Women's Barracks

by Tereska Torres

  The Captain was in front. She was a large and handsome woman, with graying hair cut short. She had a heavy face with a self-satisfied mouth, an intelligent forehead, and impenetrable eyes. Behind her stood the warrant officer, Petit, a smallish woman who had the look of a little old man, with reddish-gray hair and a face filled with small wrinkles. She was altogether like a gallant old fellow holding himself quite erect and looking over the girls with a friendly eye.

  "Everything here is still on a makeshift basis," said the Captain. "In a few days we'll have the house furnished and each of you will be assigned to a job in the forces. If any of you has any difficulty, come and see me. You know that my job is to help you, and I count on making this barracks a home for each and every one of you, since you are so far away from your families. I have some important projects in mind; I have big ambitions for you. I hope that you will put in a great deal of work these first days, and that you will get along well with your officers. France, for whose sake you have…"

  While the Captain talked, I could see Ann studying the warrant officer, Petit. Yes, Petit had the air of an elderly man, and I suppose Ann knew that it was inevitable that Petit should notice her. She touched her tie to make sure the knot was in place; she passed her hand over her hair.

  Petit was studying all the girls, smilingly, looking from one to the other of us, until her eyes met Ann's, and then her eyes remained immobile for an instant. Petit had small gray clever eyes. It seemed to me, watching her, that her little pupils were suddenly drowned in Ann's large somber blue eyes, and even I, only a bystander at this silent exchange, could sense a current passing between the two women.

  They looked at each other over the heads of the rest of us, and I thought: They've never met before, but they recognize each other; they know they're the same kind. It was plain that there was no need of words or of explanations between them. It was quite simple, quite clear, and even if nothing came of it, they could count on each other in the eternal battle between themselves and other women—those of us who were subject to the needs, the fears, the weaknesses that neither Ann nor Petit felt.

  We resumed our places at the tables. There was no table linen, but the food was good. After all, the cook was French, and from Normandy. She knew her work; she had operated a restaurant before the war. The cook was large and fat, with hair dyed a hard black. She didn't know how to speak without shouting, and her voice was rough.

  Assigned to her in the kitchen were three little girls from Brittany who had just arrived on a fishing boat. They were young, fresh, round-cheeked; they didn't use make-up, and they looked even more unsuited to their uniforms than the rest of us.

  No one ate very much. We all felt homesick. On the wall, there already hung a huge photograph of General de Gaulle. Occasionally someone would raise her head toward him, as though looking for reassurance.

  Chapter 3

  The alert sounded precisely at six o'clock, as it did every night. No one had gone out that evening. It was our first day, and we were busy arranging our things, and besides, very few of us knew anyone in London.

  In the evening, a second group of a dozen women arrived, and we "old ones" experienced a certain feeling of superiority. We were already forming little groups among ourselves.

  The silken Jacqueline, noisy Mickey, and little Ursula were in my dormitory, and from the first we were somehow drawn together. The reason came out, perhaps, when a young woman with a large full mouth and an absolutely round face approached our little group, and standing facing us asked, without any preliminaries, whether we were virgins.

  Mickey began to laugh. Jacqueline assumed a haughty, offended air. Ursula simply blushed and said yes. On the instant, our dormitory was baptized "The Virgins' Room" —though the young woman who had asked the question could obviously not be included in that category. Her name was Ginette, and she informed us that she was a salesgirl and a divorcee. She undressed, promenading naked among the cots, and declared to Jacqueline, "You know, the best thing about my face is my legs." It was true that she had pretty legs.

  Presently Ginette held up a pair of the regulation khaki panties they had handed out to us. "Just look at that! What a monstrosity! How can I expect to get a lover with that?" And on the spot, Ginette brought out a pair of scissors and a needle and thread, and began to turn the panties into briefs. At once, the rest of us followed her example. Each of us remade the regulation underwear.

