Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Speaking of the coming excursion, Robbie Shaw said, Why not invite the girl who had the problem too? It’ll be good for her.

Ah, said Dankworth—sidestepping that noxious subject. That girl Carradine, is she here? We have a truckload of bedpans outside.

They went outside and there was the improbable truckload. As they carried canisters of tea and tins of fruitcake indoors under Shaw’s rowdy orders, Naomi went urgently to find the right orderly to get the bedpans unloaded. It seemed to her that these two young men of no great gifts were angels of efficacy on an island whose masters sought to forbid every gesture of cleverness and grace.

Naomi told the men that there would be at least eight women free to make the journey.

Will you be one of them? I mean, the ones who come? asked Shaw confidentially—and out of Dankworth’s hearing.

It depends. I would like an outing. If Freud comes, then I’ll go too.

He lowered his voice. Lionel likes the brunette with the eyes. And all the impudence. Could you get her to come?

I doubt she could be stopped.

It was agreed amongst the women that if anyone should have a holiday from the general hospital—assuming she could be persuaded—it must be Freud. And so Naomi must—of course—go too. Apart from that, names would be drawn from a hat.

That night in the darkened wards Sally moved amongst fevered amputees, those whose wounded arms lay in cock-up splints and legs in long splints. Taking temperatures and pulses, she was a meek inspector of frantic dreams and listened for pain and anguish in those whose sleep was shallow. She saw the English matron loom out of darkness. Her torchlight skimmed the beds and bounced off her white bosom.

Sister Nettice? the matron asked Sally. Nettice was somewhere in this darkness and still to be found. The matron’s torchlight went probing into corners. It brushed over faces in repose and eyes starkly awake.

Accompany me, Nurse, said the matron. Sally walked in her wake and they moved down the chicanes formed by army cots and came on something extraordinary. The torch beam discovered Nettice standing by a cot. Sitting on the floor in blue hospital pyjamas was a young man whose eyes were still bandaged but who cocked his head inquiringly towards the light. Nettice had been only partially successful in putting a distance between herself and the patient. The matron-in-chief hissed at Nettice and asked what she had in her hand. Nettice slowly produced something from the folds of her lumpy skirts. It was—Sally recognized—one of the chocolate slabs Shaw and Dankworth had brought them from the depot ship.

The matron gave the appearance of understanding this scene—at least in her own terms. Nonetheless, she breathily called on God to shed light on what was happening here. The young officer—a little smear of chocolate on his left cheek, a childlike and forgivable smudge—turned and began haltingly to feel the edges of his mattress. Unaccustomed to his dark within the dark, he levered himself slowly up. He intended to stand upright in Nettice’s defense. Nettice, however, reached out with authority and put her hand on his shoulder—exerting pressure so that he sat down on his cot.

What’s the problem, Rosanna? he asked.

I was taking some time, Matron, said Nettice—low but without apology—to give Lieutenant Byers some chocolate. In my estimation, it does him good and lets him know he still has a name and a future.

“Let him know?” Of course he has a name.

He had forgotten it with the blow to his face. I have had to school him in it and now he knows it again. But his memory must be fortified.

Must it be fortified with chocolate and on the floor? I would imagine not.

Nettice’s face was set. It would not change to mollify the matron. It refused to take on any trace of shame or contrition or justification. Nettice said reasonably, It’s so big here with voices coming and going. He would have forgotten who he was without me telling him. And a bit of chocolate.

Come, said the matron. We can’t go on hissing and whispering here. Come to my office.

Matron, Lieutenant Byers called out in a voice firm and loud enough for the daylight, if you are suggesting that there was anything untoward…

He stood again, as if with the intention to follow the matron and Nettice.

Here, said Sally, taking one of his shoulders and then the other. Nettice will handle it. Don’t worry.

She helped him sit once more on the side of his bed, a slight figure in his large drill pyjamas—the uniform of those lost in that confused space between soldierhood and the lesser life arising from the scale of the harm done them.

I’ve got her into trouble with the ogre, said Lieutenant Byers. Are women ogres or ogresses? Poor little Rosie.

She’ll just get a talking-to. We’re all used to talkings-to. Don’t worry.

A hiccough of sorrow came from him. She patted his shoulder.

It’s nothing at all, she said. That woman disapproves of people breathing.

He shook his head. Rosanna’s right, you know. Living here is like living in a factory.

Oh, will you get some sleep? asked or commanded a voice from across the room.

Sorry, mate, Byers called lowly. Sorry, all. No sweat. Can’t keep my eyes open a minute longer.

He gave Sally a little stutter of laughter.

That Sunday forenoon the two omnipotent artillery officers arrived in a car and a truck and with a young Greek guide to take them to the promised baths.

Listen, said Robbie Shaw, limping around the car, I hear different reports of these hot springs. But let’s give it a go, anyhow. By the way, this young bloke’s called Demetrios.

Four of them—Sally, Naomi, Honora, and Freud, who Naomi had somehow persuaded to come along—were able to sit in the car. Dankworth drove, with Honora in the middle of the front and Shaw with his legs stuck out as the window-side passenger. The truck—driven by one of the artillerymen—followed with the other women.

But Nettice was not there. Nettice had been suspended, which, in this windy island on a headland of gravel and with no place of entertainment but the mess, was a severe test of the soul. She was forbidden to enter the wards or speak to Lieutenant Byers. She amused herself by playing Patience with a dog-eared pack. She gave Sally a daily note for delivery to Byers. She seemed to look calmly on the possibility of further discipline.

Now the expeditionary path took her off-duty sisters jolting north away from the sea—from the place of ships and hutments and encampments—and upwards amidst fields in which green pasture grew. Scrawny cattle and plump goats availed themselves of this. On the hills, the lines of olive trees seethed in a brisk wind. Here, without warning, the colonel’s Lemnos gave way to Sergeant Kiernan’s. The gods were here, Sally thought, though she could not have named them. A long white wall contained a patch of hillside in which there stood a white Greek chapel and its gravestones. In the backseat of the car, Naomi pointed it out to Freud, who took polite interest. But the dazzle of Greek white walls wasn’t enough to soothe her. Most of her could not be reached by light.

They threaded between hills and exclaimed to see wildflowers on hillsides and speculate what they were. In a village of white walls and houses, Demetrios and Dankworth had a loud discussion on directions before continuing on and passing an ancient amphitheatre beyond. Before Christ? shouted Dankworth. Demetrios nodded his head emphatically. Far before Christos. Greco-Roman, he said.

The road began to wind, and the truck stopped to allow Carradine to be sick. They all got out for the occasion and picked wildflowers and looked down the long ribs of the island towards the brilliant sea. Sally demanded that Carradine take a seat in the car, and she joined the girls on the benches at the back of the truck where the wind blew their veils horizontal. Rising up a hill now, they saw the sudden apparition of mountains beyond a whitecapped sea. For that instant they were utterly released from earth and absorbed by the company of those mountains across the water and their remnant snow. The car stopped, and at Dankworth’s order Demetrios came back to the truck and pointed at the mountains for the benefit of the nurses aboard. Thrakya , he said, and ultimately the word “Thrace” was suggested and Demetrios agreed. Then earth dragged them back again and down a stony hill and into another glittering white village, where clothes blew on lines like regatta flags.