We all have our secrets, I think.
Nineteen
The rainy days and longer evenings mean we are spending so much time in one another’s company that everyone is starting to get on my nerves—and maybe I’m getting on theirs.
Scotty has started to carve a chess set, and the sound of the whittling knife makes me clench my jaw in irritation. I’m always relieved when he goes off to one of the other bedrooms for his endless card games.
Frank’s habit of repeating what people have said begins to get under my skin, and even Bill annoys me sometimes. He takes down my blankets in the morning and folds them for me, which I could do myself but don’t think is necessary, and when I stand up from sitting on the edge of his bed, he pulls the blanket straight again like an old woman.
Max’s jiggling legs and Ralph’s fiddling with his glasses both drive me mad.
We haven’t had any parcels for weeks, but Scotty spends time in the kitchen, devising concoctions that can be made from the ingredients brought in by Berta the cook. She has noticed that the others don’t like sour soup, but I do, so she sometimes brings a little sour milk for me to add to my mess tin. Then she stares questioningly at me, but Cousins simply nods his thanks.
Bill astonishes us all by announcing that he wants to do some knitting. Berta brings needles and scraps of wool, and Bill settles down to begin to knit a scarf. He and Flora learned together when they were children and had a fierce rivalry to see who could make something fastest or who could learn to do a new stitch.
“I even learned to knit socks, on four needles, just to get ahead of her. Turning the heel was tricky, but I was better at it than Flora. She got in such a mess and flew into such a rage!” He laughs at the memory, but I’m sick with jealousy at this girl who has been so close to him for so long.
I wonder briefly if many Englishmen can knit, but the surprise and interest of our friends assure me it isn’t common. Scotty says that fishermen can knit, and that makes it manlier. Not that Bill cares. His needles flash furiously all evening, click, click, clicking as they talk. And the clickety-clack of them irritates me too.
On Sunday afternoons, if it isn’t raining, we are all allowed to go into the village to play football, and that’s a welcome relief from the close quarters we live in. The pitch is stiff with frost in the mornings. Kurt watches us keenly, but Herr Rauchbach says he will take responsibility if any of us abscond. Nobody tries to escape, whether because of Kurt’s gun or because everyone knows there is Nazi-occupied territory for four hundred miles in every direction, as well as hazardous mountains all around us, or because the war must surely end soon. For Frank I think it’s because of Rosa. There’s a rumor that he sneaks out to meet her at night, and I think of the time Bill did the same to meet me.
Ralph sometimes stands on the touchline, because his foot is too painful to run about. I find it too cold to stand still, even though I’m now wearing my brother’s winter underwear. So I whisper to Bill that I’ll play football too, and I’m quick on the pitch and helpful to the team. Jan would be proud of me.
Max is a surprisingly good footballer for a bookish man, and scores a lot of goals, but Bill sometimes scores too and then he immediately looks to me for approbation. I slap him hard on the back. I don’t know how we have the energy to run about after the grueling work of the week, but somehow it seems to refresh rather than exhaust us, and the others are full of talk of who ran where and kicked the ball to who, for hours afterward.
It’s so cold now that Herr Rauchbach has brought us an extra blanket each and given us wood for the stove in our bedroom, which we light each evening when we come home from the quarry. It doesn’t exactly make the room warm, but it does take the chill off it during the evening. Some men have taken to dressing in the kitchen, which is the warmest place. One night Herr Rauchbach comes in as we are running back from the washroom in our pajamas and bare feet.
“The trousers and boots must be cold to put on in the morning?” he asks Ralph.
“Freezing. They can stand up by themselves.”
The next night Kurt orders the men to carry two big baskets into the hallway, and we put our boots in one and trousers in the other. Then they are hauled into the office overnight. It’s a slight improvement.
Herr Rauchbach has also ordered that a tin bath is pulled into the kitchen on Sundays, and each bedroom has one Sunday when they can use it, though the water is tepid and chilly after the second or third man has been in. I’m filled with joy at the idea of cleaning my whole body, properly, and my friends unanimously agree I should go first.
Bill and I boil the big pans on the range and pour water into the bath, while other men are still sitting round in the kitchen. It takes an awful lot of water to cover even the base of the bath, and Bill says, “We could boil more, but the water in the bath is going cold while we wait for it.”
“Yes, the water will go cold,” says Frank, sticking his finger in the water. “We only had about this much for the first man last week,” he says. “You can keep the pans on the boil while the first and second man bathe, and then the third can have it hotter and deeper. Even if it is a bit grimy!”
“OK, we’ll do that. Cousins is first.” Bill clears his throat. “A bit of privacy for a chap?” he requests.
Everyone looks astonished and then begins to laugh and catcall.
“What’s the matter, Cousins? Think we haven’t seen a cock before?”
“Wanting a quiet wank?” One of the upstairs men makes a hand signal I’ve never seen before.
“I wouldn’t like to get in his water!”
“When I was his age, I wanked three times a day.”
“And had wet dreams every night!”
“Woke up with a stiffy fit to burst.”
I look at the floor and don’t know how to arrange my face. Part of my brain logs the new words, and though I’m not sure what it all means, I understand this is a kind of man’s world I ought to seem familiar with, and so I raise my eyes slyly, look from one to another, then shrug and wink. There’s loud laughter, and as they gather up their possessions and leave the kitchen, I hear animated discussion of the last time any of them managed to “get it up” and how they blame the starvation rations. Even my short acquaintance with these peckers tells me their owners have absolutely no control over when they are up or not. I can’t help wondering about Jan and my father. Do they use words like those in Czech? Do they too do those things to themselves?
When the others have all departed, Scotty leaves by the washroom door, and I know he’ll stand out in the cold guarding it until we give him the “all clear” signal.
Bill stations himself outside the other door, in the hallway, and I quickly remove my outer clothes. It’s too dangerous to strip completely, so I get into the bath still wearing my brother’s woolen underwear and the bust-flattening corset, which I’ve loosened. As I sit down, I dip my head down under the water and rub it with the bar of red soap. The water is already gray and scummy. It’s hard to get the soap out of my hair, and I feel sorry for the men who’ll come after me.
I wash myself under the long-sleeved vest, and up under the corset. It’s a shock to feel how much my breasts have shrunk as I’ve lost weight. I’m almost glad Bill never gets to see them now. Some of my lice bites are swollen and hard. I wash myself inside the long johns, and even though this isn’t a proper bath, it’s a joy to feel water on my skin, and to picture the wretched lice drowning. I rub my underarms and my groin fiercely with the soap. The soap stings where I’ve scratched myself. But I mustn’t take long; it’s Bill’s turn next. This is the most dangerous moment. Standing up with water streaming from my baggy underwear into the water, I quickly pull off the vest and corset and drop them in the water, rubbing my top half dry, goose pimples covering my body, nipples tight and hard, even in the relative warmth of the kitchen, taking only moments to pull clean underwear over my damp torso. Then I drop the long johns into the water and do the same with my bottom half. I haven’t dried myself thoroughly enough, and that makes it awkward to pull on the fresh underwear, but I feel wonderfully clean. I hope I’ll never take the joy of washing for granted again. I yank on my battle dress, loose enough to hide the lack of breast binding. Wringing out my underwear as best I can, I throw it into the big butler sink.