The Daughters of Mars: A Novel Read online

  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.

  Sally shook her head. I wouldn’t like to blame them, she agreed.

  Naomi still had her hand. Sally studied this meeting of flesh.

  I can’t bubble away with conversation, that’s the problem.

  Yes, said Naomi. I envy the gift to do it.

  So do I, said Sally.

  But if we could find friendship beyond that. If we could talk. About things held close. Secrets, even.

  Is she preparing, Sally wondered, for the subject of subjects?

  The cake trolley had come and they both took one more French pastry off it—winged capsules of cream.

  I’ve told you about Ellis and his damned watch, said Naomi with a sort of pride. I have told you things I could not have said a year back.

  Yes, said Sally. Now her hand, having been the limp object of affection, grasped Naomi’s as the band played “Rose of Tralee” and at a nearby table four officers of the Scots Guards were overtaken by gales of laughter at some folly of an absent colleague.

  • • •

  The women of the Archimedes visited Sacré Coeur to see Carradine and her husband. His wound was healing, but he was not yet ready for shipping to an English hospital. Apart from the wards full of long-term patients such as Lieutenant Carradine, they always found the place in partial chaos. In the lush, palmy gardens of the Beau Rivage, where the orchestra of Egyptians played sweet English ballads and lullabies and unexacting twiddly-dee pieces as tea was served, they would sometimes encounter an Australian or British girl who—utterly outnumbered by orderlies—worked alone or with one companion on these echoing troopships on which young men sang jolly songs on the way towards the great heap of debris, of rock and barrenness named Gallipoli, and swallowed down their dread. On the way back . . . well, they knew what was what by then.

  Black Ship

  The authorities now insisted that they spend two full days in the splendor of the Beau Rivage. Sally and Honora shared a room, since the friendship she had pledged her sister didn’t need to be slavish. They were told that in their absence the Archimedes would be refitted in some way, but “in some way” was not defined. By pure luck Sally and Honora were given a room appropriate for officers and with a balcony above the sea. Since it was early summer, the air was clear as the sun rose behind this piece of strand and revealed itself gigantically by breakfast time far down the coast. An embarrassment of recreations were at their command—they could ride along the coast on light horse mounts. They could attend picnics in the Botanic Gardens or accompany a British education officer on a tour of the antiquities from which their bush ignorance would come back amended. There were bathing parties they could join with swimming costumes provided by the Red Cross. And then the afternoon thé dansant— to which they were so used now and so worldly at.

  It was at the end of an excursion to the Temple of Poseidon and Pompey’s Pillar that an officer approached them and asked, was it true they were from the Archimedes? In that case, what did they think of the Archimedes going black?

  Black? they asked.

  Becoming a troop carrier, I mean—traveling blacked-out.

  He could tell they knew nothing and could barely understand him. Not to worry, he said. I believe it’s only temporary.

  When they returned to the Eastern Harbour and the Archimedes, they saw Egyptian workers were hanging from the sides painting out all trace of red crosses. Approaching the ship along the mole they could also see its lower doors were cast wide open. Through these doors provisions were generally lumped aboard, but now it was mules and horses that were being led by bridles. Soldiers ascended the gangway with rifles and kit. Men with rifles on their backs already looked down from the railings and possessed the ship the nurses had thought of as theirs.

  As they drank tea in their mess with jackets off to release the musk of the morning’s scurry through ancient places, Sergeant Kiernan himself arrived and said the colonel wanted to see them in their lounge. They went there straightaway. As the
y entered, the colonel seemed to nod to them individually. Fellowes and a new surgeon to replace Hookes stood there too—and near them Mitchie and another newer matron with set, uninterpretable features.

  They all found seats and the colonel told them that for military necessity the authorities had decided to make the Archimedes a black ship pro tem. It was his recommendation that the nurses should choose to be left ashore until the higher authorities decided to transform it back to its true calling.

  Nettice asked a question bearing on the point. Wasn’t it true that nurses traveled on black ships?

  Not in great numbers, he said. Perhaps one or two per ship. Very much volunteers.

  Captain Fellowes wanted to speak and sought the colonel’s nod.

