Not So Quiet...

by Helen Zenna Smith

  “You look like a Shakespearian page, Tosh, or Rosalind,” continues Skinny.

  Tosh goes on stirring the Bovril.

  “Something fascinatingly boyish,” says Skinny.

  Tosh swings round. “Boyish my bottom,” she snaps. “Take your Bovril and shut up. I hate being lousy; I don’t care a curse what I look like.”

  There is a silence. Tosh stirs the Bovril fiercely and passes it round. In the fifth bed Etta Potato snores peacefully through everything. Her real name is Etta Potter, but someone dubbed her Etta Potato the day she came out, and Etta Potato she will be for the duration. She is a good-natured soul, phlegmatic, law-abiding, and totally devoid of nerves or imagination. She could sleep on a clothes-line suspended by pegs from the ears, and wake as good-tempered as though she had rested in a soft feather bed.

  “Bovril!”

  The Bug thrusts a biscuit into the parted lips of Etta Potato and she wakes, smiles amiably, and begins to chew without inquiry. The Bug is the most interesting member of our communal life—to me. Chiefly because she is a mystery. We know about the others: The B.F.’s father is a motor manufacturer; Etta Potato is a virgin war widow: her husband went straight from the registry office to the trenches and was killed a week later; Tosh has been in the picture papers so often she hasn’t a shred of private life left; Skinny is the only child of a big pot at the War Office; while I am the nondescript daughter of a nondescript father who made money, sold his business, retired, and is spending the rest of his life in a big house on Wimbledon Common trying to forget the word “jam.” (How father must hate the “plum-and-apple” jokes that are flying around!). But of The Bug we know nothing. She is quite tiny, wiry, tragic-eyed and dark, with a bitter mouth and a disconcerting trick of saying nothing at all that irritates Commandant to the point of insanity. She is quite the most silent girl in company I have ever met, but sometimes when we are alone—a rare thing in this communal bedroom—she talks on and on in a flat, monotonous voice as though she hated the world and was thinking her hatred out loud. Her name, The Bug, originated from the quaint, round-shouldered way she hunches up behind the steering-wheel.

  “What was supper like, Tosh?” asks Etta Potato.

  Tosh tells her in one graphic word, and The B.F. clutches her bosom dramatically and cries: “Tosh!” Tosh christened her The B.F., but we are quite convinced that, although flattered at being on nickname level with the niece of an earl, she hasn’t the vaguest notion that the cryptic letters signify anything other than her own initials—Bertina Farmer.

  The B.F. is quite liked. She is fearfully “refeened and neece,” but we forgive her that: she is such a harmless ass. Her definition of a true lady is one who is ignorant of the simplest domestic details to the point of imbecility. She insisted on helplessly inquiring the first day she came over however one knew when water had reached boiling point. The servants at home had always boiled the family water, she said. She was very shocked at Tosh’s coarse comment on this form of economy in the home.

  The B.F. is like a Harrison Fisher girl on a magazine cover, and is frankly disappointed with the War. The War Office has not quite played the game sending her here. She had an idea being out in France was a kind of perpetual picnic minus the restrictions of home life. She saw herself in a depot, the cynosure of innumerable admiring male eyes. It seems such a waste of a well-cut uniform to be in a place where the men are too wounded or too harassed to regard women other than cogs in the great machinery, and the women are too worn out to care whether they do or not. She intends to transfer to the base at the earliest opportunity. “For,” she said the other day, “surely you can do your bit just as patriotically in an amusing place where there are amusing officers!”

  (The B.F. is very fond of talking about “doing her bit.” She would go down terribly well with my parents.)

  Tosh gravely advised her not to overdo “doing her bit” with the amusing officers, in case she was not so amused in the end.

  The B.F. is pretty and soft and rather plump. She was comically like a ruffled doll as she drew herself up. “I can tell by your face, Tosh, you’re being obscene, but I do not see the point.”

  “Oh, you’ll see that if you overdo ‘doing your bit,’ ” laughed Tosh. “Won’t she, girls?”

  “Do you know what she means?” inquired The B.F. piteously.

  We did.

  A few weeks ago we should not have known.

