The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally
Some NYD(S) were still wandering the station—quivering and dazed or making speeches—and it turned out an orderly had chased one down on the Deux Églises road. Orderlies retrieving such men were leading them back to their ward by the hand and shoulder, brotherly to a degree which caused Sally to shed tears as she returned to the gas ward. She wondered how it had been in the resuscitation ward during all the noise and fire and with the bombs making their random and absurd choices.
When day broke there was time for the nurses to return to their mess, glimpsing beyond the wards—more clearly now—the two-thirds-burned-out theatre hut. By accident—so Sally understood from Freud—it had been near empty at the time. The surgeons were in the admissions hut. Two orderlies had been blown wide.
At their mess table the women bolted down sugar-laced tea and ate bread which they doused in Queensland treacle as if to reembrace their dear, safe, sleeping home continent. Major Bright came in after beating on the door and told them with a mannish innocence and irrelevance—almost touching—that he had recommended them all for Military Medals. Those who stayed in their wards or had worked at the fire or had mercifully dealt with others or had placed tables or basins over men to make them feel safer or had put others on the floor and beneath their beds—even as orderlies yelled at them to get into the trenches. But, he said—as if it were a great concern arising from that mad night—it was a military lottery that would define who got the decorations.
They listened because he was such a good man. But military ambition burned very low in the women. It was amusing to Honora that the man she had carried from the chest ward was not after all a German but an English captain—and not only an Englishman but a German-speaking, renowned novelist named Alexander Southwell, the nephew of one Lord Finisterre who had been formerly a British cabinet minister. It was idly assumed that if there were medals they would go Honora’s way. But the chief remark her act attracted was wonder at how a woman of five foot six inches had—in the fury of the moment—carried a six-foot man, limp and awaiting chest surgery, from his ward to the trench.
It was an issue which did not delay Honora in the least as she went back to duty immediately after breakfast. She was all business. The mere sentiment of compassion had left her. She pursued it all in a fierce, mechanical way. There was something to do with Dankworth mixed up in it.
Let her go, Matron Bolger said. I’ll fetch her back for a rest in an hour or so.
Sally went back to her ward too but returned to the mess for a cup of tea before collapsing. Most of her gas cases had been moved to evacuation ambulances. Now it was up to the base hospitals to soothe and save them. Rest lay ahead since nothing could happen until the surgical theatres were resupplied. Honora returned with Matron Bolger—you could hear their chat before they reached the tent.
Karla Freud also arrived. She had been helping in the evacuation ward that morning—attending to men as they were loaded on rear-bound ambulances. Entering the tent now, she saw Honora and Sally and a few others—Leo too—and stood contemplating them. Honora was writing something on the card table—they all feared it was to that bureau and that the blasts of the night had unsettled her again.
Look, you’ve probably heard of my surgeon, Karla Freud stated. Boyton. He’s an American from the British Medical Corps transferred here. Well, you can stop speculating. It’s all true. I’m letting you know in case anything happens. Both of us might have been incinerated together last night, and weren’t. That means there are two reasons why my friends from Lemnos can stop thinking, “Poor old Karla.”
Then she sat down. Sally did not know whether she was supposed to congratulate her or be silent. Are we all suddenly mad? she wondered.
That’s good news for us too, said Leo—exactly the right answer. I hope you have a happy life.
All right then, said Freud. Thank you.
And so? asked Leo. A few more details, please.
His mother’s English, father’s American, his practice is in Chicago. He’s not Jewish and that means lamentations will be uttered in Melbourne. But in Chicago I won’t hear them. Only thing . . .
She winked here.
It’s the end of my dreams of the stage. Women are fools. We can’t help offering ourselves up. Living sacrifices. That’s us.
She turned to Honora, who was back-on at a side table writing her fluent letter.
Honora, she called in a frank but soft voice. Honora, dearie! Listen to me. He’s dead, that kind picnicker from Lemnos. He’s dead. He doesn’t deserve to be, but he is. There aren’t any more theories you can make up. No more letters, for God’s sake.
Honora ceased writing but sat rigid and without turning. Freud moved to her and put her hands on those stiffened, raised shoulders. But a particular sound—of air being shredded—arose again. The Klaxon began to wail. The planes had returned and could be heard, low and fast. Sally stiffened to withstand the first jolt of a dropped bomb. The women rushed outside—they could not help themselves. When the reverberating explosion came—though it must have been a kilometer along the road—it threatened to loosen Sally’s bladder. An orderly sergeant came yelling, Dugouts, ladies. Not wards! Split trench and dugouts!
But Sally ran to the resuscitation ward to see how many of last night’s cases were too damaged to be moved. There was nothing to be done for these men, but she wanted to know the numbers. Two pale-faced staff nurses were there, looking startled but steadfast. They had been tending perhaps four cases of whom any informed assessor would say at least three would die. The way the girls stood—so professionally, with their hands half folded in front of them—reminded Sally of Karla Freud’s phrase. “Living sacrifices.”
Yet she too was willing to lose herself.
