The Daughters of Mars (16 page)

Fellowes: I won’t consent. The colonel won’t.

Hookes: Then you will find I’ll hang myself like Barcroft Boake.

Fellowes: Barcroft Boake?

Hookes: The stockman poet. He hanged himself with his own whip. And he hadn’t done anyone the same damage I have.

There were tears in Lieutenant Hookes’s voice. None of the soup eaters despised him. Something in them roared for escape too.

Fellowes: What can I say? The colonel wants three theatres working.

Hookes: Even if one of them is useless? Even if it’s murder?

Fellowes: I’ve had men die on the table too.

Hookes: I promise you I’ll finish myself before you can make me go again. I’m being made to do more than I’m qualified for.

Naomi looked around the table at those who shared it with her and whispered—not to them but as if to the atmosphere of authority that imbued the ship—her own pleading that he should be let go.

The two men moved on down the corridor, Fellowes murmuring now but both unconscious that their debate had been public.

Yes, said Honora. Let the poor beggar go. Some doctors wouldn’t even feel any guilt. But he does.

She declared like a sudden discovery, We can get a new surgeon in Alex.

In Alexandria, said Sally—in honor of Kiernan.

• • •

Hookes became so distressed that Fellowes moved him from his cabin to the walking-wounded officers’ ward in what had been some sort of elegant salon of the
Archimedes.
A young orderly was put by his bed in case he might wake and need restraining. His years as a country doctor were negated for now—doctors always being respected in the bush if halfway jovial and if they benefited even the handful of patients sufficient to get the word of their ability around the town and the region. Parks were named to honor them. Wards named in hospitals. Was that earnest future now washed away for Hookes?

Nettice was the sister on duty in here. She was a woman who rarely uttered orders. She directed tasks with a nod. She seemed to believe till proven wrong that if she could see a need for action then so could a nurse. Looking sour (that had to be admitted) she ran her ward by inclinings of the head. How old was she, this little prune? Twenty-seven? Forty-seven?

It was more like a normal hospital in this ward, Sally thought during a shift here. In the first place, it was a visible and contained ward. Here were lesser wounds already dressed and looking redressable. Morphine not called for as much as it had been in the early frenzy of overcrowding amidships and aft. Some young men lay drugged and palely still or turned slightly bewildered faces to her. Others sat on the sides of their cots in remains of Cairo-tailored uniforms they had once worn in Egypt’s fleshpots. They smoked Turkish cigarettes and chatted. Many were chirpy—aware they had been plucked out of the furnace, though they would not say so. There were bullet wounds of the hand here that had subtly borne away tissue and fragmented bone. As surely as if they had been shot in the heart they could never again use a weapon. There was a blind lieutenant with bandaged pads over his eyes of whom they said, Watch that one, Sister. He’s a larrikin.

The young man so labeled cocked an ear at Nettice’s approach. Here we are, boys, watch it. The ogress cometh.

Beyond this part-cheerful ward lay the locked doorway to what used to be the ship’s library. The typhoid ward. The women who nursed those cases were required to take antiseptic baths before returning to the messes or cabins or other wards.

When the
Archimedes
began hooting its way into the East Harbour of Alexandria again—amidst all the other hooting and protesting ships, the noise woke Dr. Hookes—Sally saw him stir and moved to him. He looked up at her, and his lower face formed a rictus. Will there be tears now? she wondered.

How are you feeling, sir? she asked him.

Which is it? Which of the Durance ones?

He swallowed with that audible dryness and began to weep very softly. I’m glad you’re here. Because the first time, when they all came aboard in a rush, remember, I was on deck too. I could tell how frightened you were too.

My sister, she told him. It was my sister with you. I would have been frightened though if I’d been there.

He tried to stare hard enough to verify that this was a different Durance, but his eyes slewed about.

You would have been, yes.

He began to weep again. It was time for more of the valerian that had been prescribed. With the smallest movements of hands and eyes, she motioned the grubby orderly to be vigilant while she fetched it.

