The Daughters of Mars: A Novel by Keneally Thomas

Author:Keneally, Thomas [Keneally, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2013-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

The West Encountered

Easing back into the velvet and leather of First Class, Leo said, I pity the boys back there in Third with their wooden seats.

On a long train, the nurses occupied perhaps no more than two carriages—a living and breathing buffer between the officers’ carriages forward and the harsher ones back there where the masses of infantry and gunners and sappers, stretcher bearers and orderlies rode. Everyone had been rushed away from the old port of Marseille—from the sight of offshore Château d’If with its Count of Monte Cristo associations and from the city’s dominating cathedral, as well as from other more profane possibilities which could have created the problems of Australian discipline that Cairo had. Nearly all their ship from Egypt was—within an hour of landing—on a train bound for the more serious north of France. Heading north through unafflicted sections of France they gawked at their railway squares and church spires, at their mairies and hotels with the tricolor flying. The train pulled into sidelines to let other trains pass loaded with French soldiers—poilus—in their blue-gray uniforms. In the Rhône Valley—the rail running amidst ploughing farmers—nurses from farms exclaimed about the chocolate-colored soil that promised fertility. There were gray fortified medieval towers the farmers took for granted but which to girls from communities shallow in time riveted the eye and the imagination.

On the station at Arles, French girls gave crucifixes from large baskets—one for every passenger who would accept it. The wives of the town offered apples and oranges and wine at the carriage windows.

They sat in a siding for four hours near Avignon and saw beyond a bridge the heights of its papal palace and its skirt of humbler buildings obliquely visible across fields violet with dusk. At Lyons they queued with soldiers at the station’s taps with the water jugs from their compartments and a wash basin loaned by the porter. Sally filled one of those decanter-like water bottles and stood up and looked straight into the face of Karla Freud.

I saw you, said Freud in a tight sort of voice. She carried a decanter too. It was exactly as if she was continuing an unhappy conversation begun on Lemnos. How are you?

Karla! cried Sally with a complicated joy. She put her decanter on the ground and hugged her.

Ah, said Freud, you missed me, did you?

Yes, of course we did, Sally claimed but already she felt guilt. It was a revelation: they had tried—in fact—to forget her.

I wouldn’t have known you gave me a thought. No letters. No visits in Alexandria.

Freud was located far beyond complaint and blame though. The accusation was sad but absolute.

They didn’t give us time, Sally told her. They sent us straight across to Heliopolis.

She knew she was equivocating.

Yes, and I suppose mail didn’t occur to you. May I use the tap, if you don’t mind? There’s a bit of a queue behind.

Sally moved away and picked up her decanter. She waited for Freud to be finished. Honora and Leo appeared and also waited to talk to Freud.

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