The Daughters of Mars (40 page)

Lady Tarlton looked intently at Mitchie. You see, Marion. You see! If we had had more time . . .

In the Western District, said Mitchie with forgivable pride, we had bush nurses visiting women all through their pregnancies. Any chance of a problem and the woman was moved to town. But . . . the whole thing has languished without Lady Tarlton there to look after the financial side.

To harry donations, Matron Mitchie means, said Lady Tarlton with a wink. If the Australians had not begged the secretary of state for the colonies to relieve them of my husband’s presence, we would have put a scheme in place throughout the country so that it would have been normal and unassailable. But my husband can’t tolerate the Labour prime ministers the Australians have the ill grace to elect. Tarlton refused to allow the election the prime minister asked him to call. And so it was—as a wag in the
Sydney Bulletin
wrote—“Farewell Lord and Lady Tarlton, Sprigs of a Noble tree, We cannot tell you how pleased we are to see the back of thee.”

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.

I
t 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.

Not that, Lady Tarlton, said Sally. But the three of them knew it
was
that.

Sally and Naomi were dropped in the square of Rouen, with the Hôtel de Ville on one side and the stupefying complexity of the cathedral Charlie had taken her to on the other. As the enormous car drove off, Naomi and Sally laughed together like two girls recently interviewed by an eccentric headmistress. They went straight to a café—a little wooden place with tables set on the surface of the square. Naomi raised her face to the sun and the gesture made Sally feel gleeful too. It was the sort of day when even sisters with their history could sit together and think, If they could see us now—here on the timeworn pavement—drinking our ferocious black coffee and eating not cake but gâteau!

You know, said Naomi, it’s peculiar. It seems to me we’re happier now—at this second and here—than in our past lifetime
there
.

Lemnos, you mean?

No.
There
.

You said Matron Mitchie was back? asked Sally, to move the conversation on to safer ground. How is that possible?

Pure willpower, that’s how. She’s a single woman with hardly any relatives. She may be frightened that if she lacks a mission, she’s at an end.

But we’re single women too.

Well, Naomi conceded, a little younger, to begin with. And it may change one day too. Marriage doesn’t seem an impossibility to me anymore. I think the further I’ve got away from the Macleay, the less astounding it looks.

Robbie Shaw?

I don’t know. I’ve written to him and as good as told him no. But he still persists.

He wants to be your fiancé?

When I said the less astounding marriage looks, I’m not thinking of anyone in particular. I’m beginning to think Robbie Shaw’s idea
is
impossible. I don’t have the disposition for him. I ought to write to him again but I keep delaying. This is the problem: the further away I get from him, the more inconceivable marrying him seems. Whereas it’s supposed to be the other way round. He is a good fellow, a positive fellow. But he thinks there’s something definite in me, when really I am only covering a lack. That’s a dangerous delusion, you see. He’d find out afterwards and never forgive me, and so a really unhappy twenty or thirty years would begin. I’ve got other things to do with the next twenty or thirty years.

But that’s the way marriage works, isn’t it? asked Sally. It’s not possible unless the man and the woman are deluded.

They were silent. They did not want to apply Sally’s thesis to their parents.

No, said Naomi. I think a marriage can be sensibly embarked on. But the other thing Robbie Shaw’s deluded about is that they’ll have him back here, when one of his legs is five inches shorter than the other. They had Matron Mitchie back. But I think now it might have been Lady Tarlton who worked that magic. Shaw doesn’t have a Lady Tarlton. But listen, you said in your letter you’d met a soldier?

How astonishing it was to Sally that she didn’t feel discomfort at this conversation.

The solicitor’s son, Charlie Condon, she said. He’s amusing and has a very lively brain, though I can imagine on a hot day his enthusiasm for old buildings might get a bit much. But he’ll need a clever woman when the time comes. He is a good sketcher but intends to become a better one. He wants to sketch blackfellas, even. It’s the whites in the Macleay he’s not so keen on. He says . . . Well, he
understands how things are in town. A person can say these things when you’re so far away and it’s all reduced to size. All that bush hypocrisy.

They contemplated the idea of the town shame and decided they didn’t want to expand on it.

Charlie hasn’t been in fighting yet, said Sally. And I wish he didn’t have to be. A shell could cut the life of a fine soul like his in a second. It’s done it to other fine souls.

Then she told Naomi how Charlie had visited her and ordered a table by telegram. Underneath was the thought—If this can be told, then all can be said. All must anyhow be said one day. The blame and the thanks.

There was one subject left—Mrs. Sorley. They had both got letters from her which were pleasant and sensible and careful of their feelings.

Naomi confessed, She has sure instincts, that woman.

So we have to go on being fair to her, eh?

It’s beginning to look that way.

Each sister knew—and knew the other one knew—that what stood in the way of becoming daughters to Mrs. Sorley was their caution about liking this unchosen figure, in case it happened that they began to feel her more admirable than the mother they were connected to by sinew and blood and acts of awful kindness.

After their morning coffee, Sally took Naomi through the cathedral and showed her the things that Lieutenant Condon had shown her. Then, almost with relief at having got through the meeting, they saw the great limousine prowling for Naomi around the square. Sally waved to it as energetically as Naomi. In spite of their compact in Alexandria, they were still practicing being at full ease with each other. But this French reunion had gone well.

• • •

Captain Constable’s pulse and his blood pressure remained those of a healthy young man—though one plagued by sleeplessness. Sally did
not often see his eye closed, even at night, and he would frequently want to write something down. Only sometimes—and then in the dark hours—was there self-pity in what he wrote.

One night he remarked, This is more like an accident in a factory than a wound taken in a battle.