"I will. Thank you," I said.
He left the office soon after this, and I worked steadily during his long absence. When he returned, I saw him glance questioningly at me, with a smile. Furious, and intent on emphasizing my state of not being a maidservant, I got up and with deliberate speed did the round of several tables, searching for a refill for my stapler, which I could have got straightaway by asking the Sergeant for it.
"Come here, Miss P.," called the Major. "You are looking distressed," he said. "I hope nothing went wrong during your search."
"Nothing," I said.
"I thought maybe you are lamenting the late departed Colonel?"
"Certainly," I said.
"And will you lament me, too, when I’m gone?"
"Certainly not," I said.
"How’s that?" he asked.
"Because you are just a slave driver," I said.
"Sure."
"And that wouldn’t be so bad," I continued, "but on top of it, you enjoy it."
"Sure," he said. "Now I got you. You don’t like watching me having fun, is that it?"
I nodded. "You are uniting the useful with the beautiful, as Goethe would have put it," I said.
"I knew you’d be worthwhile to talk to," he remarked. "But what the hell. I must get some pleasure out of this damned office. I’m a surgeon. Damned office job."
"But isn’t it interesting—for you, I mean?" I asked.
"It is interesting," he said, "but in the wrong way. For instance, we’d like the tabulators to throw up results like two hundred men sprained their ankles when getting out of landing barges. Then we’d know there’s something wrong with the design of the boats. Instead, we get saddled with statistics of how many troops in Africa got jaundice after the yellow-fever vaccine, but the hell of it is that it’s nearly all officers and no enlisted men. Now, why? And the Germans have exactly the same problem."
"Drink," I said.
"No," he said. "Among the fighting corps out there, there’s no difference with the booze. They all live the same way. It’s a mystery." And as I gazed at him silently he added, "That took your speech away, all right. I didn’t know it could be done."
I nodded.
"Now, tell me, since we are getting on so famously, that Colonel before me—light colonel, wasn’t he?"
"Yes," I said, "he was a lieutenant colonel."
"Where are the light colonels of yesteryear?" And he laughed loudly. "Now, tell me. What was so good about him, a quitter like that? No fight in him."
"There was some fight in him, but not enough," I said.
"Was he a choleric? Did he rave and rant at you when you went to sharpen your pencils?"
"He never did," I said. "He never interfered. But I know he would have liked to have power, too, only he couldn’t get it. But he’d never admit it, of course."
"Then what the hell—how do you know?" asked the Major.
"Once I had to go to his office with some papers," I said. "And you know the War Office rule—no door must ever be closed. He was standing with his back to me; he didn’t see me. He had a—it’s quite sickening—a fly, with a thread tied round its middle, and he let it fly away from him at arm’s length and then he’d pull it back by the string."
"And what did he say when you interrupted his idyll?" asked the Major.
"I didn’t," I said. "I never went in at all. I sent the Sergeant."
"Pity you didn’t go in, Miss P.," said the Major. "He might have tied a string around your waist."
"I’m not a flirt, you know," I said.
"I know you are not. But you are giving a very good imitation of one." And he laughed so loudly that when I left, Claudia said to me, "How do you do it, Prescott-Clark? You seem to be getting on with the Major like a house on fire."
"I don’t, Carter," I said. "Besides, one has to get used to his what-the-helling."
On the following day, the Major was absent during the morning and looked in at the office for some ten minutes in the late afternoon. On the next day, Sergeant Parsons said to me, "I thought you’d like to know, ma’am. The Major won’t come in today at all. But he’ll want me to report about the work. He said I should keep a special eye on you. Now, I wonder why."
"So do I," I said.
"I told him you’d been very, very good yesterday, which is true," said the Sergeant. "I told him you are like the little girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead. And do you know what he said? He said, ‘That suits me fine. And when she is horrid, I’ll be horrid, too.’ "
"Charmed, I’m sure. Much obliged," I said.
"I thought you’d like to know," said the Sergeant.
"That’s big of you," I said.
