The Daughters of Mars (37 page)

A spring fog both protected them from the submarines and prevented those young soldiers who were not immigrants to Australia but were born colonial from sighting the isle of their progenitors. When the ship found Southampton and fabled England, all seemed low sky, grim, gray derricks, long warehouses. Trucks took them to the railway station, past dour, unwelcoming terraces and boarding houses little better than tenements and comfortless pubs on corners. And so to a crowded and besooted railway station. Some of the young soldiers
must have secretly asked themselves if this was what they had volunteered to die for.

The railway station—it had to be said—was also a coal dust–ridden wonder, august in its columns and great vault. The troops were bound for the training grounds of Salisbury Plain and the nurses for London. In Horseferry Road, Westminster, where the Australian military administration had its headquarters, they would have their future disclosed to them.

F
rom Rouen they could go for a day to the Paris they had been cheated of on the way north. Sally had written to Freud’s hospital near Wimereaux and named the spring date on which the three of them would be under the main clock at the Gare d’Orsay—a clock which none of them had ever seen but which surely had to exist in all railway stations—at ten o’clock. If Freud could get a lift along the coast to Boulogne, she would find the train journey from there less long-winded than their journey from Rouen.

For their Paris leave they were issued with rail warrants and taken by ambulance to the great white railway station of Rouen-Rive-Droite, where the light through the artfully designed windows was uncertain as to whether to be dreary or display some pastel subtlety for their day out. By the time the train left, the day had decided to honor their journey with color and they were in a mood to let the countryside enchant them. They passed copses of elm trees and poplars which seemed to Sally to have been culled down from ancient forests into ornamental size. The dying ring-barked verticals of tall gums which marred Australian distances were utterly missing from the scene. In the villages women and children were drawing their water from the pumps at the end of streets while—puffing on a cigarette—a boy in sabots and aged about ten watched the train sweep by. An occasional grand house would stand in its own company of trees beyond ploughed fields. But no châteaux
were jammed up against the railway line—coal grit was for ordinary people.

Then they approached the squalor and glimpses of grandeur in the city and rolled into the Gare d’Orsay—the grandest locomotive palace one could imagine, the most infused with style, a structure of French jollity to stand in counterpoint to all the solemn domes and columns of British-built railway stations from Tasmania to Egypt. They found on the concourse the great clock they had expected. Beneath it—tall and pale and a little undernourished-looking—stood Freud. Her appearance there—upright and singular and even with that vacancy on her face which belongs to those waiting for a train to arrive—seemed to round out the day with absolution. They rushed to her and she returned their kisses soberly but without any hesitation.

Where are we going? she asked—as if they were in charge.

They could cross the bridge to the Louvre and decided to do that first. The museum was full of soldiers of uncountable nationalities. A good argument for the ultimate rout of the enemy seemed established in this variety of uniforms of alternating dourness and flamboyance. The fancier the clobber—went Honora’s opinion—the less fighting the bloke had done. They had time only for a few galleries—they told themselves they would be back and would devote a day entirely to the museum. Sally was unexpectedly startled by the figures in landscape (landscape for some reason being the lesser element for her) or figures alone. But she was inhibited—since meeting Condon—from ill-educated Oohs and Aahs, from saying something basic when something better should be said. She nonetheless found herself rehearsing—in case she met Charlie Condon soon—the names of artists. She liked David—he was easy to like—and Ingres’s woman with the high-waisted gown. Somehow she understood that she would not have brought the same eye to them if it weren’t for Condon and the brief but intense education on sketching and allied matters he’d given her at Sakkara.

When they emerged from the Louvre they found the day still bright with high, streaky clouds and—though it was chilly—they walked in the Tuileries Garden where trees were still bare. Their branches offered buds though, like promissory notes on a coming exuberance. Then—following the map Sally had bought—they hiked along the embankment of the river towards the island where the great cathedral was to be found. This too they had all seen represented in childhood compendia of the world—and then there was Quasimodo lurching and dominating their imaginations. Like the pyramids, the cathedral could be approached by ordinary steps taken by one’s daily legs—the same legs with which one emerged from Kempsey’s Barsby’s Emporium and crossed Belgrave Street to Mottee’s Tearooms. The cathedral bloomed with side chapels and before each one were ranks of burning candles. Honora lit one after another for what she called “my special intentions” and sank to her knees before the Virgin, moving her lips in beseeching God’s favor for Lionel Dankworth, whose last letter was from Egypt but who might even now be in France. Another little flame for her family and one for the Allied cause. And a fourth. For Freud, she confided to Sally in a whisper. For the wrong we did her. She went on fitting small franc notes into the cash boxes attached to the racks of candles.

