War Classics (10 page)

‘No, no,’ I cried in alarm. It was pitch dark inside too and I could not find the matches. ‘You come and see that it’s all right,’ I pleaded, ‘Look in the wardrobes, and … and … behind the doors and under the beds.’

He seemed surprised, but did as he was bid. It was very daintily furnished, but I was in no mood to appreciate it then. We creaked upstairs together. My bed was, as he had said, fine, and the bedroom was beautiful. Off the dressing room was a wide balcony, simply made for people climbing up but I could do nothing about that.

‘Ye’re no really feared,’ my guide said at the door with the candle, now lit. He said it as if it were incredible.

‘Not really,’ I said, ‘but I can’t come down again to lock the front door. You do that and take the key with you. And if I don’t come down to the Hut by 9 tomorrow morning, you’re to come and fetch me – promise you will.’

He was a complete stranger, a man that until 5 o’clock that night I had never seen before in my life, and here we were, standing together in a bedroom in a lonely house in a wood. He held a guttering candle – which was our only light – and wore a puzzled frown on his face, as he looked down on me. I still hugged a hot-water bottle with one arm, while the other I had laid on his coat sleeve to emphasise my requests. I have since thought we must have made a dramatic picture, had anyone looked in. The only moral thing about us was the fact that the door was open. In fact, all the doors were open – even the front one, wide. ‘Guid night,’ he called again, clanking cheerfully down the stairs.

As he turned the key in the lock below, I locked my door hard and then looked round my big room. One candle makes a very little light and a very big shadow. I could not very well undress in the bed, though I should have wished to. It seemed the safest place. But just as at Southampton, a happy thought came to cheer me. ‘Well, if I’m killed, or – even frightened,’ I said to myself, ‘the man who does it will be lynched – torn limb from limb, in fact.’ This was very comforting. ‘The Remounts will see to that all right.’ Then I saw the fun of the situation. Here was I, all alone in a lonely house, with not a creature near, and locked in too! Anything might happen – even anything nice! It was the comfiest bed I have ever slept in in all my life and I didn’t even hear the orderly at 5 a.m.

Next morning my boots presented a difficulty – they were a rich khaki colour – mostly all over, though here and there, faint streaks of black – their intended colour – could be seen. However, they were the only ones I had, so I put them on. Being locked in, I had to get out by the window, and as I climbed up to the canteen, voices from all quarters – tops of trees, roofs of huts, insides of lorries, far down the horselines – greeted me with ‘Good morning, Miss.’ If it had been the Queen herself, they could not have given a heartier welcome.

The Hut Leader was just serving breakfast. ‘A wis just comin’ for ye,’ he remarked. ‘What’s the matter wi’ yer airm?’

‘It went septic,’ I explained. ‘The vaccination, you know, and when the bandage came off, madame poured ointment on it – tons. But it’s clean now. The English MO has bandaged it and he says it’s doing beautifully – it’s stiff today,’ I added, ‘because there were such a lot of mugs last night.’

He looked unconvinced. Hut ladies usually have stronger arms than that. I rather liked talking of my arm. He held the frying pan suspended, while he looked at me. ‘D’ye mean to tell me ye’ve been vaccinated?’

‘Of course,’ I returned in surprise, ‘we all had to be.’

His mouth set, ‘A don’t hold wi’ vaccination myself – it’s a perneeshus idea – in fack,’ he went on slowly, in a burst of confidence, ‘a went once in a deputation to the Pope to protest agin it.’

I gazed in wonder. What had the Pope to do with it anyway?

‘But, if ye hev been vaccinated,’ he said regretfully, ‘ye’d better put this on it,’ producing a small round box. ‘A invented it masel. It’s nine times stronger than iodine,’ he finished impressively.

‘Good Lord,’ I cried in alarm, pushing away the box. ‘I – I daren’t take off the MO’s bandages,’ I went on, after a minute. ‘He’s trying something special with my arm, but thank you all the same.’

‘A sell lots of them to the men,’ he continued, ‘they’ll ask for’t at the counter.’ He was quite right – they did, often, but all the same, I did not put it on.

We ate our breakfast in silence – he being Scotch, was no talker and I was afraid to speak for once. At the end he rose. ‘Can ye sweep a chimney?’ he enquired slowly. I’m afraid I looked blank. Pursuant to the Sergeant’s instructions, I had done up till then everything I had been told, but I didn’t even know how to begin this. ‘Weel, weel,’ he said with a sigh, ‘a doot a’ll hae to do’t masel, but ye’d better bake some shortbread for tea, a’m expectin’ the Chief.’

