I finished scrubbing the last of the huge marmites, filled it with fresh water, and set it on the stove. Mail had arrived, and I had a letter crackling invitingly in my apron pocket. I recognized Nanny’s exquisitely curved handwriting ---something Trixie had emulated with ease, but I had been unwilling to practice. “But you have to be able to write notes to people”, Trixie had urged. But I could not imagine anyone I would write to who would care at all if my handwriting were the approved Spencerian Method.
I had been so totally immersed in the canteen that it had become difficult to believe that anything existed outside of its plain walls. It had become harder and harder to remember life at home. I felt as if I were looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope and that each time the people became smaller and smaller and the view more indistinct.
I sat down on a case of canned milk and rested my head against the sink.
Dear Child,
This finds us all well as usual. Your father is very busy with his music, but Josie says he does not eat with the relish he used to. He cannot invite Miss Dienst to play for him anymore because of her being German. Really only Mr. de Lesseps can come and he leaves early. He is so old and deaf that having him is not very pleasant for your father.
Are you taking proper care of your hands? You know what they will be like if you do not. You should not forget the cold cream at night and as many times a day as possible. I have no idea what you are doing with your days and only hope that you are spending them wisely.
When your underclothing shows signs of wear, let me know. There is no one to mend them for you and a lady must not have ragged underclothing.
Emma and Josie and John wish to be respectfully remembered. We are all praying for you.
Fondly,
Nanny
Dear Nanny. If she could see me now – a kitchen maid working harder than Emma and Josie ever worked. Would she call that wise? I looked at my cracked and bleeding hands. She would be horrified. At least my underclothes were in order. But did hands really matter? The letter suddenly made me feel old. Nanny still reaching for things I had long since gone beyond. Nanny, the omniscient presence of my childhood, now just an echo from the past.
Yet, I still felt her love reaching out to me as it had for as long as I could remember. Every moment of my childhood was bound up in the woman who had come to us as Mary Hartley when Arthur was born and had stayed on as Nanny in all the years after. Arthur and James, as they got older, had outgrown the world of women in the nursery, but Trixie and I had remained under her stern, but loving eye. She saw us through our childhood crises and was a firm presence that we could always return to when battered by the outside world.
. Mamma, who perhaps should have held that position, was a, beautiful being who hung like a brilliant star on the outer limits of our world. But that fairy princess was a memory, I suddenly realized, of early childhood, before the fire. After that horrible event, Papa had shut himself up in the music room, and Mamma had retreated to her bedroom. It had not always been like that, not when we had been little. I could remember sitting up in bed in our pink and green room, Trixie and I having our bedtime milk and crackers and Mamma coming in to kiss us goodnight smelling of lilac powder, her skin soft to the touch. We loved it when she would be dressed for an evening out, and she would twirl around in her long evening gown, and the jewels at her wrist and throat would sparkle as she turned. Then she would kiss us goodnight, and her perfume would linger long after the room was dark, and she was gone.
On nights when she was not going out, we would beg her to tell us again of how she and Papa had met. We knew the story by heart, but we both loved hearing Mamma tell it again. She had been in Paris studying piano at a young ladies’ finishing school. Her parents were both dead and her guardian had felt that Paris would put, as she always told us, ‘a continental polish’ on the eighteen year old. Her great love had been the piano, and she was so accomplished that she had been asked to play at small recitals in various Paris salons. It was there, dressed in flowing white and playing Chopin, that Papa first saw her. This vision in white, playing with such accomplishment at the piano, brought his European tour to a stop, and he stayed on in Paris to court her. When they married, he built a music room just for her on the bottom floor of our house with a baby grand at the center framed by long windows that looked out on the garden. At night we could sometimes hear the distant sound of music making its way faintly up to our bedroom and knew that Papa would be seated in the large floral chair in the corner of the room, his feet stretched out before him, puffing contentedly on his pipe.