Naomi arrived to relieve her at her shift’s end—since it might be some hours before these officers were taken ashore. Pinned to Naomi’s white breast was not the normal nurse’s watch but the gold-plated watch of Ellis Hoyle. They managed to say little to each other.

All right then?

Yes, you go and have dinner.

Ellis Hoyle’s watch was no larger than the one their parents had bought Naomi. But in a sense it was huger than any other timepiece. Should it be mentioned? Sally asked nothing about it. But she knew all her sister’s walls of reserve had been shaken down. Naomi sat within ruined battlements. Her safety was gone—the safety of the polished country girl who chose the city. There was a risk she might join Lieutenant Hookes in his mania. Because she believed she shared with him a kind of clumsiness.

W
hen the Durance sisters chose to, without saying anything they each had the gift to warn the other of people who might approach. In a palm court full of officers, any who might come within a certain distance would suddenly see they were absorbed in each other and feel the authority of their aloofness. The fact was clear that they weren’t here to meet people, or to expand a circle of acquaintance, or to satisfy the inquiries of any young man—neither of one likely to be sent to Gallipoli as reinforcement nor of one slated to ride into the Sinai to face the Turks. When they first made their way in their approved uniforms—boomerang badge at their breasts and their nation’s name at their shoulders—from the ship to the place down the hill where the gharries waited for fares, they had already taken on something of that preventive air almost without thinking about it.

The palm court at the Metropole was a bazaar of officers—if that was what a girl wanted. There were even some in kilts—and an occasional Frenchman carrying his pillbox hat under his arm. And there were few other nurses to satisfy the surmises of these fellows. So it was just as well that they were not gifted with airs of acceptance. Their airs of rejection were of a high order.

The surprising thing was, though, that—within this ring of immunity they made so easily for themselves—Sally had no idea what to say. It had been Naomi’s concept to have tea and a talk. Sally did not know if her sister had brought her here as a duty because sisters
should sometimes meet up and have tea. The only men Naomi looked at, meanwhile, were the musicians in dinner suits and tarbooshes who filled the court with music as undistracting as the play of a fountain. Naomi waited for the tune to end—a Strauss waltz kind of tune—as if it would be impolite not to give it a chance to curlicue itself away.

And then she turned her face as the players let their instruments drop from their chins and eased their posture for a second or two. You look tired, Sal, she said.

Sally could have said the same. But it wasn’t a competition. One more good night’s sleep, she promised, and I’ll be right.

Some officers have invited all of us from the
Archimedes
out to a café, you know. I forget the name of the place. But the cars are coming for us at eight.

I think I’ll stay on board, said Sally, and have the stew.

On the other hand, said Naomi, it’s a distraction. And if I’m willing to be distracted then you should be too.

Yes, all right. But do you think going out to cafés will help us the next time a crowd comes on board?

Maybe not. But that’s not its job. Its job is to make us feel that for now everything’s A-one. Just for an hour or two. I don’t mind being distracted, I’ve decided. You’re the one of sterner stuff, Sal. You’re like Papa. You’re the one to reckon with.

They ordered their tea from earnest young waiters in crisp jackets and jalabiyas. It arrived very quickly. Sally found it strange that though there was nothing like this—the trolleys with cakes and the waiters with their murmuring politeness or the musicians in tarbooshes—anywhere in their history before the war, she and Naomi behaved as if this was their lot and they were as used to it as to the
Archimedes
. And cars at eight to take nurses to “dinner”—not tea, but “dinner,” tea here being this serious afternoon ritual. To “dinner” along the Corniche, and a stroll along the Mediterranean to finish things off—to see if anyone in uniform was worth talking to. The coming evening and its foreignness were the silken hours, and for enjoying them young men
were willing to then be shipped to Gallipoli and give up their brains and limbs and hearts. And yet Sally could still not see how she could be enhanced by these hours.

I reckon I’ll stick with the stew, she reiterated.

Fair enough.

The band had taken on its formal posture again and had begun playing something that sounded Scottish and drippy—the-only-lassie-for-me sort of stuff.

You were in the theatre this trip? reiterated Naomi. Giving anesthetics?

