Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

He appeared in time for morning tea in the sisters’ mess, introduced himself and spoke plainly to the nurses. He had been sent to report on the conditions they worked under. Again, he did not depict himself as some grand spirit of rescue. But he said that certain conditions had been reported by complainants. Mitchie, they thought. Even disabled, she would have chivied—and told her story to—surgeons who possessed military eminence.

He nonetheless managed to give them a suspicion that their behavior would be as strictly scrutinized as anyone else’s. For a while he did nothing except to move about the wards and make an occasional note. Naomi, however, found that so many of her superiors had their attention fixed on Leatherhead that her movements were not strictly supervised. She used her days to walk down to the peddlers and buy cigarettes and chocolate for the patients or to visit the graveyard and study the tragic names on crosses.

Leatherhead’s presence did not in the first few days suppress the clique of abusive orderlies who—after behaving better in the shadow of the assault on Freud—had now got back to their habitual braying of commands at nurses. In the meantime, portly little Leatherhead seemed to concentrate on making notes on the theatres and wards and on the dressing and irrigation of wounds. With ward doctors he debated the use of sodium peroxide and asked whether Dakin’s solution might not be better. He came to the nurses’ mess for an evening meal and held one of the girls’ enamel dishfuls of bully beef and rice and found—as far as you could tell—the meal neither tasteful nor distasteful.

The colonel talked away unabashed whenever he was with Leatherhead. He was proud to have the excellence of the place observed by an inspector from Alexandria.

Without seeming urgency, Leatherhead had the women one by one to his temporary office in an annex off a hut where a number of medical officers had their desks. Naomi secretly had some hopes for her turn with Leatherhead. But she was nervous of how he would read her. Would he write her off as hectic or sullen? But Leatherhead was in no hurry to relieve her limbo with a summons.

It was her sister who was called to visit him first. Sally found him as precise as he had so far appeared. He had an ink blotter which he regularly applied to what he wrote. He was not a man to take the lazy way out of letting ink evaporate. His copious papers were not strewn. He had his own typewriter for transforming them into official reports. Sally felt certain in his presence that his chief concern was to expose her flaws. But the questions were not aggressive. Place of origin. Place of training. Places and length of civil nursing. Yes, I see you were on the Archimedes. So of course you lost all your clothing, your uniforms, your nursing kit…

Yes.

And that was why you were provided with this makeshift wardrobe?

She explained that they had started off with a French navy shirt and blanket.

And those rough dresses, he declared, look like they’ve been bought secondhand from the Greeks. That aside, there have been complaints about orderlies and their treatment of nurses. What has your experience been?

We are not treated politely, said Sally. She felt a rush of released fury.

He told her please to be more precise.

And so she devoted herself to their history. The orderlies began by treating the nurses as full-time drudges and skivvies. They were commanded by orderlies to clean excrement and carry waste buckets and bedpans. To lug buckets of tissue and used dressings and amputated limbs to the furnace. None of this they were unwilling to do. But it was all they were asked to do, and they were abused by orderlies for how it was done. They were not admitted to the operating theatres except to scrub them. And sometimes called by names not normally applied to nurses. They are not all bad—the men. But the good ones seemed silenced.

By their fellow orderlies?

Sally decided to risk her entire opinion.

I see it as permitted by the colonel, she said.

He didn’t seem appalled. His head was down and he wrote with his neat fountain pen in an even, infallible hand. His bowed scalp was covered with bristly tan hair. Then he looked up.

Were any of you touched violently or improperly?

Not me. Nurse Freud… you must know about her.

Leatherhead leaned forward at this—like a man about to be engaged in gossip.

Did you know, however, that the young man who attacked her is dead?

I’d not heard that.

It is important for you women to know that there was a price exacted. A double price in his case. He was carrying a wounded major on his shoulders to a field ambulance when he was shot dead. His captain recommended him for the Military Medal. But obviously it could not be granted in such a case.

Even then Sally wondered how it was that the dry, non-disclosing Leatherhead had let this story out. To some it would seem gossip. But to the nurses it served as a vindication. She would conclude that he had done it so that they would somehow see the issue as settled. She did wonder if clever Leatherhead had merely fabricated the tale—his inventive way to put the matter to rest. But that would have been a touch of a storyteller rather than of a dry functionary.

He suddenly brought the interview to an end. He thanked her. She rose and was leaving. But he stood up as if impelled by etiquette and intercepted her before she reached the door.

So you did not think Staff Nurse Nettice unstable in her mind?

I think her mind is fixed on the Archimedes . The way the minds of some of the men are fixed at the moment they were wounded. But she is as sane as anyone else.

His dismissal of her came through turning his back and returning to his notes. His manners, his moves, his questions, his measured gossip were all so jerky and unnatural. Yet it had been a genuine cure to be questioned by him in every particular of the tribulation she shared with the others.

When she came off duty that evening she was astonished by the apparition of Nettice sitting on her own cot. Nettice looked up with her traditional frown fully in place. She said flatly, So you see, I am out.

Sally rushed over to envelop her. But Nettice showed no appetite for celebratory hugs at all.

Lieutenant Byers will be so relieved to see you. And happy as well.

Nettice said, He won’t quite be able to see me, will he?

Sally grew suddenly furious at Nettice’s sophistry. For God’s sake, Nettice.

All right then, said Nettice. I can imagine the poor boy will feel some solace now I’m back.

You sound almost as if you’re unhappy to get out of that place.

On balance I’m very happy.

You take it very easy. But did you know Naomi has been suspended for visiting you?

Nettice pondered this. I knew it was a risky business, she conceded. You will have to understand, though, that I’m not lacking in gratitude. I am just too stunned yet to fall on my knees in appreciation.

Yes, said Sally. Forgive me.

For she understood that state of soul precisely. Nettice made a better effort at sharing the enthusiasm of the others when Carradine came in. Naomi returned from one of her shopping expeditions, and the sight of her broke down Nettice’s reserve and sent her into a strange mixture of tears and hacking laughter. Would you believe it? she asked. I’m out!

Naomi said in wonder, This is the work of Colonel Leatherhead.

Carradine had a smart idea. I’ll go and fetch Lieutenant Byers and bring him for a constitutional. And you can see him by the mess tent here.

Nettice was now all at once anxious for that meeting to happen, and it was organized. She waited in the wind with Sally and Naomi on either side of her and saw Lieutenant Byers come walking forth on Carradine’s arm in his hospital pyjamas and with an army jacket over his shoulders since the evenings were turning so cold. Even with Carradine to guide him, he tested for obstructions and swept the gravel in front of him with a white stick.