I loved the romance of the story picturing in my mind a room lit only by candlelight, and my mother graceful and elegant at the piano playing The Moonlight Sonata. Trixie was far more exacting. Exactly how had Mamma met Papa? What did she say to him? Did she always see Papa with her chaperone? What did she wear the night Papa proposed? And then the question which I knew was Trixie’s real goal: how did she know that Papa was the one to marry? It was always at this point that Mamma slipped from the room with a vague…” Oh, one just knows.” I knew Trixie was not satisfied with this answer, and she would flop around on her bed more than usual before falling asleep. Perhaps if Mamma had been able to give her an answer, all that followed would not have happened.
But Mamma had stopped playing, and Papa had taken over the room with the piano and began what Grandpapa had called his scribbling. We all knew that he was at work on an opera, and that it took up all of his time. Where this interest in music had come from, and why it suddenly bloomed in his forties I never knew. But I could tell, even at a young age, that he was more committed to it than he had been to any of his jobs or his social life. This was his real love, and I would have understood that better if his love had not been such a jealous mistress. None of us were included in his passion. I could hear his eager voice from the music room when his musical friends came to call, but he never shared with the family what went on behind those closed doors. It had obviously been music that had attracted him to Mamma, but now it was as if he wanted to claim that music for himself alone.
As his interest in music waxed, Mamma’s had waned, and at some point, she had stopped playing entirely. There were fewer and fewer evenings out, and the fairy princess Mamma became a captive locked in the dim recesses of her room.
Evenings now consisted of Papa entertaining his musical friends who, even I could tell, were not the same people that had populated their social life before the fire. Trixie was downright disdainful. Had I seen that strange man with the long white whiskers or that Miss Dienst with her odd clothes and thick glasses? Miss Dienst had started coming to the house in the evenings after dinner to play the piano. Although he composed, Papa did not play the piano well, and we guessed that Miss Dienst was playing the result of his composing efforts.
Thus, the sound of the piano once again filled the house, but it did not come from Mamma. She did not join the musical evenings, and even at a young age I could tell that Mamma played much better than Miss Dienst. She built an unseen wall between herself and that room, the room that had been built for her. This was passed on to all three of us without our realizing what was happening. I was left with the feeling that something a little shameful was going on behind that perpetually closed door, and that it was to remain behind closed doors, solely Papa’s purview. Never an overly warm person, he seemed to withdraw from us, but perhaps we had also withdrawn from him.
If I were honest with myself, I would have to admit that I had been a disappointment to my parents. I had been neither biddable enough for Papa nor pretty enough for Mamma. There was nothing I could have done about what I looked like, but I knew I could have taken more of an interest in clothing, hair styles, and social events that would have given Mamma some degree of hope for me. And I knew also that I could have tried to quell those urges to act and speak that were so upsetting to Papa. And yet, look what conforming had done to Aunt Elizabeth, a woman so talented that she had published ten books by the time she was thirty. That night in the hotel room loomed up before me again. What had she warned me about at the end? What was I not to do? Well, it was too late to worry about that now. I was here in France, and I returned to scrubbing the tables. It was Rosie’s time off, so I was surprised to see her in the canteen. Her uniform was clean and starched, and the coif was noticeably absent although she had not dared the red flower again since the first day.
“What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise. “It’s not your shift.”
“I have a date,” she announced with a face alight with anticipation.
“A date? Here?”
Rosie did not reply but settled at a table in the far corner of the room, continuing to look very pleased with herself.
The canteen began to slowly fill, and soon it was fast and furious. But everything was beginning to take on its own individuality. Even the crowding men began to be real people to me, and I would see a familiar face and smile as I hurried gathering up the cups. How I wished we had more cups. Then I could quit this racing back and forth and concentrate on grinding coffee…
I swept by the table in the rear vaguely registering Rosie and a lieutenant seated next to her, Rosie intently talking. Suddenly the man held out an arm stopping me in my tracks and causing the cups to rattle dangerously in the basket.
“Hey, wait a minute.”
I looked down at the seated figure and into a pair of brown eyes with bright gold flecks in them. He was smiling, laughing at me while Rosie glowered from the next chair. I knew that face. It was the arrogant face of so many boys I had known. Jack Gates walking across the dance floor to collect Trixie as his trophy, certain of his standing and his attraction. What would have happened if Trixie had refused him? Maybe things would have ended differently. But then Trixie had all the weight of Mamma’s and society’s expectations behind her. Jack had been her prize as much as she had been his.
