The Daughters of Mars (53 page)

Suddenly it was time to order some stew and bread. When it was eaten they strolled back out of the town. At the crucifix at a shaded corner—the one before the Bapaume Road—he pulled her to him urgently and precisely as she’d hoped and in gratitude she took up the full vigor of the kiss and reimposed it on him, meeting him six-tenths of the way to show that he could hope for something reciprocal. It went on so long as to have the feeling of being a solid entity. If a farmer had appeared on a cart, or a British truck driven down the road with whistling Tommies, it would not have let itself be dissolved.

But there came up again that almost automatic feeling of temporary disqualification from joy. The closer she got to him, the greater the
demand to tell him the size of what she’d done. She didn’t disengage herself so violently as to puzzle him or disappoint him. She simply turned her head to one side—as if for breath.

I am on duty tonight, she told him. And you have a long ride.

But we’ll go to Paris?

I hope so, she said. For she did hope so still. Despite the care she had taken not to leave him confused, she could see he was a little confused. But it would not be a jaunt. He would be tested there. She would be.

Well, he told her. It’s back to the bike for now.

He mounted the framework of the cycle and put a boot in one of the stirrups. She could tell once more she’d confused him. So she said, Charlie!

He looked at her and was expectant.

There’s no question, she said, that you’re a man amongst men.

What does that mean? he asked, smiling. Because it doesn’t mean much when you’re in an army.

Well, she said, it means my love, that’s what.

He grinned madly. It was what he had cycled all the way in hope of.

Well, he murmured. That’s a big admission for a girl like you.

F
reud confided in Sally. She believed that unless Honora now fell apart there would be no putting her together again. The collapse came. Honora was sleepless and working a continuous shift. Then she entered the phase when she would prop herself powerless against the door of a ward and look at the beds with an anguished frown and be stuck as if paralyzed. It was as if all the wounds appealed so equally for her care that she could attend to none. Her overcommitted body smelled of stale summer sweat. This or that nurse would come up to take her by the elbow and fetch her back to the mess tent. But she was hostile to help and would shake herself free.

At last Major Bright himself came, and on his restrained authority she left her ward in the hands of Sally and Leo, who had washed her and packed her things for her. Sister Slattery was being sent back to Rouen for a rest, Bright told them. When her bag and valise were ready, he helped her to a car. She moved like someone elderly but was half dazed with barbital. Freud, Leonora, Sally, and the matron kissed her good-bye through the car window.

The revelation was that Bright intended to travel with her and then be back by evening for the hours when convoys generally came. He was going around to the car’s far door when he met Sally.

I am no mind doctor, he said to her, but it is not just the matter of her fiancé. What happened to him has been made graver by what she’s seen here.

To Sally it seemed as if he thought he must defend her from people who thought the best of her in any case.

Bright climbed into the car’s backseat and adjusted a travel rug across Honora’s lap. He had the demeanor of a servant. Could the scale of her grief have entranced him? After the car had disappeared, Freud said, He wants her well—amongst other reasons—so that he can talk to her. He doesn’t want her mad grief to put her forever inside the walls—a nun or a lunatic.

Bright was back by the evening. And the convoys did come. This late summer and early autumn assault—gambits designed to bring peace by Christmas and consecrate the numbers 1917 forever in the minds of the human species—were said to be a success. Yet it was hard to judge it that way from the wards of Deux Églises. If these bodies equaled success, one could not imagine the formula of defeat.

But then there arrived suddenly a night when the earth froze again and this time the war appeared to pause to mark the change of climate. Summer now seemed to have lasted mere days, all its chances quickly squandered. In the resuscitation ward—to which Sally had returned—she and the nurses wore balaclavas and the cap comforters the soldiers wore, and had hot-water bottles placed for them on their trolleys to warm their hands before they touched a patient. When the hot water from the bottles went cold and threatened to freeze, it was boiled again for cocoa or Bovril.

