Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

And she turned to the matron-in-chief who stood beside her and asked, Matron, could you refresh my memory? The general’s name again, please?

General John Monash, the woman declared coldly. Milady.

That’s it, said Lady Tarlton to Naomi, the matron listening in. That’s the name. Monash. Now at his command are more than one hundred and twenty thousand of the finest men on earth! Oh yes, some of them are rough-hewn or not hewn at all. But trees that stand. That’s it. Bravo, General Monash!

The general’s automobile entered the gates and orderlies with rifles presented arms. Young nurses saluted because here was their chief. Their chief and his men—it was said—would lead the armies of salvation and redeem the known world and avenge the sad retreat only now ending. Monash’s men—it was believed especially by Australians—could save the bacon, the beef, the kingdoms of the west. This was the man who had in the emergency driven back the Germans through Villers-Bretonneux. No maidenly yell of approbation could be too strident for him.

He dismounted his vehicle—a middle-aged man heavy in the hips and yet somehow youngish and crisp in movement. He introduced himself to the chief medical officer and then walked along the line of nurses attended by the matron-in-chief. Soon he reached Lady Tarlton. Lady Tarlton! he said with enthusiasm, as they wrung each other’s hands. You and your husband were so generous to me and my wife in Melbourne. I’ve heard of your Australian hospital. I’m afraid that like me it attracts its critics. But since I feel I know you, I say, good for you! Yes, good for you!

I might as well tell you, stated Lady Tarlton, my efforts seem to be an embarrassment to many. Enthusiasm is my great fault.

The general said, If that were a disease, I wish others would catch it. I wish it was of an epidemic scale. As for embarrassment, you know that I am a source of embarrassment too. A mere citizen soldier. And… well, the other thing. And on the other thing, I must again thank you for the invitations to Government House.

She introduced him to her matron—as she called Naomi. An interesting and complicated face, Naomi thought, an activity behind the eyes and an engagement in all around him—in her as well. None of the oafish oblivion of Lord Dudley.

If you have a moment, said Tarlton in a lowered voice, I must ask you about Miss Durance’s fiancé. A medical supply officer, he has been imprisoned for refusing to take up a rifle. And yet he is a Quaker and made his pacifism clear when he enlisted. I am sure you of all people could not stand by and see such religious persecution.

Naomi could see—from a visible jolt in the general’s eyes—that he was not too pleased to be distracted by such a reproach on a ceremonial visit.

Why do you say that I of all people … Are you referring to my Jewishness? If so…

No, no, not that. I mean you as a citizen and a progressive.

Naomi decided to care little for the embarrassment of generals.

My fiancé, General Monash, has been imprisoned in Millbank because he is a member of the Society of Friends and served the Medical Corps and has done so since Gallipoli. To be of service in that regard was his motive for enlisting. But the order that he take up a rifle… that was something he could not consent to.

There was a darkness about the general’s brow. You realize we can’t have people making choices, he told Lady Tarlton as if she were the relay point for Naomi. You must understand above all that our French and English brethren are outraged by our leniency towards our own men when they are so stern towards theirs. I have to say, Lady Tarlton, I wish this matter had been raised in another forum.

Lady Tarlton said, If I were sure, General, that we would share some other forum, then I would choose to raise it then rather than now.

I plead with you, General, said Naomi, aware that she and her patron Lady Tarlton were sabotaging the event but willing to do it if she could simply by those means engrave Ian’s case on the general’s memory. This is a man—Ian Kiernan—who has done good service and is no coward, but a sincere Quaker.

You said Quaker already, the general murmured with some coldness.

May we write to you? asked Naomi. Will you remember us?

Oh, said the general, I think it’s pretty well assured I shall remember you.

Then, thank you, said Naomi. Thank you earnestly, sir.

Yes, thank you, Colonel… no, I’m sorry, General, said Lady Tarlton, with her laugh a little like a shaken chandelier. When we first met, you were…

Yes, said the general, a militia colonel when you first met me, Lady Tarlton. Things change and wars elevate us to heady heights.

And I rejoice in your appointment, General, asserted Lady Tarlton.

Thank you. Excuse me.

And he moved away to visit the rest of the line of nurses.

Lady Tarlton turned to Naomi. I think we did very, very well, she whispered—though the rest of the reception line were at least mystified at why the renowned general had spent so much time with the eccentrics of the Australian Voluntary. The matron-in-chief wore a face drained of all hope. This was to be a meritorious, pleasant, smooth day. She walked on fixedly by the general’s side. But she knew the occasion had been plundered.

At Corbie one afternoon Sally could feel what might be the onset of the flu everyone was discussing. At some clearing stations they said it had felled—at least temporarily—one out of three, and in a few, half the personnel. Sally suffered a shiver and a leadenness of the joints and throat ache. She took her own temperature and saw it had escalated in a few hours, which was said to be one of the marks of the thing—rapidity of onset. She presented her symptoms to the matron and was taken to a tented ward where twelve nurses who had caught it were tended by other nurses wearing masks.

One of them said to her, How ridiculous, to have a spring and summer flu when there was no real winter one.

She suffered high-fever delirium in which she was back in the cold-to-the-core water after the Archimedes. And up swam her mother with an unfamiliar smile and said, I can teach you to let go.

Mama!

She was later told she cried that. Were you dreaming about your mother, love? she was asked.

Her exchange with her mother involved gratitude. You knew I had determined to commit a crime and you died of your own will to prevent it.

She also encountered Charlie Condon—he was engaged in painting the wall of a trench yellow and wanted her to admire it.

When she was clearer headed, she saw Slattery wearing a mask. She had come to see her and told her how there had been an advance of some miles and everyone was going partway back towards Deux Églises—the trucks of equipment were loaded again. Amiens and all things holy were saved for now.

A doctor said, I don’t think you have the flu. Your symptoms are not quite right. Yes, you had quick onset, but you caught something else—something that crawled out of the trenches and struck you.

She was taken from the contagious ward and put in a separate room in a medical ward just in case, but soon was permitted to walk around—feeling limp perhaps, but confident of revival. A brief postcard came from Charlie to say he was well, and a long-delayed and redirected note from Naomi, which broke to her the news that Ian Kiernan was in prison in England. The length of sentence took her breath away.

The influenza struck Château Baincthun when one of the Red Cross nurses collapsed. The pathology lab run by Darlington had fallen into disuse and throat swabs had to be sent to the overworked laboratory in Boulogne so that the nature of the thing could be confirmed. The nurse was placed in a separate room and declined with a terrible rapidity, dying in the afternoon of the following day. She was a woman exhausted by work and very thin and the common wisdom was that this was an influenza crafted—like howitzers—to take the young in particular.