War Classics (9 page)

Our rations arrived in an old Ford car driven by Uncle Joe, a misogynist, who would never see me but who consented, under protest, to communicate with Marie Henriette when necessity arose. Usually he arrived at break of day, rattled up the
chaussée
to the old back door, dumped down the rations outside and speeded away. It required the utmost vigilance on the part of Marie Henriette to collar him at all – yet collared he must be when he forgot such things as our jam or our bully beef.

When, after a sleepy breakfast in bed – my Madame preferred it thus – I strolled down to School about 11 a.m., I descended to the kitchen regions and surveyed the rations. At first Marie Henriette, bag in hand beside me, explained volubly how far they would go and how she had been compelled to supplement them. ‘Monsieur A has desired this,’ she declared, ‘And Monsieur B – he so love that.’

I cut her short and let it be known with rapidity and precision that her one care in life was to be Monsieur Le Directeur. ‘
Pour ces autres
,’ I went on, ‘
ce qu’ils veulent
,
ça ne fait rien
.’ [‘As for the others,’ ... ‘what they want does not matter.’] I waved my hands airily and thought of
ces messieurs’
faces had they heard me. But the morning I came upon Monsieur B, with his head bent over a dictionary remarkably close to Marie Henriette’s, must have been a red-letter day for them both. She was very handsome and he was irreproachable, our dream philosopher, Lecturer on Psychology and all the rest of it. Furthermore, they were both of them married and old enough to know better. But, as far as that went, I was a don myself and for the time being, mistress of the house too. So I faced him. Summoning up my courage – Marie Henriette having discreetly wilted away – I told him flatly that I would not have him flirting with the servants. He returned with some heat that he had not been flirting and then I suggested sweetly that in that case he should continue his French lessons with the ladies on the
Plage
. He was beaten and he knew it. Only once again did I catch him out and that was the night he was leaving us. When coming to say, ‘Goodbye’ I found him in the dark kissing Marie Henriette by the kitchen door. And so French had I then become that I thought it all in order and turned the other way.

But if the kitchen was out of bounds to British troops, it was by no means out of bounds to those of Britain’s ally. Marie Henriette was understood to have a husband somewhere. ‘Marry perdoo,’ quoted the Corporal tersely who gave me her particulars when I engaged her. Marie Henriette herself, more warily, only spoke of him as ‘
disparu
’, though she styled herself quite complacently ‘
veuve
’. But what she lost in a husband, she made up in brothers. Of her and none other might the song have been written ‘An’ if ye lose yer mother sure it’s hard to git another – but it’s easy for to git another man, Mary Ann.’ All ranks and conditions of the French Army would congregate in the School kitchen. Latterly I would not have turned a hair had I met le Maréchal Foch himself between the Maconochie and the bully beef on our kitchen table.
1
And Marie Henriette had one order for them all, as I came down the stairs. ‘
Debout
,’ she would call in a stentorian voice, and a flashing row of be-medalled and be-ribboned
poilus
– and sometimes officers – confronted me. Marie Henriette led me down the row as the inspecting general. ‘Michel,
mon frère
’ was from Verdun, three times wounded, Croix-de-Guerre – incidentally he had today brought us the butter from Marie Henriette’s country home. ‘Auguste’ was older – he wore the
fourragère
and was himself commanded to explain to an ignorant person like myself what that stood for. Fine-looking, handsome fellows they all were and not one of them failed to salute me when we met afterwards in road or street. Indeed – through Marie Henriette – I said, ‘
Bonjour
,’ as regularly to French troops as I said, ‘Good morning,’ to our own.
2

I can still hear the little refrain the Staff hummed a propos of that, about me at the School – the days it had had a good dinner! ‘
Tres chic et magnifique
,
et toujours tres jolie
, the soldiers cry as she goes by “
Bonjour
Marie”.’ For the sake of English morals, I had better explain that my name neither is nor was Marie, but the words were taken from a song then very popular in the canteens.

If my views of the French Army were coloured by Marie Henriette, hers of England, I discovered, were a startling reproduction of the Base. It was a country where, wherever you went, there were all husbands and no wives – endless Messieurs in becoming uniforms who spent most of the day in making love to you – their money was unlimited and they spent it without a thought and a grateful country provided them gratis with their food. ‘
Ah
,
Mlle – que je voudrais bien aller en Angleterre
,’ [‘How I would love to go to England’]– and she said it as if it were heaven. No doubt far and wide in France today, the impression is the same. Well, she is in England now, but her luck has held. She is keeping house for a bachelor in Piccadilly – so probably she is still quite unaware that there are ‘
mesdames
’ in England.

