Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

The authorities now insisted that they spend two full days in the splendor of the Beau Rivage. Sally and Honora shared a room, since the friendship she had pledged her sister didn’t need to be slavish. They were told that in their absence the Archimedes would be refitted in some way, but “in some way” was not defined. By pure luck Sally and Honora were given a room appropriate for officers and with a balcony above the sea. Since it was early summer, the air was clear as the sun rose behind this piece of strand and revealed itself gigantically by breakfast time far down the coast. An embarrassment of recreations were at their command—they could ride along the coast on light horse mounts. They could attend picnics in the Botanic Gardens or accompany a British education officer on a tour of the antiquities from which their bush ignorance would come back amended. There were bathing parties they could join with swimming costumes provided by the Red Cross. And then the afternoon th é dansant— to which they were so used now and so worldly at.

It was at the end of an excursion to the Temple of Poseidon and Pompey’s Pillar that an officer approached them and asked, was it true they were from the Archimedes ? In that case, what did they think of the Archimedes going black?

Black? they asked.

Becoming a troop carrier, I mean—traveling blacked-out.

He could tell they knew nothing and could barely understand him. Not to worry, he said. I believe it’s only temporary.

When they returned to the Eastern Harbour and the Archimedes, they saw Egyptian workers were hanging from the sides painting out all trace of red crosses. Approaching the ship along the mole they could also see its lower doors were cast wide open. Through these doors provisions were generally lumped aboard, but now it was mules and horses that were being led by bridles. Soldiers ascended the gangway with rifles and kit. Men with rifles on their backs already looked down from the railings and possessed the ship the nurses had thought of as theirs.

As they drank tea in their mess with jackets off to release the musk of the morning’s scurry through ancient places, Sergeant Kiernan himself arrived and said the colonel wanted to see them in their lounge. They went there straightaway. As they entered, the colonel seemed to nod to them individually. Fellowes and a new surgeon to replace Hookes stood there too—and near them Mitchie and another newer matron with set, uninterpretable features.

They all found seats and the colonel told them that for military necessity the authorities had decided to make the Archimedes a black ship pro tem. It was his recommendation that the nurses should choose to be left ashore until the higher authorities decided to transform it back to its true calling.

Nettice asked a question bearing on the point. Wasn’t it true that nurses traveled on black ships?

Not in great numbers, he said. Perhaps one or two per ship. Very much volunteers.

Captain Fellowes wanted to speak and sought the colonel’s nod.

You are entitled to leave the ship, he told them when he got it. The colonel cannot say so—but it seems to me an act of recklessness to chop and change the nature of a ship like this. For this journey we will replace you with competent orderlies. I heard a staff officer say that surely they —whoever that is—did not contemplate that you would sail for this journey, in any case. We’ll wait then and see what happens next to the ship.

When the colonel and the other surgeons left the room the nurses rose—militarily adept now—to honor their military ranks. Then Mitchie told them to resume seats.

Well, it’s all lunacy as usual, she declared like a reassurance. There’s the risk of submarines—you see—on a black ship.

That’s so, confirmed the other matron as if they might doubt Mitchie’s word. That ought to be taken into account.

The enlightened above us, Mitchie declared, intend that the ship go to the Dardanelles black and that we see these horses and mules and men off. Then the Archimedes will transform itself back to white and take on patients and go to Mudros and thence to Alex. Of course it is a folly and you must not let yourself be subject to it.

But are you going? Honora asked her.

Our situation is different, claimed Mitchie. They need us to guide the orderlies who—I am pleased to announce—fear us. But it is different with the rest of you.

But of course it was at once apparent—by eyes lowered to avoid the force of her argument as by exchanged looks with the same force—that they were all to go.

They waited all day. The loading of these men and ponies and mules of the Inniskilling Fusiliers ammunition train finished and then the soldiers sat on deck talking and smoking and contradicting each other in an accent sharp as an ax. They gave off a sort of discontent—the growls and mockeries of men who had just been worked hard and could foresee harder still. This unexpected form of soldier—all rifle and webbing—came hobnailing it through the main deck of the hospital. One of them turned on seeing nurses and—instead of the applause or the brotherliness of shouted greeting when soldiers on other ships passed the Archimedes— hooted with harsh delight.

Here come the fooking chorus girls!

Kiernan, however, tailed the soldiers and drove them along and told them that they were guests—this wasn’t their ship. They told him to get—as they said it—fooked. And their rawness did own the Archimedes for now. Even so, the soldiery was relocated by their considerate officers and sergeant majors to places where it would be harder for them entirely to take away the purpose of the ship. Towards dusk the Archimedes pulled away from its mooring with a few blows of its whistle. Even the Currawong used to leave the Macleay with more ceremony.

Dr. Fellowes passed along the hospital deck, which was now restored to quiet. Ponies all over the cargo deck, he said. They’d built stalls and loaded them last night. How well would dung sit with medical supplies? Nurses went below and saw the mule lines and fed some sugar to the rows of ponies. They saw wagons and shoulder-high green boxes of munitions mysteriously numbered for war’s purpose. Young grooms in khaki shirts looked at the nurses with a blunt hunger unknown in the world of the town and the street.

On the promenade deck, Sergeant Kiernan and some orderlies were tying ropes from the inboard handrails to the ship’s railings to keep the men of the munitions train off the starboard promenade. The work with roping-off was done and the orderlies leaned back against the walls smoking or making their narrow cigarettes, seeing nothing in the haze.

You’re a fine fellow, Honora called to Kiernan, nearly as a tease.

Leo said beneath her breath once they had passed on, A man of beliefs. A Quaker.

Holy mother, said Honora. I can imagine a girl or two quaking for him.

Sally would remember this dusk—cramped in by haze—as having an air of uncertainty in which the Archimedes itself seemed to take part. She would think later that the day was like one in which a horse who could smell a cliff ahead, and had a purpose to avoid it, did not trust its rider to achieve the same level of wisdom.

Two destroyers appeared on either side of the ship. Surely this scale of naval seriousness wasn’t devoted to them. Was it a chance meeting at sea by vessels with the same landfall?

Sally heard Irishmen doing physical jerks on the afterdeck and an NCO telling them to put some elbow grease into whatever exercise he demanded of them. It was not a comfortable sharing that existed here. The nurses felt yarded in to their cabins and their salon lounge that night. The Irish soldiers loudly occupied the bunks on the hospital decks. All the ports were battened down to enclose any chance beam of light from inside. The nature of sleep seemed to Sally different from the usual. It meant—for a beginning—that when she woke she did not know whether it was day or night unless her watch inscribed TO DEAREST SALLY ON YOUR GREAT DAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 1911 was consulted.