Espresso Tales - Alexander Hanchett Smith [9]
Pat smiled. This was vintage Domenica. Nobody else of her acquaintance would speak like this, and she found it curiously refreshing. Her own generation was too timid – beaten into compliance with a set of imposed views.
She looked about her, almost furtively. “And which parts would those be?” she asked.
Domenica waved a hand in the air. “Oh, there are various parts of the country where people haven’t washed a great deal. Probably because they didn’t have enough taps and baths in the houses. It’s all very well for the middle classes to go on about cleanliness, but people used to have a terrible battle.
“Mind you, I had an aunt who was an officer in the Wrens during the war. She used to tell me that some of the recruits were charming, just charming, but she could never get them to wash. She had to force them into the showers. But I suspect that she was exaggerating. She had a slight tendency to egg things up a bit.
“That aunt had wonderful stories, you know. When they sent her off to officer training school in 1940 she was in a batch of twenty women. They all slept in those long Nissen huts – you can still see some of them standing if you go up to Cultybraggen, near Comrie. Well, there they all were, all thrown together. And my aunt, who was from Argyll, was thrown in with people from all over the shop. The woman in the bed next to hers was terribly grand – her uncle was an admiral or something like that – and when she joined up she brought her lady’s maid. Would you believe that? It sounds absolutely astonishing today, but that’s what she did – and the Navy allowed it! The maid enlisted at the same time and was given a bed at the end of the hut. She 16
All Downhill from Here
cleaned her mistress’s equipment, polished her shoes, made her bed, and all the rest. It was an absolute scream, but apparently nobody batted an eyelid. It was a different country then, you know.
“And apparently this grand person drank. Every night after lights were turned out in the hut, my aunt heard a bit of fiddling about in the next bed and then she heard ‘glug, glug . . .’ as she downed the gin. Every night! But there was a war on, I suppose, and people had to get by as best they could. Which they did, you know. They did just that and they very rarely complained. Can you imagine how we’d behave today if we had to knuckle down and deal with another fascist monster on our doorstep?
We’d fold up in no time at all. We couldn’t do it – we simply couldn’t do it.” She paused, and for a moment, just a moment, looked doubtful. “Or am I simply making that great mistake, which everyone of my age makes, I suspect, and which leads us to believe that things have got worse? Are they worse, Pat?”
Pat was glad to be given the chance to answer. “No, they aren’t. If you look at it from the perspective of people of my age, things are much better now than they were then. Much better. Think of colonialism. Think of what was done to people at the receiving end of that. You couldn’t do that today.”
“That’s true,” said Domenica. “But since you mention these values – self-determination, human rights and the rest – my point is this: would we be able to defend them if push came to shove? Those young men who climbed into their Spitfires or whatever back then – many of them were your age, you know. Twenty. Some even younger. They knew the odds. They knew they were going to die. Would the boys you were at school with do the same thing, do you think? Would they do it now? Be honest. What do you think?”
Pat was silent. She was not sure. But then the thought occurred to her: some of the girls would do it. Maybe that was the difference. Yes!
Chapter title 17
6. Domenica Gets into Top Gear
Deep in conversation