Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Oh holy God! he said.

Yes, Sally uttered—but even then she was still the witness as well as the participant.

She heard his magnificent helpless whimper—he could not achieve more than the uttering of animal sounds—and felt the gush of him inside her and heard that strange, boyish laugh as if something difficult had been achieved. Then it was a naked, sated child she held.

Oh holy Christ, he said, to think a bullet could deprive a man of you. Of your magnificent body. And of everything you’ve given me.

She smiled against his face. He kissed her familiarly and at length. All that caution he had shown before had blown away.

She told him with a prophetic certainty, You won’t get any harm up there. Not now I’ve found you.

But she was full of fear nonetheless.

How can you know that? he asked, already three-quarters sunk in belief.

I don’t know how I know.

He kissed her. You have become an oracle, he said.

Her witness—the inner assessor who had hung above this bed—was heartily pleased. Now she had no excuse but to give up mental exercises. Now the witness could withdraw and leave the participants to their chosen sport. Body to body. That, said the departing arbiter, was fine.

Charlie got up and poured some wine. But neither of them drank it. For need had recurred.

Thirty hours later she was in Mellicourt. The question was whether they would recognize the newness in her. But when she went into the nurses’ mess there was another distraction. She found Slattery there—returned—chatting away with Leonora in an easy chair by the stove and giving a good impersonation of never having left.

Ah, Honora said expansively—seeing Sally and standing. She pulled her close. Sally was jolted by a surge of tenderness. Don’t worry, Honora whispered, I know Lionel’s dead. I’ve been working in a head ward at Rouen, and they take so long to die, poor chaps. In the scales of luck or of God’s will, or whatever you may choose to call it, Lionel was lucky.

She said nothing of Major Bright.

After a convoy arrived at six o’clock the next morning, Sally and Honora worked together in the resuscitation ward as accustomed partners.

In that earliest phase of spring, the two great armies were gathered together with such mutual intent that they could not stop even for one night. Visits in force were made to each other across icy ground and thickets of wire. This was a test of blood—apparently the raiders won if they bled less than the raided upon. Prisoners were taken—or if they weren’t, it was considered a failed ploy. And the guns had their own volition with that sound of unceasing hunger for flesh and membrane.

Just as they had over Deux Églises, at night the Taubes came looking for the town of Mellicourt and the ordnance supply depot beyond it. Sally and others knew that one night they would—by accident or malice—find the new clearing station, since it stood near the end of a light railway and close enough to desired targets. The very sound of these machines was a bruise to the soul.

But in daylight and free time, Major Bright and Slattery walked together down the thawing lanes to Mellicourt. Bright was a private man who had to overcome his edginess at being seen as a courter. So he tried to adopt the stiffness of the physician walking the patient. He had led Honora gently to the acceptance of the death of one lover and was probably a bit ashamed to find himself with ambitions to replace him. The sight of Honora and Bright strolling along struck the women as strangely sentimental—a scene from a time before bombardments.

From Mrs. Sorley—Naomi could think of her under nothing else but her old name—the sewn parcels full of luxuries continued to arrive at Château Baincthun and lighten the dour cuisine of the Voluntary Hospital. According to a letter she had written the previous autumn, Mrs. Sorley was fretting. Her son Ernest had volunteered that spring and was aboard a convoy for France. It was, she said, not so fashionable to volunteer now that people knew something of the truth of things. “I have been so bold as to give him your address. He is not a bad boy at all. If he should call on you—and if you have the time—I would be very grateful if you could treat him as a relative as I have every confidence you will. I must say you Durances are fine-grained people and he is lucky to have you as a stepsister.”

And so in the first days of spring Ernest turned up at Château Baincthun—a lanky, strong-looking boy Naomi half remembered from the Macleay. He told her he had walked from Boulogne—where he was waiting for the boat to London for leave. He had spent the winter campaigning but as was usual with men he gave few details. In fact, when she was called to meet him, she thought that what he had been through seemed to sit easily with him. Unlike officers he wore no gloves and not even the mittens the orderlies at the château wore. The cold, wet hike from town had not seemed a hardship to him. She took him to drink tea in the room that served as the nurses’ mess.

Sorry if I’m a bit in the way, he said. He did do an impersonation of a clodhopper in his army boots. And when she introduced him to Lady Tarlton, he was shy and spoke carefully, like a questioned adolescent.

It’s my mother writing every week, he explained to Naomi. “Have you seen the girls?” Not that I’ve got any objection to that. Except I know you’re busy…

And he made a gesture to the east, that casual reference to the huge zone of mire and blood. He drank his tea thirstily.

Isn’t it funny to think that after the war we will be stepbrother and -sister? I think it’s a real bargain on Mum’s part. I always thought you Durance girls had a kind of style. Well, as long as you can stand the rough Sorleys…

Have you had any wounds? she asked.

I had the gas a bit, he admitted. The stuff that hangs around and everyone’s hoarse with it. But I wasn’t bad enough to go to the regimental aid post. You know, it’s a shock at first. You go into stunts where you don’t think a fly would live, let alone a man. But somehow you go on fitting yourself in amongst the lumps of lead. We’re doing pretty well up in Flanders. Showing them a thing or two.

When it was time for him to go back to the camp she had a motorcar—not the fatal big black-and-white one—brought round to take him. She did not want him to travel alone on foot in the cold.

They waited on the steps for the vehicle. She asked, Have you seen my sister?

No. But if she’s at a clearing station… It’s amazing who you meet here if you stay long enough. I’ll wait till after Fritz is finished with this big push they say is on the cards. Then I’ll see her.

Hey, you’ve got a lot of authority, he said, winking at her as the car arrived and he got in. The Durances are a step up for the Sorleys.

No. Your mother says that. But she’s wrong.

She watched the car roll away amidst the skeletal trees. Now she had another child to be concerned for.

A strange thing was observed at the clearing station in Mellicourt. Sally became aware of military police arriving and taking away orderlies. Not all of them, but a sampling. They were not under arrest, she was told by the nurses. They were to be transformed into infantry—even if that left the wards shorthanded.

These events had their impact at the Château Baincthun too. Naomi received an urgently scrawled note from Ian Kiernan.

I’m afraid I write this by grace of a provost sergeant major. I am in the old gaol at Amiens. It’s a bit like a gaol out of an opera. They have gleaned nonessential men from the Medical Corps and ordered them to take up arms and go to the front. I have been considered nonessential to the future of my clearing station. I realize my naïveté, in that I did not ever think this a possible outcome. Madame Flerieu was right. But having refused to obey the order, here I am.