A Padre in France

by George A. Birmingham

Later on, after many cricket matches, we agreed that it was desirable to get up entertainments in the camp. There was no local talent, or none available at first, but I had the good luck to meet one day a very amiable lady who undertook to run a whole entertainment herself. She also promised not to turn round and walk away when she saw the piano.

We stirred ourselves, determined to rise to the occasion. We made a platform at the end of the dining-room. I took care not to ask, and I do not know, where the wood for that platform came from. We discovered among us a man who said he had been a theatrical scene painter before he joined the R.E. He can never, I fancy, have had much chance of rising to the top of his old profession, but he painted a back scene for our stage. It represented a country cottage standing in a field, and approached by an immensely long, winding, brown path. The perspective of that path was wonderful. He also painted and set up two wings on the stage which were easily recognisable as leafy trees. For many Sundays afterwards I stood in front of that cottage with a green tree on each side of me during morning service.

Another artist volunteered to do our programmes. His work lay in the orderly-room and he had at command various coloured inks, black, violet, blue, and red. He produced a programme like a rainbow on which he described our lady visitor as the “Famous Favourite of the Music Hall Stage.” She had, in fact, delighted theatre goers before her marriage, but not on the music hall stage. I showed her the programme nervously, but I need not have been nervous. She entered into the spirit of the thing.

A thoughtful sergeant, without consulting me, prepared for her a dressing-room at the back of the stage. A modest man himself, he insisted upon my leading her to it. We found there a shelf, covered with newspaper. On it was a shaving mirror, a large galvanised-iron tub half full of cold water, a cake of brown soap, a tattered towel, and a comb. Also there was a tumbler, a siphon of soda water, and a bottle of port.

“The dears,” she said. “But I can’t change my frock; I’ve nothing but what I stand up in. What shall I do?”

I glanced at the bottle of port; but she shrank from that.

“I must do something,” she said.“I’ll powder my nose.” The shaving mirror, at least, was some use.

The entertainment began stiffly. We were not accustomed to entertainments and felt that we ought to behave with propriety. We clapped at the end of each song, but we displayed no enthusiasm. I began to fear for our success. But our lady—she did the whole thing herself—conquered us. We were laughing and cheering in half an hour. In the end we rocked in our seats and howled tumultuously when the sergeant-major, a portly man of great dignity, was dragged over the footlights. Our lady pirouetted across the stage and back again, her arm round the sergeant-major’s waist, her cheek on his shoulder, singing, “If I were the only girl in the world and you were the only boy.”

We believed in doing what we could for those who came to entertain us. When we secured the services of a “Lena Ashwell” Concert Party we painted a large sign and hung it up in front of the stage: “Welcome to the Concert Party.” We forgot the second “e” in Welcome and it had to be crammed in at the last moment above the “m” with a “^” underneath it.

We made two dressing-rooms, one for ladies and one for gentlemen. The fittings were the same—brown soap, cold water, shaving mirror, tumbler and siphon. But in the gentlemen’s room we put whisky, in the ladies’ port. The whole party had tea afterwards in the sergeants’ mess—strong tea and tinned tongue. A corporal stood at the door as we left holding a tray covered with cigarettes.