Now I had no such expectations placed on me, and I did not have to play the game, not that I had ever been very good at it. All the years of resentment welled up in me, and as I shrugged off the restraining arm I said in my frostiest tone, “Excuse me. I have work to do.”
The laughter drained from his face as his hand fell to his side. “You’re a green hand here. You know nothing.” He waved his hand in the air and said with exaggerated politeness, “Please continue with your very important job.”
With that he got up from the table, tossed his flying helmet on his head, and strode out of the canteen. Carefully avoiding even a glance at Rosie, who was looking angrily at me, I continued on my way collecting cups and headed back towards the counter and coffee urn. As my resentment subsided, I found myself wondering about this lieutenant. I knew that I would see him again. Our community was too small.
And I soon did. He seemed to become the center of attention the moment he entered the canteen, a role he accepted as his due. His name was Basil Carter although everyone called him Bazz. There he was now, perched on top of the old piano that someone had found and dragged into the canteen. It was sadly out of tune, the keys yellow with age, but no one seemed to mind. Although Gil was playing the piano with the ease of a professional, it was Bazz who sat higher than Gil. The singers who were crowded around the piano looked to Bazz who led them, kicking his heels on the side of the old upright in time with the music. Even Len Stokes, who was the Chief of Monitors, merely stood beside Gil with his back to the others, singing.
I studied Bazz as I worked in the kitchen grinding coffee at which I am become proficient and cleaning the ever-dirty huge marmites. He was arrogant and willful, but also had enough charm to be fascinating.
I watched Rosie looking at him as he moved about the canteen, naked yearning on her face, and knew that she stood no chance with him at all. He would flirt with her, use her to amuse himself, but he would not be interested in someone of Rosie’s background. I knew, because his background was the same as mine. In spite of not always fitting in, I could navigate my world with an ease of which Rosie could not even imagine. I could picture him in our dining room at home and knew he would be just as comfortable with the multiple forks, knives and spoons as I was, attentive to Papa and distant but charming to the staff.
I went out to pick up the empty cups. We were getting low. I started at the end of the room away from the piano, picking up the ones at the deserted tables. It was a few moments before I realized that the piano had stopped, and the room was suddenly quiet. Bazz and Len Stokes were facing one another, eyes locked. I just caught the end of what Len was saying.
“ …and the Chief of Monitors has authority you know.”
“Not over me,” said Bazz. “I’m not one of your boys.”
“No, you’re a peacock strutting on the outside all by yourself.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve got hundreds on my side.” Bazz turned around as I changed my basket from one hand to the other, the cups jarring. “Well, Little-Miss-I –have-a Job- to-Do. And whose side are you going to be on?”
All eyes in the room turned to me, and I felt I was treading in waters I did not understand. “Side?” I said hesitatingly. “Aren’t we were all on one side against the Germans.”
“No,” Bazz said. “We haven’t even gotten to the Huns yet. We’re fighting a little war of our own right here.”
“That war’s over,” Len said. “Your friend Major Hardy has surrendered.”
“So, you don’t like Hardy’s new improved style?” Bazz’s smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “I particularly like his newly-cut hair.”
I thought back to that first morning when we had served the two officers at breakfast, and I had been introduced to Major Hardy, the Officer in Charge of Flying. I had wondered at the time at his lack of military bearing in contrast to the impeccably uniformed colonel. He was in charge of all the men learning to fly, and I could tell from his conversation that first day that he hated his job. Was the reason for that here in front of me? He must have come up against Bazz in one way or another and had lost. Bazz would be a formidable opponent I thought.
But Len and Bazz were still arguing, my presence long forgotten. I lingered, however, interested in what seemed to be a big rift in this group of men I had thought of as being of one accord.
I had slowly begun to pick up information on how the aerodrome outside the busy confines of the canteen was organized. Between picking up cups, washing, and serving coffee I had learned some things about the jobs that the men held. There were, of course, the cadets, the student aviators, and their instructors who were called monitors. Len, as Chief of Monitors, was in charge of all of them. But Bazz did not fall under his purview. There were numbered fields all around the building complex, each devoted to a different part of the training. Each field had an officer in charge, and Bazz was one of those. Certainly not as important a job as Len’s, but then he was outside of Len’s control. The only person that could stand up to him would be whoever was going to take the job of Officer in Charge of Flying which Major Hardy had abandoned with such willingness.