My heart leapt. How nice to see the Chief again!
He
hadn’t asked me to sweep chimneys. But my host was speaking. ‘Ye’ll mebbe no’ ken how to make shortbread, like?’ he enquired tactfully. I did not. In self-defence, most Oxford dons don’t. ‘Tak’ off your boots and put on your overall an’ a’ll show ye.’ We didn’t make real shortbread, not having the ingredients, but a kind of Quaker Oats cake, crisp and sweet and brown – rather easier to make. At least that is the only way I can account for my being able to make them – after only spoiling two. Never have I passed a happier morning and when at 12 o’clock, I hurried to the counter to serve the first cup of tea, my cheeks were hot, my hands were floury and I expect, so was my hair. But the troops were not to be daunted. ‘You looks like a little bit o’ home, Miss,’ one said in plain tones of admiration. ‘Don’t she just,’ echoed the Quartermaster proudly from the depths of the orderly kitchen.

‘Ye’ll no’ be forgettin’,’ said the Hut Leader to me at lunch, an hour later, ‘that this is St Andrew’s nicht. We’ll ha’e a supper after nine o’clock in ma room.’

It was indeed 30 November – tho’ I had forgotten it. This was, I suppose, why the chimney required to be swept. It was the quaintest St Andrew’s night supper to which I have ever sat down. To begin with there was no whisky – not that I would have drunk any in any case – but it seems to go with St Andrew. The Hut Leader and I had the honour to represent Scotland – the Chief was English but well intentioned, and so was the Quartermaster.

We dined off chestnut soup – made from chestnut flour specially sent out from Gibson’s, Princes Street, to the Hut Leader – then roasted chickens – the
pièce-de-résistance
, those, and produced from somewhere by the Quartermaster. ‘However did you get them?’ I said in admiration. We usually dined off bully beef or fish, when I could get it.

‘Well, I points to what I wants, Miss, and then I say “
Vous blaguez
,
Madame
” when she sez the price and there it is.’

Dessert was my cakes and the canteen chocolate, and then in lemonade we drank ‘Them That’s Far Awa’.

After that the Hut Leader announced that the Camp Commandant had invited us both to lunch on the morrow – and what about my boots? The Orderly had expressed a desire to clean them. ‘But,’ I exclaimed in distress, ‘even if he does, they’ll be muddy again before I get to the Camp Commandant.’

The Quartermaster intervened. ‘I’ll find you a pair of gum boots and you’ll put them on till you get to the CC’s house. Then you can put on your own at the door.’

It is not the usual way of calling at home – to put on one’s boots in the porch – but I did not want to disgrace the troops, and when I did get as far as the CC’s dining room next day, he could have seen his face, had he chosen, reflected in the polish of my boots. It was a very stiff luncheon – all prunes and prisms – the CC treating me with withering politeness from behind the majesty of his eyeglass. Just once again I saw him, down at the Base, cantering a fiery charger through the crowded Grande Rue, and clearing it before him. It was on the tip of my tongue to shout out, ‘Halt’ and I knew the horse would have pulled up dead. But the consequences to me would have been – well – undesirable, though not unexpected.

As we walked back from luncheon, the Leader told me a padre would arrive to conduct the service in the Hut that night. Now padres – bar one – are the only ‘duds’ I ever struck in France. This one was harmless. I was conducted to a seat in the front row, beside the Hut Leader, and the men were told they might choose the hymns. They had come in, mud-soaked and fresh from the horses, and were sitting patiently but wearily round. It was perhaps natural, I reflected, that they should choose ‘Days and Moments Quickly Flying’ but I only really understood the reason when we came to the rousing chorus of another hymn ‘And nightly pitch my moving tent – One day’s march nearer Home.’ I think the padre himself must have been surprised at the fervour of that last line. I endured the sermon with the thought of the next hymn. It came – one of the old Glory hymns – ‘Wash me and I shall be Whiter than Snow’ with the ‘Wash me’, as the Army would say, in triplicate, at the beginning. When I stole a look at the mud-stained, unkempt rows – it was not a ‘parade’ service – I could not keep the ghost of a smile from my lips, but I hope it was a kind ghost, for I loved the singers.

