Bill adds, “And they itch like the devil.”
Ralph points to a pail of white powder with a paintbrush sticking out of it, then goes back outside to the guard, leaving me and Bill alone. Though the door, I hear Ralph strike up a conversation in German.
Bill quickly kisses me, and we grip each other tight for a long moment. I think I can feel his heart beating. This might be the last time.
He runs his hand over my shorn head.
“You’re still beautiful,” he whispers again. “I’ll always love you.”
A huge lump in my throat prevents me from replying.
He strips off his battle dress jacket and shirt and lifts his arm for me to paint the wispy blond hairs underneath, and then turns to do the other side. His white body is covered in goose pimples.
“We should do the seams of our clothes too,” he says, removing his trousers and pulling them inside out. “The places the buggers love to hide. And down round your you-know-what. I’ll do mine.”
He turns his back to me and rubs a handful of the powder down the front of his underwear, while I apply the powder to the seams of his battle dress and trousers. When we’ve finished with his clothes, he waves to my buttons.
“I’ll watch the door if you can do yourself?”
I remove my battle dress and unbutton my shirt, exposing Jan’s long-sleeved vest, which covers my corset. Cautiously I sniff the brush, then apply a little powder to each underarm area, quickly rebuttoning my shirt. Like Bill, I dab a little powder down my shorts into my private hair.
Quickly I paint the powder along the internal seams of my battle dress and trousers, yank the clothes back on and touch Bill’s hand. He’s kept his eyes on the door the whole time, legs parted, ready to go to war for me.
He turns toward me. “You are my love forever.”
And tears now fill my eyes.
“Hush now. Don’t do that.” He wipes away tears on the sleeve of his shirt.
I hold his gaze and nod, but dare not speak.
When he sees I’ve regained control of myself, he opens the door.
“That stuff reeks,” he says to Ralph. “The fumes have really got to Cousins!”
I make a pantomime of rubbing my eyes.
The three of us walk slowly away, and I think, We’ve done it. We’ve got through the de-lousing.
I’m just starting a thank-you prayer when there’s a shout from behind us, from the bald Nazi guard. I look quickly at Bill in case it’s the last chance I get to memorize his lovely face, and then I force myself to turn. The guard is holding up a piece of paper that Ralph has dropped. Relief floods through me again, and Ralph gives him another couple of cigarettes.
On the way back to the hut, we call again at the latrine, and I glance in the mirror where the men shave. My eyes seem huge now, cheek bones angular, chin square. I would call it head shaving, not hair cutting. I hate it, hate it, hate it, want to hide my ugliness from Bill.
In the hut, I empty my kit bag on my bed and rummage for the woolly hat my mother knitted. I refused to wear it when she gave it to me, saying it was too boyish and horrid, but now I pull it on, stuffing everything else back in my rucksack. I make up my mind to wear it always. I will not die looking ugly. A small voice in the back of my head whispers, I thought you were going to be Cousins? He wouldn’t make all this fuss about a stupid haircut. But I am not Cousins, not yet at least. I yank the knitted hat down to my eyebrows and over my ears.
“Feeling the cold?” asks Bill sympathetically.
Men are such idiots, I think.
At midday, someone comes around with a dustbin of thin soup called skilly and one small potato each, and afterward Ralph’s told the honey wagon has arrived for our latrine duty. Ralph flicks the hair off his forehead and looks anxiously at me. “You might want a scarf to tie round your nose and mouth.”
I recognize the purpose of the honey wagon as it pulls up close alongside the latrine block. I’ve seen the cesspit at home emptied, and I know what to expect, though I’ve never been so close.
The wagon’s like an oil tank mounted on a cart, pulled by an old nag of a horse. I pat the nose of the horse and miss my mare back on the farm with a sharp stab of physical pain. There’s a Russian prisoner in charge of the wagon, and I understand that this is our punishment—to do the work of the lowest. A hatch opens into the cesspit below, and as the Russian lifts it, the stench and fumes make me retch.
“Fuckin ’ell!” exclaims Bill, turning his head.
The Russian drops a rubber elephant’s trunk dripping with filth into the hatch, and I quickly wrap the scarf around my nose and mouth, though it doesn’t help much.
He demonstrates how to clamp the elephant’s trunk and then flips a lever. We hear waste being sucked through the hose into the tank. It’s disgusting. The trunking judders and flips, and I fear the clamps might fly off at any moment and cover us in excrement.
When the sucking noise changes, the Russian turns off the motor and pulls the stinking hose from the hole, then hands it to us to replace on the cart. I think we’re finished now, but he indicates that we must go with him to the next latrine.
He leads the horse, and I walk on the other side of it, resting my hand now and then on its warm coat, wishing the familiar horsey smell wasn’t overcome by the stink of human waste. At the next latrine we’re in charge of the process, while the Russian stands back. I try not to touch the shit on the hose, but it’s impossible, and I can feel its wet softness on my fingers. I hold my hands away from my clothes. When it’s done, the Russian leads the horse to the entrance of the camp, where the wagon will be removed.
A guard I haven’t seen before approaches, and my heart bangs in my chest. He holds his nose as he tells us in broken English that we must meet the Russian here tomorrow at eight thirty sharp.
“OK,” says Bill. “Get it over with early. Which way back to seventeen?”
The guard points the way back to our block of huts, and as we walk, I breathe into the scarf around my nose but can still smell the excrement on myself. Perhaps I can smell my fear too. I feel the guard’s eyes on my back and try to swagger like Cousins, not move like a girl. At our washroom we clean our hands and then remove our jackets, roll up our sleeves and thoroughly scrub our arms with carbolic soap. To touch the shit of other people! It feels as if I’ll never be clean again.
• • •
I’d like to stay in the relative safety of hut seventeen, but Ralph insists on taking us for a walk around the perimeter fence.
“You need the exercise,” says Ralph firmly, “or your muscles’ll waste.” I feel in some way this is addressed to Max, not to me, and sure enough, Max pulls on his boots to come too.
Everywhere my eye lands is danger—a guard, a gun, barbed wire, prisoners who might hand me in for a piece of bread. I stride out, hands in pockets balled into fists. I won’t go without a fight. Cousins wouldn’t. I am Cousins. Max and Ralph walk just ahead of us, sometimes talking, sometimes not, in the way that old friends do. I notice Ralph’s slight limp again and think Max must be slowing his pace to fit Ralph’s.
Looking around me, I begin to understand the scale of this place, where we can walk and walk and still be just in the British compound.
In the evening, the men divide into small groups within the hut. Ralph’s at the table teaching German to one group. I listen for a while, longing to correct some of his grammar. Max is still on his bunk scribbling furiously in a notebook. Bill and I look at a copy of the camp magazine called the Clarion.