The Daughters of Mars: A Novel

by Keneally, Thomas

  Charlie, it’s a wonderful big shape. I don’t know what to say.

  Look, he told her, there’s one thing I want to see in case it’s pounded to rubble. Could you stand that? It’s called the Beau Dieu—the handsome God. It’s in the doorway. Do you mind . . .?

  So, she thought, he still has a fascination outside of the larger issue. Or was he nervous and the handsome God a means of delay? She told him, Of course not. I’d like to see it too.

  They walked up to the cathedral of mismatched towers and found—between the doors—the smiling stone Christ trying to bring mercy to naked sinners who entered the maw of hell on the inner fluting of that great stone entry. Christ stood benignly between the doors, hand raised in the calmest compassion but also regret. It was not a god of omnipotence but of grief for his children.

  And then inevitably they went in. She insisted by instinct—as if to let a kind of longing accumulate—that having seen the Beau Dieu they might as well finish the business.

  It was not the exquisite experience of their tour of Rouen Cathedral. But that was not this cathedral’s fault. Their minds were on a different order of meeting. They proceeded down the sandbagged nave and saw fire marks on some of the walls. All the stained glass had been removed. So too had many of the statues from the side chapels. But the altar pieces were still ornate. They both worked at being engrossed by this. But all this huge piling of artful stone, all this steepling, all those vaultings which had resisted the temptation of gravity for so long—these did nothing but delay the aims of this meeting.

  In one of the side alcoves—made deeper and more shadowy by the extra heaped sandbags against the main wall—they seized on each other so instantaneously that neither of them could have sworn who was the instigator. There was as profound and languorous a kiss as the place would permit. She could smell the sugary potency of brandy in his mouth. Feeling she had passed through into unfamiliar country where the currency of normal self was not recognized, she said after a while, I was speculating on how long it would take before we reached this point.

  He laughed low and close to her face. Not only did I wonder how long, he said, but I made provision, should you wish . . . I don’t know how to say this. There’s a place north of here. Few soldiers, if any, there . . . in Ailly-sur-Somme. There’s a decent enough little hotel on the western bank. I’ve booked two rooms and have a driver bribed to take us out there—he thinks it’s just for a dinner in the country. And indeed we’ll have dinner. And then we can come back afterwards or we can stay there.

  She rubbed his surprisingly smooth jaw. The same part of the face, she was reminded, that had been shorn off Officer Constable. She must fight that Durance habit still entrenched in her: everything that presented itself to be rejoiced in had to be matched up at once with something that must be mourned and feared.

  Oh, we’ll definitely be staying, she told him like a woman who knew what she was doing—the sort of woman she’d never suspected herself to be.

  You said definitely? he asked with a sort of disbelief.

  Yes. And if you lose so-called respect for me, I don’t care.

  Why would I lose respect?

  It is only afterwards that conversations of this nature take on their character of ordinariness, of things said before by the millions—as if somewhere in the Book of Common Prayer or some less elevated document there was a prescribed exchange not only of the plain vows of marriage but of those of seduction too. Yet at their congress of two in the alcove, everything seemed new. Sally had an ambition to be a reckless woman—having seen and envied it in others. And now it was achieved, and she was loved by Charlie for it.

  We need another café, he told her, as if he could absorb these new things only by taking a seat. Wait a moment, he said. No more for now.

  They went out and found one and sat at a table not warmly placed. This time they had coffee.

  Now look, said Charlie. His eyes were direct but she could see a color of embarrassment even in that climate-hardened face. This is a fatal or glorious thing I’m asking, he said. Because I’ve booked two rooms, but that’s useless. The madame won’t choose to be deceived. It’s a very different case from the British, who—I believe, anyhow—can choose to pretend that adjoining rooms are proper enough. But that’s beside the point.

  She thought now that she might be more eager than he was but could not find a way to tell him that, to tell him to be easy about it. At the same time she liked his nervousness and was fed by it.

  I didn’t know that in the end we’d need to discuss all this tawdry stuff, he said. These cheap little deceptions. All this dancing with shadows. I’m sorry for it.

  She held his wrist in a way which really suggested, Get on with it!

  Why does it have to be like planning a crime? he asked.

  Because joy is a crime now, she told him.

  He laughed in gratitude but shook his head. His confusion wasn’t allayed at all.

  But it’s worse than anything I’ve said, he insisted. There’s a bogus marriage certificate . . . The French officers make them and sell them to us . . . When I get there I can say, Madame, the two-room reservation is a mistake . . . My wife and I need only . . .

  She held her hands up. You needn’t tell me, she said. I leave that to you.

  But why does the world make such a rigmarole?

  To make people think twice, she suggested.

  But they don’t think twice when they want to tear a young fellow’s head off. They don’t think twice about artillery and gas. You can get all that without jumping through hoops. No forgeries, no nods and lies.

  That’s an argument you can’t win, Charlie.

  He assessed her. He found it hard to believe in her acceptance. Whereas by now she’d got over her own astonishment at her will to go ahead.