  You are entitled to leave the ship, he told them when he got it. The colonel cannot say so—but it seems to me an act of recklessness to chop and change the nature of a ship like this. For this journey we will replace you with competent orderlies. I heard a staff officer say that surely they—whoever that is—did not contemplate that you would sail for this journey, in any case. We’ll wait then and see what happens next to the ship.

  When the colonel and the other surgeons left the room the nurses rose—militarily adept now—to honor their military ranks. Then Mitchie told them to resume seats.

  Well, it’s all lunacy as usual, she declared like a reassurance. There’s the risk of submarines—you see—on a black ship.

  That’s so, confirmed the other matron as if they might doubt Mitchie’s word. That ought to be taken into account.

  The enlightened above us, Mitchie declared, intend that the ship go to the Dardanelles black and that we see these horses and mules and men off. Then the Archimedes will transform itself back to white and take on patients and go to Mudros and thence to Alex. Of course it is a folly and you must not let yourself be subject to it.

  But are you going? Honora asked her.

  Our situation is different, claimed Mitchie. They need us to guide the orderlies who—I am pleased to announce—fear us. But it is different with the rest of you.

  But of course it was at once apparent—by eyes lowered to avoid the force of her argument as by exchanged looks with the same force—that they were all to go.

  • • •

  They waited all day. The loading of these men and ponies and mules of the Inniskilling Fusiliers ammunition train finished and then the soldiers sat on deck talking and smoking and contradicting each other in an accent sharp as an ax. They gave off a sort of discontent—the growls and mockeries of men who had just been worked hard and could foresee harder still. This unexpected form of soldier—all rifle and webbing—came hobnailing it through the main deck of the hospital. One of them turned on seeing nurses and—instead of the applause or the brotherliness of shouted greeting when soldiers on other ships passed the Archimedes—hooted with harsh delight.

  Here come the fooking chorus girls!

  Kiernan, however, tailed the soldiers and drove them along and told them that they were guests—this wasn’t their ship. They told him to get—as they said it—fooked. And their rawness did own the Archimedes for now. Even so, the soldiery was relocated by their considerate officers and sergeant majors to places where it would be harder for them entirely to take away the purpose of the ship. Towards dusk the Archimedes pulled away from its mooring with a few blows of its whistle. Even the Currawong used to leave the Macleay with more ceremony.

  Dr. Fellowes passed along the hospital deck, which was now restored to quiet. Ponies all over the cargo deck, he said. They’d built stalls and loaded them last night. How well would dung sit with medical supplies? Nurses went below and saw the mule lines and fed some sugar to the rows of ponies. They saw wagons and shoulder-high green boxes of munitions mysteriously numbered for war’s purpose. Young grooms in khaki shirts looked at the nurses with a blunt hunger unknown in the world of the town and the street.

  On the promenade deck, Sergeant Kiernan and some orderlies were tying ropes from the inboard handrails to the ship’s railings to keep the men of the munitions train off the starboard promenade. The work with roping-off was done and the orderlies leaned back against the walls smoking or making their narrow cigarettes, seeing nothing in the haze.

  You’re a fine fellow, Honora called to Kiernan, nearly as a tease.

  Leo said beneath her breath once they had passed on, A man of beliefs. A Quaker.

  Holy mother, said Honora. I can imagine a girl or two quaking for him.

  Sally would remember this dusk—cramped in by haze—as having an air of uncertainty in which the Archimedes itself seemed to take part. She would think later that the day was like one in which a horse who could smell a cliff ahead, and had a purpose to avoid it, did not trust its rider to achieve the same level of wisdom.

  Two destroyers appeared on either side of the ship. Surely this scale of naval seriousness wasn’t devoted to them. Was it a chance meeting at sea by vessels with the same landfall?

  Sally heard Irishmen doing physical jerks on the afterdeck and an NCO telling them to put some elbow grease into whatever exercise he demanded of them. It was not a comfortable sharing that existed here. The nurses felt yarded in to their cabins and their salon lounge that night. The Irish soldiers loudly occupied the bunks on the hospital decks. All the ports were battened down to enclose any chance beam of light from inside. The nature of sleep seemed to Sally different from the usual. It meant—for a beginning—that when she woke she did not know whether it was day or night unless her watch inscribed TO DEAREST SALLY ON YOUR GREAT DAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 1911 was consulted.

