The Daughters of Mars (52 page)

Honora looked sullen. The matron took out a book from her pocket. She patted it with her hand and yelled against the continuous but blessedly distant explosions of bombs. If you do not come here when the Klaxon goes, she told them, it is very likely they will move us out of the casualty clearing stations. The general says he will not have us in danger and will move us if we expose ourselves to the Taubes. You understand?

She waved the book in her hand. For now, she announced, I want you to pay your mess bills. Don’t tell me you don’t have money on you.

She opened her book and began to go through the amounts each nurse owed for sherry or lemonade or ginger beer or wine or brandy, and made arrangements for payment—whether or not she received it then and there.

A titanic detonation of the surface above their heads occurred—as these things did—without introduction. They were jolted against each other by the brutal and bullying sound and then drew together and found themselves half deafened. But the matron continued to read.

Slattery, eleven shillings and sixpence. Freud, twelve and eight-pence. Casement, eighteen and seven pence—a lot of extra chocolate bought there, Casement . . .

The Klaxon declared temporary safety had returned long before the matron was finished. But in successive days the sound of aeroplane engines made daytime sleep hard and a woman could not take sleeping draughts at night for fear ambulances would arrive. After the sun had set, the enemy’s aircraft traversed the sky indiscriminately—unable in darkness to tell a baby’s cradle in Deux Églises from the enormous British gun now rumored to be emplaced a few miles west.

There was nothing worse on those summer nights than abandoning the startled, wide-eyed boys—those conscious of the raid but unable to be moved. But nothing was secretly and guiltily better than leaning inwards to listen to that older woman—the matron, the plausible aunt—reading her sums above the varying racket.

T
hese abnormal days Sally breakfasted after night duty in ten minutes. Then she slept till perhaps half past ten in the morning, when a sense of urgency woke her and sent her back to her ward. But at one of those dawns of rushed breakfasts she was interrupted. There’s a fellow here asking for you, a staff nurse told her.

At once she knew. Charlie Condon. If it were him he could annul all the awful days and nights—though that this would happen was merely a notion. She went outside and on the path by the resuscitation hut saw him. He was leaning against the building and a bike was propped up near him. She noticed first that his face had grown somehow older. The features had hardened. It was the face—she thought straightaway—of a knowing warrior. She sensed that he could not only suffer anything imaginable but that he might do it too. It was a greater surprise to see him in this new form than it was simply to see him. He is another man, she considered, as I am another woman. Can we still converse? She dearly wanted to.

Oh, he said, almost as if he hadn’t expected to see her. This has really turned out well. I’d heard you’d been bombed and—I’ve got to say—I was pretty worried. Since we’re in a rest area just now, I borrowed this bike and rode down to see if you were all right.

“Down,” she noticed. That must mean he’d traveled from further north.

Charlie, she said. So kind of you. We’re all top of our form, except not a lot of sleep.

Yes, he said. That’s the way it is up there too. Makes a person a bit crazy, doesn’t it?

But you . . . you look . . .

What? Uglier?

Are you still an artist?

I’m a sketcher still, he reassured her. Do you know, a kiss would give my talent wings. But not possible here, I suppose.

Come and have tea, she told him.

If no ambulance convoy came in before full light they would be able to have a decent talk. And these plain words—these words of no merit at all—seemed the best ones to exchange with a man who must have the terror of the front fixed in his brain. And who had ridden a bike—how many kilometers?—to check if she was safe.

They went into the mess hut.

I can get you whisky, she offered. If you’d like it.

In fact, whisky, stout, brandy—they were all there for the having these days. Nurses could decide that a given patient needed something, and it was there in the pantry. They had begun to use a lot of it in the NYD ward. In a sane world whisky or brandy should not be administered with opiates. But in this world a quick effect was more important.

He said, Whisky would not go amiss by far.

Wait a second, she said, holding up a finger knowingly. She went and fetched him a tin mugful and brought it back. This simple function delighted her beyond measure.

If the matron should come in, she said, pointing to the mug she put down, we can pretend it’s tea.