“Listen, Carter. You’re on the outskirts running a little field, and as long as you don’t burn up the equipment or turn it over to the enemy, it doesn’t matter how much you carry on. Your job is insignificant.” Bazz started to speak but Len overrode him. “Me, I got men. I gotta see that my monitors teach a bunch of men how to fly without killing themselves and destroying planes. There’s only one way to do that, and it’s not your way.”
“It’s damn fool rules and discipline, I suppose?”
“That’s right. And it has to come from the top down. You can’t play any games without rules.”
Bazz drew in his chin and imitated the bark of a drill sergeant, playing to the audience around the piano, “Button up your blouse. Keep your hair cut. Shave every day. Wear a blouse to meals. Put your cap on straight. No liquor. No women. No freedom. Yes, sir, no sir. What’s that got to do with killing Huns in the air?” There was scattered laughter in the room, but it was uneasy.
“You don’t even know how to kill in the air yet.” Len’s voice dripped with disdain. “Neither did that guy we just bedded down in Field Ten. He died with his hair long and stubble on his face, but, oh yes, he was a free man. Last night he went to bed with a bellyful of liquor.”
“You don’t know that, you ----“
“I checked.” Len smashed his fist down on the piano. “But you’d better watch out. There is a change coming.”
“Well, bring ‘em on,” Bazz said. “One major at a time. We can handle ‘em can’t we?” he said turning to the room. He was a powerful figure, tall, commanding, disdainful, and with a dangerous glitter in his golden eyes. I could almost feel him drawing the men in the room to him, and while some eyes turned away from his, no one said a word against him.
Len suddenly relaxed and sat down in a chair. “You think so? When the next one gets here you may find that you have met your match. You may meet someone who doesn’t care about getting along with the boys. He might even be more than you can handle.”
“What the hell.” Bazz jammed his hat on his head and went out of the canteen crashing into my basket on the way out. “There’s not an officer in the AEF that this bunch can’t break.”
Now that I was more on top of my job, I began to listen more to the men as I circulated in the canteen. I learned that there were not enough officers who were aviators to take on the gigantic job of training all the new flight cadets, so many of the jobs were taken over by officers from other branches of the service who knew nothing about flying --- and it seemed from the comments and stories had no desire to learn. Colonel Gallatin stories were legion. He was a cavalry officer as I had noted the first day I met him, and the riding crop I had wondered at was not just for show, but for his horse which he kept stabled somewhere on the base. I overheard Gil telling the story to a new monitor with great glee. One of his first moves had been to put a hitching post outside of his headquarters. He used to inspect the various flying fields on horseback. The horse had become skittish at one field as the planes started up, and the Colonel had yelled, “Stop those fans. Don’t you see they scare my horse?” Gil and the new monitor had almost fallen off their chairs laughing. “But that is not all,” Gil continued when he gained control of himself. “He told me himself that all this aviation stuff was nonsense and was taking good men away from the army. That if he wanted to know what was going with the enemy, he would just tie up his horse, and climb a tree.” Now the two men were practically limp with laughter.
When Colonel Gallatin was finally transferred, horse and all, Major Hardy took his place. Suddenly he was transformed from the formerly careless dresser into a neat officer, his hair cut, his uniform pressed and buttoned. He took over his new duties with energy, and soon half completed buildings were finished and new ones started. Colonel Gallatin must have been right. Buildings and materials were easier to handle than men.
But now there was no Officer in Charge of Flying, and the haphazard discipline that Bazz applauded accelerated. Monitors and cadets became crazier and more careless, and expected and got a funeral at three daily. In this vacuum morale sunk and bitterness mounted. For all those who seemed to embrace the anarchy, there were others who complained about not being able to get any sleep because of the parties in the barracks after dark. They complained of filth and disorganization, but there was on one with the will or desire to change it. The base seemed to balance in limbo waiting for the new broom. But if it did not come soon, I thought, it might be too late.