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PARTISAN REVIEW
appear, he nudges whoever is with him and says, "Look who's here." He
cannot be a really strong individual because it is obvious that he says
things like this to make himself feel big, but he does put over quite a sue·
cessful act as a strong man, and he is one of our small·arms experts as
well as a lance-bombardier artificer. However, he interests me for one
reason only. He is the only man who admits or claims to have been with
"Dummy'' himself in a sexual sense.
He told the story to Bombardier Allen. He stood outside "Dummy's"
house in the high street and beckoned her out. She came bringing with
her a pencil and paper, on which she wrote, "I am not well." Marshall
did not cotton on to this at first, and they went out for a walk. When
Marshall set about fixing the girl he found out what was wrong, but she
gave him what he described as "a ... against the wall."
As I say, Marshall is the only man who personally admits or claims
to have been with "Dummy." But there is no lack of stories about the
curious, brutish noises of appreciation she makes when confronted with
spectacles of virility or directly assailed by it. Her face could I suppose
be a whore's face, but it is very appealing. She is pale, and she is heavily
and rather badly made-up, but she wears pretty colours, and she takes so
much interest in whatever is going on around her. I saw her last Saturday,
the 12th of July. We were drinking outside Alick's, which was full to
capacity of Protestant Irish celebrating the Battle of the Boyne. "Dummy"
stood at the bottom of the street in a blue dress, laughing with pleasure at
our drunken or half drunken antics and evidently waiting for something
outrageous to happen. She did not go to the dance afterwards. As the
rest of the village whirled round singing "The Sash My Father Wore'' and
"The Green, Grassy Slopes of the Boyne" and screaming as Highland
dancers do, I missed her.
Letter From The Country
D. S. Savage
Dear Friends:
Perhaps you would be interested to have a very brief account of our
existence since the war. There is not really much to tell: quite simply,
when the war broke out we decided the country was more healthy than the
town, and as (a) my wife and child had been sent out near Cambridge at
the beginning of the war under the Government's evacuation scheme, and
(b) our thoughts for some time past had been turning towards a life
in
the country, I relinquished my office job
in
London and joined my family.
After a month or so of living rather miserably billeted upon someone else
in a desolate suburb of jerry-built "residences" clustered round a Victorian
jam-factory, we found this cottage at a very cheap rent in a nearby, and
although ruinous, quite charming village