When Honora’s votive candle foray ended, they climbed Quasimodo’s tower where—looking down the reaches of the Seine—she covered her Paris amazement with a more earthy issue. She could see the hatted heads of men in the open-topped
pissoirs
, capable without embarrassment of lifting their hats to passing ladies.

The Eiffel Tower waited in its gardens for them and was reached by the Métro with its crowds of soldiers and older men in suits—all with lush Gallic moustaches—and worn-looking housekeepers, seamstresses, wives. Their weariness was unlikely to be dispelled even by a military triumph. Then, as they mounted the Métro steps—
there
, the tower beetling and dizzying but tethered by its four giant feet to four distinct plots of earth.

Back at the railway, they kissed Freud good-bye in the belief they had at least in part expiated their earlier crassness. She responded with a wary affection—not sure yet whether she wished to go back to full sisterhood. She found her train. Then they took theirs to Rouen, on a long-lasting spring evening.

As they ate chocolates and pastries, Leonora suddenly asked the others whether they thought there were malingerers amongst the NYD. On the table before them lay the litter of what Leonora called in her private-school way a beano—boxes which had held exuberant gâteaux and little fluted cups for the most improbable chocolates and the most fanciful confections. As Leonora raised the matter of NYD, Honora made a sucking, dubious sound through her back teeth as if uncertain that she wanted to discuss it.

Warwick thinks there are, Leo said. Not all. But a sizeable number. Malingerers.

Warwick was of course Captain Fellowes. Leo would be the sort of wife who would gladly take on her husband’s opinions and not feel imposed upon by them. She was an excellent nurse, energetic and willing, skilled and kindly. But she thought that Captain Fellowes’s ideas were worth a lifetime of assent.

Sally ran through the catalogue of cases she’d met. The young Scotsman who talked a great deal when not heavily sedated and who, as his dosage wore off, was likely to rush around the tent asking everyone where his mask was and—comic if it weren’t tragic—looking for it under beds and chairs. He had been gassed himself—though the doctor said not badly. It seemed, though, that he had seen his fellows choking to death and thereafter even the smallest residual waft of chlorine or phosgene left behind in the trenches after a gas attack was enough to unhinge him.

So was this pretense? But to pretend for weeks on end to be out of your head with shock was itself a sort of madness anyhow.

Honora gave a small chocolate burp and echoed Sally’s thought.

If any of them are fooling us, then we shouldn’t be ashamed because it means this—they have fooled their way through three levels of doctors and officers, from the front line to the dressing station to the casualty clearing station and on to Rouen. That’s what you would call a worthy performance.

I was on duty in there one day, Leo persisted, however, when I turned suddenly and saw this sly, half-smiling look on one of them. Just in the second before he went back to aphonia and shuddering away. It made me wonder.

It might just have been a variation in the condition, Sally suggested. Or it could have been a rictus.

You’re very charitable, said Leo with some of her beloved’s skepticism.

But, said Honora, even if they are pretending, something horrible made them give up their sense of honor and become pretenders.

Leo ploughed on in a way Sally now found overblown. Perhaps it was the binge of sugar and chocolate and cream that had made her uncommonly persistent.

That’s easy to say. But they’ve abandoned their comrades, in that case. Warwick doesn’t think they’re deliberately shirking though. He believes it begins with the medical officers at the aid post. If the first doctor they meet is too sympathetic, it has a knock-on effect—they act it up for the next MO they meet at the dressing station and then for the next one at the casualty clearing station. So that by the time they’ve got back here, they’re convinced they’re a complete mess and act accordingly. Warwick says he would like to be a doctor at the regimental aid post, and tell most of them they were fine and give them some medicinal brandy and a good sleep and send them back.

But he’s too badly needed at base, isn’t he? asked Sally.

Yes, said Leonora. In a sense he would be wasted up there.

They assessed that. It was true—even if uttered with a touch more certainty than required. She continued, He’s a man of kindness. He doesn’t easily suspect people. But he’s entitled to his skepticism.