But the regulation lady was coming back, and in a few days I had to go. I have seldom been sorrier leaving anywhere in my life than leaving Luneray. After the first night in my house in the wood, I felt just like an Enchanted Princess with all my Knights round me. To the outside world they might be rough and horsy and stupid, but I knew they were gems – tophole, as the Sergeant had said – every one. There they were, on treetop, hut roof, far down the lines, waving goodbye as the Chief and I sped away.

Down at the Base it was work again. A very important Visitor had arrived from England – to organise correspondence work with the Forward Armies. The Chief was closeted with him for hours and then they sent for me. ‘I feel,’ said the Chief, ‘that this will really be worthy of your talents.’ I never quite knew how to take statements like that, though I am sure there must be a right answer somewhere.

The Visitor looked at me through his glasses. ‘I am very much astonished,’ he said severely, ‘that you are doing so little at the Bases. I have been over them all. And yet the newspapers at home show that the troops are simply craving for Education.’

‘Not the Base troops,’ I said gravely, thinking of the Sainte Valerie lorry and its missing load.

‘That’s what they all say,’ he returned, nettled. ‘Why shouldn’t the Base troops want it?’

‘Because they are mostly no good in the line, you know, or too old to go up, and they all have their work too. They haven’t much time for education.’

‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘all the young officers are University men – everybody knows that – and
The Times
says they read Plato in the trenches.’

I was politic. ‘We haven’t those here,’ I said.

‘I come from Cambridge and I know dozens of young officers,’ he went on. ‘Where are they?’

Well, I came from Oxford, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. ‘Mostly dead,’ I answered. ‘They’ve won the war you know.’ He must himself have been indispensable – he was under age – for he turned to his files.

‘I have here a scheme,’ he said icily, ‘for instructing by correspondence all Units not in touch with a Base.’ My heart leapt – teaching the Forward Armies! That was business indeed! I was prepared to love our Visitor, in spite of his
Times
. ‘The men will write to you and say what they want (a little envelope for that). You will have a list of all Tutors available in France, with their qualifications, and where the subject has no Tutor, you will write to me (big envelope for that). I have all the Universities in England behind me and most of the leading commercial men in London. If music is required, I have a Tutor in Trinity College, Dublin.’ Ireland all over, I thought, to choose a subject like that. Music by correspondence would hardly appeal, even to the Forward Armies. ‘And you yourself,’ he concluded, ‘will undertake the classics, I believe.’ I bent my head. ‘It’s a first-rate scheme,’ he went on, ‘and I think you hardly realise out here how interested people at home are in this demand for Education. Here I have overworked business men giving up their spare hours to this correspondence work, that the men may get the best of everything.’

‘And so the men should,’ I put in quickly, ‘but you know, those you want to get at have no spare hours at all.’

‘I fear you lack my enthusiasm,’ he countered.

‘No,’ I said sadly, ‘only your optimism, but I will do my best.’

‘I have to go home myself,’ he went on regretfully, ‘as I cannot be spared from my present work – so I shall have to leave it to you.’

‘Shall we get the bills and – er – envelopes and prospectuses printed then?’ I suggested, hoping to change the subject.

‘No,’ he said curtly. ‘I shall have those done in London. It will be quicker. We work day-and-night shifts there, you know. And I’ll send them out by a friend of mine, who is just going back.’ Probably one of the dozens of young officers, I reflected. It was. And he dumped them at Boulogne whence, because of the severity of the weather and the bulkiness of the packages, I could get no car to retrieve them for weeks and weeks.

When the Visitor had departed, we breathed again. Oh! I had one parting shot at him. ’I could give you final instructions,’ he said to me, ‘about the manner I wish this done, if you come round to the General Headquarters tonight after dinner, about 9 o’clock, say.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said quietly, ‘but I teach from now on till 9,’ – it was very nearly teatime then – ‘and I have to have my dinner after that.’ What the troops would have said – or done – to him, if they’d heard him suggest I should walk along the
Plage
by myself unescorted to see him, at 9 p.m. I did not say. He might be spared that, I felt, seeing he knew so little already.
3

At tea, the Staff waxed very merry over my new job. Any of the local officers – and all visiting officers – were welcome to drop in to tea, and most of them did. The Chief, his secretary and I, the Philosopher and the OC Stores, were the only permanent members in for tea. Between them, they devised a new title for me – ‘OC Odd Subjects, Lonely Soldiers’ Department, Care of British Army.’ ‘Care of British Army, anyhow,’ said the Philosopher bitterly.