Yes.
And that was why you were provided with this makeshift wardrobe?
She explained that they had started off with a French navy shirt and blanket.
And those rough dresses, he declared, look like they’ve been bought secondhand from the Greeks. That aside, there have been complaints about orderlies and their treatment of nurses. What has your experience been?
We are not treated politely, said Sally. She felt a rush of released fury.
He told her please to be more precise.
And so she devoted herself to their history. The orderlies began by treating the nurses as full-time drudges and skivvies. They were commanded by orderlies to clean excrement and carry waste buckets and bedpans. To lug buckets of tissue and used dressings and amputated limbs to the furnace. None of this they were unwilling to do. But it was all they were asked to do, and they were abused by orderlies for how it was done. They were not admitted to the operating theatres except to scrub them. And sometimes called by names not normally applied to nurses. They are not all bad—the men. But the good ones seemed silenced.
By their fellow orderlies?
Sally decided to risk her entire opinion.
I see it as permitted by the colonel, she said.
He didn’t seem appalled. His head was down and he wrote with his neat fountain pen in an even, infallible hand. His bowed scalp was covered with bristly tan hair. Then he looked up.
Were any of you touched violently or improperly?
Not me. Nurse Freud . . . you must know about her.
Leatherhead leaned forward at this—like a man about to be engaged in gossip.
Did you know, however, that the young man who attacked her is dead?
I’d not heard that.
It is important for you women to know that there was a price exacted. A double price in his case. He was carrying a wounded major on his shoulders to a field ambulance when he was shot dead. His captain recommended him for the Military Medal. But obviously it could not be granted in such a case.
Even then Sally wondered how it was that the dry, non-disclosing Leatherhead had let this story out. To some it would seem gossip. But to the nurses it served as a vindication. She would conclude that he had done it so that they would somehow see the issue as settled. She did wonder if clever Leatherhead had merely fabricated the tale—his inventive way to put the matter to rest. But that would have been a touch of a storyteller rather than of a dry functionary.
He suddenly brought the interview to an end. He thanked her. She rose and was leaving. But he stood up as if impelled by etiquette and intercepted her before she reached the door.
So you did not think Staff Nurse Nettice unstable in her mind?
I think her mind is fixed on the Archimedes. The way the minds of some of the men are fixed at the moment they were wounded. But she is as sane as anyone else.
His dismissal of her came through turning his back and returning to his notes. His manners, his moves, his questions, his measured gossip were all so jerky and unnatural. Yet it had been a genuine cure to be questioned by him in every particular of the tribulation she shared with the others.
When she came off duty that evening she was astonished by the apparition of Nettice sitting on her own cot. Nettice looked up with her traditional frown fully in place. She said flatly, So you see, I am out.
Sally rushed over to envelop her. But Nettice showed no appetite for celebratory hugs at all.
Lieutenant Byers will be so relieved to see you. And happy as well.
Nettice said, He won’t quite be able to see me, will he?
Sally grew suddenly furious at Nettice’s sophistry. For God’s sake, Nettice.
All right then, said Nettice. I can imagine the poor boy will feel some solace now I’m back.
You sound almost as if you’re unhappy to get out of that place.
On balance I’m very happy.
You take it very easy. But did you know Naomi has been suspended for visiting you?
Nettice pondered this. I knew it was a risky business, she conceded. You will have to understand, though, that I’m not lacking in gratitude. I am just too stunned yet to fall on my knees in appreciation.
Yes, said Sally. Forgive me.
For she understood that state of soul precisely. Nettice made a better effort at sharing the enthusiasm of the others when Carradine came in. Naomi returned from one of her shopping expeditions, and the sight of her broke down Nettice’s reserve and sent her into a strange mixture of tears and hacking laughter. Would you believe it? she asked. I’m out!
Naomi said in wonder, This is the work of Colonel Leatherhead.
Carradine had a smart idea. I’ll go and fetch Lieutenant Byers and bring him for a constitutional. And you can see him by the mess tent here.
Nettice was now all at once anxious for that meeting to happen, and it was organized. She waited in the wind with Sally and Naomi on either side of her and saw Lieutenant Byers come walking forth on Carradine’s arm in his hospital pyjamas and with an army jacket over his shoulders since the evenings were turning so cold. Even with Carradine to guide him, he tested for obstructions and swept the gravel in front of him with a white stick.
Sam, called Nettice in a thin voice.
Rosie? he said with his head cocked. Darned sorry to get you into trouble.
There is no more trouble now.
He shook his head. For there was the untellable trouble of his blindness. But then he inhaled a deep breath and managed a wide, generous smile.
A triumph for justice, he said. Not a common thing in armies.
The women chose to find this heartily amusing and gave themselves up to more laughter than was perhaps justified.
• • •
Uniforms arrived from the depot ship to relieve them from the harsh oddments of coarse cloth. There was a rumor sweeping the stationary hospital that Colonel Spanner had left that morning on a ship for Alexandria. The arrival of a new chief medical officer, a Scots surgeon from Adelaide—a former civilian used to treating other civilians with at least some civility—occurred with equal suddenness. The Australian matron broke the news to them—as if they might be aggrieved at it—that they were required to wear the capes ordained by their military authorities. The near-forgotten and halfway elegant gray overcoats with boomerang-shaped “Australia” on their shoulders were also provided, and a neat array of shoes almost too refined for the mud and gravel of Turks Head.
