Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars

Someone began to speak in French. It was a man, but not Sedgewick. He went on praying for peace and brotherhood in a calm voice. A woman took up immediately after him. And then another woman—and so it went. Apart from hymn singing, she had never heard women make so much noise in church. An hour passed and betrothal had not been mentioned. At last Ian was nudged by Mr. Sedgewick and rose to progress to the middle of the floor, holding out a hand for Naomi to join him. She did so. She felt that her face blazed before these strangers.

Sedgewick stood and stated that Monsieur Panton, Madame Flerieu, Monsieur Gosselin, and he himself were the members of the Committee of Clarity on this matter. The committee swapped seats with others so that they could all sit together on a single bench. Allow us a second to study your papers, said Sedgewick.

Madame Flerieu—thin and fine boned—started a robust discussion about something. Mr. Sedgewick answered, gesturing like a Frenchman and adopting that throaty Gallic seriousness. The two other men had their say as well. At last Mr. Sedgewick looked up at the two candidates.

The question is, he explained apologetically, whether your work, Mr. Kiernan, could be seen as redeeming lives or preparing them for further military demands.

The woman—Madame Flerieu—was clearly the one who had taken this line. So, thought Naomi, this committee business is more serious than old Sedgewick implied.

I have had the same doubt myself, Ian said. I provide medical supplies and surgical equipment. There are Quaker ambulances from America working in the field and what might be said of me could be said of them as well. It is the ancient question of trying to do a small good in a devilish world.

Sedgewick appeared happy with that answer, but Madame Flerieu said in English in a reasonable but intense voice, Members of the ambulances of the Friends do not hold military ranks.

I confess that is a question to discuss, said Ian.

And Mademoiselle Durance holds a military rank. Do you not, Mademoiselle?

I work in a voluntary hospital. I believe the Australian army has forgotten me.

Sedgewick held up his hand and shook his head benignly like a man quelling unease.

And you intend to marry?

As far as Naomi could tell it was the first time anyone had actually used that verb aloud.

She said, Yes. If Ian intends to marry me.

Of course, said Kiernan. Of course I do.

At times convenient to you both, are you able to meet again with the Committee of Clarity? asked Sedgewick.

I’m sure we will make the arrangements, said Ian.

Sedgewick asked, Does Miss Durance have any concern about such a requirement?

Naomi said she did not. But—as she told them—given her duties at the Voluntary Hospital it would take some skill on both their parts to make their leaves coincide.

So it is your will before God, Ian Kiernan, to take Naomi Durance as your betrothed with a view to marriage?

Exalted by her re-creation as a woman betrothed, she heard him agree. Then Sedgewick asked Naomi the same question and afterwards she could not remember having given an answer.

So the betrothal is initiated, said Sedgewick. And may God turn his face to you.

Naomi felt in that second that the solemnity and casualness of the ceremony gave it unrivaled hope, and a sense of liberation, not of bonds. Here—in this room vacant of all but two dozen residents of France—lay a definition of marriage so particular as to mark Ian and herself off from the bad luck and ill will of other alliances. She was sure of it.

The clearing station had quickly spawned its own graveyard, which lay across the shallow valley and a few steps north towards the village in a field one side of which was a farmer’s ditch. Night duty was a time when young men yielded up their souls. Orderlies carried bodies to the morgue hut from which in the morning they would be placed in coffins and carried across the Deux Églises road to the site where a padre from a unit resting out of the line—and a burial party ditto, along with a bugler or bagpiper—would give them their final rites.

Everyone seemed to take this growing crop of white crosses as a given and nothing to distract a person. Only sometimes—as the summer came on—did Sally notice in temporary shock that amongst the hollyhocks the place had grown new suburbs. Farmers and their wives ploughed and planted in the fields all about and were as indifferent to the raucousness of the front and to the field of crosses as were the nurses and orderlies.

Dr. Bright’s Sunday picnics—held in a field on the slight ridge above the casualty clearing station—had grown since the spring and included English doctors and nurses from the British casualty clearing station across the road to Bapaume. Almost inevitably a surgeon from the British clearing station had brought a cricket kit. Thus Test matches—Australia versus England—were played. Nurses and middle-aged doctors leapt to catch hook shots at square leg and crouched to fumble at snicks in slips. But at least they had encountered the rich, dark soil and the irrepressible grass. Sally, however, took a big catch in the position she believed they called square leg.

Sister Durance, called Major Bright, take the slips with me.

For he was standing near the wicketkeeper.

I don’t understand, said Sally.

Slips, here. I’m first slip, you be second. I see you’re a good catch. Advance Australia Fair. Come on!

She moved grudgingly to take up the position and saw Honora was profoundly asleep under the tree on the ridgeline and was not engaged at all in the game but seemed in fact sedated by it.

You see this young chap? Major Bright asked Sally confidentially, pointing to an Australian gunner they’d found in an estaminet in Deux Églises and recruited for their team. He’s a leg spinner. So be ready for a catch. It won’t be fierce. Ball off the edge of the bat. A lollipop catch.

The English orderly at the batting crease met the Australian’s less than distinguished delivery and belted it across the field so far that it disappeared over a hill.

My God, said Bright, they’re taking it seriously. That’s a bit rough.

He stood straight and inhaled.

I hope you don’t mind my asking, Sister Durance, he murmured as beyond the fall of land Australian and British orderlies and two nurses searched the grass for the cricket ball. But I would be grateful if you kept an eye on young Slattery there. It seems to me that the word of the bureau in London, and of course of our glorious military authorities, is uniform. And she is the only dissenter.

Yes, said Sally. But her work stays solid.

Of course. But she writes too often to the bureau, and she continues to do so, even though they have nothing to tell her. She seemed to be over the loss, but she’s reverted. She needs a long leave, and a chance to find the means to accept that her fiancé is dead. I am not asking you to be a spy. But there are so many letters to that bureau, I assure you—nearly daily. More—I confess—than I have actually sent off.

There were rumors Major Bright was more affected by Honora than that. There did exist, however, fifteen or more years’ difference.

Please keep an eye on her. Just to see signs of stress or of the… the abnormal. She refuses to leave here; I have no grounds to make her. But she should be observed. In case…

Sally said she would do her best in this matter. On the rim of the slope a nurse had found the cricket ball, and this was a pretext for jubilation and cheers.

In the garden on a suddenly blazing day when men sat in scattered light by oaks and elms and read books and magazines—with Matron Mitchie dozing in her wicker wheelchair—Lady Tarlton took Naomi aside.