"A girl friend," he said, "keeps yer straighter than a man. Makes yer
punctual."
"So she won't wait for you when you are late?"
"Not a minute over time," he said with pride. "I used to be a terror
when I first knew 'er; kep' 'er waitin' abaht. She soon cured me, did F.
Steel."
"You are a funny little bird, Pinker," said the Sister, passing.
"Lil bird, am I?" He tucked his cardboards carefully into his locker and
followed her up the ward firing repartee.
I sewed my splint. In all walks of life men keep one waiting. I should
like to ask the huge and terrible girl about her cure.
Monk is the ugliest man I have ever seen. He has a squint and a leer,
his mouth drops at both sides, he has no forehead, and his straight,
combed hair meets his eyebrows--or rather, his left eyebrow, since that
one is raised by a cut. He has the expression of a cut-throat, and yet
he is quite young, good-tempered, and shy.
When Monk was working at a woollen belt Pinker said: "Workin' that for
yer girl?... You got a girl, Monk?"
Monk squinted sidelong at Pinker and rubbed his hands together like a
large ape.
"'E ain't got no girl," shrilled Pinker. "Monk ain't got no girl. You
don' know what a girl is, do yer, Monk?"
Although they do much more to help each other than I ever saw done in
the officers' ward, yet one is always saying things that I find myself
praying the other hasn't heard.
In the next bed to Monk lies Gayner, six foot two, of the Expeditionary
Force. Wounded at Mons, he was brought home to England, and since then
he has made the round of the hospitals. He is a good-looking, sullen man
who will not read or write or sew, who will not play draughts or cards
or speak to his neighbour. He sits up, attentive, while the ulcers on
his leg are being dressed, but if one asks him something of the history
of his wound his tone holds such a volume of bitterness and exasperation
that one feels that at any moment the locks of his spirit might cease to
hold.
" ... ever since Mons, these ulcers, on and off?"
"Yes."
"Oh well, we must cure them now."
Her light tone is what he cannot endure. He does not believe in cure and
will not believe in cure. It has become an article of faith: his ulcers
will never be cured. He has a silent scorn of hospitals. He can wind a
perfect bandage and he knows the rules; beyond that he pays as little
attention as possible to what goes on.
When his dressing is over he tilts his thin, intelligent face at the
ceiling. "Don't you ever read?" I asked him.
"I haven't the patience," he replied. But he has the patience to lie
like that with his thin lips compressed and a frown on his face for
hours, for days ... since Mons....
I have come to the conclusion that he has a violent soul, that he dare
not talk. It is no life for a man.
I said to Pinker this morning, "I wish you'd hurry up over your bath;
I've got to get it scrubbed out by nine."
"Don't you hurry me, nurse," said Pinker, "it's the on'y time I can
think, in me bath."
I should like to have parried with Pinker (only my language is so much
more complicated than it ought to be) that thinking in one's bath is a
self-deception. I lay in my own bath last night and thought very deep
thoughts, but often when we think our thoughts are deep they are only
vague. Bath thoughts are wonderful, but there's nothing "to" them.
We had a heated discussion to-day as to whether the old lady who leaves
a tract beneath a single rose by each bedside could longer be tolerated.
"She is a nuisance," said the Sister; "the men make more noise
afterwards because they set her hymns to ragtime."
"What good does it do them?" said the V.A.D., " ... and I have to put
the roses in water!"
I rode the highest horse of all: "Her inquiries about their souls are an
impertinence. Why should they be bothered?"
These are the sort of things they say in debating societies. But Life
talks differently....