the climax was precipitated by a great
event at the barracks.
Once more Christmas had passed over Down Street, and the New Year’s
holiday. Once again we were certain that the invasion would take place
in the spring. It was 1942.
The news came that General de Gaulle was to inspect Down Street. During
the week preceding this event, one would have thought that his
inspection of our quarters was a very important part of invasion
preparations. We polished the house just as though General de Gaulle
were sure to climb up to examine the tops of the wardrobes and to crawl
inside the kitchen stove. Under the command of Petit and the officers,
we drilled and drilled. The assembly bell never stopped ringing, and
punishments for the slightest infraction came down on us like rain. Our
dear captain had launched a veritable offensive in the realm of
discipline. If one of us had the misfortune to fail to salute a superior
officer in the street, if a sentinel forgot to come to attention at the
passing of an officer, if a button didn’t shine brightly enough, there
came an avalanche of punishment details. And the worst crime of all was
to voice an objection, for the officers, naturally, were always right.
The most excited of all of us over the coming of the General was
Jacqueline. To her, he represented something beyond the savior of
France. He was the justification of aristocracy. He was the living proof
that France _had_ to be saved through someone who had issued from this
superior group. Even her passion for De Prade had in it something of
this worship of aristocracy, and I suppose the modern psychologists
would say that she was in this way expressing her love and her longing
for her aristocratic father, who had died when she was a child. But
Jacqueline was so nervous over the coming visit of the General that she
became almost as irritating as the officers; if someone so much as left
an open newspaper lying on a cot, she would exclaim over the disorder in
our dormitory.
On the day of the General’s inspection, everything shone in Down Street,
and we all stood at attention for an hour in advance. The Captain had
assumed her most important air, as though the visit were addressed to
her personally.
Finally he arrived, and every feminine heart beat more rapidly, and each
of us forgot her years of exile and unhappiness. We felt only the pride
of being there among the chosen, among the volunteers, before the leader
who at that time personified all of Free France.
From our first day of enlistment, except for the months when Jacqueline
was in the hospital, Jacqueline, Ursula, and I had kept our places next
to each other in ranks. As we saw the General appearing in the doorway,
it seemed to me that I could feel the charge of pride that passed
through Jacqueline, a possessive pride.
De Gaulle was as tall as we had expected he would be, and he did not
know how to smile. Grave and solemn, he had a face impassive in its
severity. But one could see that he was a true aristocrat, born in the
great tradition of the high French families. He did not try to exert any
sort of charm, to make any conquests, to make himself well thought of.
On the contrary, he was austere and hard. He said a few words to each of
us, asked each woman her name and what she did, and passed on from one
to the other, and our responses seemed to leave him totally indifferent.
All at once a Brittany girl broke the monotony by responding that she
didn’t like her job, that she had too much to do, working as a waitress
in a sailor’s canteen. Her honest, prepared little speech came out in
one timorous breath, like a complaint to a parent. One could see a
shiver of horror going through the Captain and communicating itself to
all the other officers, and then down to the noncoms. But the General
paid no more attention to this reply than to the others, and passed on
to the next volunteer.
During the Brittany girl’s outburst I felt Jacqueline become rigid. She
was staring at the General in a hurt, puzzled way. At first I didn’t
understand why she should feel upset. Jacqueline was the last person to
feel a democratic indignation. But I sensed that in some way he had
failed her; he had not perhaps displayed the concern of a true
aristocrat, a god, for every least one of his children.
This incident of the complaining girl had a continued effect on
Jacqueline. She remarked about it once or twice, until I understood that
for her this incident had meant the loss of an idol. The General had not
cared, any more than our captain cared. And she needed someone to care,
she longed for someone to care as she longed for a father, and as I
suppose all of us long for a faith, a feeling that above us there is
someone who is good, and pure, and responsible—as she told herself her
own father must have been. And now that the General had disillusioned
Jacqueline, he was gone for her, and only De Prade was left.
It was shortly after this, at the end of March, that De Prade received
orders to leave on a mission to Africa.
Jacqueline talked of no one and nothing else but this man with his deep
intelligent black eyes and his square chin and his courteous manners.
And now he was going away—the only person in whom she could believe.
Just because he had resisted her so strongly, just because he had
behaved so honorably, according to the perfect aristocratic code, just
because he had shown himself superior to impulse, she had to seal
herself to him, even if in doing so she caused him to break the code for
which she loved him.
On his last evening in Kensington there was a little party in his honor.
