Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Dearest Naomi, I know you are busy until late at night. But could you write a letter to the deputy provost marshal, Australian Corps, and tell him of your knowledge of my conscientious objection? Could you also ask Mr. Sedgewick if he could write and mention our meetings with the Committee of Clarity? I know this is tedious for you, my love, but I am pleased to be able to allay your fears. The provosts treat me with every sympathy. I just wish if possible to avoid ending up in a prison in Britain—who would not wish that? In the meantime, we take comfort from the fact that the Australian commanders still refuse to impose the death sentence for my sort of behavior. I hate to think there may be some poor British Quaker, or even Canadian, who has been trapped in this peculiar way and could be executed.

She took the letter to Lady Tarlton. Oh my dear heavens, said Lady Tarlton after reading it. Would you like me to write too?

You’d consider that, would you?

Yes. You must go to Amiens at once and take a letter from me. As if anyone would want to pretend to be a Quaker.

Naomi did not comment on this curious compliment. Lady Tarlton quickly assembled all manner of warrants to allow her to travel. They both knew it would not be a comfortable journey since Amiens was at the very crux of the British position along the Somme and was known to be so by the enemy.

When she arrived in Amiens, after a journey of many delays, and found her way to a military office near the entrance to the station, she was told that the prison was five kilometers north and to the west of the river. No, no transport. She should try to take a taxi.

She went to a hotel and found a lazy porter and risked giving him a handful of francs to find her a cab. The cab driver was told to expect a similar bounty. So in the back of his taxi she set off across the canals and at last through the suburbs and out into the countryside. The prison rose up—a fortress—amidst the clouds of a dour plain and its cultivated fields. Arriving at its gate she tried to persuade the taxi driver to wait. But despite all offers of reward he pretended not to understand and drove off. It was no problem—she could walk the five miles back to town.

She went over cold gravel to the wooden postern and noticed a bell to one side that could be rung by hand. This she took to with a will. A British corporal opened the postern. She told him what she wanted and he seemed amenable and asked her to step inside. She found herself in a gatehouse which contained cave-like offices. First she had to sign in. She had to admit it was not exactly like the oppression of the Christians as depicted in Sunday School. The British NCO seemed quite sympathetic that she’d got herself involved with a shirker.

And you’re the fiancée? a sergeant-major asked from a more deeply placed desk of the office.

Yes, she said.

Good of you to come and see him, said the man.

He said he’d have a word with the captain, and turned a handle on his telephone. He murmured into the machine very confidentially. Young lady here. Wants to see her fiancé—Australian deep thinker. Serving nurse, named…

He cocked an eye but then looked at the register.

Durance, is it? Durance, he concluded. He looked at another roll book on the table. First Lieutenant Ian Kiernan, Australian Medical Corps. Yes, sir.

He came out from behind a counter and escorted her into the yard and along its thick enclosing wall and through a door. They entered now a further room which was utterly enclosed and totally bare except for a deal table and two fragile-looking chairs. Here he left her.

Naomi waited five minutes and grew more and more depressed by the place, and overwrought by its air of punishment—not anticipated punishment either. But punishment already as good as accomplished. Then there was a noise at the door and two military police armed with pistols brought in Ian. He looked identifiably the same Ian as before, but he was inadequately dressed for the weather—no jacket. They’d taken his braces and his belt so he had to hold up his trousers with a fist bunched at his waist.

The guards took up their posts on either side of the door. One of them announced in a voice of triumph, No, no touching.

And no loud opinions, thank you, said the other in his own loud voice.

Ian smiled. He sat at the table. She wanted of course to hold him but when she reached for his wrist, one of the guards said, Miss…

If you’re so keen on the war, why aren’t you fighting? she said to the guard. She knew it was a doomed argument.

Please, Naomi, Kiernan pleaded.

I’ve heard that one before, Miss, said the provost anyhow. From nearly every shirker.

She realized she must concentrate on Ian.

They are so stupid to lock you up after all this time, she said.

Well, now that I am in prison, the Committee of Clarity has every reason to believe in my sincerity, he said. By the way, Lady Tarlton wrote and said she would use her good offices… They gave me her letter because they were impressed by her title. They’re obviously going to use the same argument as Madame Flerieu. It served her and will serve them. If I was a conscientious objector, I shouldn’t have been in the Medical Corps in the first place. Medical orderlies are ripe to be called on to become riflemen, and they are naïve if they enlist and consider that they will never be asked to pick up a rifle.

But the chief medical officer at the clearing station must know your sincerity.

Oh, yes. But there have been French mutinies and even British ones. And our chaps are making an art form of absence without leave. The authorities have to make a stand, you see, and they are not always exact about how they do that.

He turned his head and she could see a bruise she had not spotted before, running from below his right temple and over his cheek and down his jaw. He put his finger to his lips.

Inexact methods, he murmured. But that’s over now. A rite of passage.

The military policemen maintained their silence.

The strict charge is mutiny, he told her. When I get to the court martial, would you find it possible, my dearest Naomi, to be a witness? If they knew that we were pursuing betrothal under the aegis of the Friends…

Yes, she said. You must insist they call me.

One of the military policemen said time was up.

She said to them, Can’t you give him a jumper? It’s cold today.

All the prisoners have a blanket in their cells, one of them said.

She stood as Kiernan was taken out. Alone in the soulless room, she was overwhelmed by a combination of desire and a feeling of revelatory force. The world was after all malign by its nature and not by exception. Or else it was established that it was wonderful but a madhouse. Young men were smashed for obscure purposes and repaired and smashed again. The Friends were thus the criminals in the planetary asylum.

The trial will be in Amiens in March, the sergeant told her on the way out.

On the morning before the trial, Naomi again left the Château Baincthun—this time she had been summoned as a witness and by an authority superior even to Lady Tarlton’s. Lady Tarlton had declared herself ready to go and speak as to Ian’s character. But since she knew Ian only remotely, she was not summoned.

At the end of a tedious railway journey she reached the Gare d’Amiens, just by the cathedral, and had a dreary walk through streets populated by soldiers to the nurses’ hostel. Here she failed to eat a plate of lumpen food. A ferment of concern had her repeating in her head every argument for Ian’s exoneration. The skein of reasons rolled and unrolled itself there almost by its own volition. Just a few degrees more of intensity and she felt she would be in the streets haranguing military men. In such a state—and occupying a shifting mattress—she failed to sleep. She knew that most of the Australians were up in Flanders and that coming down here to the trial in Amiens was probably an excursion the officers of the court martial welcomed. She hoped that would put them in a kindly frame of mind.