  Next morning the women stirred—ill-humored—from the enclosed humidity of dreams.

  Oh God, said Freud, as if she’d turned up in a world less satisfactory than yesterday’s.

  Honora slipped warm as a loaf of bread from her lower bunk and began whispering her mysterious prayers fast. They needed to open the ports now to verify the day. Air which had lain all night on the ocean swept in. They dressed in their white ward uniforms and went up on deck to diagnose the morning. It was growing bright out there, and the sea breeze fell away to let in a torrid offshore wind from the nastiest core of Egypt. It penetrated their nursing veils and lightly flapped the red borders of their capes.

  Honora asked, Could you really believe that down there below, in that great water somewhere, there is a steely tube of men who would do us harm? I could believe in a lot of things. But I can’t believe in that. The tube of steel with men inside.

  They sat in the lounge reading and playing euchre. Tomorrow—after the soldiers’ last night aboard—they would be busy cleaning and readying the hospital deck. Restless by nine o’clock, they went up on deck. Naomi remarked that the destroyers had vanished. That—she hoped—had no sinister naval meaning.

  The Archimedes Gone

  During the nurses’ visit to the promenade, the ship swayed in a way a person would not call alarming but that they were unused to. Some of the orderlies on deck stumbled and took their cigarettes from their mouths and looked at each other with a question. They did not return their fags to their lips until the balance of the ship had been regained.

  My heaven, Honora told them, we’re swerving.

  It’s to throw the fellows in your tube off, Honora, Freud asserted, narrowing her large eyes and sharing the joke with the glaring horizon.

  They could see Lemnos—by now reduced from myth to the level of any other dreary island. The hot breath of land was left behind. The air had sharpened and there was that true sea again—that sea into which today the light dived and split apart and met again at some visible point far down—a gem of light beneath, hard to take your eyes off. It imbued Sally with a welcome if temporary joy.

  They remained on deck that morning and Captain Fellowes—no surgery to perform—appeared looking grave and in the full authority of his uniform. He said, Ladies! But his nod—or so they liked to think—was directed at Leonora.

  These Irishmen never s
top saluting me, he said of the interlopers. I’m not used to that from orderlies. And have never had it from nurses.

  They all laughed along a little creakily. He was almost too perfect a creature to exchange banter with. He tipped his cap and moved forward.

  Oh well, said young Leonora then. She seemed happy with the exchange—if you could call it that. She nodded to them and went below.

  Freud raised the old question. So do you think they’ve done it? You must understand what I mean. Fellowes and Leo?

  There seemed no malice in the question. She appeared scientifically interested.

  No, said Nettice. Nor should you ask.

  Freud declared, Doctors are the men who know how to manage these things. Without damage to the girl, I mean.

  What of the moral damage? asked Nettice dryly.

  No one had asked Freud, Do you know these things from experience? But they presumed she did and gave her credit for her urbanity and the possibility of her glamorous sins.

  Well, said Honora, moral damage or not, done it or not, she’s crazed for the man!

  And why shouldn’t they have gone further? Naomi said as a sudden late challenge.

  Oh, Mother of God, murmured Honora. Even the Methodists are voting for jig-a-jig.

  Honora and Freud and Nettice and the Durance sisters decided amongst themselves to shift subjects by going to view the sea from the uppermost deck. They ascended a stairway or companionway and stood exposed totally to the sky with mysterious equipment and winches and piping for company amidst vibrating cowlings and heavy painted grilles. The two great funnels dominated, but the Egyptian painters had been here too and their red crosses were submerged behind a layer of white. The water seemed greener and vaster still. They all at once saw their future approach them like a fish—coming straight at them. You could faintly hear it thrash the water.

  Look how straight it is, said Honora in a kind of doltish admiration.

  There was a profound thud of impact and a shattering and steely explosion which, had they not been young women, would have knocked them off their legs.