Unmarried men were going, had gone. They would soon get Darrington. God, God, God, God, God. Why hadn’t he gone? Why didn’t he go? People’s faces—“O Mrs. Darrington. It’s so funny. You’re the only woman here whose husband isn’t. .” Isn’t? God. But it was true. Guns. Guns. Guns. Thank God she had suffered to the sound of guns and the baby wasn’t. . dead. . not born. . still born. . but it didn’t matter. “Darling but — you — don’t — care — any — more.”
2
“Jerrold, but I do care.” By a super-human effort, she lifted her face to his and smothered under his kisses, she went on with it, “yes, I do care awfully,” for what did it matter? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t real and what she was doing had no reality, no meaning. It was one with drab walls, walls of drab men that stood between her and — guns, guns, guns. But Darrington would go soon, would go to France soon, so that she could lift up her face to his and let his arms (khaki arms now) hold her close, close, “being away from you has made the difference. I see what you are now, have always been.” She would have to go on with it, no matter what might happen for his arms were khaki arms now and soon he might be dead, dead — what a relief. No, she mustn’t think things like that. Had she thought it? No, she hadn’t thought it. She had never thought it. “You’ve made everything so lovely here. I never realized how huge the room was. Dinner was so charming with the white wine.” White wine? Where had it come from? White wine. Delia had sent her some white wine, saying she looked peaked, Delia being heavenly, everyone being heavenly because of Jerrold being in Khaki, they were being nice to her though everyone was gone. Did they think she wanted another baby? Were they being nice to her hoping she might have one? Was there nothing else in the world? Men and guns, women and babies. And if you have a mind what then? But there were men with minds, must be men with minds, feeling as she did and it wasn’t so bad, now Darrington was in khaki. Going to France soon. She must keep up. “Where did the white wine come from?” “O Delia sent it, delicious Delia, done up in uniform, hateful meetings—” but she mustn’t be horrid about Delia. They were all busy, all the pretty drawing room turned into a red cross section and she knew she ought to have gone on making swabs but it was so horrible, not seeing swabs but what they were meant for, and talking, how they gossiped and Delia working so hard. Poor Delia something had gone out of her. Delia however hard Hermione might try to think it, wasn’t the same. She had lost her soul somehow in this mess, this work room, this lint, this cotton wool. But no. It was Hermione who was horrid. How horrid to hate them, all the women who went on talking as if they were enjoying it, and the worst of it was one felt they were enjoying it. It was horrible of her not to but how could she help it? How could she help her vivid mind not seeing? Her mind had been trained to see. Cultivated. For just this horror? Women talking, picking cotton, making bandages. O God, don’t they see what they’re making them for? Am I the only coward? But I’m not. I had a baby, I mean I didn’t — in an air raid. I know what pain is. They don’t know. They can’t see. But for Delia’s sake (delicious Delia) one must go on, go on, done up in a dust cloth and an apron, with one’s nun’s face. But she wasn’t a nun, all the rest had clean faces, her face wasn’t clean. It was smudged with gun-powder for she had been under fire — wasn’t a dressed up nurse, was a real casualty. “O Mrs. Darrington, we hear your husband—” What had they now heard? But they hadn’t. They had mixed her up with someone else. Her husband wasn’t better, wasn’t worse. Her husband was just the same thank you. She had unwittingly said the right thing. They thought Jerrold was wounded, then someone whispering and they let her alone for they had found out that she had had a baby in an air raid just like Daily Mail atrocities. Novels were right. Even newspapers. She had had things happen in true journalese style, she Hermione who had drawn music from people, who was a child, they had said then, a spirit. Where was that? Who was a child, a spirit? And when had all that happened? Jerrold had gone back now. Hermione had gone back now to the Red Cross Unit that was Delia Prescott’s great drawing room. . where Walter had used to give concerts. . where gold gauze had been the first Liberty gold gauze curtains Hermione had then seen, where Delia had always had wedges of winter hyacinths in the round sort of marble basin in the other little room off the big room where the tables were crowded now against the room wall. Jerrold had gone back. Hermione had gone back. . Delia was resting by her. “O is that you Delia?” Must talk to Delia about something else. She couldn’t go on hearing their callous appraisal of how someone “took” something. People all “took” things like that. But she hadn’t. But they didn’t know she hadn’t, she would go on pretending. But she might get across to Delia. Delia, delicious Delia, who wasn’t (nobody could accuse her) delicious in that fawn-mud uniform. “Delia.” “Dryad.” Dryad. She would scream simply. Delia had forgotten herself. She had called her Dryad. People now didn’t call her Dryad. She had been Dryad in the old days before the earth opened and left part on one side, part on the other.
