THE MINT. T. E. Lawrence / Lawrence of Arabia

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СКАЧАТЬ in the Depot when I was so fearful of what the other fellows might do to me. Shyness with men was now and for ever overpast after fourteen days, only; long days: but my soul, always looking for some fear to salt its existence, was wondering what seven whole years of servitude would do against the hasty stubbornness which had hitherto buttressed my values. The question took a self-pitiful turn, and I mizzled gently in the white-walled silence, to the minor accompaniment of the cinema orchestra refined into faintness by passage through two buildings and across a hundred yards of air. Surely it must have begun to rain? That trumpet call had an almost liquid beauty.

      The others began to come in from the streets. Animal heat steamed from the dampness of their clothes, with the sweetly-cloying smell of a sheep-pen some October evening. The hairs of their tunics' curling nap were spangled with the first drops of the night's rain. Late-corners were sodden to blackness. Airmen's knees get wet, first, because the edges of our over-coats conduct the drip thither: and the strained cloth over the joint laps up the water in a moment. Life is hard for service men whose spare-clothes are wet through. We have no drying fires: and by day everything, wet or dry, must be folded away to pattern. So it may take a week of night-airing to get them right.

      Cook, the ex-seaman, staggered through the door. At once his pals took charge. One hastened to put down his bed while another stretched him on the hut form and stripped him. Together they tucked him up: in turn they held his basin while he vomited. Some laughed at his plight, but the seniors checked them, saying, 'Poor bugger: he's properly loaded.' The sense was that one of us had met misfortune. James, our young and very proud acetylene-welder, sneered with the uncharity of the not-yet-fallen. 'Cunt shouldn't bastard-well drink if he can't carry it.' 'Wait' said Peters angrily, 'till you grow up and a man offers you a wet.'

      As I lay dozing, snatches of these Saturday conversations shouted through the din on three sides of my lying-place assaulted my ears. 'Jock had a pot tonight in the wet canteen.' 'Bollocks: the barman only shook his bloody apron at him, and he went arse-ways on the fucking floor.' 'They do the hesitation and the chain in the same movement.' 'Golly, I didn't half want it: she fair lifted.' 'He swore he'd been on sherry and bitters all fucking night, and it was only bastard-well twenty-past six, and the bloody bar hadn't opened till six.' 'Her eyes were starey, like a haddock's: gave my fucking arse-hole a headache.' 'The poshest guy had white shoes, and white flannel slacks, and his blue tunic. Boy, he looked bloody smart.' 'If we're daft they're fucking lunatics at Rugby.' 'What about the brooches lost? The M.C. calls Silence, any Lady lost a brooch? See all the tarts grab their tits.' 'Stoke's famous for cracked pots.' 'Anyway, it doesn't take six cunting towns to make our burg.' 'One snaky piece had a low dress, and she shimmied.'

      A fescennine court-martial, some beds off, woke all to full attention, it was so loud. Sailor's rich voice, beer-polished, rose and fell across China's snarl. Lofty was being charged with blanket-drill. 'Swinging the dolphin' Sailor called it with a lapse into seafaring. Corporal Abner moved up two beds to interfere if the parties fell to demonstration: but it ended in alcoholic laughter, by good hap. Drunkenness sometimes unbridles the flesh, as nightmare hounds out the brain.

      Without in the darkness the rain affirmed itself. Closer columns of raindrops bore down on the supine earth and drove all life to cover. Lights out came at last, to my craving ear. Silence wiped out their horrid babel and let the rain-sound, already ruling the outer air, win the dark hut and rule it too. There was no moon, only a road-lamp glimmering through the windows to pencil edges of light along the roof-beams and their gallows of rafters, overhead. Very deep in the night I woke again, because a squall lashed our windows. Its wind had cleared half the sky and betrayed the moon's disc wobbling in the wet-filmed panes.

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