The Daughters of Mars: A Novel Read online

  This young woman of twenty-two—or near twenty-three—years was considered by those who bothered to see her to be possessed by a wistfulness which some people thought represented that greatest crime of bush towns: aloofness, flashness. Either that, or she was a cause for sympathy. A spinster-in-training.

  Voluntary

  Then—after eight months—the thunderclap. It would alter earthly geography. It altered the geography of duty and it enhanced all escape routes. It was not the thunderclap of war—at least in the clear and direct sense. It was not the declarations of the prime minister or the news that the enemy was in Samoa and New Guinea, and his flotilla of cruisers and raiders was already at sea, or about to take to it and make the Pacific and Indian Oceans perilous. It was not the rush to make a full-blown army out of a mere framework of weekend militias. It was not a renewed awareness that the valley was numerous in Bavarian Catholic cow-cockies, now likely to be less loyal even than the Irish. It was a letter addressed to her father and her by Naomi in Sydney.

  There is a call for military nurses. Unless you have sharp objections, I’ll apply. But any acceptance is unlikely. If Sally feels that she would be left without proper help, I will of course . . .

  Recently Sally had begun to favor the day shift for its busyness, leaving the house with stew and potatoes bubbling on the great iron range fueled with the fallen branches of ring-barked trees. In her noon absence her father would eat some of this and when she returned at dusk always declared it had been top-class. It was good that he was not a complainer, that his hard-mouthed taste was not broad, and any food involving meat, potatoes, and green peas fulfilled his idea of nourishment, as long as it was served scalding. But even before the great change in the world, she had known in some secret chamber of the mind that she was readying herself for an escape, one all the more—not less—daring and reckless because it did not involve tunneling or scaling walls.

  On the excuse she would be home too late from the hospital, she had started to get the Sorley girl to cook her father the evening meal. Many would see what was coming their way—the womanless homestead which would be his lot—and they would rant and plead. But Mr. Durance did not show any sign he intended that. He stated a thoughtful and unblaming awareness that in the end both the girls would go, for Naomi had already proved it to him. Neither love nor blood nor begging, he wisely and grievingly knew, could hold a man and his children under one roof and unto death. At some time the roof would change itself into a wheel which spun off the children. This month—if the occasional Herald which reached the farm could be believed—the roofs of the world had become a wheel for crushing the breasts of mothers and fathers. If Naomi could be shrugged off by this roof in the Macleay, then she, Sally, was fit also to be thrown out on a tangent over earth, and perhaps over oceans—whose scope might even reduce her crimes as a daughter to the size of an atom.

  There was as well a problem she had with a farmer’s son named Ernie Macallister—about whose suitability for her and her suitability for him it seemed a number of people had already decided. She’d let herself be taken to Crescent Head to swim and once to the flickers at the Victoria. The college of women—her late mother too—had just about chosen to allot her in their minds to young Macallister like real estate. The tedium of all this frightened her.

  The federal letter calling for nurses arrived at the Macleay District the same day as Naomi’s and was left in the nurses’ room by the matron in case any of her four charges felt the drag of history. Sally approached her matron and told her that she would like to apply. It would probably be for nothing. The matron was, however, English-born and ardent on the Empire and the war, and she gave Sally leave.

  Sally intended to try to fit the business of potential enlistment in Sydney into two days and two nights. She sent a telegram asking to stay not at Naomi’s flat but at the more spacious Randwick house of her Aunt Jackie. She knew this would be considered by Naomi as a stringent step. That it would be correctly interpreted as resentment of the urban sister and an avoidance of the unease rising from the murderous succor they had extended to their mother. But something was rampant in Sally, something that said crazily that Naomi should not feel entitled to keep the whole of the war and leave Sally with the crumbs of a languishing peace.