I continued "very, very good" during the Major’s absence. When I saw him entering the office the following morning, I decided that I was not going to expose myself to any more of his taunts. By working diligently during his absence I had proved myself to be the opposite of a maidservant. This praiseworthy state of mind did not last long, however, and I grew steadily more enraged at the sight of the Major, who was also playing the game of not being a servant and sat tilted back in his chair, reading the Times. I rose and left the office and went to the lavatory, where I dawdled for a while. On my way back, I met the Major in the passage, walking in the direction of the General’s office. I repeated my excursion once before and once after the morning coffee break. On that last occasion, I met the Major once again in the passage, this time coming up behind me. "Miss P.," he said. I stopped and turned around.
"How is it," he asked, "that every time I happen to pass by I meet you outside the office?"
"If you didn’t run around so much yourself, you wouldn’t meet me so much, Major," I said.
"May I inquire where you’ve been?" he said. "Was it a case of the lady glowworm who told her boyfriend glowworm, ‘If you’ve got to glow, you’ve got to glow’?"
"Vous tombez mal,” I said. "I went to get a drink of water."
"Oh, we speak French when we are on our dignity, do we?" he said. "But tell me, how did you manage to drink? Are there any glasses in the ladies’ room?"
"Oh, yes," I said, "there are some tumblers."
"And you drank it out of a tumbler?" he asked.
"I did," I said.
"That’s bad," he said, with a pretense of being grieved. "I thought you’d be quicker on the uptake, after what I told you the other day." He paused. "Next time you’re thirsty, Miss P., drink with a spoon. One spoonful at a time. Go back, return—another spoonful. That should work out at fifteen journeys." And I walked away, followed by the sound of laughter.
That day, in the late afternoon, the Major came in carrying a sheaf of papers. He stopped in the door and informed us that it had been decided to spread the free days and to carry on with the work on Sundays. "Now, ladies, which of you would like to work on Sunday?"
The idea appealed to me greatly; it was nice to be free during the week, when the shops were open. "I’ll work," I said.
"You mean, you’ll be here, Miss P.?" said the Major.
In the week that followed, I worked steadily, irrespective of the Major’s presence or absence, and I was quieter, too, during the tea and coffee breaks, and somewhat morose during the lunchtime gatherings, which made Claudia remark, "You are losing your sparkle, Prescott-Clark. You aren’t going to run round as a reformed character, are you?" And June said, "How now, brown cow? Let’s have a real orgy today, shall we? He won’t be in all day. He’s gone to London, I hear." And I said, "But he’ll pick on me when he gets back, and I refuse to be his court jester and office clown, you know." When she said, "Shame on you, Prescott-Clark, to let yourself be got down by our beloved Major," I hinted that my dejection was due to a certain Captain’s having been posted abroad.
Beryl liked to declare that she was "sick and tired of men" and couldn’t be "bothered anymore with that rot," but I, on the contrary, felt willing to be bothered, and even if I admitted to the rot, I found it worthy of in
dulging in, because it was never quite the same kind of rot. Since entering the War Office, I had had two affairs with American officers, each lasting for several weeks. I finished the one by provoking a quarrel and withdrawing in a pretense of huffiness. In the second case, there had been no need for such subterfuge, because the officer had been posted away. In each case, I had been bored. And in each case I might have been willing to carry on for longer if it had not been for the attitude common to both men; they were both married, and they gave me to understand that they were fundamentally faithful. It boiled down to the joke of the wife in America writing to her husband-soldier overseas, "I hear you got yourself a mistress. What has she got that I haven’t got?" and his replying, "Nothing, except she’s got it right here." I could not stand this. I did not want to be second best. I wanted to be the one and only one, even if it was for a short span of time. Amazed and disgusted at the blockheadedness of the men who failed to perceive this, I was able to agree with renewed sincerity with Beryl’s utterances concerning the selfishness, the insensitivity, and the lack of curiosity of men when dealing with women.