All of De Prade’s friends were there. They danced and drank from a
bottle of Armagnac that had been brought back from France by one of our
secret agents. They talked of the second front and discussed the latest
news of Paris.
Jacqueline was seated on a low chair at De Prade’s feet; he was stroking
her hair. In a way, she knew he felt himself saved. He was going to
leave, and this struggle between them would be over. His honor was safe,
the honor of a De Prade, who had never deceived anyone, neither his God
nor his wife nor himself. He looked down upon the bowed neck of
Jacqueline, looked at her hair, following the few bleached locks that
she liked to wind through the reddish-brown mass. He put his hand on her
shoulder, and she knew that he must have felt her shoulder lift a trifle
in response to his hand. But she did not turn her head toward him. For
if he saw her face, he would know that it was not yet over with them;
even though he was leaving tomorrow, it was not yet over.
When all the guests had departed and the other three men had gone to
bed, De Prade came for the last time to say good night to Jacqueline.
She was lying on the narrow couch in her room. A strap of her thin
nightgown had fallen, baring a rosy shoulder, and it was this shoulder
alone that looked up at him, for her eyes were lowered, and a tear had
stopped on her cheek. De Prade sat down on the edge of the bed, as on
any other night, and began to talk to her softly. He told her that he
would write to her, that he would surely be back in a few months, that
she should be sensible and watch her health. Jacqueline did not answer.
The tear still stood on her cheek, and De Prade could not take his eyes
from her round, rosy shoulder. He was filled with a terrible longing to
kiss that shoulder just once before leaving. He leaned over and laid his
lips on Jacqueline’s shoulder. She flowed toward him, and suddenly he
was holding her in his arms. Without knowing how it came about, he was
kissing her on the mouth, repeating, “I love you, I love you.”
It was very brief. Not a cry came from Jacqueline, for the short pain
was too wonderful, too long awaited. She opened her eyes and saw De
Prade’s face with his eyes closed, his face that of a man utterly
outside himself, with his mouth slightly open and his eyes suddenly
circled with black. She held him pressed in her arms, happy, crushed by
his weight, victorious, her world secure. He fell asleep against the
shoulder to which he had surrendered.
The following morning De Prade left on his mission to Africa.
* * * * *
Jacqueline came late to the office that morning. As our offices were
still next door to each other, I saw her when she came in, and I at
first assumed she looked so distraught because De Prade was leaving. But
at the earliest opportunity she took me aside and told me she was
worried. Nervously, she told me what had happened. And she was afraid
that she might be pregnant. Though this fear was only natural, I
couldn’t help feeling a sickening disappointment; this was the real
love, the real passion I had been watching, and it came down to the same
sort of agitated apprehensiveness and whispering that went on in the
barracks every night, after the girls returned from their casual
affairs. I knew I was being unjust to Jacqueline. Her relationship to De
Prade had been anything but casual; her deepest emotions had been
involved. And yet, for me, this brought only another dismay, another
tightening of my defenses against love. I knew that I should not permit
disgust to invade me. I had to believe that I would one day love a man.
But the same life that was driving some of the girls to sexual liberty
came close to driving me to complete inhibition.
As for the practical side, I was scarcely the one to give Jacqueline
advice. We decided that Mickey, who worked on the floor below, would be
the ideal person to consult, for strangely enough, despite the loud and
common talk that went on constantly at the barracks, we had only the
vaguest scraps of confusing information about practical sex matters.
We hurried downstairs and encountered Mickey, with a stack of files
under her arm, on the way to the elevator. “I have to talk to you,”
Jacqueline whispered, and Mickey understood.
“I’ll meet you in the washroom at ten-thirty,” she said. The washroom
was the one place where the secretaries could meet and chatter in peace.
At ten-thirty we found Mickey there. Fortunately, no one else was in the
room. Jacqueline explained her predicament. Shouldn’t she do something
about not having a child? It might be dangerous to do nothing. But what
should she do?
For all her experience with men, it seemed that Mickey actually knew
very little more than we did about such things. Her lovers always took
care of everything. Mickey would simply leave all the precautions to
them, and nothing had ever happened. But she was quite sure, she said,
that it was too late for Jacqueline to take any effective measures now.
She could do nothing but wait and see, and hope for the best. If it
developed that she _was_ pregnant—well, it was too early to think of
doing anything about it now. “You’ll just have to wait and see,” Mickey
repeated.
Jacqueline started to laugh. Leaning against the washbowl, she laughed
until I was afraid she was becoming hysterical. “How can it be too late
and too early at the same time?” she gasped.