  The Bovril is good. We want more, but there is none. Tosh empties the chamber of charred paper out of the window, letting in a blast of icy air. The wind is rising, moaning round the convoy like a thousand angry witches. We shiver. Is it going to snow again? It may grow warmer if it snows. It can’t grow any colder. It has been freezing hard for days. We break the ice in the water-jug in the mornings and waken with our hot-water bottles frozen to a solid lump. We snuggle deeper into our flea-bags and tell one another we really must get up. The Bug wants to change her underclothing and Etta Potato wants to wash to the waist to save doing it in the morning. She looks intensely relieved when informed the water jug is nearly empty, that there is just enough water for a hasty sponge of the face and hands. Her “big wash” must wait, indefinitely, until she plucks up courage to carry the hot water from the outhouse across the open yard, through the snow, into the bedroom. The Bug decides after all not to change into fresh underwear; her old ones are warm, and there is no sense in changing into clean, cold things until she washes her body thoroughly. We all agree. The Bug is grateful for our approval. She will show her gratitude in the usual manner, by pointing out the danger of bathing on some cold night when we feel slack. Skinny pensively ponders if there is time to write to her bosom friend, Ellie, in Brighton, but makes no attempt to move. We are glad, for she will read aloud what she has written, and we all detest Ellie, the bosom friend in Brighton. We don’t know her personally, but that makes no difference.

  Tosh puts on her underskirt, a second pair of woollen stockings, thick shoes and gaiters, and rolls her body, cocoon-wise, in a khaki scarf of extraordinary length before donning her uniform. She tries on her cap. It is several sizes too large now, owing to her depleted hair. We all lazily proffer advice. A safety-pin and a reef in the back of the cap is easily the most popular and workable. The B.F. produces the safety-pin. Tosh pins her cap and tries it on. The safety-pin is not strong enough—it flies apart and jabs her in the back of the neck.

  “St. Peter’s holy trousers!” ejaculates Tosh.

  We roar with laughter.

  “Tosh!” reproves the B.F. “Your blasphemy!”

  “What? You don’t call that blasphemous?” Tosh is genuinely surprised. “If you really want to hear some blasphemy. . . .”

  The very last thing The B.F. wants. She interrupts hastily. “You can say what you like, Tosh, but it is blasphemous to talk about St. Peter having trousers. . . .”

  “Holy ones,” says Tosh. “I did make them holy, B.F.”

  “Any kind,” insists The B.F. “It’s blasphemous to say he’s got any kind at all.”

  “B.F.! Don’t tell me there are no trousers in heaven. Don’t tell me the men go trotting about showing all they’ve . . .”

  “Tosh!” The B.F. turns crimson and the rest of us fall about. Then, the joke over, we as suddenly grow quiet again, waiting for the whistle. The only sound in the room is the crackle-crackle of the newspaper Tosh is stuffing into her cap. In the silence the guns grow ominous and audible. More ominous than when last we listened to their eternal rumble-rumble. They are always louder at night when the day noises have ceased. There has never been a lull in their muffled thunder night or day for the last fortnight. It is seldom they worry us; we are too dead beat as a rule to notice them. Usually we fit them into the backs of our subconscious minds and forget them. They are like the pianoforte accompaniment to a gramophone record of Melba or Caruso—there, but never listened to until the voice ceases.

  Booma-boom-booma-boom-boommm!

  “I’ve lost a hairpin,” sa
ys Etta Potato. “No, false alarm.”

  She smiles. Placid Etta Potato. Her chief worry in life is the fear of losing her hairpins. They are many and large, stout iron affairs with the black enamel worn completely away, and Etta Potato can be traced by them as effectively as the hare in a paper-chase. During a recent air-raid, when her ambulance—fortunately empty—was knocked into a ditch by the impact of a bomb which fell in the next field, Etta Potato was found under the bonnet hunting for one of the lost hairpins. I watch her now carefully hairpinning her smooth, brown bun, and I see her in about sixty years hence—placid, scarcely lined and imperturbable, still fastening a smooth bun with hairpins. The bun will be white, but the hairpins will probably be the same.

  Booma-boom-booma-boom-boommm!