It was drawing near the end of November and the Chief felt a ‘star turn’ should not be kept doing accounts – however precisely she totted them up – nor yet hunting up a laundry which professed to restore one’s own
linge
[linen] instead of conducting its affairs on the diverting but precarious Bran-Pie system. ‘Take a dip, take a dip in the old Bran Pie, you may get a … you may …or even a Commission in the Coldstream Guards.’ On Monday mornings Monsieur B, our philosopher – the beloved of Marie Henriette – talked with affectionate regret even of English laundries by comparison and a propos of this, he one day asked me if I would have a prescription made up at a French chemist’s. His own French, he went on to explain – no doubt owing to some failure of my efforts, I inferred – had not progressed far enough for this. Such of his shirts, he assured us, as had come back from the wash, had been sent back in a tub. He was delicate and did not wish to catch pneumonia. Indeed, it was because he had been unable to stand the English Winter that he had thought of coming to France. ‘This is a far, far better thing I do,’ murmured the OC Stores [Officer Commanding Stores] – a friend of mine who was lunching with us – ‘than I have ever done. I go to a far, far better rest than I have ever known.’

So I spent that afternoon trudging from chemist to chemist. Apparently the prescription contained a drug unknown to France. But I would not go back without it. ‘Put in something else,’ I said to the last chemist wearily, ‘it’s only for a cold,’ and a mythical cold at that, I said to myself.

Nothing loth, he obeyed. French chemists are not like English ones. ‘If the monsieur drink much of this,’ he said placidly, corking the bottle, ‘he grow ver’ seek.’

‘Not poison?’ I said in alarm.

‘But, on the contrary,
Mlle
,’ he waved his hands, ‘’e grow well, but ’e grow seeck.’

‘Excellent,’ I said briefly, ‘it is what is to be desired.’ It was after this that the Chief sent me up to the Camp where they ‘didn’t want to learn nothink’, to take over the canteen for a few days. I heard on my return that nothing but the best cognac – and lots of it – had been able to restore Monsieur B, who firmly believed I meant to poison him.

The stores and I went up to Luneray camp together – I sitting beside the chauffeur, the nephew of a bishop in England. This was exciting because, as he explained to me on the way up asking for my sympathy, there was a regular old standby lecture on ‘Some Bright Spots in England’ delivered by an earnest padre at every camp within hail. A few of the Bright Spots, such as Wakefield and London and Sodor and Man had added luminaries in the way of Bishops, and when they had, the orthodox son of the church did not hide them under a bushel. To give the desirable homely touch indeed, he always pointed out, as one particular Bishop was shot across the screen, ‘that a nephew of his lordship drove the Stores car that they knew so well.’ This was the men’s Bright Spot and made the rafters ring.

‘If he weren’t such a darned ass in any case,’ said my chauffeur bitterly. ‘I’d — ’

‘You mean the padre of course?’ I enquired innocently. He turned and looked down at me speechlessly. ‘Don’t do that,’ I said hastily, ‘or we’ll go into the poplar trees straight away. They think of everything in France you know. I’ve no doubt Napoleon even thought of you and me when he planted those fringing the road.’ I hope the Bishop, his nephew and I don’t ever meet together in England. I should instantly think of the Bright Spots and then I shouldn’t behave as the Bishop would like.

It was five o’clock when, with many a gasp and heave, the Ford at length pulled up at Luneray. It was on the heights – remote from any village or hamlet. It commanded the English Channel and had William the Conqueror’s Forest behind it. They said that while the Conqueror was riding through the forest one day, the thought came to him that he might occupy England. And so he did it. As simple as that. Anyhow the Forest was worthy of the thought.

On the crest of everything stood our canteen. The men’s huts were dotted all around. I hastily donned an overall and got behind the counter – for the first time in my life. Pouring out mugs of tea was not so bad, nor yet giving the change therefore out of five franc notes (it being payday at the Camp), thanks to the French Government’s admirable system of decimal counting. But the canteen’s ration of tobacco had arrived with the Stores and the queues stretched right to the door. The orders came something like this: ‘Two teas, Miss, and two packets o’ biscuits – sweet ones if you’ve got ’em – three and two packets o’ Twist, six packets o’ Woodbines and a tin o’ Soldier’s Friend.’

‘Only one stick of Twist,’ I said gently, ‘and two packets of Woodbines – we’re rationed you know.’

‘Very good, miss,’ he said obediently. ‘Tea and Twist and as much chocolate as you can give me and a tin o’ Soldier’s Friend.’

