Enid Bagnold

“ The noise of Stewart's feet sounded in the corridor. She swung a lantern in her hand; her face was shining, her hair streaming.
"Is there any food?"
"It's on the stove."
"Is it eatable?"
"No."
Silence for a while, and then one by one they crept out into the black mud beyond the hut to fill their cans with hot water from the cook-house—and so to bed, on stretchers slung on trestles, where those who did not sleep listened through the long night to those who slept too well.
"Are you awake?" came with the daylight. "Ah, you are washing! You are doing your hair!" There was no privacy. ”

“ A loneliness beyond anything she had ever known settled upon Fanny. She found comfort in a look, a cry, a whistle. The smiles of strange men upon the road whom she would never see again became her social intercourse. The lost smiles of kind Americans, the lost, mocking whistles of Frenchmen, the scream of a nigger, the twittering surprise of a Chinese scavenger.
Yet she was glad to have come, for half the world was here. There could have been nothing like it since the Tower of Babel. The country around her was a vast tract of men sick with longing for the four corners of the earth. ”

“ In such a mood, in such a giddy hour, seated in person upon her car, in spirit upon her imagination, Fanny rode down the mountain into the night.
She was invincible, inattentive to the voice of absent man, a hard, hollow goddess, a flute for the piping of heaven—composing and chanting unmusical songs, her inner ear fastened upon another melody. And heaven, protecting a creature at that moment so estranged from earth, led her down the wild road, held back the threatening forest branches, brought her, all but standing up at the wheel like a lunatic, safely to the foot of the last hill. ”

“ She slept a last night in the dark red German room three streets away—first making a little tour of the walls in her nightgown, the candle flame waving from her hand, the hot wax running in a cascade over her fingers—and looked at the stag's horn fastened to the bracket and the cluster of Christmas postcards pinned to the wall.
The postcards arrested her attention, and a light darted in her mind. They were dark postcards, encrusted with shiny frosting, like the snow outside. Little birds and goblins, a wreath of holly, and a house with red mica windows were designed on them. ”

“ Foss had called to the real driver of the car.
"She is ... everything!" answered the man, in a hurry, going off to his coffee. She was not.
Just as the approaching sun began to clear the air, just as with a spring at her heart Fanny felt that to be present at the opening of a fine day was worth all the trouble in the world, the engine began to knock. She saw Foss's head tilt a little sideways, like a keen dog who is listening. The knock increased. The engine laboured, a grinding set in; Foss pulled up at the side of the road and muttered to Alfred. ”

“ Then she heard the two men working, tools clattering, murmured voices, and in ten minutes Foss said: "Try the starting handle."
She heard the efforts, the labour of Alfred at the handle.
"He will kill himself—he will break a blood-vessel," she thought as she listened to him. Every few minutes someone seized the handle and wound and wound—as she had never wound in her life—on and on, past the very limit of endurance. And under her ear, in the cold bones of the car, not a sign of life! Not a sign of life, and, as though she could hear them, all the clocks in the world struck nine. ”

“ Across the road in the deeper gloom that dyed the valley and spilt over its banks, a head rustled in the ragged border of twig and reed, and eyes watched the brightly-lighted meal which seemed to hang suspended above the vague shape of the motor car.
With a sense of being perfectly alone, walled round by the gathering dusk, Fanny made a deep inroad upon her sandwiches and cake, finishing with the apple, and began to roll up what remained in case of further need, should no one come to fetch her. ”

“ Far away, in what seemed another world, equally blind, snowy and obscure, but divided from this one by fathoms of frozen water, a car was coming out from Pont-à-Moussons on to the main Nancy road. Its two head-lamps glowed confusedly under the snow that clung to them, and the driver, his thick, blue coat buttoned about his chin, leant forward peering through the open windscreen, stung, blinded, and blinking as the flakes drove in. ”

“ There is a life within life, and only I" (she thought arrogantly, her peopled world bounded by her companions) "am living in it. We are afraid, we are ashamed, but when one dares talk of this strange ecstasy, other people nod their heads and say: 'Ah, yes, we know about that! They are in love.' And they smile. But what a convention—tradition—that smile!"
There was no sound in the forest at all—not the cry of a bird, not the rustle of snow falling from a branch—but there was something deeper and remoter than sound, the approach of night. ”

