Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

You’ll get talkative enough. After a time.

She liked that phrase, “After a time.”

Haven’t you noticed, he went on, that I always choose subjects on which I can be a know-all, and studiously avoid those on which I am ignorant? Viticulture, say, or stamps, or the workings of the internal combustion engine. I am not a Renaissance man. I play my limited strengths, that’s all.

That’s enough for me.

They both became aware that men were looking across the square at them—ravenous for a gram of their shared fervor.

There will be a great outbreak by the enemy, he murmured, and half the men we see here…

But not you.

Certainly not me. I’ve been sent down here to reconnoiter. In case we have to move when the Germans come. Now, I admit I’ve been studying up the cathedral here just to impress you. But it’ll be damned cold in there. First let’s find a café.

They walked across the square. Her distress rose all at once—with a sort of heat.

This coming onslaught…?

Don’t concern yourself, he said. We’re in reserve for now. In any case, up there or down here, they won’t hit us first off.

How do you know?

Because we’re too good for them, he said simply, without a hint of bravado. They won’t hit the Canadians or the British veterans, he went on. They will hit some poor, hapless British army of conscripts—kids just moved up, eighteen-year-olds with a few good old NCOs. That’s one of the flaws of conscription, you see—men undertrained. Divisions that don’t know themselves.

It was surprising to hear him talk like that—as a military analyst, a role he had never adopted before.

The likelihood of coming assaults was far from being the only cause of her fretfulness. There was as they crossed the square the gravitation of their two bodies. She knew he was aware of it as well—if he hadn’t been, it wouldn’t have been gravitation. They sat a little discontentedly in a café—a pause in their ferocious rapport that had to be gone through. He ordered brandy and drank it without coughing—the coughing at cognac was far in his past. Gone with the choirboy features. She drank the light-colored stuff the French called thé . He reached an ungloved hand across the table, and she took it in her open palm and felt the cold rasp of his. Again, the holding of a hand did not attract the attention of the deity here like it did in the Macleay.

You are the best of companions, he said. Do you want to see the cathedral? I mean, for your own sake. Not so that I can blather on…

There was something dizzying about cathedrals, something cleansing too. They were a sort of Gothic autoclave. But she had seen enough for now. She wanted to be with him in a way that did not have to do with architecture.

Charlie, it’s a wonderful big shape. I don’t know what to say.

Look, he told her, there’s one thing I want to see in case it’s pounded to rubble. Could you stand that? It’s called the Beau Dieu—the handsome God. It’s in the doorway. Do you mind…?

So, she thought, he still has a fascination outside of the larger issue. Or was he nervous and the handsome God a means of delay? She told him, Of course not. I’d like to see it too.

They walked up to the cathedral of mismatched towers and found—between the doors—the smiling stone Christ trying to bring mercy to naked sinners who entered the maw of hell on the inner fluting of that great stone entry. Christ stood benignly between the doors, hand raised in the calmest compassion but also regret. It was not a god of omnipotence but of grief for his children.

And then inevitably they went in. She insisted by instinct—as if to let a kind of longing accumulate—that having seen the Beau Dieu they might as well finish the business.

It was not the exquisite experience of their tour of Rouen Cathedral. But that was not this cathedral’s fault. Their minds were on a different order of meeting. They proceeded down the sandbagged nave and saw fire marks on some of the walls. All the stained glass had been removed. So too had many of the statues from the side chapels. But the altar pieces were still ornate. They both worked at being engrossed by this. But all this huge piling of artful stone, all this steepling, all those vaultings which had resisted the temptation of gravity for so long—these did nothing but delay the aims of this meeting.

In one of the side alcoves—made deeper and more shadowy by the extra heaped sandbags against the main wall—they seized on each other so instantaneously that neither of them could have sworn who was the instigator. There was as profound and languorous a kiss as the place would permit. She could smell the sugary potency of brandy in his mouth. Feeling she had passed through into unfamiliar country where the currency of normal self was not recognized, she said after a while, I was speculating on how long it would take before we reached this point.

He laughed low and close to her face. Not only did I wonder how long, he said, but I made provision, should you wish… I don’t know how to say this. There’s a place north of here. Few soldiers, if any, there… in Ailly-sur-Somme. There’s a decent enough little hotel on the western bank. I’ve booked two rooms and have a driver bribed to take us out there—he thinks it’s just for a dinner in the country. And indeed we’ll have dinner. And then we can come back afterwards or we can stay there.

She rubbed his surprisingly smooth jaw. The same part of the face, she was reminded, that had been shorn off Officer Constable. She must fight that Durance habit still entrenched in her: everything that presented itself to be rejoiced in had to be matched up at once with something that must be mourned and feared.

Oh, we’ll definitely be staying, she told him like a woman who knew what she was doing—the sort of woman she’d never suspected herself to be.

You said definitely ? he asked with a sort of disbelief.

Yes. And if you lose so-called respect for me, I don’t care.

Why would I lose respect?

It is only afterwards that conversations of this nature take on their character of ordinariness, of things said before by the millions—as if somewhere in the Book of Common Prayer or some less elevated document there was a prescribed exchange not only of the plain vows of marriage but of those of seduction too. Yet at their congress of two in the alcove, everything seemed new. Sally had an ambition to be a reckless woman—having seen and envied it in others. And now it was achieved, and she was loved by Charlie for it.

We need another café, he told her, as if he could absorb these new things only by taking a seat. Wait a moment, he said. No more for now.

They went out and found one and sat at a table not warmly placed. This time they had coffee.

Now look, said Charlie. His eyes were direct but she could see a color of embarrassment even in that climate-hardened face. This is a fatal or glorious thing I’m asking, he said. Because I’ve booked two rooms, but that’s useless. The madame won’t choose to be deceived. It’s a very different case from the British, who—I believe, anyhow—can choose to pretend that adjoining rooms are proper enough. But that’s beside the point.

She thought now that she might be more eager than he was but could not find a way to tell him that, to tell him to be easy about it. At the same time she liked his nervousness and was fed by it.

I didn’t know that in the end we’d need to discuss all this tawdry stuff, he said. These cheap little deceptions. All this dancing with shadows. I’m sorry for it.

She held his wrist in a way which really suggested, Get on with it!

Why does it have to be like planning a crime? he asked.