Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Next morning the women stirred—ill-humored—from the enclosed humidity of dreams.

Oh God, said Freud, as if she’d turned up in a world less satisfactory than yesterday’s.

Honora slipped warm as a loaf of bread from her lower bunk and began whispering her mysterious prayers fast. They needed to open the ports now to verify the day. Air which had lain all night on the ocean swept in. They dressed in their white ward uniforms and went up on deck to diagnose the morning. It was growing bright out there, and the sea breeze fell away to let in a torrid offshore wind from the nastiest core of Egypt. It penetrated their nursing veils and lightly flapped the red borders of their capes.

Honora asked, Could you really believe that down there below, in that great water somewhere, there is a steely tube of men who would do us harm? I could believe in a lot of things. But I can’t believe in that. The tube of steel with men inside.

They sat in the lounge reading and playing euchre. Tomorrow—after the soldiers’ last night aboard—they would be busy cleaning and readying the hospital deck. Restless by nine o’clock, they went up on deck. Naomi remarked that the destroyers had vanished. That—she hoped—had no sinister naval meaning.

During the nurses’ visit to the promenade, the ship swayed in a way a person would not call alarming but that they were unused to. Some of the orderlies on deck stumbled and took their cigarettes from their mouths and looked at each other with a question. They did not return their fags to their lips until the balance of the ship had been regained.

My heaven, Honora told them, we’re swerving.

It’s to throw the fellows in your tube off, Honora, Freud asserted, narrowing her large eyes and sharing the joke with the glaring horizon.

They could see Lemnos—by now reduced from myth to the level of any other dreary island. The hot breath of land was left behind. The air had sharpened and there was that true sea again—that sea into which today the light dived and split apart and met again at some visible point far down—a gem of light beneath, hard to take your eyes off. It imbued Sally with a welcome if temporary joy.

They remained on deck that morning and Captain Fellowes—no surgery to perform—appeared looking grave and in the full authority of his uniform. He said, Ladies! But his nod—or so they liked to think—was directed at Leonora.

These Irishmen never stop saluting me, he said of the interlopers. I’m not used to that from orderlies. And have never had it from nurses.

They all laughed along a little creakily. He was almost too perfect a creature to exchange banter with. He tipped his cap and moved forward.

Oh well, said young Leonora then. She seemed happy with the exchange—if you could call it that. She nodded to them and went below.

Freud raised the old question. So do you think they’ve done it? You must understand what I mean. Fellowes and Leo?

There seemed no malice in the question. She appeared scientifically interested.

No, said Nettice. Nor should you ask.

Freud declared, Doctors are the men who know how to manage these things. Without damage to the girl, I mean.

What of the moral damage? asked Nettice dryly.

No one had asked Freud, Do you know these things from experience? But they presumed she did and gave her credit for her urbanity and the possibility of her glamorous sins.

Well, said Honora, moral damage or not, done it or not, she’s crazed for the man!

And why shouldn’t they have gone further? Naomi said as a sudden late challenge.

Oh, Mother of God, murmured Honora. Even the Methodists are voting for jig-a-jig.

Honora and Freud and Nettice and the Durance sisters decided amongst themselves to shift subjects by going to view the sea from the uppermost deck. They ascended a stairway or companionway and stood exposed totally to the sky with mysterious equipment and winches and piping for company amidst vibrating cowlings and heavy painted grilles. The two great funnels dominated, but the Egyptian painters had been here too and their red crosses were submerged behind a layer of white. The water seemed greener and vaster still. They all at once saw their future approach them like a fish—coming straight at them. You could faintly hear it thrash the water.

Look how straight it is, said Honora in a kind of doltish admiration.

There was a profound thud of impact and a shattering and steely explosion which, had they not been young women, would have knocked them off their legs.

Life belts, said Honora almost lightly then. Their life belts were in their cabins. Come on, she said.

They flowed down the stairs. On the main deck forward they could for a moment see the soldiers leaning over the bows and looking for enlightenment on what had happened to the Archimedes ’s flanks. Below—running through the hospital decks nearly empty of soldiers—they reached their quarters and their life belts and calmly put them on. Sally felt an abstract and intense curiosity on what was to happen next and they all seemed averse to any rush. They walked in good order back to the companionway that would take them to the deck. On the way Naomi approached Sally and disapproved of the way her belt was tied. A double loop, I think, she said as she adjusted the belt with strange cheeriness.

When they got up to the deck again they found it was already slightly angled sideways and forwards. It didn’t seem likely to Sally that the threat would become more severe than that. Forward there was a melee of ship’s officers and sailors and soldiers who seemed to have the same conviction that the Archimedes had become unstable only in a minor way. An officer said on a foghorn, Please, ladies—forward. Thank you. Plenty of time. Plenty of time.

Mitchie stood back and ushered her women along the deck. In passing her, Sally could sense at once that water—now that it had become a serious issue—frightened Mitchie. She was palely and only by a margin in command of herself. Kiernan and his orderlies bearing stretchers were making their way urgently towards the melee. By their rush they introduced a new level of concern in the soldiers they pushed through. A hatchway had exploded up forward where the torpedo had struck. Men had been wounded by fragments of steel. Mitchie saw the bearers pass and caught up with her women and faced them.

Quick, she said. Two nurses. We must attend to those fellows.

There was a ship’s officer with a beard like that worn by the King of England who said, No, they’ll be attended to. You must take boat number two forward.

Mitchie called for Karla Freud and Nettice and bustled past the man. Sally struggled to follow.

Mitchie turned and screamed at her, Get back! This was in all the hours they’d been at sea the first time Mitchie had become a fury. Someone was blowing a trumpet in a way that was not triumphant, and then the captain let the ship’s siren sound endlessly. Sergeant Kiernan was back, and he and the officer who looked like George V began hurrying women along the downward-leaning deck, where suddenly you had to walk by shortening a leg and reaching with another.

Honora stretched out her hand in panic. Hold my hand, Sally. Hold your friend’s hand, for God’s sake.

Naomi, Sally called, and Naomi called back. Here, here, behind you! We should take off our veils. Nurses made a neat pile of their veils against the bulkhead. They still seemed sure of what Sally had begun to doubt—that they would simply collect them again when the small emergency ended.

Mitchie and Freud and Nettice had been driven back by orderlies to join them. Two dead, said Karla Freud, and the others are on stretchers with tourniquets.