Women's Barracks

by Tereska Torres

  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 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.

  Chapter 29

  It was spring. A wonderful English springtime, with the park covered with crocuses, with blossoms, with sheep, a spring that sent mounted amazons with their cavaliers onto the bridle paths, and sent couples rowing in the Serpentine.

  Once more people were talking of the invasion. It was surely going to take place this year, and at night all of us dreamed that we were back in France.

  We girls were being photographed in Down Street. One of the propaganda services was making a short film about the life of the feminine volunteers in the Free French Forces. The dining room and the dormitories were cluttered with spotlights and cables.

  Jacqueline was filmed taking a bath, dressing, making up, and getting in the truck to go to work. The sentinels on the roof were filmed, and the little Brittany girls, enveloped in immaculate white aprons that had been borrowed for the occasion, were shown preparing our meals under the smiling supervision of a Machou transformed into a tender, motherly soul. The infirmary was decorated with tricolors for the occasion. The nurse, a dirty girl with greasy hair, who usually left the sick ones to take care of themselves, was photographed in the act of bringing a tray of food to a fake invalid. Vases filled with flowers were all around the room, and the place was hardly recognizable. In order to create an atmosphere of evening diversion, the film-makers perched a couple of girls on the piano and had them put their arms around each other and sing "Aupres de ma blonde."

  It was during the time when Down Street was revolutionized by these motion-picture activities that a new crisis arose around Jacqueline. Ursula was the first to learn of it. One day after we had all gone off to our duties, she found Jacqueline crying on her bed. Ursula tried to console Jacqueline, without quite knowing what to say.

  Jacqueline raised a ravaged face to her. "I'm going to have a baby," she said, and she began to cry again.

  Ursula looked at her mutely, not knowing whether she should believe this, whether it was meant as playacting or as truth.

  Then, realizing it was serious, she felt filled with respect for Jacqueline, and looked at her as though the child were already in her arms. It seemed to Ursula a thing that was strange and sacred and rather impossible, like a miracle. It was something that could happen to women—to real women, married, older—but here in Down Street, and to one of the "Virgins," it seemed to touch on the world of unreality.

  "Are you sure, Jacqueline?" she said in a low voice.

  Jacqueline nodded. She had seen a doctor, and he had told her that the baby would be born in December. It was now May.

  Ursula remained seated on the bed, completely incapable of offering any advice. Jacqueline repeated, "I don't want a baby. It mustn't be born. It can't. What am I going to do?"

  At first only a few of us knew the secret. Mickey was again consulted. After reflection, Mickey said that she believed there was a drug that was remarkably effective in producing abortion, but she had never heard its name. A pharmacist would know.

  Presently half the dormitory was aware of the situation, and a great variety of advice was offered to Jacqueline. Ginette made her take a series of baths in practically boiling water. She was induced to jump from her bed fifty times.

  After much searching, Jacqueline found a pharmacist who was willing to co-operate, but the stuff he sold her had no effect. Neither did the hot water or bicycle riding or jumping. And time passed.

  Jacqueline never wrote to De Prade to tell him what was happening—perhaps because everything then might have been too simple. De Prade would have sent her money, would have helped, perhaps would have been able to return. Perhaps he would have promised her to get a divorce after the war. But Jacqueline would take only the most morbid view of the situation. The conception of the child was entirely her own fault, she insisted, and De Prade would never get a divorce. If she told him what had happened, she would only make him desperate. De Prade had been filled with remorse when he left. B
ut he had probably gone to confession, done penance, and promised to forget her. She was certain that he would never write to her. On returning to France, he would probably confess their night to his wife, begging her forgiveness, and that would be the end of it.

  Perhaps, I thought, she was right in her understanding of him. He was from her world. She had selected him because of that. And she insisted that she simply could not inform De Prade of what had happened. Besides that, she had a sort of presentiment that this affair could not end for her otherwise than in still another catastrophe. Catastrophes were the order of her life. Therefore, in the end, she accepted her situation as part of this established order.