  A bomb fell not far away; then there was a crash of breaking glass. Mickey, sitting at the foot of her bed, was putting curlers in her hair. A woman who was a hairdresser in civilian life came over to help her, and then the hairdresser began to discuss Ursula's coiffure. She declared that Ursula ought to have her hair done up in curls, to make her look a little more mature. An argument began. Jacqueline wanted Ursula's hair put up in a bun, to make her look sophisticated, and Mickey was all for having it in short curly clusters, to make her look boyish. But Ursula rejected all of our suggestions, holding her head in her two hands as though to keep us from tearing out her hair.

  At nine-thirty the corporal came to put out the lights. As soon as the door was closed, Ginette turned them on again.

  Mickey, in pajamas, began teaching Ursula a dance step. Jacqueline was writing a letter, on monogrammed stationery; one of the girls was growling from under her covers that she wanted to sleep.

  I could see that Ursula was beginning to feel a kind of warmth and security in the room with all these new friends—a warmth, I learned later, that she had never known in her life before. After all, the room was bright and filled with human sounds, and all these girls were like big sisters busying themselves with her. Outside, there was night, exile, bombardment, a foreign city bathed in fog and rain. Here people spoke French, laughed and worked together, and it was as though everybody had always known each other.

  Mickey told her, "As soon as I heard General de Gaulle's appeal, I wanted to enlist. I'm so proud of being French, and I adore De Gaulle! I saw him once in a parade."

  "What's he like?" Ursula asked.

  "Oh, he's marvelous—very tall, and he looks awfully serious and sad."

  Ginette spoke up. "I crossed over the Pyrenees on foot, and I got myself pinched in Spain. I told them I was a Canadian. I was with a man, an American, a good-looking fellow. He made love like a stick, but I liked him well enough. He's in America now. He's going to send me silk stockings and lipstick."

  "You're lucky," sighed Mickey, puckering her little nose.

  Jacqueline raised her head, pausing in her writing to mutter something about women who permitted themselves to be kept. But Jacqueline's lofty attitude didn't annoy Ginette, who was now busy tailoring the jacket of her uniform, making it over to her measure, with the help of the former hairdresser. Somehow, I felt, nothing could annoy Ginette.

  The door opened again, and the face of the corporal appeared, pinched and angry. She was about to shout something when she noticed Mickey, who had her scissors in one hand and her khaki drawers in the other. The corporal glared at her. Then she announced icily, "If I see the lights burning in this room once more after lights out, the whole lot of you will stand punishment." She snapped out the light and slammed the door.

  Ginette, who was caught in the middle of the room, cursed because she couldn't find her bed. The woman who had wanted to sleep grunted that at last there was justice. Jacqueline and Mickey gossiped from their beds.

  Over the house, all night long, we could hear the growling of planes.

  Chapter 4

  I opened my eyes at dawn. That first morning I lay motionless for a moment, studying the large gray room. A foggy light came through the dirty windows. The rain beat on the panes and staggered down. The room must at one time have been a library, for there were empty shelves all around the walls, and the vacant shelves somehow made me think of blind eye sockets.

  I could make out the figures of the other women in the narrow camp beds; here and there a head, a mass of hair, or an arm protruded from un
der a gray blanket. There were no sheets. There had even been a shortage of cots, and two girls were asleep on straw pallets on the floor; one of them snored. I thought, this is my life now, and I didn't mind; I felt rather proud.

  I realized that Ursula was awake, and looking at me with her large quiet eyes. Mickey woke up yawning, and as she stretched she threw a joyful "Hello, baby!" to Ursula. This awakened all the others, and presently the entire room was alive with movement.

  "I dreamed that the corporal made me scrub the roof," Jacqueline announced, "and I was terrified that I was going to fall. I was so frightened that I woke up."

  The bell began to ring, and none of us knew whether it was ringing for reveille or for breakfast. The room was freezing cold, for the furnace had not yet been lighted. The building that had been turned into a barracks for us was an old mansion, abandoned many years ago, and almost impossible to heat properly at any time.

