Children of No Man's Land

by G. B. Stern

I

Deb, before Richard came to her, was afflicted with the hump. A sort of diffused hump. The hump of all the world. The hump that says: “What’s the good?” and “It isn’t fair!” and “I wish——” and “Everything’s so hateful!” It arose from a blurred medley of causes: the dry heat which seemed to spring from the pavements and sap all vitality. Then Con’s death; Con had been her first love, and his death stabbed her with a quick and poignant memory of eight years ago when they had nuzzled each other like two affectionate and sportive young foals—“dear little Deb.” “Con—I do love you, Con!” “For always, Deb?” “Yes, for—I say, look how the conkers are bumping down in this wind ... let’s collect them and have a battle, shall we?” “Rather!” and the headlong scamper of boy and girl up the hill towards the group of tattered, wind-buffeted chestnuts. Such glorious fun, collecting into your own separate pile the vivid russet pebbles that every fresh gust thudded and bounced on to the grass; or even, while you knelt and scrambled, on to the flat of your back. Such fun, sweeping aside the drifts of mottled yellow leaves to discover where they hid. Such fun, to shout aloud to Con a find of the embedded conker, red and plump and shining in its dull white pillow and prickly burr. Such fun, the after battle, swooping to gather fresh handfuls from your accumulated store of ammunition. She could be quite sure, always, that Con would never direct his bullets to hit her anywhere except in places that didn’t hurt. Con was a dear ... and never such a dear as on that wind-rushed, sun-flashing afternoon in October, when the Battle of the Conkers having been decided in her favour, they flung themselves down on the dry protesting rustle of the dead-leaf carpet, flushed and tingling and ever so pleased with themselves; the clouds swirling apart over their heads to show such vivid rollicking patches of blue. “Deb, darling—will—will you let me kiss you just once?” “No, Con—please—I don’t think you ought....”

Well, Con was dead. But that memory was more excellent to look back upon, than the long, slow-moving hours spent with Blair Stevenson in his rooms....

It was not Blair’s fault. She recognized that. He was always charming, always interesting, even whimsically fond of his demi-maid. He was a great deal better than she deserved, really. Only—only——

“I’m sick of it!” with a spurt of impetuous dissatisfaction. Sick of it, and did not know how to wriggle clear of it. Perhaps the Foreign Office would soon send him abroad again. Deb was prone to hang about, hoping for some lucky mechanical chance to terminate her mistakes, rather than herself make abrupt severance. Stevenson was indeed sent on an important mission to America that July of 1916. And Deb did not altogether like that either. She missed him. He was, at least, aware of her. The old dejected sensation of waste enveloped her again.

The endless processions of khaki spectres through the great dim stations, on their way to the Front, wound like a drab caterpillar through her days and nights. She had loved being on duty at the canteen when the leave trains came in; but this new job was different—it was horrible. They were sucked back to the Front where Con had been killed. And the world was left full of women—women and girls and old women. The world was rather like that great dim station, with hollow sounds clanging and echoing far up in the roof, and trains that came in and trains that went out, nobody quite knew when; and waiting, drearily, up and down the platform; and an old, old time-table that offered no guidance in this later chaos, flapping from the walls....

What guidance was there, moral or religious or traditional? Women took their cues and rules from one another, propped one another up by new and hastily-made standards; pointed out solitary examples—solitary pioneers. Dimly-lit melancholy world of women, invertebrate at first, learning how to walk and run, learning how to do without their men. Bits of a new code, and bits of an old tradition. A great deal of talk ... women’s voices....

Women, and women, and women. One got nauseated by one’s own sex. They did their best—they did splendidly—but oh, the man’s deeper, calmer note, and more logical authority, and firm hand outstretched!

The home with La llorraine and Manon was hardly as satisfactory as it had seemed. The ingénue engaged, required kicking—not from jealousy, but because of her demeanour which implied that everything good comes to the good girl. And Dolph Carew, whom Deb hated, was always in the flat. Wedding preparations were in full swing. And La llorraine, the sails of her content wide and voluptuously full with a fair wind, treated Deb in the confidential manner of one battered old rouette to another—inviting her perpetually to look and rejoice at the spectacle of the two innocent young things so happy. “You and I, my dee-urr, have long since outgrown such milk and roses.”... It galled Deb, not unreasonably, to be identified with La llorraine as a rouette of fifty years ago. Manon was to marry Dolph Carew ... inevitably Deb’s thoughts drifted back to Jenny—lingered there ... all that wish and desire and beat for life wasted ... and that charming little face, mournful or roguish as a monkey’s. “But Bobby’s left; Bobby with the same crinkle in his eyes and mouth and heart.... If I were to die, wanting things like Jenny did, there would not even be Bobby to remind people....”

Yes—she had the hump. The hump of all the world. And then Richard came.