  After her pregnancy had become officially noted, Jacqueline once again left Down Street. Once more her bed was taken over by a new recruit. A welfare organization of Free France busied itself with finding a room for Jacqueline in the suburbs of London, and providing her with subsistence funds. It was not the first case of this sort at the barracks, and it would certainly not be the last. But officially, no one knew the identity of the father. For once, the few girls in our little circle seemed capable of guarding a secret. It was of course generally known in the barracks that Jacqueline had passed her week ends in Kensington, but three or four officers lived in the house, and besides, they were always changing, and Jacqueline was known to have a great quantity of admirers.

  One morning a little notice was pinned up in the hall in Down Street among the announcements, sentences, and regulations. This stated that Jacqueline had been "discharged for reasons of health."

  Chapter 30

  Summer came, a London summer that lasted about a week. There had been no second front in Europe. The Red Cross messages took longer and longer to arrive, and it was said that the people had nothing to eat in France, that women were wearing shoes with wooden soles, and that layettes for babies were being knitted out of black, gray, or brown wool from men's discarded pull-overs.

  In London the men kept looking at the photographs of their wives and their children, trying to memorize their faces, which must have changed so much. They spoke less often of France now, because it was painful to remember, and it seemed now that the exile was to endure for centuries. And still people continued to arrive from France in fishing vessels from Brittany .or through Spain, and they told the same stories about the resistance, about the occupation, about the lack of food, and they told the same jokes about the Boche.

  For quite a while now the bombardment of London had almost completely ceased. People went to visit the ruins in the City as one went to visit places celebrated in ancient history.

  Emerging from GHQ at noon, we girls in uniform walked down St. James Street arm in arm, despite the fact that this was against regulations. We studied the shop windows, but could buy practically nothing, for everything was rationed and we had very few tickets. People counted purchases in tickets now rather than in pounds and shillings, and it seemed that this too would go on forever.

  The richer ones among us didn't go to Down Street for lunch, but went instead to treat themselves to a horse-meat steak with fried potatoes at Rose's. Sometimes I permitted myself this treat. After the steak, our supreme luxury consisted in stopping for croissants, real French croissants, in a Soho pastry stop. Then we would go for a walk in St. James Park before returning to our offices.

  Rose's, the park, the movies, the swank clubs and bars, the concerts at the National Gallery—all this was now part of our habitude of exile. Little by little each of us constructed a life for herself in wartime London. For the years passed, and the war endured forever.

  All London was pro-Russian. The theatre where Soviet films were regularly shown was always filled. The newspapers were filled with stories of Russian heroism. And the people of London and the Allied soldiers and the exiles from all Europe believed what was written everywhere—that this was a holy war, that hatred between nations was to be destroyed forever, and that a free world was going to be built.

  The end of the war appeared to all of us the supreme good. With the end of the war there would be an end, overnight, to all restrictions, to hunger, and to cold. The United Nations would arise, there would be universal brotherhood, there would be a United States of Europe, for all this had to come to pass, since we were fighting on the side of good, and we were going to annihilate evil forever, replacing it with the invaluable qualities of intelligence, love, and order, which we undoubtedly possessed. But all this was still far away, all this was for "after the war."

  The individual would take his place in society after the war, his rightful place. The individual would be respected, safeguarded by laws conceived for his well-being, for his liberty, and for his moral and intellectual development. But for three years and more, in the little world of Down Street, as in all other military barracks, the individual didn't exist. And those who rose in authority, those who became the "cabinet ministers" here, were the people who knew how to get along, the people with connections, the flatterers. Well, then, I asked one night when we were debating all this in the assembly room, why were we always talking of tomorrow, and never of today? What would remain tomorrow of bleeding Europe? There would be those who returned broken from war and concentration camps, the sick, and a young generation raised in a world where heroism consisted of committing sabotage, lying, and killing; and there would be the collaborators, the cowards, and the indifferent. This was the world that was to rise from the ruins tomorrow, the world upon which everybody counted so much.