Sheep from Salonika had been landed. On some nights fresh mutton replaced the bully beef on their tin plates.
Orderlies—former tyrants amongst them—now carried out waste buckets and limbs and bloodied bandages to their points of disposal. No “Bloody dumb cows!” anymore. This was the wonder the Leatherhead visitation had produced. He had switched the poles of the earth—or at least of that planet named Mudros. Because of her experience with Captain Fellowes aboard the Archimedes, Sally was asked to administer anesthesia in some shrapnel cases amongst the newly arrived from Gallipoli. She observed the vital signs as metal was removed from wounds or as limbs were taken off by amputation saws and wrapped in linen and carried out to join the heap of arms and legs awaiting prompt incineration. Honora worked as theatre nurse. Leo worked as a scout, preparing and presenting the appropriate packs of instruments and the swabs, keeping count of them, and even supervising sterilization carried out by orderlies.
The matron-in-chief who had been Colonel Spanner’s chatelaine survived for ten days before her temporary assignment to their stationary hospital similarly ended and she was sent elsewhere. Everyone felt that the hospital had been renewed.
There had been a sad revival of the wound of Lieutenant Robbie Shaw, however, the officer who with Dankworth had taken the women across the island for a mudbath. Sally had discovered that open-handed, sociable Lieutenant Shaw lay in the officers’ medical ward with a fever and a distracting pain in his all-but-healed femur wound. Doctors and the matron conferred over his exposed hip
, and the redness and swelling which bespoke sepsis.
I wish they’d open the flaming thing up, he told Sally. It’s just a bit of temporary flare-up in there. They can get it out like a core from a boil.
The ward doctor called a surgeon. By now Robbie Shaw’s pulse was racing and he had begun to rave with pain and a fever. An eighth of a grain of morphine was injected every four hours. The wound had cracked along the suture lines and foul matter seeped from within. He was taken to surgery and—with the wound opened up—had some inches of rotten bone cut out of the shaft of his upper thigh. Sally visited him in the post-operative ward and found him depressed and whimsical.
I’ll spend the rest of my life walking like a bloke riding an invisible bike.
But pain regularly distracted him from the issue of his future gait.
Honora developed a pronounced melancholy as notable as her usual elation when Captain Dankworth was sent back to Gallipoli with his artillery battery. He visited his accomplice Shaw before leaving. Sally heard Shaw tell Lionel Dankworth, Well, this buggers me for the artillery.
He was correct about his chances of more campaigning. It was mysterious that he would want it. But it seemed to be an unfeigned desire. No idea of a future profession could console him for not being capable of further gunnery.
• • •
The potent rumor arose almost as soon as the women had their new clothes on. There was to be a ship of wounded back to Australia. It took only hours before an embellishment came forth. Some of them were to travel on it. Their Australian matron—now chastened to an amenable tone by the rigors of explaining herself to Leatherhead—soon confirmed that. She read out the names a few mornings later. To show there was no full justice to be found on earth, the list included those with a reputation for giving trouble. Carradine was to make the journey—punishment for the shortcoming of being married. When she raised the matter that her wounded husband was in England, the matron suggested she leave the celibate nursing service and present herself as a Red Cross volunteer. Then, if necessary, she could pay her way back to the Northern Hemisphere and her husband’s bedside. There was no final absolution for Naomi’s rebellions of word and commission. Nettice, for her irregular ward demeanor, was to go too. And some non-offending others. But not Sally. A strange flush of relief ran through her when her name was not read. If she was sent back to Australia, she doubted she could escape again.
I hope I can make my way without you, she told Naomi. And this was not for form’s sake. Naomi seemed quite even-tempered about it all, neither pleased nor displeased.
Who would have thought I’d be the first back to Kempsey? I’ll have to break in our stepmother for you.
Sally became aware—the closer the departure came—that her dependence on her sister had been near absolute from the day the Archimedes sank. Naomi had stood between her and harshness. Without Naomi, she would need to become her own defender and asserter of her own dignity. But it was clear that there was no argument against these shipment orders—no matter how fretful Carradine might be at the idea of putting a world between her and her husband. It was fortunate that Carradine came from a family of means. She could possibly be back in Britain and by her husband’s bedside within three months of arriving in Australia.
The unspoken but deep, sly idea of torpedoes lay as a shadow over the nurses chosen.
Homewards with Doubts
In easterly slanted rain, candidates for the process called repatriation were loaded on launches and barges and taken out to a troopship. On crutches now and with a healing wound was Robbie Shaw and—guided along the foreshores by orderlies—Sam Byers. As they boarded, a black ship from Gallipoli disgorged its sick and wounded onto the pier. A great recycle of soldiers’ flesh was in progress.
On the wharf, the Durance sisters were permitted to stand aside and transact their own leave-taking. They shared an umbrella and wore their gray overcoats, newly provided through Colonel Leatherhead’s marvelous intrusion into their lives.