At her suggestion the three of them did the basin trick—the near-comic business of covering the patients’ faces. It was ridiculous, an exercise in flimsiness and capable of adding to damage. It would be laughed at later. But it seemed a serious duty now. Anything more—to move them beneath their beds—would certainly finish them. For these were men too far gone to survive the journey to the remaining operating theatre, let alone the anesthesia once there. But the idea they would die without nurses present was abhorrent. Meanwhile the Archies provided the continuous rhythm like minor instruments, the screaming descent of those explosive cylinders adding in the symphonic climaxes.
Sally uselessly took a hand of one of the patients—gently, as if feeling for a pulse. As she stood she saw Major Bright in the doorway. Will you, for God’s sake— he yelled. But an explosion along the road made him repeat it. Will you, for God’s sake, go to the dugout? Sister Durance, set an example, for God’s sake!
Her two young women stared at him without comprehension.
It is General Birdwood’s order, he roared. She waved the two girls to follow him. She wanted urgently to urinate and feared that if a bomb came near she might be concussed into this indignity.
Bright ran at their side, shepherding them to a slit trench, helping them jump down and leading them along the trench to a dugout—a covered structure Sally had never entered before, a dark pit thickly roofed with timber and loads of sandbags. As she went in, Bright held her elbow. His face was red. You have years of training and I have years more. How dare you risk all that!
There were a number of nurses inside sitting on benches. Honora was one of them. There was Freud, who had so recently tried to cure Honora of her delusions. And Matron Bolger.
Honora cried, Matron, this is an absolute bulldust order. The men hate us going.
These are today’s men, the matron told her. Who will nurse tomorrow’s men if you get blown to shreds?
Honora looked sullen. The matron took out a book from her pocket. She patted it with her hand and yelled against the continuous but blessedly distant explosions of bombs. If you do not come here when the Klaxon goes, she told them, it is very likely they will move us out of the casualty clearing stations. The general says he will not have us in danger and will move us
She waved the book in her hand. For now, she announced, I want you to pay your mess bills. Don’t tell me you don’t have money on you.
She opened her book and began to go through the amounts each nurse owed for sherry or lemonade or ginger beer or wine or brandy, and made arrangements for payment—whether or not she received it then and there.
A titanic detonation of the surface above their heads occurred—as these things did—without introduction. They were jolted against each other by the brutal and bullying sound and then drew together and found themselves half deafened. But the matron continued to read.
Slattery, eleven shillings and sixpence. Freud, twelve and eight-pence. Casement, eighteen and seven pence—a lot of extra chocolate bought there, Casement . . .
The Klaxon declared temporary safety had returned long before the matron was finished. But in successive days the sound of aeroplane engines made daytime sleep hard and a woman could not take sleeping draughts at night for fear ambulances would arrive. After the sun had set, the enemy’s aircraft traversed the sky indiscriminately—unable in darkness to tell a baby’s cradle in Deux Églises from the enormous British gun now rumored to be emplaced a few miles west.
There was nothing worse on those summer nights than abandoning the startled, wide-eyed boys—those conscious of the raid but unable to be moved. But nothing was secretly and guiltily better than leaning inwards to listen to that older woman—the matron, the plausible aunt—reading her sums above the varying racket.
These Abnormal Days
These abnormal days Sally breakfasted after night duty in ten minutes. Then she slept till perhaps half past ten in the morning, when a sense of urgency woke her and sent her back to her ward. But at one of those dawns of rushed breakfasts she was interrupted. There’s a fellow here asking for you, a staff nurse told her.
At once she knew. Charlie Condon. If it were him he could annul all the awful days and nights—though that this would happen was merely a notion. She went outside and on the path by the resuscitation hut saw him. He was leaning against the building and a bike was propped up near him. She noticed first that his face had grown somehow older. The features had hardened. It was the face—she thought straightaway—of a knowing warrior. She sensed that he could not only suffer anything imaginable but that he might do it too. It was a greater surprise to see him in this new form than it was simply to see him. He is another man, she considered, as I am another woman. Can we still converse? She dearly wanted to.
Oh, he said, almost as if he hadn’t expected to see her. This has really turned out well. I’d heard you’d been bombed and—I’ve got to say—I was pretty worried. Since we’re in a rest area just now, I borrowed this bike and rode down to see if you were all right.
“Down,” she noticed. That must mean he’d traveled from further north.
Charlie, she said. So kind of you. We’re all top of our form, except not a lot of sleep.
Yes, he said. That’s the way it is up there too. Makes a person a bit crazy, doesn’t it?
But you . . . you look . . .
What? Uglier?
Are you still an artist?
I’m a sketcher still, he reassured her. Do you know, a kiss would give my talent wings. But not possible here, I suppose.
Come and have tea, she told him.
If no ambulance convoy came in before full light they would be able to have a decent talk. And these plain words—these words of no merit at all—seemed the best ones to exchange with a man who must have the terror of the front fixed in his brain. And who had ridden a bike—how many kilometers?—to check if she was safe.
