Women's Barracks (8 page)

Ursula could hear Machou yelling in the kitchen; she was probably cursing out one of the girls on K.P. The poor things! Of all the punishments, this was the one Ursula most dreaded. She preferred the heaviest labor to spending five minutes in the presence of Machou.

She couldn't understand how the regular kitchen helpers could bear their slavery. There were several little girls from Brittany permanently assigned to Machou, and somehow they seemed to have adjusted themselves well enough to their kitchen tasks, and also to life outside the barracks, in London. On their smooth round cheeks their newly employed rouge appeared almost obscene, and their heavily reddened lips seemed to be bleeding. Ursula wondered about them, and she talked to me about them, for they were girls of about her own age, and they seemed to find this life agreeable enough, while she learned so painfully.

The little girls from Brittany had arrived in different ways, mostly from Brest. Some had come on the fishing boats of their brothers or cousins; others had arrived after wild adventures, stowed away in naval craft. One of them had found herself running along the quay during a bombardment of Lorient in 1940. She was deathly frightened. A sailor ran alongside her. He told her to jump into his boat for shelter. The girl had followed his advice, screaming as each bomb fell. The sailor had put her down in the hold, and in the meantime the captain had raised anchor for England. On arriving, he had been startled to discover his stowaway.

The little girl had been even more astonished, but there she was in England, together with a number of French sailors, who advised her to stay. She had wept, imagining that her mother would believe her to be dead, but she had decided to remain, hearing the call of General de Gaulle. A woman's army was about to be formed—and at home there was the Boche.

That was how most of these daughters of the fishermen and peasants of Brittany had arrived, to be assigned by the Captain to kitchen work or to the daily cleaning of the barracks. The little girls from Brittany went out with the sailors from their own province, who took them dancing in sordid little halls and slept with them in disreputable hotels. Otherwise, they'd have been left alone, always stuck at the barracks. With the sailors they could talk of home, of St. Malo, of Brest, of Cherbourg. What else could they have done, in a London filled with heretics who had never even set foot in Brittany?

As assistants, these girls had the women who were on punishment. The penalties were posted in the hall. One could read:

Jeanne, 50 lbs. of potatoes to peel, for being drunk.

Louise, dishwashing, for painting her nails red. Andree, confined to quarters for a week, for disrespect to an officer.

Two or three times, Ursula had been punished. Once she had appeared late for morning roll call. Another time the corporal had found her hair too long. Ursula peeled potatoes to atone for her long hair—it had reached to the collar of her jacket, which was forbidden. This regulation was relaxed later on, and Ursula again let her hair grow; but at first this rule, like all the others, was rigidly enforced.

Seated on the kitchen stool, enveloped in a long yellow smock of rough canvas, she had endured the jesting and the ribaldry of Machou and her acolytes for two hours. No one spoke directly to her, but their voices, which seemed to be purposely raucous, and their descriptions of their affairs with men disgusted Ursula. She felt sick and dirty. There was no feeling of superiority in her, as in Jacqueline. On the contrary, Ursula was embarrassed by her own feeling of revulsion. She would have liked to be able to hide it, as though it were some disability, and to laugh with the others, and to be treated as one of them. She wanted so much to be liked, but there was nothing to be done. Whenever she opened her mouth, her voice seemed to come out false, strange, and forced, so that Ursula herself couldn't recognize it, and she was sure that the others were not deceived. They called her a sissy, and gave their tales an extra seasoning so as to make her blush.

All this was not purposely vicious; except for Machou, they weren't badhearted. But they were bored in the kitchen, and the presence of a timid little girl who blushed was a diversion. Their cruelty was only childish. Actually most of them were of the same age, or scarcely older than Ursula. And they knew well enough what would be thought of them at home if their mothers or fathers were aware of the life they were leading in London.