  Late in summer, Ann requested permission to spend her leave in Scotland. She gave a false address to Petit; actually she left for Lee's estate.

  Petit was not deceived. Seated at the bar in Down Street, she confided her miseries to Claude and to anyone else who cared to listen. "I know where they are," she said. "But what's the use? If I went after her there, it wouldn't change anything."

  She resigned herself therefore to wait for Ann's return, consoling herself with a fat blonde who was a waitress in the GHQ canteen.

  Meanwhile Petit drank a great deal of beer, and intrigued to get herself promoted. And despite everything, despite her morals, her swearing, and her intrigues, we all really liked her. For Petit was a brave soul, not very intelligent, but fair with the recruits, and she did all that she could to help anyone who came and asked for aid.

  Ann passed the weeks with Lee in Scotland. What happened there, the strange event that was to be whispered about with a kind of revolted glee, seemed to me the saddest of all the things I had heard about the unnatural lives of these women. It was something that happened in the intimate lives of three people, and yet it came out, as everything had to come out in that atmosphere of war and of the barracks. Petit pried it from Ann, and then Petit herself spread the story, in a kind of vengefulness.

  Lee came from a very rich family; not far from Edinburgh they owned a veritable manor in the style of the Stuarts. Every year Lee passed her vacation there with her brother, a blond young officer who was used to his sister's ways and his sister's friends. He was a type of young man who seemed to have emerged from the novels of the Brontë sisters. He drank a great deal, belonged to an exclusive regiment in wartime, and spent his leaves in boredom at the ancestral manor in the occasional company of his masculine sister, who went off hunting every morning.

  An ancient servant couple took care of the dwelling, which was situated in the midst of woods and lakes among the arid Scottish hills. Lee and her brother found the place tiresome, and went there only through a sort of sense of duty, but Ann was enchanted and astonished by the establishment. She had been raised in genteel poverty, and had never known her father. She had always been attracted by riches. It was her dream to be wealthy and powerful someday. By instinct, Ann always sought connections with people above herself. In the barracks she was friendly with the officers, through her inner need to rise in station; and even her women friends, her Lesbian lovers, were always rich or in some way powerful. I don't think she chose them through cold calculation
, but it always turned out that way.

  Every morning she went hunting with Lee, or riding in the immense park. In the afternoons she visited the countryside, and on returning explored the innumerable chambers of the manor. She loved to walk barefoot on the bearskin rugs in the evening, and to watch the immense logs burning in the fireplaces. The servants had the reserved and dignified bearing of domestics in a household of consequence, and Ann had the impression of sharing in all this opulence. When she embraced Lee in her hungry arms, it was the entire manor that she was hugging to herself.

  The brother smoked his pipe, his feet on the table, a glass of whisky at his side, as he yawned through travel magazines.

  Lee studied the fire. The fire danced in her eyes. She looked at Ann, and it seemed to her that she had brought her bride home to her house, the ancient house of her ancestors. Every evening, when the three of them were seated like that in front of the rosy fireplace, Lee had the feeling that with the arrival of Ann she had succeeded in making the manor a homestead, and that the only thing now lacking to her was a child, an inheritor: Then she would really have all that a man could have. She crossed her long legs and stroked her short flat hair. If only Ann could have a child! But that was impossible. It was the one thing that she couldn't give her. Every night when she made love with Ann, Lee felt herself thwarted by this sterility, and in her mind, where all values were disoriented, a project was slowly forming.

  She reflected on each detail and carefully considered the staging of the scene. After all, it was her child that was in question. She spoke of the matter first to her brother.

  Her brother had consumed no small quantity of whisky since that morning, and the idea rather amused him. It would be a bit of a change, at last.