Our first patient died of shock, Sally admitted. But that didn’t stop Fellowes and Freud getting on with things. It’s peculiar what you’ll accept as normal. But that red-headed lieutenant—Hookes—he can’t take it on.

I don’t think the poor fellow should be despised for that.

Though it’s a pretty basic thing, to cut the femoral.

Well, the wounds are quite a mess, aren’t they? They’re not like an illustration in a book.

They both took a spoonful of cake.

I wanted to let you know, said Naomi then, I’m back to my normal self. The first night was what you’d call a jolt.

We were all jolted, Sally told her.

Yes, none of us are quite the same. But it isn’t a jaunt anymore, is it? I mean, you go for a ride to the pyramids with a soldier and end up carrying around his watch for the rest of your life.

You don’t have to carry it round, said Sally. Where is it now, anyhow?

It’s in my bag. I keep it wound up for some reason. I think if I’d known him well, I would have found it easier to get rid of it. I’m sorry to carry on like this. I don’t normally carry on. You know that story about the man whose clock becomes like his heart . . .

Edgar Allan Poe? And the body under the floorboards?

That’s right. The body . . . I think he isn’t dead if I keep the thing going. Dad’s book, wasn’t it? That watch-on-the-dead-body story?

Yes, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Poe. They were his two. And the Bible for show.

Not bad taste, Naomi decided. When you think about it. He wanted to keep us out of the milking shed, remember. He’d employ people he couldn’t afford, just to get the milking done and keep us out of the shed. I’d see some of the Sorleys and Coulthards coming in to milk for him and I’d look away.

Naomi had her gray gloves off and her right hand reached across the table to take Sally’s wrist. I planned to have this afternoon tea to ask you something. It sounds strange. But I’ve got an idea you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

Sally’s body tensed while waiting for some unguessed-at demand.

Will you be my friend? And don’t say that of course you will be, you’re my sister. That’s not the issue. Will you be my
friend
?

They both knew it was something they hadn’t thought of asking before this—and would not have without the
Archimedes
.

Understanding what Naomi had done, taken the morphine into her hands and along with it the burden of bringing their mother to that mortal quietness, Sally had not been able to say such simple things herself. To utter thanks to Naomi—so Sally thought—would have brought the heavens crashing down. What Naomi asked was something humbler than gratitude.

I know very well, said Naomi, that I shouldn’t have dumped you at the farm. I don’t know why I wanted so badly to get away. Why can a person hate a place where every love and every kindness has been shown to her? It’s a great flaw of character.

No, said Sally. Or else I’ve got the same flaw.

Anyhow, you stayed there. I didn’t give you a choice. Tell me to sling my hook if you want. Because it’s easier to sound wise now—after the manner of the
Archimedes
. The
Archimedes
is like a telescope that makes you see far-off things in their right proportion. But I was a pretender to do that to you. I knew it, and I couldn’t—or didn’t—stop myself. That gives you plenty of grounds not to be my friend.

They listened to the teatime music for a while. Sweet scrapings. It was not momentous to them and mimicked conversation.

What I want, Naomi ventured further, if you’ll be good enough, is that we talk like friends. You don’t have to like me as much as Freud or Honora. But if we talked somewhere along those lines . . . That if we had to share a cabin, it wouldn’t be a hopeless cause. If we could talk woman to woman. I would love that. I hope you’d be able to imagine it.

Sally wondered if it could be done. Between such great love and great dread, something simple and little and comfortable as friendship. But she was not ready for the largest subject of all.

She said, For one thing, I was cranky about the clearing-off thing you did. But I was proud too. To have this swish sister. And you were the pretty one.

Don’t be ridiculous.
You
. All the girls say so.

Well, are we going to argue about that? And I don’t see the men in this room having too many arguments over it. But I ought to warn you. I’m a cold cow. I have a cold heart.

The same with me, said Naomi with an excitement—as if they were comparing birthmarks. Friendship isn’t easy with people like us. Ellis Hoyle misread me by some means. Our cold hearts are what we inherited. That’s not to blame Mama and Papa.