The Unfortunates. Laurie Graham

by the prospect of being sent to France at last, to patrol my wards by lamplight, and adjust the pillows for dashing lieutenants, that I stole two slices of cake and allowed myself to be caught with the second piece jammed sideways in my mouth. Ma had in her hand the official Red Cross list of required items.

      ‘Hot-water bottle covers,’ she said. ‘I dare say they are quite easy to make. Or warming wristlets. And Poppy, you might bear in mind that like charity, the war effort begins at home. Reilly is with us so little now we have given her to Honey, and cake doesn’t grow on trees.’

      But Reilly and Sherman Ulysses’ reign of mutual torture was almost at an end. In September Sherman announced, ‘Shernum kicked fat Yiley, ha ha’, and Reilly announced she was going to New Jersey to make hand grenades and not to bother keeping her position open.

      Ma replied stiffly that she hadn’t intended to, and then went to lie down with a vinegar compress, while Reilly packed up her few poor things.

      I felt something in me change. A page turned, or a cloud passed. I couldn’t quite say. But sitting alone in the parlor, waiting to hear Reilly’s footsteps on the back stairs, everything seemed to be shifting and stirring, and I liked it. I heard her door close and then the thunk of her valise on the stairs.

      I stationed myself in the stairhall and smoothed down my skirt. She paused a moment when she saw me blocking her way, but then she came on down and took the hand I offered her.

      I said, ‘I wish you well, Reilly. I’m proud to think you’ll be doing such important work.’

      ‘You get board and lodging,’ she said. ‘And a day off every week. And it’s only a bus ride into Atlantic City.’

      I suppose she thought I might ask her to change her mind.

      She said, ‘I can’t stay cooking for two and nursemaiding a child that’s never been corrected. There’s a war on.’

      We shook hands.

      I said, ‘I shall soon be doing war work myself.’

      I had no idea where those words sprang from. Perhaps it was the thought of knitting wristlets.

      As soon as Reilly was gone, I put on my cloth jacket and took the elevated railway all the way to Exchange Place. Uncle Israel was most surprised to see me, but not a bad kind of surprised.

      ‘Someone give you a bang on the head, Pops?’

      Uncle Israel always deemed himself something of a humorist.

      I said, ‘It’s a turban. I designed it myself. Uncle, I want to do some proper war work.’

      I explained that our Irish had gone fruit-picking and Reilly was on her way to a munitions town and everyone in the world seemed to have something to do except me.

      ‘I guess you heard about your cousin Addie?’ he said. ‘I guess that’s what’s brought this on?’

      I always loved my Uncle Israel but that day even he seemed condescending. I couldn’t endure any more. I banged my fist on his desk and he jumped a mile in the air.

      ‘Nothing has brought it on,’ I shouted, ‘except a war. A great big war where everyone else is doing good works and having fun but I’m not allowed. I’m a grown-up but I’m still obliged to stay home with Ma. It’s not fair!’

      Simeon the secretary put his head round the door, ready to eject me I dare say or bring in a glass of restorative brandy, or place his skinny body between Uncle Israel and any physical danger. Uncle waved him away.

      He was quiet for a moment, weighing up, I suppose, where his loyalties lay. I gave him a little help. I said, ‘Even Aunt Fish is doing a hundred different things so I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt for me to make myself useful.’

      ‘Pops,’ he said. ‘If you want to do your bit you won’t find me standing in your way. Not at all. Your Pa would have been proud.’

      I said, ‘That’s what Ma said about the socks. But I’m through with knitting.’

      ‘Quite right,’ he said, ‘quite right. Well, I wonder what I can do to help?’

      How banging on a person’s desk can make them change their tune.

      I said, ‘I need you to ask someone. You know lots of people. Tell them I’m a very good worker and I’m available to start immediately. And I know French. And I’m not afraid of blood.’

      I didn’t think I was afraid of blood.

      Uncle Fish stood up and put on his top hat.

      ‘This calls for some thought,’ he said, ‘and thinking calls for lunch.’

      So he offered me his arm, and Simeon stood back as I swept by him, in case of continuing fireworks. We went to Child’s restaurant for corned beef hash and fried eggs.

      I asked about Cousin Addie. Cousin Addie, he told me, was quite the talk of Duluth. She had tried to join the marines, but when she realized all they were offering was work as a stenographer, she had used strong language to the recruiting sergeant and then gone directly to the bank to organize her own war work.

      She had bought four large gasoline-powered vehicles for a mobile hospital and was having them shipped to France at her own expense. Better yet, she was going with them. I was hurt that Cousin Addie hadn’t thought to invite me along. Especially as I’d written her a letter and explained we were made of the same stuff. Her mobile hospital was going to have an operating theater, with its own lighting generator and a laundry and a disinfection unit, and it was all in trucks that could be driven to forward positions. Uncle Israel said she wouldn’t see change out of twelve thousand dollars.

      I asked him if I had twelve thousand dollars.

      ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Have some peach pie. Girls like pie.’

      But I was eager to be off to the Red Cross. It seemed to me that once they realized I was kin to Addie Minkel of Duluth I’d be on the next boat to France.

      I said, ‘Uncle, how long would you say it might take a person to learn to drive a truck?’

      ‘Pops,’ he said, ‘I’m going to introduce you to Max Brickner’s wife at Surgical Dressings. I can’t be party to anything that might lead to getting shelled or sunk, so don’t ask me. As it is, I have the feeling I’m never going to hear the end of this from your Ma. And anything that incommodes Dora has a habit of turning right round and incommoding me.’

      Red Cross headquarters was all comings and goings. Telephones rang, vehicles arrived and left, and Isabel Brickner’s hair had worked loose from its pins.

      ‘Of course I can use you,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you answer that telephone?’

      I took a message about surgical scrubs while Mrs Brickner searched for shipment manifests and sent an avalanche of papers onto the floor. Uncle Israel looked on, smiling.

      ‘Looks like you could do with a filing clerk, Isabel,’ he said, ‘and Poppy’s a good little tidier-up.’

      Mrs Brickner straightened up and looked at me.

      I didn’t even allow her time to open her mouth.

      ‘No I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m a hopeless tidier. But I’m strong and healthy and I want to do something for the boys at the front.’

      ‘Do you, Poppy?’ she said. ‘Then take off your coat, roll up your sleeves, and report to Room 19.’

      And so I began the next stage of my war effort. I sat at a long table with a dozen other girls, rolling cotton bandages and singing songs.

      Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching

      I spy the Kaiser at the door

      But we’ll get a lemon pie and squash it in his eye

      Then there won’t be a Kaiser anymore

      It