Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Constable and his ironic distance from his frightful wound and from the regimen of face-remaking operations that he had endured was as much a tonic to her and Slattery as they had once tried to be to him.

Unexpectedly but in view of a further improvement at the numbers brought up by the algebraic formula applied to clearing stations by headquarters, Freud and Sally and a few others received orders signed by Bright to take leave. Without Charlie, Paris would not offer enough. So Sally decided to try to get to Amiens and north to Boulogne to visit Naomi at the Australian Voluntary before taking the Blighty ship. She had a hankering to visit Captain Constable and to see one of the fatuous West End shows. But on the way she wanted to talk to Naomi about Charlie, and the swiftness of Leo’s death as a sign of the imbalance of things.

The truck journey to Amiens took two of her available hours, and the train for Boulogne left on time since it fed the arteries of the war. In the train she slept almost without interruption in a near-empty first-class compartment of comfortable velvet. She reached the Gare Centrale and signed herself in to the Red Cross nurses’ home and found she could send a messenger by bike to Château Baincthun. Waiting to hear from Naomi, she walked towards the port and managed to reach a lookout on the ancient walls, from which she could see the entire drama of the place. Camouflaged troopships were arriving with soldiers and leaving with wounded and men on leave. Along the beaches bathing cabins weren’t disgorging many swimmers but she saw a man with one leg emerge and hop across the wet sand, determined to encounter the late summer sea.

She made her way back to the hostel along narrow workers’ streets where barefooted boys played rough games and looked up from their little brutalities to see her pass. Future poilus, she thought, who would be sent to fight for the right to their squalor.

By the time she got back from her walk Naomi was outside the hostel looking peaked and concerned. Her face was transfigured when she saw Sally, and the sisters embraced without any complications or reticence or subtle suspicion or begrudging. Now—with all distance between them vanished—they went looking for a café. Naomi, Sally could see, had been altered by the loss of Mitchie and Kiernan to something simpler, more intense and direct. Sally had once thought her complexity would baffle all science. Now Naomi carried on her face a look of the most straightforward joy at reunion, of happiness unanalyzed and unapologized for. She also looked older—or at least ageless—and still thinner. As much as any soldier, she too needed a peace.

I had an idea, said Naomi, once they had ordered their coffee. It’s a beautiful afternoon and the hospital is just five miles inland. Are you well enough to walk?

Sally was tired, but nonetheless felt exhilaration at the idea of a hike. They set off with the sun high and mists of insects tumbling in the air above the crops of wheat and barley that the sisters would see through gaps in hedges and over farm gates. Fields of flax bloomed pale-blue and blowflies troubled the hindquarters of cattle. This country was not as flat as the battle areas—the hedgerows climbed genuine slopes that were steeper than the mere slight ridges for which tens of thousands had died further east.

It seemed to Sally it was a time as far off as childhood since they had walked like this together in country roads. She spoke briefly of Charlie and more of Leo and the untowardness of all that. Naomi talked of the campaign she and Lady Tarlton were engaged in for liberating Kiernan. The many eminent people they’d written to. He had now been sent to Aldershot Military Prison—the Glasshouse, whose inmates were considered unfit for visits. Still, Naomi was trying to organize one. Trying to imagine what his life was like plagued her imagination. What sort of men might guard and bully him? she asked Sally, not expecting an answer. Certainly men who gave him no credit for the Archimedes or Lemnos or service in France.

In any case Lady Tarlton had told her—as Naomi further explained to her sister—that it was likely that, should war end, civil lawyers could be introduced into the equation, men who could argue a case like Ian’s all over again in a world where reinforcements were no longer the constant cry of generals. Lady Tarlton said she knew a number of such lawyers—fellows who’d represented suffragettes. How they would be paid, Lady Tarlton did not say.

Of course, I’m willing to spend my savings, Naomi continued, and Ian’s father is—I think—affluent. And certainly devoted to his son. And I’ve never found that Lady Tarlton makes a boast on which she does not come good. So I have champions and I have possible resources. Well, that’s my rave and I apologize it takes so long. But now, your Charlie. What of him?

There was less Sally could say. She couldn’t broach the adventure in the hotel at Ailly. And the rest was all tedious and uninterrupted anxiety. There was no earthly power to whom she could write on Charlie’s behalf.

He never seems to be my Charlie, she said. First he’s the army’s. Then he’s his own man. It’s because he’s unownable, I think, that I love him.

Naomi laughed. Well, now, she said. That’s you, that’s Sally exactly.

Sally stared ahead, shielding her eyes so that she could scan the road for potential perils. Naomi reached and enclosed Sally’s hand in her own.

Look, she said, as if to distract her sister. It was along here—in that little dip in the road—that the limousine was thrown on its side and went careering. And poor Mitchie…

This kindly and shady summer stretch—with a slight kink before the trees around the château—hove into view. They both inspected the patch of road as if its tragedy could be reread and perhaps adjusted.

Naomi said, I had a visit from Mrs. Sorley’s son. He seems a big, handy boy. Another one to worry about though.

Sally privately thought she would swap Mrs. Sorley’s son for Charlie’s safety any day. Of course there was guilt attached to doing the deal in her head—Charlie for the other boy. As if there was in fact someone to make the contract with.

It was strange when I met young Sorley, said Naomi. We were trying to feel as if we were stepbrother and stepsister—he made the bravest attempt at it, poor boy. He took the trouble to come here in the first place. I hope we can sit down at some time and have real conversations.

Sally took thought and then said, It used to take us Durance girls a long time to get to know people like that. But we’re getting better at it, I think.

Yes. Taciturn, that’s what they call us. Standoffish. Were you aware people called us that?

Not you, insisted Sally.

Oh yes, said Naomi. Me more than you. They never used the word “shy.” Well, I suppose people think, why use a good word when you can use a bad. I think that on balance you’re much better at being social than I am. I felt you got on quicker with girls like Leo and Freud and Slattery.

You must be really bad then, said Sally, and they laughed together at the affliction of their genealogy.

Sally stayed at the château for two days—meeting Airdrie and the English Roses and the military surgeon and the young ward doctors, and sharing Naomi’s room. Sometimes she went with Naomi into the wards to do dressings and irrigations and to make beds. Otherwise she walked men around the garden. The English Red Cross nurses were awed to see an army sister descend to a menial level, and one said, You Australians—you’ll do anything! as if the Durance girls were exceptionally free-spirited colonials.

As they sat in bed, Naomi told her the story of Major Darlington who—went the authorized version—had chosen between the respectability of base hospitals and the favor of other surgeons over Lady Tarlton’s company.