“ Standing still her ear caught a rich, high, throaty sound, a choking complaint which travelled in the air.
"It is the car," she thought. Far away a patch of light floated in the sky, like an uprooted searchlight.
"That is the fog, bending the headlights upward."
She stood in the centre of the road and listened to the sound as it drew nearer and nearer, till suddenly the headlights came down out of the sky and pierced her—she stood washed in light, and the car stopped.
Beside the driver of the car was, not Julien, but a man with a red, wooden face like a Hindoo god made out of mahogany. ”

“ Fanny slipped out of the yard and crept along behind the flares like a shadow on the pavement. At the street corner she passed out on to the bridge over the Moselle, and leant against the stonework to watch the plumes of fire as they glittered up the riverside upon the tow-path. The lights vanished, leaving the darkness so intense that she could only feel her way over the bridge by holding to the stonework with her hand. A sentry challenged her and when she had passed him she had arrived at the door of her German lodging. ”

“ A deep loneliness was settled upon the desert where nothing grew. Yet, suddenly, from a ditch at the side of the road, a child of five stared at her. It had its foot close by a stacked heap of hand grenades; a shawl was wrapped round it and the thin hands held the ends together. What child? Whose? How did it get here, when not a house stood erect for miles and miles—when not a coil of smoke touched the horizon! Yes, something oozed from the ground! Smoke, blue smoke! Was life stirring like a bulb under this whiter ruin, this cemetery of village bones?
She stopped the car. ”

“ Vanity, creeping above love, beat it down like a stick beats down a fire; it was too easy to-day; he gave her nothing left to wish for; the spell over him, she felt, was complete, and now she had nothing else to do but develop her own. And this she had instantly less inclination to do. But, guided by his bright wits, he too withdrew, let the tacit assumption of intimacy drop between them, and their walk by the Moselle was filled by her talk of the Russian prisoners and Verdun. ”

“ There would be no one in the sitting-room, but a tin would stand on the stove with one, two, or three pieces of meat in it. By this she knew whether the cubicles were full or if one or two were empty. Sometimes the coffee jug would rise too lightly from the floor as she lifted it, and in an angry voice she would call through the hut: "There is no coffee!" Silence, silence; till a voice, goaded by the silence, cried: "Ask Madeleine!"
And Madeleine, the little maid, had long since gone over to laugh with the men in the garage. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII GERMANY Over the side of the next mountain all Hans Andersen was stretched before them—tracts of little country, little wooden houses with pointed roofs, little hills covered with squares of different coloured woods, and a blue river at the bottom of the valley, white with geese upon its banks. They held their open mouths insultedly in the air as the motor passed. The narrow road became like marble, and the car hissed like a glass ball rolled on a stone step. On every little hill stood a castle made of brown chocolate, very small, but complete with turrets. ”

“ If he is devoted to you it is not an unreasoning devotion, and he is judging me poisonous to you. As he has himself been hurt, he will not have you hurt. I wish he had never come. I wish he might never be my driver to the river, and your friend, and our enemy."
"Fanny!"
"I wish it. I am unhappy about him, and unhappiness is always punished. While we were in Metz every one smiled at us; here every one will spy us out, scold, frown, punish—"
"And your magic luck?"
"Alfred threatens my luck," she said. Then, with another look, "Are you angry with me? Can you love such a character?" ”

“ His tyres were in rags, great pieces of rubber hung out beyond the mudguards.
"Dandy car you've got!" he said with envy. "French?"
Soon he was gone upon the road to Chaulnes. His retreating back, with the spindly axle, the wild hood, the torn fragments of tyre flying round in streamers, and the painful list of the body set her laughing, as she stood by the signpost in the desert.
Then she took the road to Peronne.
"I won't have my lunch yet—" looking at the pale sun. Her only watch had stopped long since, resenting the vibrations of the wheel. ”