Her third winter of war was established now. Amidst the wetness of days and the iciness of nights a letter from Charlie Condon arrived. It nominated the dates of the leave he believed he could get to meet her in Paris. She was grateful the letter did not have to chase her. For there were more rumors their clearing station was to be moved northeast into Flanders towards that curious town named Ypres—which officers pronounced “Eep” and soldiers “Wipers.”

She took the letter out of the mess—where it had been delivered to her—and read it standing under a pewter sky on a frozen ground. Of course—observing herself as if from a distance—she took the luxury
of weeping in the usual plain way. Tears were a necessary river in the case of her and Condon.

But there were other reasons for these tears. He’d come through again—just a few coin-sized bits of shrapnel near the shoulder blade, he wrote, and a few on the hips. Metal had, he said, kindly avoided his spine. She knew spines metal had chosen to enter.

And so it was set. It must be said to him. The plan to murder a mother was not diminished by the plans to murder divisions of men. Trustworthy Nurse Sally Durance had pilfered rescue, designed it to seep all the way to her mother’s heart—her gracious and unsated heart. But Condon would not be told the Naomi part. I planned murder, she’d say, and would have done it. That’s what I’m capable of.

Under the frosted, sullen sky, Sally understood that part of her still belonged to that sickroom twelve thousand miles away. That it was as close as the resuscitation or gas wards. And thus she could not prance around galleries with Charlie as another girl might. Even if—when she told him—doubt would afflict him and she might find herself back safely and terribly on her own.

For three minutes the hope and uncertainty of the coming meeting kept her out there in the cold. Then exhaustion and shivering drove her inside and to her bunk. It lay in the new-built nurses’ hut, divided into rooms for three or four women set on either side of a central corridor. Even here she had stuck with Freud and Leo. To hell with being called cliquish. She slept profoundly through artillery and aircraft grinding their way to the sky’s apex and then rose to savor Charlie’s letter and its promise of grace. Until a four ack-emma clanging signaled a new convoy had arrived and the sharpness of self was submerged again by busyness.

Later in the day she spoke to Matron Bolger and wrote back to Condon with the dates offered her by that sturdy woman.

• • •

In the first days of December they were told the clearing station
was
being moved—with all its instruments of operation and mercy—away
from Deux Églises to a place not yet announced. Sally had her trunk packed in case the move occurred while she was in Paris. She took a smaller bag to the capital to meet Captain Condon. She caught a truck to Amiens—one of the eight-tonners that supplied the clearing station. In the train from Amiens to Paris she slept—but woke in time to team herself with two Canadian nurses as unwilling as she was to negotiate the Métro with their luggage and willing to share a taxi fare from the Gare du Nord. They had time to compare notes briefly. The Canadians worked in a hospital near Arras and had had a tedious journey down to the train. Their faces looked a little hollow—they had the drawn look of women overworked. Do I look like that too? Sally wondered.

The taxi took them to a Red Cross hostel for nurses in Rue de Trévise—one of the Canadians was from Montreal and could thus tell the driver in French that it was close to the Place Vendôme. And—she confided under her breath to the others—the Folies Bergère. Charlie would not arrive until the following morning, so Sally accepted their invitation—as they were being given the keys to their reserved rooms—to join them in the plain dining room that night. They’d hit the town tomorrow, they said. After a needful rest.

Arriving in the dining room a little after six she saw her companions were already at a table. Its linen was fresh and solid-cornered with starch. There was one other woman at the far end of the room and—alone at her table—she seemed well advanced on her meal. Her back was to them. Even so, her shape and the way her shoulders moved minutely at the duties of devouring bread and casserole were acutely familiar. Sally was shocked but immediately filled with a sense of intrusion. It was obviously Naomi sitting there, maintaining the downcast, chaste gaze of a woman eating alone in public.

She must first tell her new companions and excuse herself. She crossed to them and said, I’m a bit astonished. My sister happens to be over there. She hasn’t seen me yet.

They wanted to know where Naomi was working.

In Boulogne, said Sally.

You’re
welcome to join us, said one of the Canadian women, but we understand if . . . Not a lot of chance sisters get to meet and talk about home.

That’s what we’ll do, Sally thought. We’ll talk about home. We’ll talk home squared or to the power of three. We’ll get it settled.

