No Man's Land (15 page)

An accident… So The Bug rests alongside Tosh in the bleak cemetery in the shadow of the Witch's Hand.

An accident… drivers walking about with sullen eyes, and whisperings that are not pleasant listening… and I, in the hours after the midnight convoy, sitting thinking things that are best not thought… my fingers tight against Commandant's thick, red throat, gloating in the ebbing strength of that squat, healthy body until I am sick and faint with murderous longing.

The impulse has gone… but in its place has come something worse. I am haunted now as The Bug was haunted. Whenever I close my aching red eyes a procession of men passes before me: maimed men; men with neither arms nor legs; gassed men, coughing, coughing, coughing; men with dreadful burning eyes; men with heads and faces half shot away; raw, bleeding men with the skin burned from their upturned faces; tortured, all watching me as I lie in my flea-bag trying to sleep… an endless procession of horror that will not let me rest. I am afraid. I am afraid of madness. Are there others in this convoy fear-obsessed as I am, as The Bug was… others who will not admit it, as I will not, as The Bug did not… others who exist in a daily hell of fear? For I fear these maimed men of my imaginings as I never fear the maimed men I drive from the hospital trains to the camps. The men in the ambulances scream, but this ghostly procession is ghostly quiet. I fear them, these silent men, for I am afraid they will stay with me all my life, shutting out beauty till the day I die. And not only do I fear them, I hate them. I hate these maimed men who will not let me sleep.

Oh, the beauty of men who are whole, who have straight arms and legs, whose bodies are not cruelly gashed and torn by shrapnel, whose eyes are not horror-filled, whose faces are smooth and shapely, whose mouths smile instead of grinning painfully… oh, the beauty and wonder of men who are whole. Baynton, young and strong and clean-limbed, are his eyes serene and happy now as they were the afternoon of the concert in the prisoners' compound… or are they staring up unseeingly somewhere in No Man's Land, with that fair skin of his dyed an obscene blue by poison gas, his young body shattered and scattered and bleeding? Roy Evans-Mawnington… is he still smiling and eager-faced as on the day he was photographed in his second-lieutenant's uniform… or has the smile frozen on his incredulous lips?

Oh, the beauty of men who are whole and sane. Shall I ever know a lover who is young and strong and untouched by war, who has not gazed on what I have gazed upon? Shall I ever know a lover whose eyes reflect my image without the shadow of war rising between us? A lover in whose arms I shall forget the maimed men who pass before me in endless parade in the darkness before the dawn when I think and think and think because the procession will not let me sleep?

What is to happen to women like me when this war ends… if ever it ends. I am twenty-one years of age, yet I know nothing of life but death, fear, blood, and the sentimentality that glorifies these things in the name of patriotism. I watch my own mother stupidly, deliberately, though unthinkingly – for she is a kind woman – encourage the sons of other women to kill their brothers; I see my own father – a gentle creature who would not willingly harm a fly – applaud the latest scientist to invent a mechanical device guaranteed to crush his fellow-beings to pulp in their thousands. And my generation watches these things and marvels at the blind foolishness of it… helpless to make its immature voice heard above the insensate clamour of the old ones who cry: ‘Kill, Kill, Kill!' unceasingly.

What is to happen to women like me when the killing is done and peace comes… if ever it comes? What will they expect of us, these elders who have sent us out to fight? We sheltered young women who smilingly stumbled from the chintz-covered drawing-rooms of the suburbs straight into hell?

What will they expect of us?

We, who once blushed at the public mention of childbirth, now discuss such things as casually as once we discussed the latest play; whispered stories of immorality are of far less importance than a fresh cheese in the canteen; chastity seems a mere waste of time in an area where youth is blotted out so quickly. What will they expect of us, these elders of ours, when the killing is over and we return?

Once we were not allowed out after nightfall unchaperoned; now we can drive the whole night through a deserted countryside with a man – provided he is in khaki and our orders are to drive him. Will these elders try to return us to our conventional pre-war habits? What will they say if we laugh at them, as we are bound?

