XVI
Maud was running a Canteen at the Station at Lessingham.
Troop trains came through there every day, and very often at night. She took the night shifts as a rule, and did her school work by day. That was like Walter.
‘One likes to do one’s bit, you know,’ she said.
She talked a great deal about the ‘Tommies.’ What fine fellows they were; what splendid single-hearted fellows. It was true no doubt, and any way, even if they were not, it was a good thing to give them cakes and hot coffee; they were unfortunate enough, poor things, and I admired Maud for her work for them, and yet somehow, when she praised them, I wanted to run them down. I felt so sure that she did not understand in the least what they were like; difficult, intricate creatures, part noble, part ignoble, just as we all are; some brave, some cowardly, some understanding what they were doing, others not understanding at all; and Maud lumped them all together as ‘fine fellows,’ just because they were English soldiers, and we were at War; and I knew she would have called them that, whatever they were like.
Miss Mix used to visit the wounded soldiers in the London Hospital; she read to them, and wrote letters for them, and she took blinded soldiers out for walks. Good old Miss Mix; she too thought them all splendid, but it was quite different with her.
She said to me one day:
‘They have all done what I could not do. They have been through things I know I could not stand; and it is partly for my sake, for lots of old women like me, who seem not much use in the world, that they have done it; and it makes me very grateful to them, that is all I know.’
I went with Miss Mix several times, and wrote letters and read to them too, but I could not leave Eleanor much, now I had no nurse. Louise took her out for me then, but after Christmas Louise left us, and went into a Munition factory, and for several weeks I could get no one in her place. When I got another maid, she was very incompetent, and Sarah, the cook, did not like her at all. They quarrelled, and complained about each other a great deal; and then Sarah gave notice. She too went to work at Munitions; it was natural, I suppose, for they earned much higher wages. Mrs. Simms, the charwoman, cooked for us for a time, and at last I got a cook who was very old and deaf, and could not cook very much; but I was glad to get her, and she stayed for some time.
There was no time to do anything else while this was going on. I did part of the housework even then, for the old cook couldn’t, and the young maid was very slow. I did it badly, and it took me, too, a long time. I hated the housework; I hated the brooms and dusters; dreamed about them at night; and about the kitchen sink, where I had helped to wash up, while we had no cook. The brooms were kept in the bathroom, for we had no other place to keep them. There were pegs for them there to hang on, and a shelf I for polishes and dusters. I began to hate the bathroom too. It was a squalid bathroom, with a painted bath, that was painted green, and was chipped.