Naomi had by now heard the voices and risen from her table. Sally felt a gust of affection at the solemn, peaked, mature features.

I have leave, Sally told her stupidly. Naomi clasped her arms around Sally and Sally did the same in return. It was so much easier now.

Naomi led her by the elbow to a seat opposite her own place and then—overcome with the hilarity of the coincidence—bowed her head down onto Sally’s shoulder like a confiding schoolgirl.

Well, said Naomi when they had sat opposite each other.
You
obviously need building up—a tonic.

I was thinking the same about you.

Oh, everyone works themselves too hard at the Voluntary.

I’ve got a week’s pass, Sally told her. What about you?

Two days, said Naomi, waving at one of the Red Cross volunteers who served as waitresses at the hostel. A pity it’s so short.

I’m meeting up with Charlie Condon tomorrow. He’s going to show me the galleries.

That’s wonderful, Naomi said.

What about you?

Ian Kiernan’s coming tomorrow and we’re going to see our Committee of Clarity.

Sally had never heard of such a thing and shook her head.

I’m sorry. I presumed I’d told you about it. It’s the committee that’s overseeing our engagement.

Your engagement?

Yes, I told you in a letter.

I didn’t get it, complained Sally, though she knew she sounded rancorous—especially at the postal corps. Then of course the true force of the news struck her.

He’s someone worthwhile then? she asked, anxious that her grand sister might be eroded.

Naomi laughed. You know him, she said. You know the man he is.

Yes, Sally admitted. A sturdy sort of bloke all right.

And . . . despite its highfalutin name, this committee’s job is to make sure we’re . . . genuinely keen on each other.

Sally watched as Naomi laughed at her own use of slang. Naomi was very happy. How could she manage to be so simply happy with Kiernan and their engagement when she’d used the hypodermic that night? If they could talk about it, Naomi might be able to instruct her. Sally could not eat her soup when it came, though she inspected it at considerable length.

What’s the matter, Sal?

Do you ever think of our mother? Sally challenged her. I mean, think of her as more than the dead we see each day?

Of course. I forget for an hour. But she returns. I was with her when she went. Many would think that grief. But it was also a privilege.

Enough of that, Sally decided. You heard of Honora? she asked.

I did. And I think any of us could end like that, with a bit of bad luck.

But it was back to the main question. Will you tell your Committee of Clarity that you gave her the injection? Sally said. Or wouldn’t they understand?

She looked up now and saw what she thought was confusion on Naomi’s face.

And have you told Ian Kiernan about it? Sally asked.

No, said Naomi. Sally . . .

I’m going to have to come clean with Charlie . . . I can’t have him not knowing. That would poison us. I’ll take the blame for planning the business. No mention of you. Because I always intended the whole thing even if it was you who stepped in—purely out of generosity. I’ve never thanked you—I couldn’t manage it till now.

Naomi was doing a good act of mystification.

You’ve got nothing to be grateful for, Naomi said. My God, you should see how you look, Sal—like the starveling coming home. Please eat that. You’re scarecrow thin.

What does that matter? The thing is, I love you and I hate you for taking up the burden. For doing it.

Hold hard there, Sally. Doing
what
?

Sally lowered her voice. Killing her!
Killing her
. I know you found my little treasure of morphine. You knew what I meant to do. You took it on yourself to do it and you ground up or poured out what was left. That’s a reason I started behaving as if I couldn’t decide whether I should love you or hate you—be near you or stay clear.

Just wait a second, murmured Naomi. And by the way, the Canadians are staring at us a bit.

Do you care about that? asked Sally in a whisper—though a fierce one. And bile did rise now. Such a stupid small thing? You and I killed our mother, and you’re worried about bloody Canadians!

There was a demonic fury in Sally because all Naomi did was lower her face. No sudden rising from the table. None of the outrage Sally had foreseen and now wanted.

I did nothing, said Naomi calmly. She had taken Sally’s hand again. Our mother just died. That’s all. I don’t know why it was that night of all possible nights. But—pure and simple—she died.