  “God, I hate those bloody guns,” mutters Tosh, and this time The B.F. is silent. We stare ahead. We hate and dread the days following on the guns when they boom without interval. Trainloads of broken human beings: half-mad men pleading to be put out of their misery; torn and bleeding and crazed men pitifully obeying orders like a herd of senseless cattle, dumbly, pitifully straggling in the wrong direction, as senseless as a flock of senseless sheep obeying a senseless leader, herded back into line by the orderly, the kind sheep-dog with a “Now then, boys, this way. That’s the ticket, boys,” instead of a bark; men with faces bleeding through their hasty bandages; men with vacant eyes and mouths hanging foolishly apart dropping saliva and slime; men with minds mercifully gone; men only too sane, eyes horror-filled with blood and pain. . . .

  My last letter home opens before me, photograph clear, sent in response to innumerable complaints concerning the brevity of my crossed-out field postcards: “It is such fun out here, and of course I’m loving every minute of it; it’s so splendid to be really in it. . . .”

  The only kind of letter home they expect, the only kind they want, the only kind they will have. Tell them that you hate it, tell them that you fear it, that you are as terror-stricken as you were when they left you alone in the dark in that big, quiet house on Wimbledon Common, you who had been accustomed to the cheery trams and rumbling motor-buses of Shepherd’s Bush—tell them that all the ideals and beliefs you ever had have crashed about your gun-deafened ears—that you don’t believe in God or them or the infallibility of England or anything but bloody war and wounds and foul smells and smutty stories and smoke and bombs and lice and filth and noise, noise, noise—that you live in a world of cold sick fear, a dirty world of darkness and despair—that you want to crawl ignominiously home away from these painful writhing things that once were men, these shattered, tortured faces that dumbly demand what it’s all about in Christ’s name—that you want to find somewhere where life is quiet and beautiful and lovely as it was before the world turned khaki and blood-coloured—that you want to creep into a refuge where there is love instead of hate. . . .

  Tell them these things; and they will reply on pale mauve deckle-edged paper calling you a silly hysterical little girl—“You always were inclined to exaggerate, darling”—and enclose a patent carbolised body belt; “the very latest thing for active service, dear, in case you encounter a stray ‘bitey’ ” (that’s what you used to call a louse yourself, hundreds of years ago; refined, weren’t you?), an iron tonic, some more aspirin tablets. “Stick it, darling; go on doing your bit, because England is proud of her brave daughters, so very proud. . . .”

  England is proud of her brave daughters.

  Almost as proud as Father and Mother.

  “It’s so splendid to be really in it. . . .”

  The only kind of letter they want. Father can take it to his club and swank: “I’ve got two girls out in France now, and a son in training. He’ll be ordered out any minute, he says. Ah! One of my girls pretty well in the firing line; not allowed to say, of course—Censor and all that—address Somewhere in France”—swelling himself—“doing her bit, you know, doing her bit. Just on twenty-one. Plucky? Yes, but loves it. An Englishwoman to her finger-tips—wouldn’t keep out of it—proud to do her bit for the old flag”—blowing his nose emotionally—“proud to do her bit, God bless her. . . .”

  And Mother, head of more committees than anyone else on Wimbledon Common, fiercely competing with Mrs. Evans-Mawnington in recruiting. Mrs. Evans-Mawnington and Mother like the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle: maddeningly equal to one another. Mrs. Evans-Mawnington has a son; so has Mother. The angles are equal. Mrs. Evans-Mawnington is head of the same number of committees as Mother. The angles are equal again. But Mrs. Evans-Mawnington has no daughters, which is where Mother scores. Her angle is two daughters up on Mrs. Evans-Mawnington’s angle—oh! decidedly two daughters up. She expects soon to out-committee Mrs. Evans-Mawnington on the strength of her two daughters. She will make Mrs. Evans-Mawnington’s angle so small Euclid himself would never recognise it. “So brave of you, Mrs. Smith, to have given your children, so noble. . . .” Mother triumphantly smirking across the room at the disgruntled Mrs. Evans-Mawnington, who has no daughters: “We must all do our bit, mustn’t we? Abnormal times. I had a letter to-day from my Nellie, so cheery, so full of spirit, not at all the kind of life she’s been accustomed to—such a sheltered life she’s always had—it’s a trifle rough out there, but she wouldn’t come home for anything.”—Wiping away a tear.—“When I think of her wee fair head walking along with the wee dark head of my little Trix—she’s in a hospital in France—both of them doing their bit . . . we must all do our bit. . . . I am wearing myself to a shadow, but they shall never say Mother didn’t do her bit, too; if they are in it, Mother shall be in it too. . . .”