AS I WATCHED the Major day by day, I found that he was double-faced; his countenance bore one character when seen full front and a different character when seen from the side. Talking to him, looking him full in the face, I noticed that his square forehead and square jaw made him seem straightforward and reliable, and the fair glossiness of his coloring, the smooth blond hair, the evenly pink skin, the gray eyes, and the well-shaped teeth, which gleamed whenever he parted his long lips, lent to his person an air of unspoiled youthful candor, an eagerness to please that seemed almost simpleminded. When I observed him from across a distance, the beguiling coloring was dimmed by gray shadows, and his profile stood out against the windowpane as if stamped out of a sheet of steel. There sat a charmless, blunt-featured man, looking older than his years—clever, stubborn, unkind though given to joviality, unsubtle and yet capable of deviousness.
I was at that time doing the most difficult of the medical coding work involving the Zone of Interior. In military parlance this name designated the United States of America, and my work dealt with the cases of soldiers whose condition was so serious that they had to be returned to the States for further treatment. Among the checkers, whose work was much easier and subordinate to mine, was a dentist’s widow, a Mrs. Dicks, with the face of a garden-statuary dwarf. She clearly came from a ruling-class background, of which she never spoke, and had lived long years in Ceylon, of which she spoke often. She had tried to be admitted to our crowd and had not made a success of it. Mrs. Dicks had already exasperated me on two previous occasions, when she had come to me with queries couched in such Edwardian terms as "fearful bloomers" and "someone came a cropper," and I had treated her with arrogance and bad temper, cutting her short with, "Go back to your knitting," and, "Get out of my sight." She had retreated, indignant, convinced that I was in the wrong, and that I was "afraid to face the music" or "afraid of losing face." Now, on the third occasion, perhaps because I was feeling more downcast than before, I did not cut her short, and we had a row. Sergeant Parsons came to visit me an hour later.
"I just thought you’d like to know, ma’am," he began, "I used to know a little girl and she was called Eve—isn’t it strange? Eve, just like you. She was only six years old at the time, but she was already very clever, and this would have been fine, only little Eve was conceited about her cleverness and she wasn’t clever enough to understand that it isn’t clever to be clever when it upsets other people."
I said, "Widow Dicks should have jumped onto her husband’s funeral pyre and committed suttee," and the Sergeant said, "This is not done in Ceylon, and we are not talking about Mrs. Dicks, we are talking about little Eve," and he went on relentlessly till I promised to keep my peace with Mrs. Dicks in the future.
On the day after this, the Major called me: "Come here, Miss P." When I stood by his side, he handed me what looked like a poem, beautifully set out on a sheet of handmade rice paper with those carefully irregular edges that look as though they have been nibbled by a well-behaved mouse. "You’re welcome to see it," he said. He watched me, smiling, as I read:
I now leave the Zone of Interior, Where everyone was my superior; Henceforward the body’s exterior Is all I’ll endeavor to know.
It went on for six more stanzas.
"What do you think of it?" he asked when I had put it down.
"It’s awfully impressive," I said. "Very smooth. The paper, I mean."
"Mrs. Dicks has resigned," he said, "and this is her Parthian arrow."
I said, "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”
"Oh, we speak Latin when we are humble," he said.
I nodded.
"Sergeant Parsons was already here," he continued, "buzzing into my ear. Wondering if you are worth it. Worth keeping. He says you’re a demoralizing influence. But what the hell. As long as you demoralize me in the future, instead of the others. How’s that?"
I did not speak.
"May I take it that since you did not say no you mean yes?"
I nodded.
"What’s troubling you, Miss P.? You don’t look happy about it."
"Why do you always call me Miss P.?" I said. "You deny me my status and my full name."
"I just can’t think of you as married," he said.
"How do you mean?" I asked. "Do you mean that you can’t imagine it, or do you mean you cannot bear to think about it?"
He looked at me, silent, till I cast my eyes down.
"We’ll get around to this another time," he said, "but in the meantime, as a stopgap, I’ll give you another reason. ‘Mrs. Prescott-Clark’ is such a mouthful. ‘Miss P.’ is a matter of convenience. I’m kind of lazy, I suppose. You of all people should know how I feel." And he laughed loudly.