I see in the years to come old men in their easy chairs fiercely reviling us for lacking the sweetness and softness of our mothers and their mothers before them; chiding us for language that is not the language of gentlewomen; accusing us of barnyard morals when we use love as a drug for forgetfulness because we have acquired the habit of taking what we can from life while we are alive to take… clearly do I see all these things. But what I do not see is pity or understanding for the war-shocked woman who sacrificed her youth on the altar of the war that was not of her making, the war made by age and fought by youth while age looked on and applauded and encored. Will they show us mercy, these arm-chair critics, once our uniforms are frayed and the romance of the war woman is no longer a romance? I see much, but this I do not see.

And the next generation… our younger brothers and sisters… young things raised in a blood-and-hate atmosphere – I see them hard and callous and cold… emotionless, unfriendly, cruelly analytical, predatory, resentful of us for stealing the limelight from their childhood, bored by the war and the men and women who fought the war, thanklessly grabbing the freedom for which we paid so dearly… all this I see as my procession of torn, dreadful-eyed men passes in the cold dark hours preceding the dawn.

And I see us a race apart, we war products… feared by the old ones and resented by the young ones… a race of men bodily maimed and of women mentally maimed.

What is to become of us when the killing is over?

*

Commandant is willing that I should go.

A rest – sick leave she calls it – but she avoids my cold glance carefully when speaking the words. She understands. I have finished with the war for good. I will take no more part in it. Why should I, who hate and fear war with all my heart, and would gladly die to end it if that were possible, work to keep it going? Etta Potato says my logic is unsound, but I am too weary to argue, too eager to be gone from the little communal bedroom where nightly marches my procession of maimed men.

I divide my kit between Etta Potato and Chutney, leaving only my uniform to travel in. My overcoat is deeply stained where Tosh's head rested… but I must wear it, for I have no other clothes. There are a few farewells; Etta Potato drives me to the station… I do not see Commandant… I am in the train at last… Etta Potato waving farewell from the platform…

My war service is ended.

I am going home.

Darkened stations… endless cold waits… soldiers in khaki… wounded soldiers in blue… V. A. D.'s… nurses… grey, uninteresting landscapes… bare trees… camps, camps, camps… tin huts, wooden huts… marching troops… desolation… cemeteries of black crosses… hospitals… and everywhere mud, mud, mud.

I am going home.

The train stops, starts again, stops; I change to another, on and on and on…

I am going home.

Why am I so calm about it?

Boulogne at last. Why do I not shout and laugh and dance? How often have I pictured this Channel crossing, my wild exhilaration, arriving under the chalk cliffs of England, the white welcoming chalk cliffs of England.

The sweetness of England… England, where grass is green and primroses in early springtime patch the earth a timid yellow… where trees in bud are ready to leaf on the first day of pale sunshine… England, England, how often have I promised to throw myself flat upon your bosom and kiss the first green blade of grass I saw because it was English grass and I had come home?

But now I am coming home… and I do not care.

I have pictured arriving at Charing Cross. Perhaps it would be raining, but it would be English rain and I would hold my face up to its drops. Father and Mother would meet me… drive me through familiar places – Piccadilly, Regent Street… as it grew dusk lights would reflect warmly on the wet, shiny pavements… London and then out through innumerable streets of toy villas towards home…

Home, home… and I do not care.

I do not care. I am flat. Old. I am twenty-one and as old as the hills. Emotion-dry. The war has drained me dry of feeling. Something has gone from me that will never return. I do not want to go home.

I am suddenly aware that I cannot bear Mother's prattle-prattle of committees and recruiting-meetings and the war-baby of Jessie, the new maid; nor can I watch my gentle father gloating over the horrors I have seen, pumping me for good stories to retail at his club to-morrow. I cannot go home to watch a procession of maimed men in my dainty, rosewalled bedroom. It is no place for a company of broken men on parade…

I cannot go home. In the morning, perhaps, but not to-night.

*

‘You've just come from France, haven't you?' I look up from the coffee I am drinking in the hotel lounge. He is a second-lieutenant, very spick and span in his new Sam Browne and well-cut uniform – ‘Rather a nut,' The B. F. would label him. He is so immaculate I feel dirty immediately, despite my pre-dinner hot bath, my shampoo and hair-cut, my manicure and my newly-acquired powder-puff.