At her table in the hall, Ursula heard the coarse voice of Machou, and the voice of one of the Brittany girls answering in the same tone. She sighed and opened a book that she had taken from the barracks library. The door of the switchboard room was closed. Claude was angry with her, and wasn't speaking to her, for it was generally known how the news had spread of their night together, even though Mickey swore that she hadn't said a word. And for Ursula there was another complication. The women were no longer speaking to her. Claude, nevertheless, had lost none of her popularity. She was admired and rather feared by the girls. It was Ursula whom they all held in disfavor, and every night Ursula wept in her bed.

For the first time in her life, she was aware of her body. It had a special independent life of its own. It longed for the warmth of Claude and for Claude's hands. It twisted in every direction in the narrow little bed, hungry and cold, in search of the other body that had awakened it.

The evening before, a new order had been issued: The sentinel was no longer to sleep in the switchboard room. Ursula thought she would fall sick with frustration. If at least Claude would talk to her or smile… But Claude didn't even look at her.

Miserably, she tried to fix her attention on her book. She didn't know what she was reading. Then suddenly the half-open door of the barracks was pushed open, and a soldier entered. He wore a Polish uniform. He was a very young man, small in stature, a little chubby, not handsome, with a round childish face, a thick mouth, and very large black eyes. He looked all around, with his brows raised, and this gave his face the expression of a questioning, astonished child.

Realizing that Ursula was looking at him, he asked in a foreign accent, "Isn't this the barracks of the Free French—the women’s barrack?"

It was only then that Ursula recognized him, and she felt a rush of joy in her heart, as at recovering a friend.

"Yes, it's me!" she cried, and at the same moment she grew very red, for there was really no way for her to know that it was she whom he sought. But the young soldier smiled and approached her.

"Now, that's really lucky! I was wondering how I would manage to find you, because I only knew your first name."

"But how did you know my first name?" Ursula asked.

"Why, when you were leaving, your friend called you Ursula."

Ursula gave him a chair and he sat down beside her. Once he had got that sentence out of him, he fell silent again, and Ursula found him a little dull. Claude, for instance, always had something to say. She kept you continuously hanging on her words.

The young soldier asked her what she was doing and whether she was free for dinner that evening. Ursula said she was. It would be better than to stay in the barracks when Claude wasn't even speaking to her.

Then he arose, and asked her pardon for having come without warning, and left.

Nevertheless, Ursula felt more cheerful because of his visit.

Her turn of duty was over at five o'clock and it was still daylight, gray and rainy as usual. Ursula went up to the empty dormitory. It was cold; the window was open. The cots were made up as in men's barracks, with the sheets and blankets carefully folded at the head of the bed in a square packet with no overhanging edges. The mattress was folded double, so there was nowhere to sit except on the bedsprings.

Ursula stood in the middle of the room. Although the women were still forbidden to put things on the empty shelves around the walls, the officers had relaxed their attention to this regulation during the past few days, and little by little, photographs, holy images, little vases, and books had appeared next to the beds. But there was nothing at all by Ursula's bed. She had no mementos. She decided that she would buy herself a bunch of violets to put in the toothbrush glass above her cot, as Jacqueline had done. She would go out right away for the violets.

In the street, Ursula bought the violets for sixpence, and suddenly she had the idea of giving them to Claude. As soon as the thought came to her, she couldn't wait. She began to run in the street, holding tight to the little bouquet, which consisted mostly of leaves around four or five violets. She arrived at the barracks out of breath and knocked at the door of the switchboard room. Claude's melodious voice said, "Come in."

Claude was seated in front of the switchboard, manipulating the plugs. She kept her back erect, as always. The blonde hair was brushed back. She turned her head toward Ursula, slightly contracting her plucked brows in an annoyed manner. Ursula, her head lowered and her heart full of uncertainty, held out her little bouquet to Claude, without saying a word.

Claude's frown dissolved in a smile. "Oh, how nice!" she cried. "What lovely violets! Come let me kiss you!"