  Most of the girls were parading back and forth to the bathroom in their dressing gowns. Ursula was dressing under her covers, complaining that she was too cold to emerge. Jacqueline went over to her, in that protective way that she had, and knotted Ursula's tie, like some society matron taking care of a waif.

  The door opened and the prune-faced corporal appeared. "Everybody in the hall for inspection!"

  Although it was seven in the morning, the main hall was still so dark that the electricity had to be turned on, but there was only a small yellowish bulb that gave very little light.

  All of us were formed into a circle. The sergeant, two corporals, and Petit, the warrant officer, stood in the center, and called out the names of the recruits. Each of us had to reply, "Present," and come to attention.

  After the roll call, the corporal whispered something to the warrant officer, who thereupon turned to glare at our little group from the "Virgins' Room."

  Petit approached Ginette, commanding her to raise her skirt. Her hefty thighs appeared; high up they were rimmed in khaki. I thought of the pieces cut off from all of our regulation drawers, scattered upstairs in a corner of the dormitory. Petit said nothing to Ginette, and passed on to the next woman. Then she went beyond our group, with the same inspection. And it became evident that not only in our room, but in practically all of the dormitories, the women had had the same idea, and shortened their underwear. Petit returned to the center of the circle.

  "All those who have desecrated their uniforms will be deprived of liberty during the entire week," she announced. "They will receive another pair of drawers and are required to wear them according to regulations. I am aware that they are not in the latest style, but you are soldiers, and not ladies of fashion, damn it!"

  We scattered, some laughing, some muttering.

  "The dirty bitch!" said Ginette, with a look at the corporal. Ann's deep voice growled a second to Ginette's outburst.

  Nevertheless, a few moments later in the dining room, I noticed Ann gossiping gaily with the corporal. Ursula was sitting with me, and she too remarked on the sudden change. Like me, she was wondering whether Ann were just an opportunist, sincere only in seeking her own advancement. I took it that Ann knew how to get along with people, but as Ann came toward us I saw that sensitive little Ursula was blushing. Ann was a likable person, and I suppose, like all of us, Ursula was sorry to recognize an imperfection in someone whom she wanted to admire.

  Ann sat on the other side of Ursula, setting down her plate, in which the porridge had mingled with a dollop of orange marmalade. Ann shrugged over the disagreeable mess. There simply weren't enough plates; everything had to go on one. "Well, little Ursula," she boomed, "is everything all right this morning? Do you like the soldier's life?"

  Her deep voice was filled with warm comradeliness, and Ursula instantly recovered from her doubts of a moment before. She smiled at Ann, but didn't seem to know what to answer.

  In general, Ursula didn't know how to make conversation. This was probably due to the queer childhood she had had. The lone daughter of divorced parents who had wandered separately in different parts of the world, she was the little girl of no one. She had been born in France and had lived almost everywhere, raised by servants and left largely to herself. For her, France had provided an illusion not only of a homeland, but of a home. Little Ursula, as we came to know, worshiped France with all her soul, because she had nothing else to worship.

  At the time of the Franco-German armistice, her mother was in America and her father in China. No one was especially interested in Ursula. In the drift of refugees from Paris, she had found her way onto a British ship that was evacuating troops from Brest. And so she had gravitated to Down Street like the rest of us.

  Her heart was filled with dreams and longings, with love, with a sense of the intimacies she had missed, and all this was mingled with a strange fear of life itself. She had never felt equal to things, neither with her mother, nor with servants, nor with strangers, nor in the schools to which she had been sent, in one country or another. And here in the barracks she continued to feel lost and terrified, without knowing why. It seemed to her that all her life would be like yesterday's problem of scrubbing the floor—she would never know at what corner to begin, and no one would ever take her seriously.

  "When I am grown up," she would say, and then suddenly she would realize that she was already grown up, that she was nearly sixteen and she was a soldier. And she would look terrified.

