Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

You see that, he said, pointing across her body—but his arm not too close—to the gutter full of cabbage leaves. See the leaves stirring there?

The leaves were stirring. Now she could see there were at least two children sleeping amongst the husks.

Poor little beggars! he said. It doesn’t matter who wins, they’ll still sleep out in cabbage leaves.

Though if the Turks came, Sally argued, things might be worse still.

Well, we like to think so, don’t we? I wonder what they’d say if we asked them. In any case, the Turks aren’t coming yet, it seems. Our masters marched us out there and told us to make the chaps dig trenches in the desolation of gravel. But the Turks didn’t come.

He laughed but didn’t seem angry enough to wish any great harm on Turks or the Ottoman Empire. Even here it was the Germans—advancing on Paris—who held the imagination.

They were on the edges of the city now and Maclean looked up at the dazzle of stars. You’ve seen more of the enemy than we have, he remarked dreamily. I’ve got to say, you’re all real bricks, you girls. A credit to Australia. Whereas we don’t know yet whether we’re a credit or not.

Since his doubt seemed sincere, she assured him, I can see you striding on—no matter what.

Perhaps she had volunteered too much admiration of his coming warriorhood. For there he was turning to her and leaning forwards so that he could see her eyes, though they were not quite able to be studied under starlight.

Thank you very much, he said. That’s a reassuring thought.

They heard laughter from the gharry ahead. Captain Hoyle, said Maclean. He’s keen on your sister. You might find a brother-in-law there. Barring accidents.

This astonishing news did not raise or answer the question of whether Naomi was as eager for Ellis Hoyle.

A further tumbling laughter from ahead—but it flirted a little more with the limits of what was considered proper control. Honora. She was with a man named Lionel something-or-other. She was popular with men. Perhaps they misread her by thinking her Celtic loudness meant something else than it did. Sally could tell meanwhile that Maclean didn’t laugh unless a walk into a closed door or the collapse of a chair justified it. He was what they called sober. This suited Sally. In the sport of jollity and chat she was by temperament and by her crimes a nonstarter.

Maclean said suddenly and with apparent embarrassment, That Freud girl? Did you know her before?

No. She’s from Melbourne.

Jewish, isn’t she?

Yes, said Sally and was surprised to find she was envious, in a remote way.

The chaps who were on the Archimedes say she has a top-rate voice. But what sort of girl is she? In temperament, I mean.

She is very much a city woman and very amusing. We’re all pleasant people as yet, of course. We’re on a wonderful journey and we see marvelous things. We haven’t been stung so far by anything inconvenient. But I don’t think Freud will get stung badly by anything.

Well, he said and chuckled as if he were happy with that degree of information.

She thought all at once it was a bad thing for a man to quiz one woman about another. He should not be allowed too easily to get away with it.

You didn’t want me to be your stalking horse for Nurse Freud, did you?

Oh my God, no! Oh no, that would be a terrible thing for a fellow to suggest. Besides, my questions about Miss Freud were simply idle chat.

She didn’t quite believe him. The triangles of blackness ahead were the pyramids as sharp as a knife in a brilliant night sky. To underline the central role of the Sphinx, someone—one of the drivers or a guide who slept out here all night—had climbed the paws of the great stone beast and was holding a sodium flare in his hand, so that the wonderful and frightening face of the thing glowed from beneath, more terrifying and more godly than by day.

This is definitely the way, said Lieutenant Maclean, to see the Sphinx.

She hoped he would not take those great, glowing features dominating the dark as a lofty mandate to reach out and attempt something. They were shoulder to shoulder and that was enough for her. Any closer and her warmth would turn to revulsion.

Do you know, he said, pointing towards the diminishing radiance of the Sphinx’s features, that there are chaps in our battalion who came here just to see this and not to fight? They’re quite frank about that. Chaps who wanted a trip. I bet they turn up at your hospital pretending to hernias and bad hearts.

Sometimes, she admitted, there’ve been pretend patients. Men pretending tachycardia. You know, irregular heartbeat. Men can mimic tachycardia by sniffing cordite.

A young red-headed medical officer on the wards, Dr. Hookes—a general practitioner from the Western District of Victoria, of which, like Hoyle, he was willing to speak as the region of the earth which gave all other terrestrial regions any radiance they had—would say, Nurse, go and get the Faraday machine. And to the patient, Your heart needs an electric shock. And Sally would turn away to fetch this dreaded machine. There was such a device, but malingerers did not need to see it wheeled in. They would reassure Dr. Hookes that they thought their heart had settled. But one young man—very fresh-faced, perhaps a year from school—came in with a fibrillating heart and died on the bed in mid-sentence.

I do enjoy your company, Miss Durance, said the lieutenant all at once but not without consideration on his side.

The statement did not seem to plead for some short-term gain. But why and how could he know enough to like her? They were not much more than walking distance from Mena House, and she felt an urge to excuse herself, dismount the gharry, and start off overland. It took her seconds to understand that this would be correctly judged as madness.

I like spending a bit of time with you, he went on, because you’re not a light-headed girl.

There was a gush of laughter from the gharry shared by Honora and Lionel. Maclean gestured in that direction. You see what I mean? he asked.

She was beginning to feel sorry for Maclean’s men. They would have no trouble seeming to agree with him and then probably mocking him rotten in the bars available for non-officers in Cairo. He wasn’t a bad fellow but had not yet recovered from his school-prefect self. He might now have been able to sense that his strict principles were not charming her as he thought they might have been.

I mean, these girls, he said, they’re fine girls. And earnest when it comes down to nursing. They just don’t seem as reliable.

I’d say my sister was most reliable, she said, boasting despite herself.

But she has a decent reserve, he said. It seems to me a decent reserve is a family trait of yours.

I hate that word “reserve,” she told him, just to rout him further.

So that was the end of the debate about shyness or reticence or whatever.

I don’t think I should be hard on our chaps, he said—an attempt to win her back. But what should alarm us a bit and be a salutary lesson is that the men pretty much beaten at Mons are British regulars. Is an Australian militiaman-cum-citizen soldier worth three of such men—as our boast goes? The fellows in the camp think so, but I believe a man is a man, Australian or not. And no question but that our chaps are better types. But not trained, you see, and hating to train. They hate it.

From the hospital roof they look as if they’re training pretty hard, she argued.

Yes. But half of them don’t even think it’s necessary. Just give them a gun and let them loose, they think, and off they’ll go like so many dingo-shooters.

She could feel his hand reach out for her wrist with particular intensity now. But no vein of fear seemed to throb in it—nor was there any sweat. It was a dry, calm hand. She felt it would be churlish to object. She let it lie there, passive, as long as it did not become part of an argument or consider advancing itself further.