Non-combatants and Others Part 29

CHAPTER XVII

NEW YEARS EVE

1

On this (surely) most unusual planet, nothing is more noticeable than the widely differing methods its inhabitants have of spending the same day. One person's new year's eve, for instance, will be quite different from another.

Even within the Orme family, they were different. Margot spent the evening at a canteen concert. She took a prominent part in the programme, having a charming, true and well-trained contralto voice. She sang charming songs with it, some of them a little above the taste of the majority of soldiers, but pleasing to the more musical, others not.

It was a long and miscellaneous programme, varying from Schubert and Mendelssohn to 'Stammering Sam' and 'Turn the lining inside out till the boys come home,' so every one was pleased.

2

Dorothy Orme was a.s.sisting at a dance at the hospital. (You must do something with soldiers on new year's eve; it is particularly urgent that they should be kept indoors, because of the Scotch.) It was a jolly dance, and both the soldiers and nurses enjoyed it extremely. When twelve struck they joined hands and sang 'Auld Lang Syne,' and every one hopefully wished every one else a Happy new year. (Only two Jocks had got out and kept their Hogmanay elsewhere and quite elsehow--a creditably small proportion out of forty men.) Dorothy got home by two, said it had been a topping evening and she was dead tired, and went to bed.

3

At Wood End, Mr. and Mrs. Orme entertained Belgians. Nine Belgian children, and parents and guardians to correspond. They played games, and danced a little, and fished for presents with a rod and line in a fish-pond in a corner of the dining-room, where Mr. Orme lay curled up, secretive and helpful, so that the right things got on to the right hooks.

It was a great success, and ended at ten. Mrs. Orme's head ached, and Mr. Orme's back.

They had had a great deal to do; they had had Mademoiselle Verstigel to help them, but none of their children, who were all busy elsewhere, and whom, therefore, they did not grudge. They were generous with their children, as well as with their time, energy and money.

4

Betty Orme, who has. .h.i.therto been only remotely referred to in these pages, spent the evening driving three nurses and a doctor from Fruges to Lillers. She was a steady, level-headed child, with a fair placid face looking out from a woollen helmet, and wide blue eyes like Terry's.

She acted chauffeur to a field hospital, drove perfectly, repaired her car with speed and efficiency, and was extremely useful. Her nerves, health, and temper were of the best brand; horrors left her unjarred and merely helpful.

The nurse at her side, a garrulous person, said, 'Why, it's new year's eve, isn't it? How funny. I've only just remembered that!... I wonder what they're all doing at home, don't you?'

But Betty was only wondering whether her petrol was going to last out till Lillers.

'I know I'd a lot rather be out here, wouldn't you?' said the talkative nurse.

'Rather,' said Betty abstractedly.

Even through their helmets and motorcoats and thick gloves they felt the wind very cold, and a few flakes of snow began to drift down from a black sky.

'More snow,' said Betty. 'It really _is_ the limit.... I wonder if it'll be finer next year.'

5

John Orme was in a trench, not far from Ypres. It was bitterly cold there; snow drifted and lay on his platoon standing to, their feet in freezing mud. They were standing to at that hour of the night (11.30 P.M.) because they had been warned of a possible enemy attack. They had been badly bombarded earlier in the evening, but that was over. There had been four men hit. The stretcher-bearers hadn't come for them yet; they lay, roughly first-aided, in the mud. John, vigilantly strolling up and down, seeing that no one slept (John was a very careful and efficient young officer), pa.s.sed a moaning boy with his arm blown off and his tunic a red mess, and said gently, 'Hang on a bit longer, Everitt. They won't be long now.' Everitt merely returned, beneath his breath, 'My G.o.d, sir! Oh, my _G.o.d_!' He could not hang on at all, by any means whatever. And there were no morphia tablets left in the platoon.... John turned away.

Some one said, 'New year'll be in directly, Ginger. How's this for a bright and glad new year?'

John remembered, for the first time, that it was December the 31st. It didn't mean anything more to him than the 30th. After all, it must be some day, even in this timeless and condemned trench.

He didn't believe in this attack, anyhow. It had been a ration party rumour, and ration parties are full of unfulfilled forecastings. But he wished he had a morphia tablet for that poor chap....