She poured herself tea and offered her cup towards his.

Your very good health, she said.

She assessed him again. She dared not think that—after all this—he looked like a man who might come through. But that was the case.
He always gave her that impression when she saw him, though not when he was away.

It’s a great relief to clap eyes on you, she said.

Relief? he said.

Of course a relief. Here we only see the wounded. It seems—though it can’t be true—that all men must be wounded sooner or later. But tell me again—the sketching . . . ?

I’m doing a bit in the rest areas. But there’s nothing to sketch up there now. A limited palette, you’d say, for painting as well. Black and brown and slimy green-yellow. Not the stuff of aesthetics. The whisky is very good.

Tell me. How far did you cycle?

I don’t know.

He pointed vaguely northwards. It was good for me. And I won’t insult you by saying I haven’t thought of you a lot.

I’ve been concerned for you too.

He smiled into the mug of whisky. Come on now. Aunts can be
concerned
. And you’re not my aunt. I will accept something such as, I’ve been thinking a great deal about you too, Charlie. Or else, I haven’t given you a blessed thought.

It’s so hectic here. But I fear one of the men on stretchers might be you. You’re on my mind a lot.

Ah! said Charlie, who had wanted to hear that. On your mind a lot. I’m pretty gratified to be told that, Sally. That’ll suit me.

She was aware of nurses moving busily about them now—fetching breakfast plates and giving the banal nods and winks. Would there be more winking amongst them—and smart-aleck rolling of eyes in her direction—when Charlie Condon was gone again? Well, of course. That price must be paid.

I have a belief that if I think of you too much something will happen to you.

Well, no fooling you clearing station girls. You know enough to know there are some days a man can’t believe he’ll live. And nights, ditto.
And if you live through the day and night there’s another impossible day and night to come. Yet . . . there I was this morning. On my bike. You can’t overstate how important this journey was to me.

It brought Sally herself a kind of exaltation to hear a sentiment like that.

I’m pretty impressed myself, she assured him.

The tent was near empty now. The others had got over their whispers and decided to give the two of them a time to themselves. Charlie reached for her wrist and she wished something more vigorous would happen. But it wasn’t possible there.

I’ll need to be back by seven o’clock this evening. That means I must set out on my bike about half past three. Just to be sure. The roads get a bit chancy towards dusk and there’s a lot of traffic.

It was as if he were explaining why the hand on wrist would have to do her for now.

It’s a pity, he laughed, a photographer from the
Macleay Argus
doesn’t come in now and photograph us. The two brave Macleay warriors.

She said, It’s hard to believe the Macleay still exists.

But unfortunately its waters now suddenly flowed back into her, washing along on their surface the still not fully absorbed ending they’d given their mother. It had all come back sharply, as she knew it must. No quantity of massacre could reduce it to a small taint. And Sally knew Charlie must be told about it if he intended to take the more energetic journeys she wanted him to take to keep tracking her down in the French or Flemish countryside.

Oh, I’m sure it’s still there, she heard him say. It’s determined, you know. The earth maintains a great indifference to what we do. When you come back to an area of fields like the ones round here, you understand that the mire up there is just waiting to break out into pasture again. It won’t happen this year—it mightn’t happen for another ten. But in the end the tendency won’t be repressed. There’s greenness waiting under all that slime.

The matron appeared briefly and said, Good morning, Sister; good morning, Captain. It was then Sally saw the nuggets of insignia on his straps which showed him to be that. A captain.

He whispered, Don’t be impressed. The way things are just now there are fifteen men to a platoon and sixty to a company. But they are building us up with new blood. Forcing old hands like me up in rank.

New blood? she asked in horror.

I could have chosen better words, he conceded.

They decided to walk to town past the cemetery and a barley field which a farmer—gambling against a movement of the front line—had bravely planted. The road entered the town from the south. A two-storey official building near the
mairie
had a shattered roof, but people moved normally in the streets. Big-bosomed farmers’ wives shopped and talked to each other in the open day.