How long will there be hospitals on Lemnos? Naomi asked as a form of speculation.
There’ll be no end to them, since there is no end to Gallipoli, Sally declared, utterly convinced. For an end to it could not be foretold for this year or the next.
If you are stuck here, said Naomi, then I must do my best to get back. I don’t care if they make me carry buckets of diarrhea for entire shifts. Because you are my sister. And you have been the same person throughout. Steady. No, don’t dare protest. You have been calm and brave and solid. And better able to govern yourself than others have been.
What about your own courage? What about you breaking in to see Nettice?
They were acts of pure ratbaggery. Done out of hopeless anger.
Sally wondered what a person could do when being praised so wildly for calmness and valor. And by your sister! It felt close to being wrongly accused of theft or treachery. She was persuading herself not to say so when she saw Sergeant Kiernan in the line of men waiting for the launches. He was overcoated and carrying a kitbag on one shoulder and the normal duffel bag. He saw them and came over.
You are both about to escape? I’m so pleased.
No, said Naomi. I’m the only one going. I’m not escaping. I’ve been thrown out.
You can describe me in the same terms, Kiernan told them. He looked at the gray bulk of the troopship standing offshore in the gale—and then up the long road to Turks Head—as if weighing all that was about to be lost.
I felt powerless, he said. I knew what was happening to you where you were. All I could do was tell the officers at the rest center and write to my father. He’s a friend of the alienist Dr. Springthorpe who is treating men in Egypt and has a lot of influence. So he wrote in turn to Springthorpe—enclosing my letter. The counsels of impotence. But I hope it did some good.
When he turned his eyes back to the Durance sisters, there was none of the normal humor in his face.
Laws against fraternization, he confessed, were all the rage at our general hospital. And I was cowardly enough to obey them.
You couldn’t have done anything, said Naomi.
I must go back to my fellows, said Kiernan. It will be easier to speak on board, Miss Durance.
He turned to Sally. I do hope we meet again. Though not on this dismal island.
So you’re cured of all those mythologies?
There was a stutter of laughter from him. Yes, they can keep the whole lousy lot of them. I’m sticking to modern history. It seems to be an absorbing enough study to me.
Sally watched her sister’s launch depart the shore. Despite the dimness of the day she also saw it arrive at the bottom of the ship’s stairway and at last the tall figure of Naomi ascending. Sally had once thought of a ship as fortressed against all elements except internal fire. Now she saw it as a flimsy tube—or an egg awaiting the hammer. When Naomi had vanished into the ship she turned away from the bay and climbed the hill to be ready for the ambulances now beginning to roll along the pier. We’ll all grow old in our work, she decided. She felt aged already beneath the low, malicious clouds.
• • •
In her three-berth cabin on deck two Naomi received by way of a steward a letter from Lieutenant Shaw, whose femur wound was sending him home too. “A bit down at the moment,” he confessed. “But there has to be something I can do in the military sense. If you see me, I’ll be the one who walks at an angle of 45 degrees—unless the ship is at 45 degrees, in which case I’ll be leveled out completely.”
She hoped Shaw wouldn’t plague her. That thought was unworthy—for his kindness on Lemnos he deserved to be humored. But she needed a certain solitude to absorb what had befallen her and to contemplate her Australian future. Her vanity when she first presented herself at Victoria Barracks had been to think she would return home with legible success on her brow. Now she was to return as one of the rejected. She was weighed a failure. That would show on her brow. Her father and his new wife might not see it. Yet—knowing it was th
ere—she would cramp in all she did.
Cheers rose from other and incoming troopships as the nurses showed themselves at the railings to take a last view of that isle whose hard edges were veiled by rain. Naomi did not go up there to see her sister’s island shrink away in veils of dimness and downpour. She stayed below to sleep as soon as the ship began to move. But once stirring and turning on her bunk she promised herself that should the ship sink during its weavings across the rough surface of the Mediterranean, she would let herself fall straight to the base of the ocean without waking.
She heard no more from Robbie Shaw the next day and spent her time reading Punch in the lounge. At dawn the next morning they approached the coast of Egypt. But the waves breaking along the Corniche, the apartment buildings which looked like confections of icing sugar, the buildings dreamed up by an architect who had then taken decoration a step too far, the lighthouse where Pharos had once stood, one of those wonders of the world which children were required to number and write down—the whole fabulous city—was a scene she now lacked the means to relish. The Qaitbay citadel they used to see from the docking Archimedes was today like a fortress from a flick or a novel. The British flag above its turreted central tower suggested war was a simple thing—achieved by musketry from battlements aimed at some unwashed tribe.
Nettice was comforted that her troopship had so easily quartered the Mediterranean. She had been busy, in any case—using a steward who attended to their cabin to carry messages to Lieutenant Byers in his quarters one deck up.
They were rested in nurses’ quarters at a British hospital in Alexandria until their train was ready the following morning. At that ornate railway station in Cairo—through which Mitchie had long ago led her untried charges to board the Alexandria train—they set out for Port Suez.