He smiles disarmingly. ‘Awful cheek my coming over, but I embark to-morrow. First time out. Frightful novice.'

First time out. I avoid his laughing blue eyes. He is indeed a frightful novice… that is why his eyes are still laughing.

‘Do let me talk to you,' he begs. ‘I'm lonely and you seem lonely, too. I've been watching you all through dinner, wondering why you stayed in Folkestone instead of going straight through. Do talk to me. I'd love some tips first-hand from someone who's been out there…'

I agree to talk to him… but not of the war.

Anything but the war. My voice hardens. He notices it and his eyes are suddenly grave… but I do not want them to be grave. Let them smile while they can still smile, they will be grave soon enough. I make a stupid joke… the blue eyes dance again. Blue eyes, dancing like the sea on a breezy summer's day. There is a hop going in the ballroom… I hesitate, my uniform is almost in rags… he tells me it may be, but I look tophole, and my short hair is the sort of hair a fellow would like to rumple his fingers through if he dared… he clasps his hands together in mock penitence…

He is so gay, so audacious, this boy of my own age who is so young and brimming over with life. He invents a wild fandango, and shouts with laughter at an old lady in the corner who stares disapprovingly through lorgnettes. He is clean and young and straight and far removed from the shadow procession I watch night after night, the procession that came to me early this morning and wakened me shrieking in the presence of a compartmentful of shocked strangers. He is so gay, so full of life, this boy who is holding me closely in his arms… he could never join that ghostly parade…

Dance, dance, dance, go on dancing… press me against your breast… talk, talk, talk, go on talking… yes, daringly drop a kiss on top of my cropped head in full view of the shocked old lady with the lorgnettes… laugh, laugh, laugh, go on laughing… yes, I will drink more champagne with you, I will smile when you smile… I will press your hand when you press mine under the table… yes, I will dance with you again till I forget I have seen you at the end of the ghostly procession that has crossed the Channel with me.

He asks me to call him Robin. I tell him my name is Nell. I wish it were something more charming.

But it is charming, as charming as its owner. Oh, yes, yes,
yes
… if I shake my head again he'll kiss me in the middle of the ballroom, and the disapproving old girl with the lorgnettes will pass out completely… he loves to see me smile… Not unhappy as I was at dinner now, am I?

The last dance comes. The last chord crashes. He pulls me to him so roughly that I am left breathless for a second. ‘The King' is played. He stands rigidly to attention, his eyes clouded for a moment. ‘The King' finishes. I make a quick joke about Paris leave; he throws his head back and laughs. Easily and swiftly he laughs, this Robin who is straight and clean and whole.

We walk into the lounge slowly… bed now, he supposes, with a side-glance at me… hardly worth while undressing, embarking at five… filthy, unearthly hour to get a fellow out of bed…

We get into the lift without speaking… our rooms are on the same floor…

At my door he kisses me, at first gently… ‘a good-night kiss'… then more ardently… how strong and beautiful he is, this Robin who has not been out to hell yet…
Dear Nell
… he kisses me again…
Dear Robin
…

Must he say good-night?… Can't he come in and talk to me after I am in bed?… I don't think him an awful rotter for suggesting it, do I?… How ingenuous he is, this Robin who kisses me so ardently, whose eyes are blue and sane… He'll be good, honestly – well, just as good as I want him to be… he kisses me again… poor Robin, poor Robin…

The luminous hands of my watch say four o'clock. It is pitch dark. I switch the bed-lamp on. He is deep in the abyss of sleep… ‘Time to go, Robin.'

He awakens smiling and flushed, like a child. ‘Nell…'

Then, after a while, ‘You will write – promise?' I promise.

‘I feel a cad, an absolute…'

No, no, no.

‘I'm your first lover, aren't I? Why, Nell? Were you a bit in love with me, too?…'

I nod. A lie, but it will do. But it was not only because he was whole and strong-limbed, not only because his body was young and beautiful, not only because his laughing blue eyes reflected my image without the shadow of war rising to blot me out… but because I saw him between me and the dance orchestra ending a shadow procession of cruelly-maimed men…