“ A population half-fed and poor. A sky black as ink and liquid as a river.
Prisoners in the streets, moving in green-coated gangs; prisoners in the gutters, pushing long scoops to stay the everlasting tide of mud; thin, hungry, fierce and sad, green-coated prisoners like bedraggled parrots, out-numbered the population.
The candle of the world was snuffed out—and the wick smoked.
The light was gone—the blinding light of the Chantilly snows, the lights on the Précy river—moonlight, sunlight—the little boat crossing at moonrise, sunrise.
"Ah, that long journey! ”

“ The touch was so slight that she had passed on, but at a cry she drew up and looked back. The lorry which she had touched was overhanging the edge of the road, and its radiator, striking a tree, had dropped down into the valley below. Climbing from her car she ran back and was instantly surrounded by a crowd of Annamites who chirped and twittered at her, and wrung their little hands.
"What can I do?..." she said to them aloud, in distress.
But they understood nothing, and seemed to echo in their strange bird language, "What can we do ... what can we do?..." ”

“ Out to the left a mauve bank of cloud moved up across the sky like the smoke from a titanic bonfire, and, with the first drift of moisture towards them, the four shivered and rose simultaneously to pack the things and put them in the car.
As Fanny stooped to wind up the handle the first snowflake, soft and wet and heavy, melted on her ear.
"It won't lie," said the Bearskin. "Shall we draw up the hood?"
They drew it up, but the thin man, huddling himself in the corner of the back seat, insisted on "side-curtains as well."
"Then I'm sorry. Will you get out? They are under the seat." ”

“ The globed lamp was tricky, and the chamois-leather would slip and let her bark her knuckle on the bracket. But the glow, born in the brass, grew clearer and clearer, till suddenly, stooping to it, she looked into a mirror and saw all the garage behind her and the long rows of cars bent in a yellow curve, and little men and oily women walking incredibly upon the rounded ball of the world. ”

“ The slow night grew out of nothing, expanded, and nearly enveloped the slopes of the hill below. The wind dropped in the cloudy, heavy twilight, and the papers of the sandwiches did no more than rustle upon her knees. Not prepared yet to light her car lamps, Fanny laid her torch upon her lap, and its patch of white light lit her hands and the piles of bread, cake, and fancy buns. ”

“ Stopping below her window it was assailed by little creatures who threw themselves as greedily within as if they were setting out upon a wild adventure.
"All going to meet somebody," said Fanny, whose mind, drowned in her happiness, took the narrowest view of life. But for all their push and hurry the little creatures in the glass cage were forced to unfold their newspapers and stare at each other for occupation while the all-powerful driver and Wattmann, climbing down from the opposite ends of the car, conferred together in the street. "It's waiting for the other tram!" ”

“ In leaving the Meuse district did they leave, too, the boundless rain, the swollen rivers, the shining swamps, the mud which ebbed and flowed upon the land like a tide? Was hunger at an end, discomfort, and poor living? They had no inkling.
Fanny, indifferent to any change, hoping for nothing better, turned first to the meat tin, for she was hungry.
"Metz is a town," she hazarded.
"Of course!"
"There will be things to eat there?"
"No, very little. It was fed from Germany; now that it is suddenly fed from Paris the service is disorganised. One train crosses the devastated land in the day. ”

“ THE JOURNEY Fanny turned again to seek the lights of the town and the dagger points of the churches that climbed against the sky upon the hill behind her, but all that met her eyes was the blanket of wet darkness, and the shimmer of the snowflakes under the lamps.
She slipped through the garage gates, touching the iron bars ... "almost for the last time."
"But what does it matter? All towns are the same and we sing the same song in each and wear the same coloured feathers." She stirred the snow in the yard with her foot. "An inch already and the Renault has so little grip upon the snow. ”

“ In the shelter of the hamlet the lights leapt forward and struck a handful of houses, thickened and rounded with snow. Almost immediately darkness swallowed them up, and a drift of snow flung up by the wind burst in powder over the bonnet and on to the glass.
"The plain outside. Now we go down a long hill. We turn sharp to the right here."
The car entered a tunnel of skeleton trees through which the flakes drained and flickered, or broke in uneven gusts through the trunks. The left lamp touched a little wooden hut which stood blinkered and deserted. Just beyond it was a sharp turn in the road. ”