Читать книгу Sand In My Shoes: Coming of Age in the Second World War: A WAAF’s Diary - Joan Rice - Страница 40

Two weeks' interlude between this and the last entry represents a week in the WAAF sickbay with a cold and pink eye and five days in an isolation hospital with measles, separated by two delightful days of sick leave seeing both the Gate Review and Funny Side Up with Eric. I was talking while in sickbay with a girl about platonic friendship, the way you do get talking very late in the night with neither of you tired through too much bed, and she said it never worked because the very fact that you were men and women made one of you at some point, if only very briefly, have feelings for the other. That's true. Sitting beside Eric in Funny Side Up, he in his new undress uniform and I in the unaccustomed femininity of a pretty frock, this dialogue just over between us:

Joan: ‘Mind you've caught my frock.’

Eric: ‘Joan, you're getting me in quite a state.’

Joan: ‘Is that the effect the frock has on you?’

Eric: ‘The frock or you.’

I got the first feeling I had for him of sentimentality but now it's gone and I feel nothing again.

I read somewhere else that a woman who can inspire love and not even feel pity is a dangerous and unhappy character.