World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, English
Later on, after many cricket matches, we agreed that it was
desirable to get up entertainments in the camp. There was no local
talent, or none available at first, but I had the good luck to meet
one day a very amiable lady who undertook to run a whole
entertainment herself. She also promised not to turn round and walk
away when she saw the piano.
We stirred ourselves, determined to rise to the occasion. We made a
platform at the end of the dining-room. I took care not to ask, and I
do not know, where the wood for that platform came from. We
discovered among us a man who said he had been a theatrical scene
painter before he joined the R.E. He can never, I fancy, have had
much chance of rising to the top of his old profession, but he
painted a back scene for our stage. It represented a country cottage
standing in a field, and approached by an immensely long, winding,
brown path. The perspective of that path was wonderful. He also
painted and set up two wings on the stage which were easily
recognisable as leafy trees. For many Sundays afterwards I stood in
front of that cottage with a green tree on each side of me during
morning service.
Another artist volunteered to do our programmes. His work lay in the
orderly-room and he had at command various coloured inks, black,
violet, blue, and red. He produced a programme like a rainbow on
which he described our lady visitor as the "Famous Favourite of the
Music Hall Stage." She had, in fact, delighted theatre goers before
her marriage, but not on the music hall stage. I showed her the
programme nervously, but I need not have been nervous. She entered
into the spirit of the thing.
A thoughtful sergeant, without consulting me, prepared for her a
dressing-room at the back of the stage. A modest man himself, he
insisted upon my leading her to it. We found there a shelf, covered
with newspaper. On it was a shaving mirror, a large galvanised-iron
tub half full of cold water, a cake of brown soap, a tattered towel,
and a comb. Also there was a tumbler, a siphon of soda water, and a
bottle of port.
"The dears," she said. "But I can't change my frock; I've nothing but
what I stand up in. What shall I do?"
I glanced at the bottle of port; but she shrank from that.
"I must do something," she said. "I'll powder my nose." The shaving
mirror, at least, was some use.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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