  If the driver who took them out along the river to Ailly that afternoon suspected their true plans, they did not care, and were pleased to be dropped off by the door of the hotel which was out of the town, in woods through which a path led to the river. Sally sat in a chair in the little parlor and let Charlie conduct the business at the desk. She felt far from abashed. She felt like a woman in possession.

  • • •

  The room was heavily curtained and lined with wallpaper crowded with roses on a dingy background. The bed seemed concave—sagging from the heavy ease people had taken on it over tens of years. It was covered with thick shawls and its pillows were muscular. Sally counseled herself that this was where it would happen. It was to be that arena—that high bed which shorter-legged women would be forced to enter only by unseemly gymnastics but which she could lower herself onto. She felt nervousness—for his sake and hers. She had, however, encountered something of the movements behind this rite in nursing texts. She knew the physiology. She was not quite as ignorant as if she had worked as a typist. She had certainly been untroubled by embarrassment when they signed in with the authority of their freshly minted but faked document placed on the desk by Charlie as casual proof of union. Now, here, he was still the one who was flustered because he thought she might be. He could not be argued out of the suspicion. It seemed he didn’t know this was a test they must put themselves to.

  He took off his overcoat and Sam Browne and uniform jacket and hung them in the great sturdy armoire. A meticulous fellow, he made himself busy about it and commented on the mugginess of the room, even at this time of year, and asked her permission to open the window a little. It was stiff and presented him with a test—a swollen windowpane in a warped and shrinking frame. He seemed to be delighted to have to struggle with it. Sally took off her jacket and hung it in the armoire. Someone knocked tentatively at the door—it was a moon-faced girl with a tray of white wine and some grapes and cheese and biscuits. Monsieur, she mumbled and crossed the room and placed her tray on a table by two heavily upholstered chairs. Then—keeping custody of her eyes—she left, waving her hand in negation as Charlie offered her a few francs hastily delved from his pocket. H
e closed the door behind her.

  Would you like some wine? he asked. For the tray offered him another grateful delay.

  She was standing waiting in the middle of the room. She had taken off her gray overcoat and jacket—a reasonable thing to do in a sultry room.

  Later for the wine, she told him.

  Would you like me to wear . . . protection?

  No, our periods don’t come. They did at Rouen. But they stopped again at the casualty clearing station.

  But she was faintly willing anyhow to conceive a child in case Charlie disappeared.

  She was aware now that she must dictate the terms. She reached for and caressed the side of his face. She had always undervalued touch except as a medical technique. She had discovered its spectrum now. He responded—all fears of cheapness dropping easily away. The wise, harsh, watchful face battle had given him was close. His mouth was of course tentative again at first, until he detected the frank invitation in hers. She uttered a sentence she could not have foretold. It was a sentence of no distinction but phenomenal novelty to her. It asked him to put his hand inside her blouse.

  He did it. Again enthusiasm and certainty grew slowly within him. Touch my breasts now, she instructed. The touch brought a kind of convulsion in her stomach and at the spine’s base, a weakness of the upper thighs. This is why a bed is needed, it occurred to her. The lovers are lamed.

  You should undress, she instructed him. Behind the screen, if you like. I’ll do my nurse’s work with the bed. We won’t need eiderdowns.

  Again she had made him more sure of himself. You say undress? he asked. He seemed to want details on what this meant.

  But you’re an artist—you’ve seen all those paintings of love. What do you see there?

  Well, nakedness, of course, he said like a schoolboy at last achieving the right answer.

  And those army shirts are pretty rough when it comes to texture, she told him with an instructive smile. Unless they’re tailored. And I don’t think yours is.

  No sense in getting them tailored, he said. Clothes get ruined up there.

  So I’ve noticed.

  And you? he asked.

  I’ll wear a shift for now, she said with this alien certitude of hers. I’m not an artist like you.

  He went behind the screen. In the great ark of the bed she lay on her side in her shift, observing what she had read—in franker romances exchanged between nurses—that etiquette dictated she should not watch him as he emerged. According to these books, if you did not turn away a man might think you were assessing his person, his old fellow, his penis, his prick, his John Thomas—which in any case she was sure he would have covered for now with his hands. She turned to him though as soon as he entered the bed and covered himself with a sheet. Again, it was the question of pace which bemused him. He lay like an untutored log—or nearly so. She realized she might have the jump on him, knowing those technical diagrams from nursing textbooks. She dragged him by the shoulders. His hands with the terror of combats in them went around her as she waited in her shift. She could feel the calluses of his palms abrading her back. She could feel him at her thigh. At once an even more disabling flame and torture entered her body. She knew to part her legs. She never expected to have this instinctive willingness.

  Then—as she wanted—he entered her, and that fury she’d been awaiting became possible between them. She had feared this penetration since she’d first been conscious it happened amongst humans. And here it was. It mocked all fear and she felt that marvelous irrelevance of outer worlds and outer populations.

  Nonetheless, even now a large part of her mind stood above the bed. It waited just as the courtiers used to hang over the beds of young kings and queens, to make sure that nature—which took its course with peasants and farmers—took its course with Crowns. The point was that to Sally this was not only love. It was also an experiment on the future. This witness in her wished to verify that there was something here—some promise of becoming a single flesh, though not necessarily today. Because today ran the chance of being hit-or-miss. But in a longer run, over time and through regular exercise. He had acquired a more unified mind in the meantime. Large in ambition he now pounded himself into her. There was no end to the profane and delightful simplicity of Charlie as he moved and moved within her.