‘Of what?’ I said mechanically counting out the chocolate.

‘For cleaning buttons, Miss – on the second shelf on your right,’ prompted the next man in the queue.

‘No, Miss, you ain’t got none of it. Ain’t been none of it for the last three weeks, there ain’t,’ said another finally, with keener eyes than mine for what was on the shelves. ‘Tea and Twist and ’arf a dozen candles, Miss.’

I looked up in surprise. ‘It’s only two I’ve been told to give,’ I hesitated.

‘That’s right, Miss,’ came the steady answer, ‘but I comes from Sainte Valerie, bit o’ ten mile off. We gets six all right, Miss, as we ain’t got no canteen there.’

Never once have I known a soldier take advantage of a greenhorn behind the counter. The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman but, although the Saints might tempt you to believe it, he is not the only one. The British Army – other ranks – are there every time.

This was a Remount Camp on pay night. In the hut the men were packed like sardines in a tin, behind the counter there was no one but myself and I was hardly the experienced elderly person that was
de règle
for this canteen. But there wasn’t a man I didn’t talk to, as well as serve, from 5 to 9 that night, and some few, remembering my last visit, had a special welcome for me. ‘Come to stay, Miss, ’ave yer this time – come for keeps?’ I shook my head sadly. After all, an elderly lady is hardly very exciting if you want to sing, ‘If you were the only girl in the world’ as they were doing then.

At last it was closing hour and they melted away and I turned exhausted from the counter. The Quartermaster was beside me. ‘You’ll come and ’ave a bit o’ supper now, Miss.’ In the little room behind, ‘tea and something with it’ was laid out for me.

By ten o’clock I was very sleepy and in my head was still doing sums.
Tea, Twist, three boxes of matches, two packets of Woodbines …
‘Where am I going to sleep?’ I enquired lazily.

The Hut Leader was clearing up. ‘Oh, didn’t they tell you?’ He turned round. ‘There’s a hoose in yon wood aboot ten minutes’ walk from here. I’ll tak’ you roond whenever I’ve finished this.’

‘They won’t all be in bed will they?’ I faltered, wishing I was there. ‘I hope it’s not too late for them.’

‘Them, them,’ he repeated in surprise, ‘Lassie, there’ll be naebody there but you.’

I jumped. ‘Alone in a house in the wood?’

‘Ye’ll be a’richt,’ he went on, putting away the last dish. ‘Ye’re no feared, are ye?’

‘No,’ I said boldly. It wasn’t done to be ‘feared’ in France. I sat in silence.

‘If ye have a hot-water bottle by ye,’ he went on, ‘I’ll fill it from the boiler and ye’d better tak some caunles. There’s nae licht in the hoose.’

Nothing worse could happen now. I opened my suitcase and gave him the bottle. ‘There’s a wee jug owre there,’ he said, pointing to the top of the boiler. ‘If ye like to tak some hot water wi’ ye. There’s nae fire in the hoose.’

I hadn’t been with the Army for nothing – I obeyed. ‘ There
is
a bed in the house?’ I said anxiously, as he opened the door.

‘An a fine yin that,’ he returned with great heartiness. Outside it was pitch darkness – worse than Southampton pier. He went first, with the can of hot water and my suitcase. I followed, with a lighted candle and my rubber bottle. We hoped the candle might burn, sheltered by his back, as he was not very sure of the way. It did not. Except for the wind, there wasn’t a
human
sound anywhere. Who would have thought there were thousands of men in huts quite close? By the time I had bumped into the second tree, I began to think less of William the Conqueror and his forest.

My guide turned aside. ‘This isna the right way,’ he said cautiously. ‘I’ll haud by the left till we get to the path.’

‘Here we are,’ he announced cheerfully in a minute, as I went over the knee in mud and spilt most of the hot water in the process. ‘There’s a gey lot o’ mud here,’ he said, sensing the catastrophe. Fortunately it was not all quite so deep, but as long as you were in the midst of mud, it appeared that you were on the right way. At length there seemed to be fewer bumps and I felt, rather than saw, a house loom up. It was quite a considerable house – a ‘shatoo’ in fact, as the troops called it, by daylight. ‘There’s an orderly sleeps in yon stable,’ my guide pointed out. ‘Ye’ll no be feared if ye hear steps like, about five in the morning.’ Dumping down the can, he produced a key and unlocked the door. ‘Ye’ll be a’richt now,’ he sighed, when all my belongings were inside. ‘Guid night then.’