Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

In the first onset of cold—the rehearsal for the winter that would ultimately take the unconcluded war to Christmas and into 1917—the young Scottish surgeon Dr. Airdrie would visit the wards in a wool-lined skin-and-fur jacket of the kind worn by officers and men. She sported stylish stalking boots which seemed to imply that she was ready to go hiking or hacking or hunting stags in the Highlands. Penelope was her first name—so it emerged—but no one used it. Perhaps because she had not encountered many other women doctors and had contempt for the hauteur of male physicians, she was familiar with the nurses and seemed to talk to them as if no veil of wisdom separated her from them. When—if ever—the war’s giant wheel ceased to turn, she would be taught how to behave—at peril of her career—in a civilian hospital.

Naomi came to see that Airdrie had no other choice than to chat over tea with them. For she was in many ways the most isolated person in the château—potentially separated from nurses by her university education, but inevitably seen even by the distracted Major Darlington as a medical anomaly. She told Naomi and others that she found the two former consumptives who worked as ward doctors very plain company. They were the sort of men, she said, who’d studied their wee medicine rather than grow up and become human beings. Mammy so wanted her little boy to be a doctor! she mocked.

She liked to gossip and that was always welcome. Lord Tarlton owned half of Banffshire, she claimed—his grandfather, an English interloper, as described by Airdrie, had cleared out the population of the estates to Australia and New Zealand.

My uncle knows the present Tarlton remotely, she said, and a cousin was his land agent at some stage, though I haven’t bothered Lady Tarlton with that news. As for Lady Tarlton herself, her name is Julia Henning and she’s English—Manchester-born in fact. She owned her own millinery shop in the West End, with very blue-blooded ladies as her customers. But still, in the eyes of that group, a hatmaker—however fine a hat she might put together—is subhuman. My mother says it was murder for them when they married. Lady Hatshop, everyone called her. You see, there was many a mammy with a plain daughter had her eye on wee sawney Lord Tarlton. So there was an unco scandal when he bespoke beautiful Miss Henning. At first glance he might seem attractive—in a bit of a dither like Major Darlington—but there are no depths behind it. A high Tory messenger boy.

I mean, she continued, even the army dispensed with him. And I believe he didn’t cover himself with glory in your country either. His wife’s politics helped drive them apart from the beginning. So why did they marry? Well, a title’s a title and a beautiful hatmaker is a beautiful hatmaker. And Miss Henning might have thought she could influence him and make something of him. But no sooner did he have her locked up than he started tomcatting his way around London. They have no children but he has bastards everywhere—I know one he’s supporting in Putney. Though the Australians hated him, he has a certain charm and has wee bastards there as well—the daughters of the big graziers. He made himself persona non grata with all the big… What do you call them?

Squatters, Naomi supplied.

Yes, them.

You must be exaggerating, Doctor, Naomi suggested.

I don’t think I am very much, said Airdrie after a pensive assessment. I would say that Lady Tarlton is the woman with the best excuse in the Empire for taking a lover.

Taking a lover? asked Naomi.

Taking a lover? asked the English Roses. Who?

Well, said Airdrie, let those with eyes to see…

Naomi was surprised by how quickly the initial shock of the idea faded in her and was replaced by annoyance at Airdrie and her supposed knowledge of Lady Tarlton.

You’re a good, loyal girl, said Dr. Airdrie with conviction not mockery. You’re standing up for Lady Tarlton, aren’t you? Defending her repute? I don’t think you need to. In my eyes, her repute stands.

Even then, Naomi saw some of the English Roses avert their eyes as if they knew something Naomi didn’t.

And I thought you were being tolerant too, Durance. Of this Lady Tarlton and Major Darlington matter. Good luck to her, declared Airdrie. Funny though, that she goes for those slightly dazed sort of fellows. But you didn’t know? Don’t be ashamed. It speaks well of you.

Naomi set to in her mind to remodel the Lady Tarlton she knew to the possibility Airdrie was right. It was easier to do than she had thought. She would have been shaken a year or so ago—or, say, before the Archimedes . Now it was such a small matter. The front dwarfed all.

Airdrie approached her as she left to go back on duty.

I’m sorry, she said. I was mischievous in general but it was not aimed at you. You probably think I am a mere gossip too, and I am. Love it, I do. Can’t help it. Forgive me.

Naomi walked away and didn’t care what Airdrie thought of people who were brusque.

That evening she got an apologetic note from Airdrie, inviting her to lunch in Wimereux—they could get a lift in there with Carling the following Saturday. This would of course be dependent on a convoy coming in. But moules and pommes frites were a specialty of the Pas de Calais, wrote Airdrie with gusto. Yummy! And all you say to me—I swear—will be kept secret.

When it did snow in the meantime, an unusually early fall portending a bad winter, Mitchie’s few Australian nurses danced in its cleanness—never before encountered by them—in the garden. They were watched with amusement by the English Roses. Naomi had by now heard a lightly wounded Australian officer murmuring the news that Major Darlington was getting on a treat with her ladyship. But even the Australians—with a taste for ribaldry—were careful how they displayed their amusement at this. Envy must not be confessed to, and so the male code was to reach for mockery. It would have been more open if Lady Tarlton and Major Darlington had not grown to be so worthy of esteem and veneration. There seemed to be a strong and informal agreement amongst the increasing number of those who knew of their affair that it should no longer be a matter of comment. A trip by the walking wounded into Boulogne, where they talked to other soldiers, proved that rumors that the Australian Voluntary was an eccentric and slapdash place were common. Knowing what they knew, they resented that image. As well as that, the affair had not distracted Lady Tarlton from keeping the meals plentiful and the wards warm in the huge spaces of the château—a house which, as she had feared, invited in a gale each time the main door opened.

Penelope Airdrie and Naomi went into Wimereux for their lunch and were pleased to take shelter in a restaurant from the windy promenade on which—for a freezing half hour or so—they inspected the long stretch of tidal beach and the murky whitecaps of a dismal sea.

Never one for the seaside, me, confessed Airdrie.

A fire blazed in the restaurant. They ordered mulled wine. Then a huge bowl of moules and another of fried potatoes was brought to their table. They donned large bibs and—after opening and devouring the moules —rinsed their hands in bowls of water. Dr. Airdrie looked out through the lace curtains.

Never pretty, never pretty, this time of year.

This gave her an opportunity to ask Naomi details of Australian weather, Australian skies, Australian strands. It was peculiar that weather brought out a tendency to patriotism in a person. Storms and murk were forgotten. Summers were described and frosts unmentioned. As she expanded on the subject of humid days generating thunderstorms, Dr. Airdrie raised her hands to cover her face.