  Oh holy God! he said.

  Yes, Sally uttered—but even then she was still the witness as well as the participant.

  She heard his magnificent helpless whimper—he could not achieve more than the uttering of animal sounds—and felt the gush of him inside her and heard that strange, boyish laugh as if something difficult had been achieved. Then it was a naked, sated child she held.

  Oh holy Christ, he said, to think a bullet could deprive a man of you. Of your magnificent body. And of everything you’ve given me.

  She smiled against his face. He kissed her familiarly and at length. All that caution he had shown before had blown away.

  She told him with a prophetic certainty, You won’t get any harm up there. Not now I’ve found you.

  But she was full of fear nonetheless.

  How can you know that? he asked, already three-quarters sunk in belief.

  I don’t know how I know.

  He kissed her. You have become an oracle, he said.

  Her witness—the inner assessor who had hung above this bed—was heartily pleased. Now she had no excuse but to give up mental exercises. Now the witness could withdraw and leave the participants to their chosen sport. Body to body. That, said the departing arbiter, was fine.

  Charlie got up and poured some wine. But neither of them drank it. For need had recurred.

  • • •

  Thirty hours later she was in Mellicourt. The question was whether they would recognize the newness in her. But when she went into the nurses’ mess there was another distraction. She found Slattery there—returned—chatting away with Leonora in an easy chair by the stove and giving a good impersonation of never having left.

  Ah, Honora said expansively—seeing Sally and standing. She pulled her close. Sally was jolted by a surge of tenderness. Don’t worry, Honora whispered, I know Lionel’s dead. I’ve been working in a head ward at Rouen, and they take so long to die, poor chaps. In the scales of luck or of God’s will, or whatever you may choose to call it, Lionel was lucky.

  She said nothing of Major Bright.

  After a convoy arrived at six o’clock the next morning, Sally and Honora worked together in the resuscitation ward as accustomed partners.

  In that earliest phase of spring, the two great armies were gathered together with such mutual intent that they could not stop even for one night. Visits in force were made to each other across icy ground and thickets of wire. This was a test of blood—apparently the raiders won if they bled less than the raided upon. Prisoners were taken—or if they weren’t, it was considered a failed ploy. And the guns had their own volition with that sound of unceasing hunger for flesh and membrane.

  Just as they had over Deux Églises, at night the Taubes came looking for the town of Mellicourt and the ordnance supply depot beyond it. Sally and others knew that one night they would—by accident or malice—find the new clearing station, since it stood near the end of a light railway and close enough to desired targets. The very sound of these machines was a bruise to the soul.

  But in daylight and free time, Major Bright and Slattery walked together down the thawing lanes to Mellicourt. Bright was a private man who had to overcome his edginess at being seen as a courter. So he tried to adopt the stiffness of the physician walking the patient. He had led Honora gently to the acceptance of the death of one lover and was probably a bit ashamed to find himself with ambitions to replace him. The sight of Honora and Bright strolling along struck the women as strangely sentimental—a scene from a time before bombardments.

  Shirker

  From Mrs. Sorley—Naomi could think of her under nothing else but her old name—the sewn parcels full of luxuries co
ntinued to arrive at Château Baincthun and lighten the dour cuisine of the Voluntary Hospital. According to a letter she had written the previous autumn, Mrs. Sorley was fretting. Her son Ernest had volunteered that spring and was aboard a convoy for France. It was, she said, not so fashionable to volunteer now that people knew something of the truth of things. “I have been so bold as to give him your address. He is not a bad boy at all. If he should call on you—and if you have the time—I would be very grateful if you could treat him as a relative as I have every confidence you will. I must say you Durances are fine-grained people and he is lucky to have you as a stepsister.”

  And so in the first days of spring Ernest turned up at Château Baincthun—a lanky, strong-looking boy Naomi half remembered from the Macleay. He told her he had walked from Boulogne—where he was waiting for the boat to London for leave. He had spent the winter campaigning but as was usual with men he gave few details. In fact, when she was called to meet him, she thought that what he had been through seemed to sit easily with him. Unlike officers he wore no gloves and not even the mittens the orderlies at the château wore. The cold, wet hike from town had not seemed a hardship to him. She took him to drink tea in the room that served as the nurses’ mess.

  Sorry if I’m a bit in the way, he said. He did do an impersonation of a clodhopper in his army boots. And when she introduced him to Lady Tarlton, he was shy and spoke carefully, like a questioned adolescent.

  It’s my mother writing every week, he explained to Naomi. “Have you seen the girls?” Not that I’ve got any objection to that. Except I know you’re busy . . .

  And he made a gesture to the east, that casual reference to the huge zone of mire and blood. He drank his tea thirstily.

  Isn’t it funny to think that after the war we will be stepbrother and -sister? I think it’s a real bargain on Mum’s part. I always thought you Durance girls had a kind of style. Well, as long as you can stand the rough Sorleys . . .