6

Terry Orme was in his dug-out, which was called Funk Snuggery. It was a very noisy night. The enemy seemed to be having a special new year's eve hate. Whizz-bangs, sugar-loaves, beans, all sorts and conditions and shapes of explosive missiles filled the earth and heavens with unlovely clamour. It was disturbing to Terry, who was reading Moussorgsky. (Terry belonged to that small but characteristic cla.s.s of persons who read themselves to sleep with music. John preferred Mr. Jorrocks.) Terry dug his fingers into his ears, and perused his score.

There was another man in Funk Snuggery. The other man looked at his watch, waited three minutes, and said 'Happy new year.' Terry, stopping his ears, did not respond, till he shouted it louder.

Terry looked up. 'What's that?' he inquired. 'Oh, is it? Fancy! Thanks; the same to you.... But I _shan't_ be happy this year unless they let me hear myself think. Beastly, isn't it?... They say after a time it spoils one's ear. Wouldn't that be rotten. Have a stick?'

The stick was of chocolate, and they each sucked one in drowsy silence.

It was next year, and still they would not let Terry hear himself think.

He put away Moussorgsky with a sigh, and curled up to go to sleep.

7

Hugh Montgomery Gordon was in billets, in a village in Artois. He and a friend went out for a stroll in the evening; they visited an _estaminet_, where they found poor wine but a charming girl. They told her it was new year's eve; she told them it was _la veille du jour de l'an_. They taught her to say 'Happy new year' and other things. She and they all spent a very enjoyable evening.

'Absolutely it, isn't she?' said Hugh Montgomery Gordon languidly to his friend as they walked back to their billets. 'Don't know when I've seen anything jollier.' He yawned and went indoors, and spent the rest of the year playing auction.

8

Basil Doye, in camp on the Greek mountains, sat and smoked in a tent a.s.saulted and battered by a searching north-east wind from Bulgaria. He and his platoon had been occupied all day in digging trenches, and spreading wire entanglements which caught and trapped unwary Greek travellers on their own hills. Basil Doye was tired and bored and cold, in body and mind. A second lieutenant who shared the tent was telling him a funny story of a bomb the enemy had dropped on Divisional H.Q.

last night, and of the General and staff, pyjama-clad, rushing about seeking shelter and finding none.... But Basil was still bored and cold.

'O Lord!' said the other subaltern presently, 'the year'll soon be done in. It's going out without having given us a sc.r.a.p with the Bulgars; how sickening!... Why in anything's name couldn't they have sent us out here _earlier_, if at all?'

'Our government,' said Basil, abstracted and unoriginal, 'is slow and sure. Slow to move and sure to be too late. That's why. So here we are, sitting on a cold hill in a draught, with nothing doing, nor likely to be.'

To himself he was saying, 'She'd fit on these hills; she'd belong here, more than to Spring Hill. She's a Greek really ... that s.p.a.ce between the eyes, and the way she steps ... like Diana.... Oh, strafe it all, what's the good of thinking?' Savagely he flung away his cigarette.

A great gust of wind from Bulgaria flung itself upon the tent and blew it down. Then the sleet came, and the new year.

9

West was in church. The lights were dim, because of Zeppelins. The vicar was preaching, on the past and the future, from the texts 'They shall wax old, as doth a garment; as a vesture shalt thou lay them aside, and they shall be changed,' and 'Behold, I make all things new.'

The year was going to be changed and made new in nineteen minutes and a half. West (and the vicar too, perhaps), though tired and despondent (the week after Christmas is a desperate time for clergymen, because of treats), were holding on to hope with both hands. A desperate time: a desperate end to a desperate year. But clergymen may not, by their rules, become desperate men. They have to hope: they have to believe that as a vesture they shall be changed, and that the new will be better than the old. If they did not succeed in believing this, they would be of all men the most miserable.

West sat in his stall, looking, so the choirboys opposite thought, at them, to see if any among them whispered, or any slept. But he did not see them. He was looking through and beyond them, at the vesture, ragged and soaked with blood, which so indubitably wanted changing. Once his lips moved, and the words they formed were: 'How long, O Lord, how long?' Which might, of course, refer to a number of things: the war, or the vicar's sermon, or the present year, or, indeed, almost anything.