Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

We could win on Gallipoli, and men would still be brutes. And there would still be stupidity.

The news—as it spread—demented the others too. They shook their heads but their outrage was too huge and subtle to be stated. When Naomi offered to walk with her through the wards, Freud said she was forbidden the wards. But imagine the wounded over there on the land being dragged down the ravines by my monster. And falling into his hands.

So it came down to near-useless gestures and words—such as Honora telling her not to forget a rug since the cold season was coming and they all knew it could be chilly in Alexandria. Yet she and everyone else understood well that climate could not alter things for Freud. Naomi and others went to help her pack. A truck arrived for her, its engine vibrating with impatience. An unsteady Freud was helped up into the cabin. Naomi and the others could not lend enough hands to lift her portmanteau and her hatbox into the rear of the vehicle.

One last idea struck Naomi then. Mitchie is in Alexandria, she called.

But the truck had circled and was on its way, and she did not know if Freud had heard.

Nor was this the only departure that day. Nettice had by now been moved to the post-operative ward in lieu of Freud. Here, amputees and other dazed survivors of surgery from a newly arrived convoy lay in a hut amidst groans and murmurs. The matron-in-chief was flanked by two orderlies when she found Nettice there and announced that she was to be sent to a rest compound until she had recovered from her mania.

The “rest compound” was—in this case—the evasive name for the mental hospital below Turks Head. Other nurses saw Nettice refuse to go, but it was pointed out to her that the orderlies could take her straitjacketed if she chose. The Durances were sleeping at the time. It was not until an orderly clanged a series of shell casings to signal time for the night-duty nurses and orderlies to leave their beds that they and others discovered what had happened. It gave Sally that sickening sense of the authorities creating their own world, working by their baleful rules and excluding all other versions. This awareness made other nurses feel a disqualification from protest and an unfitness for struggle before the powers at play on Turks Head. The local regimens seemed more potent than the prerogatives operating in the known but remoter universe beyond the island.

Sally sensed that her own feelings of outrage—like all those of the cowed women—were secondary in their depth to Naomi’s.

But at breakfast Leo told them no visits were permitted to the rest compound. Nettice was as unreachable as Freud.

The sisters slept deeply after their morning failure. Defeat and fiasco, loss and stalemate acted on them like a drug. Yet when Sally was awakened by the evening bell, she saw Naomi across the room washed and half-dressed and still wearing an air of purpose. Sally observed her and hurried to keep pace with her for fear of what she might do when she was ready to go out. They left the tent together, and the now relentless autumn wind blew them across Turks Head and down its slope.

British hospital, Naomi declared.

They came to the British general hospital and found at last the nurses’ mess. As they knocked on the pole at the tent flap the dusk meal was in progress. Asked in, they could see at once that it was a place of far kindlier climate than theirs. Someone had had enough spirit and license to paste pictures of the English countryside on the walls. Everyone seemed properly dressed in white pinafores. The record of a soprano singing folk songs turned on a table-top Victrola. The women were talking over the music with a liveliness—thought Sally—which bespoke their greater confidence in the world. A young woman noticed them standing at the entry and rose and said, Hello there, Kangaroos, come and have some tea.

How can you tell we’re Australians? asked Naomi.

Those great gawky overcoats, said the nurse.

She made her friends move up and found them chairs at the table. They all exchanged names. The one who had welcomed them in was Angela. She had young, glittering, impressive eyes. She had not yet had the goodwill pummeled out of her. She introduced them to two other Englishwomen there. These are the poor girls who were sunk on their ship, Angela explained in wonder, as if the sinking had been an achievement of theirs.

Poor things! one of the girls said. It’s really too bad you have to wear those old clothes. We should take up a collection for you.

Please, said Naomi, don’t go to the trouble. We’re dressed the way the colonel chooses we should be dressed.

That can’t be true, said Angela soothingly.

No, we are meant to be degraded, Naomi insisted.

The three English nurses frowned at each other. Sally felt a duty to show them her sister did not overstate the case.

It’s true, sad to say, Sally confirmed.

Naomi said, One of our friends has been put in the rest compound for no particular reason than being sweet on a blind officer. You British nurses look after the rest compound. We’d like to send a message of cheer to our friend.

Oh, said Angela, you must talk to Bea over there. She’s rostered in the compound. Angela lowered her voice and confided not in Naomi and Sally alone but in her three friends as well. Bea got in hot water herself for getting too friendly with one of our boys here. You see someone with a terrible wound who looks like your brother or your cousin or a boy you used to know… It’s easy to get a bit infatuated with them. But you know that.

Naomi and Sally both studied the girl who had been pointed out. She was very pretty, with ringlets. She was the sort of girl who would have one of them hanging down her forehead—in defiance of the strictures about keeping hair enclosed. She looked childlike. But no one could be a trained nurse here and be an utter child.

Nonetheless, said Angela, I can’t imagine someone being actually binned and diagnosed as mental just because she liked the soldier. Come, we’ll see Bea.

She got up and led the Durance sisters across the room. The sisters stood off a bit as Angela spoke to Bea and indicated them. Bea scraped back her chair and got up. The four of them moved into the corner by the Victrola. Bea had a less posh accent than Angela. It was Yorkshire or some such. But she was—Sally thought—by far the prettiest mental nurse a person was likely to meet. Yes, she said, she was the day nurse in the women’s compound. She knew Nettice—there weren’t many patients in there. Just nurses who’d gone a bit unsettled. There’s a guard with a rifle by the gate but that was to protect the women patients from the males’ mental compound because the behavior from those men was not to be predicted. A boy will think he’s at home and go off wandering down to his local pub.

Some of the fellows were so awfully upset by the thunder of the other night, she said. Jabbering mad from Gallipoli and Cape Helles to begin with. There is one of yours who hid under his bed, poor kid—a boy of about sixteen or seventeen. Whoever let him into the army should be shot.

But Nettice, said Naomi, what sort of company does she have?

There are only four of them. One is a girl who got a big crush on another woman and one is a girl who doesn’t speak at all. The one who doesn’t talk sits there until she pees herself. I do the changing, of course—we couldn’t allow one of those orderlies. And then another girl who can’t stop speaking. These two are both pitiful cases and will be sent back to Alexandria, or else home. The sooner the better too. We don’t have any mentalist here worthy of the name.

But Nettice? said Naomi again.

Obviously sane as you and me. And a great help.

It’s too much, said Naomi, rendered reasonable by the geniality of the English nurses, to ask you to let us visit. But if we gave you letters for her—letters to cheer her, I mean…