The band played beautifully in Trafalgar Square
a dignified and compelling march—and Coney Island, in its welter of squalling
children, the smell of ice cream and peanuts and water-soaked cigar butts, the
surf, one-third water and two-thirds people, fighting their way through the
grapefruit rinds, the squeak and bellow of honky-tonk music.
Soldiers have paraded in London, men who
marched like clothed machines, towering men, straight as their own rifles and
their hands swinging—at home, the knights of this and that in wilted
ostrich-plumed hats, in uniforms out of the moth-balls again, knights who were
butchers last evening, and clerks and tellers of the local bank, but knights
now, out of step, shambling after their great banner, their tinsel swords at
all angles over their shoulders, the knights of this and that.
The hospitable people of London have served
flan and trifle, biscuits and tea, marmalade, gin and lime, scotch and water,
and beer—hot dogs, with mustard drooling from the lower end and running up your
sleeve. Hamburgers, with raw onions spilling out of the round buns. Popcorn
dripping with butter. The sting of neat whisky and the barrels of beer set on
trestles. Chocolate cakes and deviled eggs, but mostly hamburgers with onions,
and which will have you have, piccalilli or dill or mayonnaise, or all of them?
The cool girls dance well and they are pleasant
and friendly. They work hard in the war plants, and it’s a job to get a dress
so neatly pressed. The lipstick is hard to get, and the perfume is the last in
the bottle. Neat and pretty and friendly. At home the sticky kisses in the
rumble seat and the swatting at mosquitoes on a hot, vine-covered porch. And in
the joints the juke box howls and its basses thump the air. When you say
something the girl knows the proper answer. None of it means anything, but it
all fits together. Everything fits together.
This is a time of homesickness, and Christmas
will be worse. No grandeur, no luxury, no interest can cut it out. No show is
as good as the double bill at the Odeon, no food is as good as the midnight
sandwich at Joe’s, and no one in the world is as pretty as that blond Margie
who works at the Poppy.
When they come home they’ll be a little tiresome
about London for a long time. They will recall exotic adventures and strange
foods. Piccadilly and the Savoy and the White Tower, the Normandie Bar and the
place in Soho will drip from their conversation. They will compare notes
enthusiastically with other soldiers who were here. The cool girls will grow to
strange and romantic adventures. The lonesome little glow will be remembered as
a Bacchic orgy. They will remember things they did not know that they saw—St.
Paul’s against a lead-colored sky and the barrage balloons hanging over it.
Waterloo Station, the sandbags piled high against the Wren churches, the
excited siren and the sneak air raid.