  In Sydney by morning and rushing by tram to Victoria Barracks, Sally entered a drill hall where other women stood half-bewildered, and filled out a form about her nursing career and her own medical condition. She queued for the interview at which she was to present two papers—her nurse’s registration and a health certificate from Dr. Maddox—to an elderly militia colonel, whose manner was paternal, and a senior matron who sat with him at a table, whose manner was dry. The pressure of unconfessed murder nudged up around the edges of the two printed forms, and she was pleased to pass them over.

  Even so, Sally suspected she would not be chosen. She might make this slight and feeble move and then go back tamed for years more to the duty of daughterhood. She suspected she might in fact go back with as much secret relief as disappointment. She was willing to go back. That forenoon as she left the hall, she resigned herself to return on the following night’s coaster. The tin roof would not spin her far off and had already begun its pull inwards.

  She spent the rest of the day with Jackie. The aunt was the better part of ten years younger than her mother and—married to an accountant—did not seem to possess that worn quality which ultimately marked anyone who associated themselves with dairy cattle. She was jolly too, and had a genuine gift for levity, whereas Sally’s mother had maintained her silence and air of endurance rather than give way to irony. This afternoon was not marked by any particular urban excitement designed to comfort Sally for her imminent return to the bush. A journey to the Italian greengrocers; some wurst for her children’s and husband’s lunches. Though the powers of the earth had decided that wurst would be called “devon” now, the meat was still in the process of taking on that new, solid British identity. Then to the grocer’s—Moran & Cato’s. Dazzling metropolitan experiences!

  It was four o’clock then. The children whom the aunt intended for university were studying in their rooms—they possessed their own desks, no homework on kitchen tables in this house—and Naomi Durance arrived. Her knock was answered by her aunt while Sally was reading a magazine at the kitchen table. Sally heard her arrival and settled herself for facing her sister. Entering the living room she saw Naomi wearing a white jacket over a light blue dress, and carrying a straw hat with a blue band. She managed with an easy, urbane air her clothing and her striking green eyes and long features and her mother’s sweetness about the long lips. She was also fit to be feared and worshipped in the best of makeup. Even their aunt greeted her as if she were an exciting visitation. The kids came out of their rooms wearing smiles of anticipation. She had brought with her a box of chocolates.

  When the kids had taken chocolates back to their desks to help them with Euclid, Naomi began. What a surprise I got, Sally, when the colonel and matron told me another Durance—yes, Sally Durance—was down here.

  She spoke softly like a magistrate pretending it was pleasant information but really taking it as another instance of human folly for which Sally would need to pay. This brought out something unwished-for and sullen in Sally.

  Naomi said, Why didn’t you ask me, instead of bothering Aunt Jackie? I could have put you up.

  Yes, Sally wanted to say. The two killing daughters together. What a happy arrangement!

  I just wanted to make my own plans, Sally mumbled. No offense intended.

  And who’s looking after Papa? I was just wondering.

  Sally looked up into Naomi’s potent eyes. You aren’t. I’m not. But I’ve made sure he’s taken care of.

  But how does he feel at the moment?

  He doesn’t say. I’ve set up the Sorley girl to cook his meals. But at least twice a week Mrs. Sorley herself comes over with the daughter and brings scones and fruitcake. He may be lonely but he
doesn’t say. Anyhow, all those who have grown children will feel lonely sooner or later, won’t they?

  Naomi looked at the aunt as if all this were a slight against her too. Then she asked, But don’t you think one daughter away is enough?

  I don’t know why it’s a law of the universe that it’s you who’s away, said Sally.

  She knew this was another mistake. She was having too much of the fight before the fight had been declared. Naomi doesn’t want me to go home for Papa’s sake but because I am a walking reproach to her. As I am to myself, but I need the great distraction of distance and wounds to forget it.

  I am older, Naomi said, soft but taut. That’s an accident of birth. I came here when Mama was healthy and you were training by your own choice at the Macleay. There was not so much need for one of us to be home as there is now. If you had been the older sister, you would be in my position and I would be in yours and without resenting it. But I got set up here and found new obligations before Mama got ill. It’s an accident of the situation prevailing when I came here.