And drawing Ursula to her, she kissed her eyes. In that second Ursula came back to life. Her brown eyes were once more alight, her heart was like honey. She felt happy and light. Everything was beautiful, everything was perfect, her life, the barracks, London—since Claude still liked her, since Claude didn't hold anything against her. She sat down on the camp bed, and between two telephone calls Claude recounted her woes—she had seen her husband again, she was desperately in love with him, she would never love anyone else. Claude drew a photograph out of her pocket and showed it to Ursula.

Claude's husband had an air of self-confidence and cruelty. Claude began once more to relate how she had met him, and how they had married after years of quarreling and love-making. Her voice became feverish as she spoke, and all at once she seemed almost an old woman; a woman showing age, filled with agitation, with dark reflections in her eyes, with bitterness against everything —against herself, against her husband, against the barracks. And suddenly she began to quarrel with Ursula, complaining that the evening before, in Claude's absence, Ursula had failed to note down a telephone call from Ann. Then it was finished. Ursula could never again be happy for more than a few seconds with this strange and ever beautiful woman. The dinner bell sounded. A voice called Ursula.

She went out sadly, trying to hold back her tears. In the hall, the young soldier waited for her.

There was no secrecy in our dormitory. It had become almost a law to announce whom you were going out with, and on returning to describe the results.

One evening Mickey perfumed herself with chypre, borrowed from Ginette. She used a depilatory under her arms, and selected her best khaki silk tie. She said that she had a date with Robert. Ann laughed, because Mickey had gone through all these preparations a few evenings before, for a movie date with Robert, only to have him call it off at the last moment.

Mickey hadn't even been angry. She had told us that she was sure he had a date with another woman, but it was all the same to her. She had nothing against him for standing her up. She was neither susceptible nor vengeful —and Robert had invited her to dinner for tonight.

"Where are you meeting him?" Ginette demanded.

"At his hotel," Mickey said.

"Well! Something's going to happen!" Ginette predicted.

Something's going to happen, Mickey thought while dressing. Something is certainly going to happen. I can't go on in this state.

She had felt sick with excitement for several days. She no longer ate or slept. She wanted "something" to happen. It was Robert. When he came into the office, Mickey's whole body reacted. Her typing became scrambled, and she didn't hear what was being said to her.

She had had enough of waiting and holding back. She had been playing at the approaches to love for three years now. She remembered a certain actor she had known, and the recollection, agreeable enough until then, suddenly became disgusting to her. She had, indeed, rather bragged of her "affair with an actor" to all of us in the dormitory. He had taught her everything, without ever going to the very end. He had taken her, one summer day, to a field filled with daisies; and he had caressed her, and then he had said, "You're too young. Go home, quickly!" She had been satisfied to go home then, for at that time she had not wanted to explore any further.

Now she had had enough of these sterile caresses. Before putting on her uniform shirt, Mickey glanced at her back in the mirror. All those pimples were so ugly. Soon, now, she wouldn't have them any more, and Ginette would treat her as an equal, and she would know, she would really know what it was like.

She had met the actor at the home of some friends. He had been performing in a small theatre in the provinces. Backstage, where she had gone to see him, he had bent her against a pile of ropes and kissed her while caressing her thighs. She had found it amusing. This sort of thing had continued for a year. He had of course been much older than she.

Afterward, she had flirted with a number of boys, but still she knew no more than she had ever known. The men saw only little pieces of her and she gave herself in little pieces, laughing, wrinkling her nose, opening wide her large innocent blue eyes, so that all of them felt a little bit remorseful, and treated her like a little girl, without insisting too much.

After a few months in Down Street, Mickey was beginning to feel tired of being treated like a child—especially by Ginette. Ginette was very fond of her. They often went out together, and sometimes Ginette took a few others of us along, when her men friends wanted dates for their friends. Ginette was ugly, but she was a great success with men. She had sex appeal. From their first look at her, men seemed to know that she liked to make love.

But Mickey had a certain lack of success when she went out with Ginette. Ginette used the same trick with all of us—"They're virgins," she would say with a kind of pitying scorn. For a while the idea of being out with a virgin would amuse a man on a casual date, but after some time he became irritated, and even seemed to find the circumstance humiliating.