Thank God at least she was on this side of the chasm. She hadn’t thank God, gone (as Jerrold wanted her) to America. “Jerrold was mad wanting me to go to the States.” “Poor Jerrold.” Why did Delia say poor Jerrold. “Why did you say that Delia?” “I don’t know. After all he is in it and there’s George out of it. I can’t know how he does it.” “But George is American.” “That doesn’t matter, Dryad. He’s here with us.” “But we’re American.” “That makes it twice as hard, people sneering (and they’re right) about the dove-cote.” “Yes they’re right, but it isn’t our fault, America’s not in it.” “They make us feel — it — is—” Delia must work five times as hard as anybody, Americans must suffer five times as hard as anyone else to show — to show what? An American. What did they mean by that? They said it so often nowadays. “Lady Prescott—” Delia tired to death trailed her weary khaki across to another table. Lady Prescott’s unit. Delia.
Henry James died of it, their great American, and they said Americans didn’t care. Didn’t care. Some didn’t. But when they did, O Gawd, as George used to put it. George. How could he go on wearing the same spotted speckled mosaic of cravats? But poor Georgio. One never shoved anyone into it, couldn’t. Not even Darrington. Guns, guns, guns, and how small they looked like a little pack of hornets, so near and so small, a whole flotilla of little planes this time and how brave of them. How low they were flying, people talking of poisonous gas and people straining upward and all in the daylight, you couldn’t say they weren’t remarkable, extraordinarily brave, extraordinary super-human courage to fly low over London in full noonlight. And the crash that followed and would follow and all of us blinking up into a lead-grey light that was the full noon glare, how could they do it, and all of us really marvelling that they were so brave really, English people, so surprised, all of us were so surprised that noon seeing them fly so low. We all said they must be “us,” we all said hearing the stifle and the low growl, “no, it’s them.” We all marvelled saying “baby killers,” watching one, two three, all flying in a neat formation. “Those beasts. Baby-killers.” Yes, that was true. How odd that the most blatant of journalese should be true, the most banal and obvious things were now true, the war had made things like that true. Hermione had never read, listened as little as she could until this became true. “Baby-killers.” The most obvious and low level of horrors, O Gawd, and prose and poetry and the Mona Lisa and her eye lids are a little weary and sister my sister, O fleet sweet swallow were all smudged out as Pompeii and its marbles had been buried beneath obscene filth of lava, embers, smouldering ash and hideous smoke and poisonous gas. Was London still there? It was hard, would be hard to find it. Some of them might be left, there might be an afterwards and then some of them would get to work and dig, dig deep down and unearth all the old treasures. There was no use remembering the treasures, the cold, sweet uplifted arm of some marble Hermes, the tiny exquisite foot and bird-like ankle of some Aphrodite. Those things were being buried and all they could do was to watch, to stand in little groups and knots and after all with the volcano belching its filth over them, they were all one, must be all one, fear, terror, the obstinate courage that refused its terror made them one, facing bright hawks in an odd grey poisonous noon that swooped and swooped and we all said, “it can’t be them, it’s us, it must be, flying so low,” but it was them, insinuating themselves, what courage, what dastardly beauty of destruction. “Baby-killers.” Gods, men, flying high, flying low, “ours” were as brave of course, better, braver, better altogether, but not so tight, not so hard, not so devastating in their cruel cynicism. Baby-killers. Little Willie, big Willie, newspapers making all life on one level, but how could we help it? How could we help it? O thank God, I’m here, didn’t go back to America. How could we help it. “Delia.”