  Mickey was at the end of our table; she was laughing loudly over one of Ginette's rough jokes. Mickey's teeth were slightly pointed, like those of a puppy, and her mouth pouted forward, very red, heart-shaped in the form of a kiss. She was so eager to be part of everything.

  "… and what a conne!" Ginette ended her tale.

  "What does that mean, conne?" Mickey asked, opening wide her large blue eyes.

  There was a roar of laughter, and one of the women undertook an explanation.

  That day, too, we were assigned to house cleaning.

  Toward evening, a truck unloaded straw for mattresses —and also a batch of five new recruits, who were immediately sent off to peel vegetables in the kitchen. Ursula and I had just finished cleaning the three bathrooms. She had been chattering rather easily most of the day, and I had begun to feel that I understood this frail girl, who nevertheless was streaked through with decided, even passionate elements of character.

  As we came out on the stairway we noticed one of the newcomers crossing the hall, laden with a huge pile of straw. It was a lady. A lady such as one saw in films. At first glance, the lady appeared fairly young—thirty or thirty-two. But on closer scrutiny one saw that she was somewhat older.

  Ursula stood still and murmured, "Isn't she beautiful?"

  The woman was tall and extremely blonde—a peroxide blonde. Her hair curled in ringlets over her forehead and fell in waves alongside her face. Her nose was fairly long, but quite narrow and very slightly arched, giving her an air of distinction. She was heavily made up. Ursula stood stock-still, a wisp of a girl wrapped in her long beige smock, watching the passage of this beautiful creature. The woman had such a marvelous scent! And in passing she threw Ursula a smile that was as perfumed as the woman herself.

  At that moment our sergeant-cook appeared, roaring, "Hey, you there, the new one—Claude! What are you doing with that straw? You're supposed to be in the kitchen!"

  To our astonishment, we beheld the one called Claude raise a snarling face over her pile of straw, and from her beautifully made-up mouth there came forth one of the most violent replies that I had ever heard. As for Ursula, she stood agape. "You can go to hell!" the lady spat at the sergeant. "Just because you're a sergeant, don't think you can get away with anything! First, I'm going to fix my bed, and when I'm through, I'll come and peel your potatoes, and if you don't like it you can kiss my behind!"

  The sergeant-cook must have realized that this was no little girl from Brittany, for she went away without saying a word.

  Now Claude turned toward us. "Can you imagine, talk
ing to me in such a tone of voice! What does she take me for—her servant? More likely, she'd be mine! I volunteered out of patriotism, and not to be treated like an inferior by a conne like that!"

  It was strange, but the coarse words with which her speech was peppered seemed to lose their vulgarity when they were spoken by Claude. She had a very beautiful voice, cultured and modulated, the sort that could permit itself the use of slang.

  "Can you tell me where to find the switchboard room?" Claude then asked. "That’s where I'm to bunk. I've got to take charge of the telephone."

  An assignment of this sort seemed prodigiously important to us. Full of respect for Claude, we showed her the little room near the entrance that had been set aside for the telephone operator.

  Claude dropped the straw on the floor, went to the window, opened it, and leaned on her elbows, looking out into the street.

  Facing our barracks was a large hotel, and in front of the hotel entrance stood the doorman, very tall, very thin, with graying hair and thin lips. His cheeks were highly rouged, his eyelids were painted a bright blue, and he bowed with feminine grace before every man who entered the hotel. Then he resumed his haughty nonchalant stance, staring directly before him at the windows of our barracks.

  "You could take him for the ambassador of Peru," murmured Claude. We had no idea why "ambassador" and why "Peru," but the phrase enchanted Ursula and she started to laugh.

  "How old are you, child?" Claude asked her.

  This time Ursula replied, "Seventeen," without hesitation.

  Claude placed her hand on Ursula's head and stroked her soft hair. I felt as though I were intruding. "You have the air of a tiny little girl, and you're ravishing—you're like a little bird," Claude said.

  It was obvious that this was the first time anyone had told Ursula she was ravishing. And yet, because it was said in another person's presence—mine—it was quite normal, almost a conventional remark.