  Mrs. Evans - Mawnington scowling, furious-mouthed, jealous . . . Mother smug, saccharine-sweet . . . shelves of mangled bodies . . . filthy smells of gangrenous wounds . . . shell-ragged, shell-shocked men . . . men shrieking like wild beasts inside the ambulance until they drown the sound of the engine . . . “Nellie loves to be really in it”—no God to pray to because you know there isn’t a God—how shall I carry on? . . . “Proud to do her bit for the old flag.” Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ! . . . I’m only twenty-one and nobody cares because I’ve been pitchforked into hell, nobody cares because I’m going mad, mad, mad; nobody cares because I’m afraid I’ve no guts, I’m white-livered. . . . “We must all do our bit.” . . . They’ve made me a heroine, one of England’s Splendid Women, and I’m shaking with fright, I can’t hold the wheel . . . one of England’s splendid heroines . . . how easy to drive the bus clean over the hill into the valley below . . . an accident. . . . “She died for King and Country.” . . . Mother in deep mourning, head of another committee, enrolling recruits at top speed . . . one daughter dead on active service equal to how many daughters alive Somewhere in France? . . . Shrieks of torn bodies . . . old men safe in England snubbing slackers. “By Gad! if I were a few years younger, by Gad!” . . . Flappers presenting white feathers to men who don’t want to be maimed or killed . . . ever-knitting women safe from the blood and the mud, women who can still pray to their smug God, the God who is on our side, the God who hates the enemy because He is on our side . . . women who don’t have to stare into the black night and hum a revue tune—“If you were the only girl in the world”—to drown the wild-beast noises of men gone mad with pain . . . one of England’s heroines . . . a failure, a failure . . . a coward, a weak, suburban coward . . . screams of men growing louder and louder, maddened men, louder, louder, louder, shrieking down the song and the engine. . . .

  The whistle blows.

  “Out of it, mes petites harlots,” says Tosh.

  We scramble from our flea-bags.

  CHAPTER II

  THREE ack emma.

  I am the last ambulance home . . . which means no hot cocoa. My luck has been dead out this convoy. The others struck it fairly easy, but I started off badly. I got Number Thirteen Hospital at the station gate—not only the farthest one out of camp, but the one on top of the hill with a rough, detestable, badly-winding road, dotted with irregular heaps of
snow-covered stones hard enough to negotiate by daylight, but hell to drive up at the crawl with a load of wounded on a pitch black night in a hurricane of wind, . . . when the slightest jar may mean death to a man inside. We all loathe drawing Number Thirteen, and an audible sigh of relief always goes up from a driver when the sergeant on duty gives her any other number.

  It would be my luck to get it on a night when the roads are so ice-polished the wheels seem to be skating—no grip at all—and the wind is blowing a gale. It nearly turned the old bus turtle as we unexpectedly caught the full force at the summit on my first trip. Next journey I was too fed up to care. This was not my lucky night with a vengeance. I was carrying a spotted fever case, which meant that after I had been unloaded in the front entrance of Number Thirteen I had to have the ambulance disinfected and myself sprayed until I smelt like a newly-scrubbed public lavatory. This precaution always seems to me a little late, considering that spotted fever cases are put in indiscriminately with five or six non-infectious sitters and stretchers for the journey to the hospital, which is not to be wondered at, considering the fiendish rush at the station when a big convoy arrives.

  Disinfecting over, I dimmed headlights and drove downhill at a terrific pace to make up lost time. But my luck was again out. Commandant saw me drive in the yard. Where had I been? What did I mean by slacking in this disgraceful manner? Spotted-fever case? Oh. (Slightly disconcerted, but by no means squashed.) No excuse. I should have been back a quarter of an hour ago. Get reloaded at once. Enough time has been wasted, without wasting more in idle conversation. (A thing I had been longing to point out, but lacked the necessary guts, like the wretched funk I am.) Freezing outwardly but inwardly boiling, I backed the bus to the train again, to be reloaded with another spotted-fever stretcher, which meant the whole rotten routine again. The language I used at this back-hander would have left Tosh among the also-rans.