Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Yes, confirmed Mitchie. You were tarred with the wrong brush. Women don’t count as much as politics.

Lady Tarlton and Mitchie had created a standard of frankness Naomi hoped she would not be called on to imitate, and indeed tea finished and she had not been asked to say anything of that kind. They made for the car again and drove through a countryside of hedgerows which concealed small, bountiful-looking fields. They inspected a number of vacant châteaux in overgrown grounds abundant in spring flowers. But some had been rendered unhealthy inside by too long a closing-up. The owners were either too hard up to restore them, or else had made themselves patriotically absent in the West Indies or North Africa until the war ended.

Lady Tarlton argued with French agents in unembarrassed, high, nasal French. If the lower floors looked passable, she would lead everyone upstairs—Mitchie included—and look for the promise of light and airiness and security against draughts. Occasionally she would ask, How many beds can we fit in here, Mitchie?

Twelve, Mitchie would say. Or two dozen for a vast room—a nobleman’s former library, say.

So many?

Things were much more crowded in Egypt, and on Lemnos, Mitchie assured her. They could fit forty beds in the ballroom downstairs. And the family chapel would provide a ward for at least a further fifteen—ideal for a recuperating officers’ ward.

We must plan for a winter in which peace has not broken out, said Lady Tarlton—obviously skeptical of the military promise of the coming summer. Therefore the grounds must be extensive enough to accommodate marquees and huts. Then there were latrines to be dug. There should be woods nearby to moderate the heat and give the walking wounded something to explore and the wheelchair cases bosky excursions through forests and by ponds.

Three châteaux had been inspected. Lady Tarlton was becoming pessimistic in her vocal way and began asking the French agent and Mitchie and Naomi questions which were not meant to be answered.

I mean, one is doing one’s best, pottering around the châteaux of the minor and more cowardly nobility—or probably of craven bourgeois who bought these places for show and then abandoned their country in her hour of peril. But I keep telling this agent I don’t want a jumped-up manor house. I need a big château, and something in good order. I need some decent plumbing too. I am not in the house restoration business.

She honked at the agent who was driving with them, J’ai besoin d’un grand château. Très grand.

The man lit up as if he had exactly the right grand château in mind. It proved—when they drove there—to sit on a low coastal hill in the direction of Wimereux. Its name was Château Baincthun. Even its avenue lined by yews—when they drove up it—gave a promise of space. Its vistas were wide but its copses close. Its façade was white and ornamented and fluted. The capitals under its roof were topped by stone-carved faces of kings or counts or sages.

By the time she had inspected its main downstairs room, Lady Tarlton clearly wanted it. The light flooded the dusty boards upstairs in a most inveigling way. Rear and upstairs rooms must be inspected to accommodate staff.

Marion, warned Lady Tarlton, as if Matron Mitchie were the flighty one, imagine this not in today’s relative splendor but with ice on the eaves and an Arctic wind trying to pick the locks.

Matron Mitchie found it possible to do so and still believe in the warmth of the boys—as long as there were stoves in the wards.

Well, of course, said Lady Tarlton.

After taking the proffered lease on the Château Baincthun to a notary in Boulogne—who claimed that his father had tendered his services to Charles Dickens, a frequent visitor to Boulogne—they dined in a private room at the Grand Paris to celebrate. Lady Tarlton pressed Bordeaux wine on them. Naomi managed to choke a glass of it down her untutored throat and struggled with its unfamiliar robustness. Like other colonials she found the aftertaste—the after-feel, as well—a matter of greater relish than the drinking itself.

It was working towards summer now. The sky was yellow at the rims but arched to a dazzling maritime blue above the racecourse. Sally waited for Naomi at the agreed-upon time at administration huts near the arched entrance. Her sister was coming from two hours’ drive away and delays were possible, and indeed a half hour passed until a great black-and-white beast of an automobile pulled up by the huts. A middle-aged man in a private’s uniform got out of the driver’s side and came and saluted Sally. Naomi spilled out of one of the rear doors after him. Her motherless co-conspirator, she thought at once. Her sister, orphaned by a dead mother, by a father who reasonably enough replied to their desertion of him by remarriage. But Naomi was smiling without reserve and that brought Sally up to the regions of light. I love her, it came to Sally. This revelation surprised her. I love her and want her to be well. They embraced heartily—Naomi so willing and reckless that it brought out a similar passion in Sally.

What have you got yourself into? Sally asked.

Forgive me, said Naomi. I said I’d come back and here I am in Boulogne, with you in Rouen.

Oh, I understand you had to go to Mitchie. And what’s fifty or sixty miles?

Sally also found herself now confronted with a tall, auburn-haired woman in a fawn dress trimmed with navy blue, and a straw hat atop a river of hair almost artfully unruly. She had heard in her sister’s letter of a week past of Lady Tarlton. She’d expected a severe mien and no one as ageless as this—or so casual in finery—or so distracted from her own splendor.

Don’t mind me, Lady Tarlton announced to Sally. I won’t interfere between you and your sister. I’m on my way to beard the medical officer commanding Rouen. Not just beard him, as the Bard mysteriously says. I hope, in fact, I can frighten him. Come into the car.

Sally obeyed. The women settled themselves in squeaking leather and Carling closed the door.

It is a modest enterprise your sister has committed herself to, Miss Durance, said Lady Tarlton from her seat. If I let them, they will try to turn us into a mere rest home and officers’ club. As your sister will tell you, they are dragging their heels on giving me military doctors to work with my young Scottish doctor—a woman, in fact—and my two young male physicians, both afflicted with bad chests. I would have all women doctors if I could. They are not as pompous as an army surgeon. And they’re certainly better than boys just cured of their consumption.

She had a strange lack of reserve—a candor almost out of order. It was clear she had a disciple in Naomi. Her statement had produced a glow of purpose on Naomi’s face. The middle-aged soldier-driver cranked the engine as Sally—like Naomi before her—accustomed herself to the opulence of upholstery and mahogany woodwork.

As they rolled forth from the arched gate, Lady Tarlton turned again to Sally, who was staring out of the window with the suspicion that the world would look different through the glass of this magnificent mechanism.

You are not tempted to join us, Miss Durance? At the château, I mean.

Apart from an instant thought of Lieutenant Constable and his obliterated face, Sally had a sense that there was something that could not be predicted in Lady Tarlton’s scheme.

She said, I am very flattered by the…

Lady Tarlton shook her head. I understand, she said, with her strange laugh which threatened to overflow its limits. After all, sisters might love each other. But sometimes there’s room only for one of them per hospital.