From that day on, the Major, when he was present, made me come and talk to him at least once a day. But it was never for the purpose of chiding me, and he dispensed with all forms of address. He called, "Come here to me."
He had no cause for chiding me, either. I would have despised myself if I had now traded on his apparent goodwill toward me, and thus, in order to show that I was not a maidservant, I was forced to be on my best behavior.
Though the Major did not engage in talk with any of the others, none of my crowd was resentful or jealous. They had, from the beginning, given him his due as "a fine figure of a man" and as "having a presence," but had made it clear that they did not consider him attractive. June, Claudia, and Betty went through their days with amorous blinkers, being devoted to their lovers, and the others rather inclined toward the frigid indigo in the rainbow of the emotions and, like Beryl, were "sick and tired of all that." Sergeant Parsons refrained from comments. And the Big Bad Wolves, who had become tame wolves and could now talk to us only during the tea and coffee breaks, contented themselves with slight, inoffensive chaffing. "If you were a soldier, Buttercup," said Sergeant Kelly one day, "you’d be polishing the apple. But being what you are, it’s a sheer waste of your time singing duets with that big blob. Why don’t you ask him what kind of tree he is—if he is a son of a birch or a son of a beech?"
"Never you mind, Kelly," said Claudia, who had just joined us. "Keep your filth for another time. Listen, you lads and lasses, great news from the home front. This new wench who came yesterday into filing. The Major asked her out that very night. Straight off the bat. Aren’t you staggered?"
"She looks anemic," said June.
"Someone should tell her to get rid of that mustache," said Betty.
"And she did accept?" I asked.
"She did," said Claudia.
"And what happened?" I asked.
"I’ll tell you exactly," said Sergeant Danielevski. "She has this speech defect. And by the time she told the Major she was a g-g-g-good g-g-g-girl, she wasn’t anymore." We screamed with laughter.
"No, but seriously, what happened?" I asked.
"Nothing," said Claudia, "as far as I can make
out. She hasn’t got a stammer, but she’s got a boyfriend on a firm tether, or he’s got her on one, and she was transferred here because he pulled strings, and he’s Quartermaster and works in the PX. The Major gave her a chaste drink and then they separated. He didn’t even see her home to her place."
I was convinced of the truth of the story, especially because I knew that our crowd would have taken great pains to keep me informed of the Major’s amorous exploits. And yet, an hour later, when the Major made me come and talk to him, remarking, "I just don’t feel like work today. I’m tired. I worked hard all day yesterday and then some, late into the night," I could not restrain myself from saying, "Yes, on the mattress. On the human body."
"First wrong, second right," he said calmly. "I’m taking an additional degree as a surgeon, the F.R.C.S. What the hell, I’m in England anyhow, I might just as well. That’s why I sometimes go up to London—for the coaching."
"I didn’t know," I said, "and I shouldn’t have made that remark. It was frightfully mauvais genre."
"You are never mauvais genre. You couldn’t be if you tried," he said. "What the hell, you are like a little princess—you even have long hair and put it up like a crown."
I thought, And what’s the use being like a princess if you ask out the common floozies? and to cover my embarrassment, I said hastily, "But isn’t it an awful strain on you? Working here and then cramming on top of it?"
"No," he said, "for me it’s easy, with the kind of training that I’ve got. I’ve done the first part already. It’s in two parts."
A few days later, Claudia came with more news. "I say, you lasses, he’s doing the rounds. He must be frantic for a woman. There’s this new girl, come in to work for the Merry Widow, and he asked her out. Again slap on the very first day; her bottom had hardly touched the chair."
"What’s she like?" asked June.
"Usual stuff—common as dirt, trained shorthand-typist. What’d you expect?" said Claudia.
"And what happened?" I asked.
"Wouldn’t play," said Claudia. "Gave him the cold shoulder, and he retreated to previous position according to plan, as they give out in the war news."
The Darts of Cupid: Stories Page 2
