Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

As for the antiquities… well, the idea of looking again at the pyramids was painful when so many of the company she had visited them with were gone. It was a good time of year for it though, Lieutenant Dankworth said. You could get to the top of the pyramid of Cheops without any heat exhaustion and see forever in all directions in a clear atmosphere. So Honora and Lionel went—scooting diagonally across the length of Cairo and even visiting the army camp at Giza for drinks with some other Gallipoli chaps.

Time to toast 1916, said Honora—extending her invitation for New Year drinks. It has to be better than this because it couldn’t be worse.

May we, or at least some of us, said Lionel—making his toast that night—punish John Turk in Palestine for anything he might have done to us in Gallipoli.

There was quite a crowd of men and nurses present. One of them had visited an aerodrome in Sinai and, seeing the airmen take off over the desert, had decided that was what he would dearly love to do. There were so many fellows applying, but the infantry and even the light horse lost their shine when compared to climbing into the air like that.

You see, he said, we’ve never had an eagle-eye view. Napoleon didn’t. Imagine if Wellington at Waterloo is wondering what to do, how long to hold out before retreating, say, and Napoleon is pouring the Imperial Guards in and the future all depends on Blücher’s Prussians turning up in time. Just imagine if Wellington had been able to say, “Lieutenant Fortescue, can you hop in your B.E. and go up four thousand feet and tell me if Marshal Blücher is on his way?” Now I’d say that’s true power. An ordinary soldier with greater power to see—to get a grasp of things—than any general.

All right, said Lionel, but then you’ve got to come down. Remember that bloke Icarus?

The men were drinking whisky and ale, the women champagne and orange and—for those who had not essayed liquor yet—fruit juice with chipped ice. And a quiet voice speaking not of vast pictures of desert or sky-highs but of earthbound things asked, Excuse me, aren’t you one of the Durance girls?

Sally had been talking to some of Lionel’s friends and saw the face of a grown boy when she turned—the features in the suntanned face had a delicate neatness a mother and aunts would cherish. A choirboy face, people said, and also, in common wisdom, that they were the most dangerous.

Charlie Condon, said the young man. East Kempsey.

Your father was the solicitor? she asked.

Yes. That’s it.

The Condons were part of the ruling class of the town in reputedly classless Australia. The gentry were the solicitors and the accountants and the bank managers whose children played together and whose wives spoke to each other. Yet this young man was shy about talking to her. She thought he did not look like a veteran. He lacked that dark pulse in the eyes.

Didn’t you go away to Sydney to study? she asked.

He said he had.

One of the boarding schools, she surmised. Then… was it the law?

Heavens no, he said. A stab at law maybe. But other things interest me. By the way, you were a year ahead of me at school. To a bit of a kid, that’s an age.

Thank you, she said and was willing to smile. You make me sound like a maiden aunt.

I’m so pleased I saw you. It’s ridiculous, but we spend all our time looking for faces from home, our part of home. And I don’t even like the place.

But we want to know, don’t we? Like it or not.

What about you? Were you nursing there? In the Macleay, I mean.

Yes, she told him and then it recurred—that she’d nursed her mother to death. In his presence it was something she wanted to suppress—to the point of oblivion.

My sister left as soon as she could, she told him—as a matter of history and not grievance. She’s back there right now, but she says she’s coming back here. She’s visiting my father at Sherwood. And my stepmother. You remember a Mrs. Sorley?

I remember a boy called Sorley, Condon admitted. I remember the widow, but only dimly. Wasn’t her husband killed by a tree?

That’s right.

Oh, he said, a famous Macleay tragedy. I always thought she looked pretty jolly for a widow. Not that I’m saying…

No, she said, I know you’re not saying…

He developed an even smile. She had for some reason expected him to grin crooked and to show the devil beneath the pretty features.

A funny place, he told her confidentially. There are a lot of people in that valley who think they’re the ant’s pants—as if Kempsey and the Macleay were Paris or London or Moscow. And when you come back from Sydney everybody’s trying to land you with their daughter—as if it’s the only place you could possibly meet a girl. Crikey, I am being critical, aren’t I? You must have brought out the moaner in me.

That unblooded look emerged in his face again. It was still a serious matter for him—his boyish rebellion against the Macleay River and its valley and its principal town.

He didn’t give off that almost chemical mixture of fatalism and bloody remembrance and tired ruthlessness the survivors did. Some of the veterans were courtly and polite because it was a railing to cling to, and to save them from the pit. The new men were polite to and courtly towards women and the world because they thought they had a life to pursue and had not yet faced the force that so utterly overpowered politeness. It wasn’t his fault—after all, he was a year younger than her. It was simply obvious.

They spoke for the rest of the evening—she broke away only when she saw Honora smiling in her direction and presuming that her conversation with Lieutenant Condon stood for some outburst of magnetism. It would be useless later saying that she had found it pleasant talking to him, since because of Honora’s own infatuation with Lionel Dankworth—deformed ear and all—she was geared up to read intense attachment everywhere and even in the mildest friendliness.

At three o’clock in the morning everyone went up on to the roof. There was a resolve to stay up there and see the first light of the year come out of Sinai—it would happen about half-past five. It must be seen—went the proposition—because this would be the year of victory and peace. Sally decided not to share the experience. As the party took to the stairs, Sally called from below, Honora, I’m going now. Thank you, it was very pleasant.

That pale word again.

Charlie Condon was already on the lower steps. Coming, Charlie? asked Honora, who obviously knew him.

Just a tick, Miss Slattery, he called, raising an arm and an index finger up the stairs to beg indulgence. The others ascended.

Well, he said, it was a fine thing somehow. Meeting you again in such altered circumstances. Look, Miss Durance, you’ve been to Giza, haven’t you? I bet you’re a veteran of Giza?

I was there earlier this year. No, it’s last year now.

Yes, well, it’s all new to me. You can’t believe it when you first see it, can you? You can’t believe you’re there, sharing the same air with it.

Yes, I think I felt exactly like that.

Now there’s another one I want to see. It’s up the river. Sakkara. The first pyramid of all—King Djoser. I wondered, would you do me the honor of visiting it with me? Not a huge distance. Hour or two on the truck. Or there’s a bus. We could take a picnic.

For the first time since she had come to Egypt, she had been asked to go somewhere she wanted to go and in the smallest party possible. The chance of an excursion without being swamped by conversation—after so many continuous nights of such conversation—was welcome.

If you will excuse me, he said, I will go up to the roof garden. I’m new here. This year is likely to be my initiation in military matters.