  Well, the prevailing situation now is this war.

  Yes, and that is dangerous, you know. Father could lose us both. There are deadly ships out there, between here and France. Read the Herald. Admiral von Spee’s ships from China are already snooping about somewhere in the Pacific.

  Sally felt heat enter her face. You look after your own safety, she told her sister, and I will mine.

  The pretty aunt was gazing at her hands. The conversation was wearing through its fake-pleasant fabric. Rawness was eating its way out.

  I am just saying, Naomi continued, that your turn will come and will probably prove a better tilt at life than I’ve had.

  When will that be though? When I’m forty-five? Of course I feel uneasy about it all, and Papa doesn’t publish his feelings every morning so I don’t know for a dead certainty how he stands and what he needs. But if needs exist, it’s his right and duty to say what they are, not yours.

  She had never debated Naomi in such hard terms before. Aunt Jackie was becoming anxious. It was wrong to wrestle like this in their aunt’s home.

  Let’s not quarrel, Naomi, said Sally then, fearing the chasm all at once and unwilling to be sucked back into girlishness and surly debate. Let’s have some tea, eh? Because they won’t accept me in any case, so there’s no argument.

  Maybe they won’t take me either. But if they do take us both . . . ?

  Well, it’s expected to finish by next summer. Your Herald said that. If it’s right about German admirals then it’s right about that as well.

  Their aunt was now occasionally opening her mouth and framing her lips.

  Aunt Jackie, Sally said, I didn’t mean anything by calling for tea in what is your house.

  No, said Aunt Jackie, firm at last. But I will make it now. No help required! You two sit and speak calmly, please. Because it is—as you said—my house.

  Sally became aware that the young cousins had come from their rooms to linger at the end of the hallway and listen to their older cousins’ exchange. They turned back to their study as their mother moved to the kitchen. Sally sat in an easy chair, Naomi in the center of the sofa. Naomi said softly, I suppose you can still withdraw. It’s not like the army. You’re not a soldier.

  Neither are you, whispered Sally across the room. We’re equal in that.

  You’re starting again, Naomi pointed out. And you barely have a smile for either your auntie or me.

  I am still in mourning, said Sally. So are you. That changes what we say and do.

  This was so close to admitting their conspiracy that she looked away and felt a demeaning moisture appear on each eyelid. She wiped it briskly away.

  Naomi rose and came to Sally and leaned down to put her arms around her shoulders. It was a clumsy caress. Durances weren’t good at broad gestures.

  I always thought of you as safe back there at home. I don’t think of you as safe when you’re down here, planning on being reckless.

  Sally was certain that her sister was nine-tenths genuine in what she said, and knew nine-tenths was a great deal. She rose, kissed Naomi on the spot where her black hair arched over the left ear. Sally thought as they embraced how their mother’s rivers of blood ran in them but could not concur.

  The next morning at the door of the hall at Victoria Barracks sat a list of nurses acceptable to tend to soldiers in far places. Both the Durance girls’ names were on it, the name of the one who had expected to be and of the one who hadn’t.

  • • •

  Inside the stone drill hall was a great echo of women, a shrilling with an only partly successful contralto attempt by some matron to settle things down. Young women crowded up to take out of the hands of two confused young men—the colonel’s orderlies—a sheet of paper on which their required clothing was listed. Having received the form, some found its prescribed garments comic and read them aloud mockingly, hooting at items even as the orderlies suggested they cross the hall to a glum sergeant at a table who was issuing money orders to cover the cost of the uniforms.

  At a further table, cloth bags containing buttons and insignia were handed out. These were inspected with more reverence than the list. A silver Rising Sun collar badge lay in there, to be worn at the throat, and silver jacket buttons on which Australia was depicted geographically, and two boomerang-shaped metal insignia which spelled out “Australia” on the tunic shoulders.

