“Girl’s out here nursing,” said Thompson. “V.A.D. Evidently has a strong sense of duty or she wouldn’t be doing it. V.A.D.-ing isn’t precisely a cushy job. He’s tremendously in love.”
“Seems to have confided most of his affairs in you,” I said.
“Told me,” said Thompson, “that the girl has just been home on leave. He hoped to get back, too, to meet her, thinks he would have got a week if he hadn’t been ordered off on this course, bombing or whatever it is.”
Thompson washed while he talked. It could scarcely be called a real wash, but he soaped his face, most of his neck and his ears with his shaving brush and then dipped his handkerchief in the drinking cup and wiped the soap off. He was certainly cleaner afterwards; but I felt that what was left of the water would not clean me.
Later on Thompson secured some rolls of bread, two jam pastries and six apples. The bread and pastry I think he bought. The apples I am nearly sure he looted. I saw a large basket of apples in one of the waggons of a train which was standing in the station at which Thompson got out to buy our breakfast. They were exactly like the apples he brought back.
We woke up the boy then. It did not matter whether he shaved or not; but at his age it is a serious thing to miss a chance of food.
About midday we arrived at a large town. Thompson learned from the R.T.O. who inhabited the railway station there that we could not get a train to take us any further till ten o’clock that night. He said again that was war, what the French call guerre, but he seemed quite pleased at the prospect of the wait. He spoke of looking for a proper meal and a Turkish bath. The bath we did not succeed in getting; but we had an excellent luncheon: omelette, fried fish, some kind of stewed meat and a bottle of red wine. The boy stuck to us and told us a lot more about his girl. His great hope, he said, was that he would meet her somewhere in France. I could see that what he really looked forward to was a wound of a moderately painful kind which would necessitate a long residence, as a patient, in her hospital. He was, as Thompson said, a nice boy; but he talked too much about the girl. He was also a well-educated boy and anxious to make the best of any opportunities which came his way. He told us that there was an interesting cathedral in the town and proposed that we should all go and see it after lunch. Thompson is not an irreligious man. Nor am I. We both go to church regularly, though not to excess, but we do not either of us care for spending week day afternoons in a cathedral. Thompson still hankered after a Turkish bath. I had a plan for getting a bedroom somewhere and going to sleep. We sent the boy off to the cathedral by himself.
The Turkish bath, as I said, was unobtainable. We walked through most of the streets of that town looking for it. Then Thompson proposed that we should have afternoon tea. That we got in a small room above a pastry cook’s shop. The girl who served us brought us tea and a large assortment of sticky pastry. Thompson hates sticky pastry. There is only one kind of cake made in France which he will eat. I knew what it was, for I had often had tea with Thompson before. I should have recognized one if I had seen it; but I could not remember the French name for it. Thompson insisted on describing its appearance to the girl. He gave his description in English and the girl looked puzzled. I tried to translate what he said into French and she looked still more puzzled.
Then from the far corner of the room came a pleasant voice.
“I think brioche is the word you want.” It was. I recollected it directly I heard it. I turned to thank our interpreter. She was a young woman in the uniform of a V.A.D. She was sitting at a table by herself, was, in fact, the only other occupant of the room. I thanked her. Thompson joined in and thanked her effusively. There was not much light in the room and her corner was decidedly gloomy. Still, it was possible to see that she was a decidedly pretty girl. We both said that if there was anything we could do for her we should be very pleased to do it After the way she helped us out with the brioche we could scarcely say less.