Has Lieutenant Kiernan ever mentioned in your presence his objection to bearing arms?
She was pleased to report he had. Even when we first met in 1915. Once we had become friends, he said many times he wanted to look after the wounded and sick but that his religion prevented him fighting.
And you and Lieutenant Kiernan are survivors of a torpedoed ship, the Archimedes? How did Lieutenant Kiernan behave at that time? Was he at all cowardly?
I would say he was very brave.
How did he demonstrate that courage?
In the water he took control of our party. It was why so many from our raft survived. He kept us together and urged us not to let go. Some men did let go but it was not his fault. When we saw a ship, he let off our flare.
And sadly that was all Ian’s lawyer wanted to know. Ian looked at her with a half smile as she was taken out of the court. She did not intend to go politely. She turned and said, Gentlemen, everyone who ever met him was told. That his conscience would not let him bear arms.
The young officer who had represented Ian intercepted her and whispered, If you wait outside, I’ll tell you the outcome.
The humanity of this cheered her. She waited in a delirium on a bench in the corridor. Here, she surmised, in peaceful times shopkeepers and farmers had sat awaiting decisions on land boundaries and drainage. Her imagination swung between Ian set free and some improbable sentence of years or worse. There was no question but that she too was counted in whatever befell him.
She was aware as she waited of all the futile prayers, including hers, which filled the air—appeals to a deity who did not seem able to stand between artillery and this or that mother’s son or wife’s husband. She felt the uselessness and the silliness of adding her own. Yet it was an unstoppable impulse. She pleaded that the judges became drunk with wisdom and sent Ian back to his clearing station.
The young captain advocate came out of the court.
I’m sorry to tell you this, he said. It’s fifteen years.
The stated span of time made no instant impact on her. Fifteen years? she asked. What does that mean?
It’s the sentence, sorry to say. Everyone agrees it’s rotten luck. But it had to be done. And of course it’s better than… other possibilities. What you said about his bravery when your ship sank… that helped him.
The reality of this toll of years entered her now like a wave of heat. She stumbled. He caught her by both elbows.
Steady on, Nurse, he told her. The presiding officer said you could see the prisoner for a few minutes. Only this: it’s best not to get him or yourself distressed.
Two military police officers took her to a small room where she could say good-bye to him. He was already standing with his hands cuffed in front of him. The officers remained there and seemed anxious above all—like the ones at the prison days before—that no touch should occur.
This is ridiculous, she said to him. Ian, what can I do?
He said, Would you thank Lady Tarlton? Not much she could say, since she’d barely met me. And my CMO—I’ll write my first letter to him. You did wonderfully, Naomi. I’ll always remember you. Could you write to Mr. Sedgewick and tell him the marriage will not take place? You should forget about me now.
She held up her hand. She was close to anger, in fact. How can I root out memory? she asked. Lady Tarlton and I have not even begun writing letters for clemency and sending them to all points of the compass.
She hadn’t thought until now of that option, and it transformed her from demented girl into campaigner.
He said, with a small chuckle, you’re going to bludgeon the top blokes into a pardon?
I am, she said.
But you have no obligation at all, you know.
That talk is rubbish, she told him. He smiled at her so plainly but, she thought, with a mass of meaning—an invitation and farewell at the same time. According to what she knew of them, men were good at mixed messages—even Quaker men.
And now it seemed that everything had been encompassed and she could not think of what to say. Ten seconds ached by.
All right, said a provost as if he wanted to end the silence. That’ll be just about it, lady and gentleman.
And so—regretting her silence had signaled the meeting’s end—she was escorted out. She found the main entrance. I won’t tremble and weep, she promised herself. I’ll annoy and agitate. Life would be made tolerable by that mission.
At the front door a guard said, Hang on, Miss, there’s Gothas overhead.
She could hear the bombers now, in amongst the background thunder of guns, the Archies close by and the seamless rage of the barrage at the front. She waited a second and then placed her head in a groove between two stone moldings and began to shudder at the awful perversion of things—of sky not permitted to be sky, of air not permitted to be air.
Men Lost
Naomi could not have explained the exact stirring of resolve that sent her into the street once the Archies stopped and safety was howled forth by way of a Klaxon. But the moment came. At the road passing the mouth of the mairie she saw some young but worn-looking Tommies—their eyes vacant and their pace unsteady and some without their rifles—drifting past. Their uniforms were stiff with mud or dully gleamed with filth. They began milling around a mobile canteen serving tea in the street. These man-boys drinking tea, and standing about cadging cigarettes, were—though Naomi did not fully understand this—the hollow-eyed ejectees of a broken front. Here and there military trucks pulled up and soldiers jumped down with rifles and took up positions at the major corners to try to gather up any further tide of broken men and urge them to stand fast.
An elderly lieutenant wearing the patch of some administrative corps watched this unfold, shook his head, and turned and saw Naomi.
Well, it’s on now, Miss, he said. The line’s busted and we are for it.
A paternal interest came into his eye.
You should get on your way, if you can. The trains may well still be operating. The further northwest you get, the better, for now. Though we don’t quite know where they’re aiming for yet.
She thanked him and went on. At the ornate railway station a few blocks away things were more orderly and men got down from the Boulogne train with their rifles and kits and looked robust enough to take a swipe—at least—at restoring the line.
She boarded the train for its return to the coast and shared a compartment with a priest and a middle-aged French couple. It would have made as much sense to try the husband for cowardice—with her and the priest as judges—as what she had seen that day. The priest read his office book and the French couple and she exchanged a few primitive sentences in English and French about their destination. They either said they were from Wimereaux or were going to Wimereaux.
The railway ran along the Somme and then curved north, and there was certainly a sense of escape to it. The priest—having finished his office—joined in the chat. He seemed to be delighted to know that Naomi was from Australia. Les belles Australiennes! he insisted. Nos Australiennes!
Her fellow travelers did not seem alarmed by the threatened assault on the heart of France. Perhaps they were not as aware it was to happen. The priest reached into his pocket and handed her a small medal. She accepted it in her gloved hands. Somewhere between Methodism and Quakerdom, belief and disbelief, she held a graven image in her hand. And yet to do so seemed of no great import and bolstered her sense of purpose in a way she would not once have believed possible.
The astonishment awaiting her on her return was that Major Darlington had gone, all in one night, and—said the English Roses—without a proper farewell to Lady Tarlton. A new chief medical officer was awaited. In the meantime, Airdrie and the weedy but obviously enduring young ward doctors did what they could. The nurses knew where Naomi had been—how could such news not get around the hospital?—and were awed and dared not ask her the length of sentence.