voice,
‘So we’ve heard,’ said Daphne, feeling that her clean and sweet-smelling self must be dismaying these men who stank, that was the only word for it. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be sick. From this young man beside her - he seemed a boy, no more - came wave after wave of smell.
‘If there’s a chance of a wash?’ came from the back seat.
‘Or even a bath?’ came a voice from Scotland.
‘Can do,’ said Daphne, driving smartly up towards her home. On the steps stood her two maids, and the man who did the garden, and on Betty’s stood her maids and gardener. From their faces could be seen what they felt, looking at these ghosts of men.
The boy beside her woke, stumbled out of the car and up the steps and fell on to the deckchair she had been sitting in that morning, where he crouched, his head on his knees, his arms enfolding his head.
‘Baths,’ she commanded. ‘And a lot of towels.’
On Betty’s steps was the same scene.
‘We haven’t anything to change into,’ said one of the men.
‘Get all the dressing-gowns you can find - anything you can find,’ Daphne told the maids.
She looked through Joe’s clothes for something they could wear, these survivors, and one after another they emerged clean from baths and the shower, in her husband’s dressing gowns and one in an old wrapper of hers. Normally there would have been jokes about the
big man in a Japanese kimono of pink and mauve flowers. They were served tea and cakes and coffee, it being teatime. Meanwhile the young man who seemed worse off than any of them lay in a deckchair and seemed disinclined to move.
A big party was planned for tonight, here. These men were not in any state for a party. She asked them and they said they would be happy to sit still and let the earth stop swaying. Besides, there would be four days.
She left them while she telephoned to stop events going forward and went to the sick youth. He seemed in a daze or a trance. She knelt beside him and asked his name.
‘I’m James,’ he said.
‘Well, James, how about a bath and we’ll get your clothes washed.’ He tried to sit up, and she pin her arm behind him and felt the pressure of thin hones.
‘You need to put a bit of flesh on you,’ she said, trying to heave him up.
‘We were sick most of the way,’ he said, in a normal voice, smiling. She had got him up, and now stood holding him. She progressed with him to the bathroom.’! here it was evident he was not up to a bath.
‘Your mates seem to be in a better state than you.’
‘They’re sergeants,’ he said.
This meant nothing to her yet. She ran the bath and asked the house girl, Sarah, to help him into the bath and wash him. She could have done it herself, but for some reason was reluctant. While he was being washed, she thought about how to get clothes that would fit this starved young man. She telephoned her husband’s brother’s house and asked if there were any clothes for a tall thin man. The brother, who was in North Africa fighting Rommel, was thin, and tall.
A maid brought over an armful of clothes.
She handed them in through the bathroom door, and after a few minutes the youth came out, supported by Sarah, in clothes that fitted, more or less.
Now Daphne had to get these piles of stinking uniforms clean. She set the maids to work: on the lawns in front of Daphne’s house and Betty’s the four maids knelt on sacks to scrub the uniforms with scrubbing brushes on wash boards. Foam flew everywhere.
Beds were then made up all over the house. Supper was served with wine and beer, but the men were nervous of the alcohol. The frail boy, James, sat at the table with the four sergeants. Rank was abolished for the duration of this stay, the sergeant from Devon said. They were looking at roast pork and vegetables. ‘Come on, lads,’ said the Scottish sergeant, ‘we’ve got to build ourselves up.’ They did try, but the big bowl of fruit salad went down better.
It was still early. The men sat about the living-room listening to a radio news made anodyne by censorship. There was a troopship in, was allowed, but nothing was said about for how long. Did she mind if they went to bed? Off they went to their various beds, but James sat on.
Joe telephoned to find out how things were going on. She told him and he said she should ask their doctor to come up and look over the lads.
James was staring at her.
‘You’re like a vision. You can’t imagine … you forget there are lovely women, when you’re with all those men, on the ship.’
‘And so it was very bad?’
‘Yes. It was.” The impossibility of communicating it to her kept him silent, and then he put out his long thin hand, in the sleeve of Joe’s brother’s blue shirt, and touched her hand. ‘You’re real,’ he said, frowning. ‘I’m not imagining you,’ He peered into her face, serious, then smiled. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he concluded.
The maids were standing around, ready to serve coffee.
Daphne said to them, ‘Okay, that’s it, no coffee tonight.’
She went to help him up, but he managed by himself and without holding on to anything followed her to the stoep, where a hed had been made, with plenty of blankets. He sat on it and said, ‘What’s your name?’