They went into the mess hut.
I can get you whisky, she offered. If you’d like it.
In fact, whisky, stout, brandy—they were all there for the having these days. Nurses could decide that a given patient needed something, and it was there in the pantry. They had begun to use a lot of it in the NYD ward. In a sane world whisky or brandy should not be administered with opiates. But in this world a quick effect was more important.
He said, Whisky would not go amiss by far.
Wait a second, she said, holding up a finger knowingly. She went and fetched him a tin mugful and brought it back. This simple function delighted her beyond measure.
If the matron should come in, she said, pointing to the mug she put down, we can pretend it’s tea.
She poured herself tea and offered her cup towards his.
Your very good health, she said.
She assessed him again. She dared not think that—after all this—he looked like a man who might come through. But that was the case. He always gave her that impression when she saw him, though not when he was away.
It’s a great relief to clap eyes on you, she said.
Relief? he said.
Of course a relief. Here we only see the wounded. It seems—though it can’t be true—that all men must be wounded sooner or later. But tell me again—the sketching . . . ?
I’m doing a bit in the rest areas. But there’s nothing to sketch up there now. A limited palette, you’d say, for painting as well. Black and brown and slimy green-yellow. Not the stuff of aesthetics. The whisky is very good.
Tell me. How far did you cycle?
I don’t know.
He pointed vaguely northwards. It was good for me. And I won’t insult you by saying I haven’t thought of you a lot.
I’ve been concerned for you too.
He smiled into the mug of whisky. Come on now. Aunts can be concerned. And you’re not my aunt. I will accept something such as, I’ve been thinking a great deal about you too, Charlie. Or else, I haven’t given you a blessed thought.
It’s so hectic here. But I fear one of the men on stretchers might be you. You’re on my mind a lot.
Ah! said Charlie, who had wanted to hear that. On your mind a lot. I’m pretty gratified to be told that, Sally. That’ll suit me.
She was aware of nurses moving busily about them now—fetching breakfast plates and giving the banal nods and winks. Would there be more winking amongst them—and smart-aleck rolling of eyes in her direction—when Charlie Condon was gone again? Well, of course. That price must be paid.
I have a belief that if I think of you too much something will happen to you.
Well, no fooling you clearing station girls. You know enough to know there are some days a man can’t believe he’ll live. And nights, ditto. And if you live through the day and night there’s another impossible day and night to come. Yet . . . there I was this morning. On my bike. You can’t overstate how important this journey was to me.
It brought Sally herself a kind of exaltation to hear a sentiment like that.
I’m pretty impressed myself, she assured him.
The tent was near empty now. The others had got over their whispers and decided to give the two of them a time to themselves. Charlie reached for her wrist and she wished something more vigorous would happen. But it wasn’t possible there.
I’ll need to be back by seven o’clock this evening. That means I must set out on my bike about half past three. Just to be sure. The roads get a bit chancy towards dusk and there’s a lot of traffic.
It was as if he were explaining why the hand on wrist would have to do her for now.
It’s a pity, he laughed, a photographer from the Macleay Argus doesn’t come in now and photograph us. The two brave Macleay warriors.
She said, It’s hard to believe the Macleay still exists.
But unfortunately its waters now suddenly flowed back into her, washing along on their surface the still not fully absorbed ending they’d given their mother. It had all come back sharply, as she knew it must. No quantity of massacre could reduce it to a small taint. And Sally knew Charlie must be told about it if he intended to take the more energetic journeys she wanted him to take to keep tracking her down in the French or Flemish countryside.
Oh, I’m sure it’s still
The matron appeared briefly and said, Good morning, Sister; good morning, Captain. It was then Sally saw the nuggets of insignia on his straps which showed him to be that. A captain.
He whispered, Don’t be impressed. The way things are just now there are fifteen men to a platoon and sixty to a company. But they are building us up with new blood. Forcing old hands like me up in rank.
New blood? she asked in horror.
I could have chosen better words, he conceded.
They decided to walk to town past the cemetery and a barley field which a farmer—gambling against a movement of the front line—had bravely planted. The road entered the town from the south. A two-storey official building near the mairie had a shattered roof, but people moved normally in the streets. Big-bosomed farmers’ wives shopped and talked to each other in the open day.
I love these little towns, Charlie told her. I keep sketching them. But don’t worry, I won’t be sketching today.
He held out a hand towards the landscape on the edge of town.
You know, I look at all this, so very nice, very ordered. Farmed for thousands of years. And it does call up by contrast where we’re from. I mean to say, what a valley, the Macleay! It’s a valley that deserves a great painter. It’s a place that almost defies a person to become a painter. It says, Come on, have a go, you useless hayseed! And it would explode Cézanne’s palette. He’d have to go reaching for the tubes of paint he doesn’t use here. That’s what we’ve got, the Australians. We’ve got the place but we just don’t have the artists. Up here, gloom and—admittedly—subtlety. And artists? My God. They’ve got wonderful artists to burn. I had leave, by the way, and went to all the galleries.