  Sally had not laid eyes on Naomi until she saw her ahead in the money queue. This was made up of recognizable hospital types—the pretty young ones always in trouble with matrons because their beauty might render them flighty and attractive to registrars and interns. Then plump, wide-hipped little women, aged beyond thirty, medical nuns, in effect, supposed by stereotype to be sour-mouthed but in Sally’s experience often triumphant in their unfettered singleness, and smiling now at the new prospect this milling hall promised. Some severer-looking older women of the rank of sisters, who hid often genial souls but had learned that a neutral face endeared them to doctors and matrons. And, suddenly, sui generis, as they say, Naomi in her good green suit.

  It is no humiliation for me, thought Sally, to take the sergeant’s money. But it was strange to see Naomi there—in line with the less august for a small sum of cash. On an impulse Sally asked the girls in front of her whether they minded if she joined her sister.

  They flung their arms around each other with a force left unspent from yesterday’s quarrel. And in its compass not all grievance was tamed but at least the residue was put to momentary rest. Naomi stepped back and shook her head.

  From now on, Sally promised herself, I reserve the right to be a head-shaker too. I have as much right to be amazed by her.

  Then Naomi got to the sergeant and signed for the money he doled out with creaky care from a cash box. He made her sign the accounts book. Next, Sally. Naomi now went to say hello to a friend from her hospital. Sally had walked back about ten paces across the hall, a little confused about what to do next—shop for war at once or go home to her aunt’s for some tea—when she saw an oval-faced, pretty young blue-gray–eyed woman wearing an orange summer dress and a cardigan over it, with a yellow jaunty hat on her head, and her light brown hair piled up. The girl said, Miss . . . Nurse, I can do it for you for a guinea plus a quid for fabric. Both the jacket and skirt with the cape and the gray working dress and a pinafore thrown in. Got my own sewing machine. Good as shop-bought, I guarantee. No delays. Only got one other order. You’ve got your belt already, no doubt. Hat, veil, and shoes you’ll have to get yourself.

  I’ve got the veil already, said Sally, as if this would put an end to the commercial impulse of the woman in the orange dress.

  The oval-faced young woman shook her head in apparently genuine bewilderment. These girls’d rather waste their money. I don’t know what sort of homes they come from. Fathers must own a bank or all be country doctors, I wouldn’t be surprised.

  The broad, easy humor of the girl’s fa
ce made Sally shy. Thanks, but my sister and I are actually on our way to Hordern’s now.

  Come on, said the girl, lowering her head, looking up under auburn eyebrows. Some would consider this undue push on her part. Others, businesslike determination. Come on, dear, she whispered. If you don’t like what I do, I won’t charge you for it. I need the quid for fabric, so you’ll have to take the risk and give me that to begin with. I’ll give you that back too if you aren’t thoroughly delighted. I mean gray serge? I run it up all the time. I’ve done gray serge for nuns and they never complained.

  Sally hesitated. But the absolute promise of refund fascinated her, and a suspicion of an energetic rectitude in the girl made the issue one of gambling on character as against the bewilderment and boredom of shopping. They both stood there, thinking each other over.

  Look, the girl resumed at the end of a few seconds’ silence. I’m the sort of person the shops’d use anyhow, if I wanted to slave on it full-time.

  A pound as a deposit then?

  No, scratch that, said the girl. I can tell you’re a solid type. I don’t need anything.

  But then, as if she were checking up on Sally’s bona fides: Where do you nurse?

  Sally told her—a bit like a soldier from a poor regiment forced to admit its name. The other woman nodded though, finding no grounds for embarrassment in the words “Macleay District.”

  I’m St. Vincent’s, she said. Nuns took me in on a scholarship. I’m Honora Slattery. Hate being called Nora though. I draw the line at that. Honora. Please observe.

  Sally surrendered her name too. This was one of those Irish, Sally knew, who generally didn’t understand the line between good manners and stubbornness. They would take Australia over and downwards, her father always said, with their horse-racing and their drinking and their hidden contempt for the King.