The Daughters of Mars (3 page)

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 face 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.

I absolutely promise, said Honora Slattery, as if to allay Sally’s sectarian suspicion, I won’t be doing more than three girls plus mine. You see, I want to lay a bit of money up for Mama and himself. The old fella’s a waterside worker. Sometimes we’re flush, sometimes we’re eating kumquats and lard.

She winked.

And just in case the hospital ship sinks, Honora Slattery ended.

Sally laughed and shook her head at the foreshadowing of this unlikely tragedy. They exchanged addresses. You can call my aunt, anyhow, when you’re finished, said Sally. She’s got a telephone.

Mother of God! said Honora. I’ve blundered in amongst the aristocracy.

No, Sally said. I’m a dairy farmer’s daughter. But, I tell you, you’d better be good.

For what mocking, corrective words would Naomi feel entitled to utter, inspired by Slattery’s failure and Sally’s own gullibility?

Honora Slattery said, You can put the house on it.

Now a woman with a foghorn—who described herself as Chief Matron Appleton—called them to order. She had open features and that easiness of command of such women.

She told them they must meet again in a week at eight o’clock in the morning to be instructed on the army, on issues of soldiers and military units. They would be introduced to the whole gamut of duties affecting orderlies and nurses—from the front line to the general hospitals behind it. For now, they would fill in one more form to entitle them to military pay, and then could return either to their homes or to their civil nursing duties until required. Those who had more than twenty miles to travel could apply for a warrant.

They all took final turns at desks with pens and ink to fill the pay forms, women of forty elbowing their way with twenty-year-olds barely past their exams. Each form was dropped at a desk at the front of the hall where, after an orderly scanned them, they were placed in a cardboard box. The women left uncertainly. The plain dismissal—and the cardboard box where they’d left the record of their years—seemed too flimsy and insignificant to contain the shift they had managed.

At the top of the steps outside, Naomi was waiting, pulling on velvet gloves. Sally thought the question of shopping for kit would come up. Well, Naomi said instead, we must send poor Papa a telegram. He ought to know tout de suite.

Who is going to send it?

I will. That’s only fair.

So Sally pressed telegram money on her and then surrendered herself to the strangeness of looking out over the parade ground to the Georgian gatehouse, where two soldiers in their big hats guarded Victoria Barracks from the malice of the emperor of Germany. There, as well, young talkative men played around and waited in line for their chance to invade the military premises and offer themselves.

I’ll go home for a few days, Sally said. Since the sergeant’s paying. I have to square things with the matron and with Papa.

But first, for the measuring-up, Sally arrived at Honora’s place in
Enmore. It proved a dim but loud home, many brothers and sisters, a thin but young-looking mother, a hulking, sullen father reading the
Australian Worker
in the kitchen, and beyond all a veranda set up as a seamstress’s workshop.

And that night, it was back to the
Currawong
. Sally loved the great coastal reach and the strenuous swell now that her mother was safe from suffering it. And the angles headlands adopted to inland mountains—which told her just about where she was on the map. She got one of Kempsey’s two charabancs which waited up the slope from the wharf and took passengers to addresses in town and round the river. At last it rattled over the Sherwood bridge. The house was empty, her father gone somewhere, and the dray gone. It suited her to walk the two or more miles over to Macleay District on its hill above the convenient cemetery and told the matron and was treated as a woman who had somehow managed an astounding stunt. She was back at lunchtime. When she faced her widowed father he answered her with a terrible uncomplaining. After all, he’d already had the telegram.