I love these little towns, Charlie told her. I keep sketching them. But don’t worry, I won’t be sketching today.

He held out a hand towards the landscape on the edge of town.

You know, I look at all this, so very nice, very ordered. Farmed for thousands of years. And it does call up by contrast where we’re from. I mean to say, what a valley, the Macleay! It’s a valley that deserves a great painter. It’s a place that almost defies a person to become a painter. It says, Come on, have a go, you useless hayseed! And it would explode Cézanne’s palette. He’d have to go reaching for the tubes of paint he doesn’t use here. That’s what we’ve got, the Australians. We’ve got the place but we just don’t have the artists. Up here, gloom and—admittedly—subtlety. And artists? My God. They’ve got wonderful artists to burn. I had leave, by the way, and went to all the galleries.

We saw the Louvre, said Sally. But we didn’t see enough. We didn’t bring the right eyes to it. Look-and-laugh sort of stuff.

Well, said Charlie, grinning, look-and-laugh isn’t bad. I would be happy if in fifty years girls looked and laughed at something of mine. What amazes me is that up there at the front, you have . . . Well, you know what’s up there, you deal with it daily. Then just fifty miles
southwest down the road, acre after acre of pretty astounding rooms. Then the Salon—and someone took me to the Salon des Refusés—the paintings that before the war hadn’t been accepted for the Academy. That was an education. Even the rejected are brilliant. In fact—as someone mentioned to me—it’s the brilliant who
get
rejected. It all has a funny effect on your ambitions, you know. Part of you thinks, all right, all
you’re
fit for, Sonny Jim, is to go back home and illustrate the covers of adventure papers and boys’ magazines. And another part thinks, I can do something like that!

She said, From what I know, at least you’ll give it a great shake.

If she was sure he would exist to take what he had back to Australia and try to see where it fitted in the fabric of the place, she didn’t care too much what difficulties he had fitting it.

I want to give it a shake, he said. Yes, I’d like to. Mind you, one of the war artists I met took me to see some of the new schools—even this crowd called the Vorticists—who are full of a kind of dread, as if everything is going down the gurgler. That seems a reasonable enough idea for these times. But what confuses me is how to take any of it back to Australia. It’s all so different from here. It’s not Europe. It’s non-Europe. And always will be.

They turned into an estaminet of paneled wood and dim glass windows. A townsman and his wife drank together at a table. They were not handsome, but they provided Sally with a parallel to the joy she felt at sharing a table with Charlie. Charlie ordered red wine. She would drink it too, so that they experienced simultaneously its rough strength against the roots of the palate.

Two farmers came in. Both saluted them informally—giving them the credit for being defenders of the township.

Charlie took a deep draught of his red wine when it arrived. She also took a mouthful of this fluid, still mysterious and acrid to her.

Of course, he continued, there’s no substantial difference between us and French people, except in us a kind of innocence. But do you think those farmers over there are giving a hoot about Verlaine or Seurat? They’re just
cow-cockies too. So I think the day’s going to come for Australia. Just a bit of a wait, that’s all.

It was a tender hope and she smiled at it. She thought then—as he finished his glass—something so alien to her and as utterly surprising in its arrival as the Taubes. Yet Honora had said it once about Lionel. If I had his son, he could not be lost entirely. And then, if he weren’t lost, there’d be two of them. Men with glittering spirits.

She said, Do you have leave soon?

He lowered his eyelids secretively.

There’s a big stunt on. But . . . I think by November, maybe some leave.

She noticed they had both drunk their raw red wine down. She had unconsciously kept pace with Charlie. He called for more. With the recent whisky and now this wine, he had become a drinker. It was said they did drink at the front—it was taken for granted there were things best done when a man was part soused.

Listen, she said, I don’t know who Seurat is. I would like to go to Paris and see the paintings with you.

Sally, he said, his face reddening as if he knew she’d read him too accurately—his zeal and desire. I would be so delighted to take you if we could make our leaves coincide. I’ll lecture you mad, the way I did in Rouen. I’ve become an even more obnoxious know-all.