As we are, said Honora with sudden sternness, to our conviction. I think it’s clear there’s such a thing as this shell shock. Most young men can’t act for two bob. You can see right through them. The cases I’ve seen aren’t acting.

Let’s not argue over it, Sally urged them. It’s been too good a day to end in a brawl. Besides, another few months of nursing, I think, and we’ll
all
know for sure.

I wonder, will there be less of it when our Australian boys go into the line, said Honora in a whisper.

Warwick believes so, said dutiful Leo.

• • •

This was in many regards a spring of jaunty hopes. Wounded Englishmen strolling General Bridges Street knew what the boomerang-shaped badges on the nurses’ go-to-town uniforms meant, and the Gallipoli “A” for Anzac at their shoulders as well. And English officers stopped them to say, We saw your chaps coming through Armentières to relieve our Twelfth Division. My heavens, they looked so robust and confident!

The influence was more in people’s minds, though, than in military dispositions. Not even the greatest Australian patriots could argue that they had the tens of millions as America did to make an army so massive that it could by mere numbers tame the year and bring it to peace. Of course, the newer women in the mess believed that each Australian was worth a number of the others. But as Kiernan had said on the
Archimedes,
flesh was flesh.

What could not be argued with was the fact that to other armies the Australians
were
like the birds of the spring. They were a sign of things turning—of the greater and greater accumulation of armies whose soldiers would resolve it all before the trenches froze again. The Australians were the harbingers.

In that atmosphere of newness and hope, Captain Fellowes and Staff Nurse Leonora Casement sent out a cyclostyled invitation to all doctors and nurses of Number 3 Australian General Hospital Rouen
to attend a party in the officers’ mess to celebrate their engagement. It was considered they would not need to wait much beyond autumn to have their wedding. Speeches of praise for the couple were made by the colonel and matron. Leo’s face shone with such authority that for an hour it was easy to believe the Western Front would accommodate itself to her nuptial timetable.

• • •

Now the first of the Australians began to arrive. One was a young officer who had been training in a quiet area they called “the nursery.” But a shell had found him there and his entire head was—for the moment—bandaged. The wound beneath that was a test Sally and Honora were set. This scale of harm and outrage numbed and drove from her mind for days on end the memory of her mother and of all connivance with Naomi.

In the surgical ward—since it was considered his wound would need occasional trimming under anesthetic—the young man took in soup and tea through a tube inserted into his bandages. Other nutrients in sterile solution were infused through a vein in his arm. The ward doctor seemed pessimistic and had declared a face wound a prime site for sepsis. When they first exposed the raw meat of the man’s face by removing the packing placed there at the casualty clearing station from which he’d come to Rouen, Sally and Honora found that one eighth of a grain of morphine did not save him agony. Stutters of complaint escaped from the bloodied hole in his face. His one eye seemed to shed tears. So the dose was raised to one quarter—which left him drowsy by the hour and was a good arrangement in Sally’s estimation. When so relieved, he could dazedly attempt to speak, making words from the throat and not with his palate. The voice box was intact but many words were unformed for lack of lips. The name on his label when he’d first come in was Captain Alex Constable.

This young man—whose face was steak from his upper right eye socket to the corner of his lower mouth—uttered one day after his wound had been dressed the sound “A’her ease nur.” He repeated
it, quite politely but insistently. They eventually realized he wanted a pad of paper and it was all at once so obvious that he should have been given one—and a pencil—earlier. It was as if his lack of a face had somehow prejudiced everyone into thinking he couldn’t write. Honora fetched a pencil and a notebook with
AUSTRALIAN COMFORTS FUND
on its cover. He held up a hand—long-fingered—and had it do a form of salaam in thanks. There was humor in his remaining eye, now left uncovered by the dressings. And so he set to writing a letter. The energy and fluency with which he wrote were astounding to Sally. When he was finished he tore out the pages he had written on and coughed—that was one form of expression thoroughly remaining to him. He folded the letter in four to fit the flimsy envelope they gave him, and handed it over for postage. He then wrote on a full, unfolded page, “Nurses, could you kindly send this missive to”—and there was an address—“Mrs. G. D. Constable, ‘Congongula,’ via Narromine, New South Wales.” They said, Of course, and he nodded and began writing again. “Sorry to hold you young women up,” said the page he ultimately handed to them.