Don’t be ridiculous. You. All the girls say so.
Well, are we going to argue about that? And I don’t see the men in this room having too many arguments over it. But I ought to warn you. I’m a cold cow. I have a cold heart.
The same with me, said Naomi with an excitement—as if they were comparing birthmarks. Friendship isn’t easy with people like us. Ellis Hoyle misread me by some means. Our cold hearts are what we inherited. That’s not to blame Mama and Papa.
Sally shook her head. I wouldn’t like to blame them, she agreed.
Naomi still had her hand. Sally studied this meeting of flesh.
I can’t bubble away with conversation, that’s the problem.
Yes, said Naomi. I envy the gift to do it.
So do I, said Sally.
But if we could find friendship beyond that. If we could talk. About things held close. Secrets, even.
Is she preparing, Sally wondered, for the subject of subjects?
The cake trolley had come and they both took one more French pastry off it—winged capsules of cream.
I’ve told you about Ellis and his damned watch, said Naomi with a sort of pride. I have told you things I could not have said a year back.
Yes, said Sally. Now her hand, having been the limp object of affection, grasped Naomi’s as the band played “Rose of Tralee” and at a nearby table four officers of the Scots Guards were overtaken by gales of laughter at some folly of an absent colleague.
The women of the Archimedes visited Sacré Coeur to see Carradine and her husband. His wound was healing, but he was not yet ready for shipping to an English hospital. Apart from the wards full of long-term patients such as Lieutenant Carradine, they always found the place in partial chaos. In the lush, palmy gardens of the Beau Rivage, where the orchestra of Egyptians played sweet English ballads and lullabies and unexacting twiddly-dee pieces as tea was served, they would sometimes encounter an Australian or British girl who—utterly outnumbered by orderlies—worked alone or with one companion on these echoing troopships on which young men sang jolly songs on the way towards the great heap of debris, of rock and barrenness named Gallipoli, and swallowed down their dread. On the way back… well, they knew what was what by then.
Black Ship
The authorities now insisted that they spend two full days in the splendor of the Beau Rivage. Sally and Honora shared a room, since the friendship she had pledged her sister didn’t need to be slavish. They were told that in their absence the Archimedes would be refitted in some way, but “in some way” was not defined. By pure luck Sally and Honora were given a room appropriate for officers and with a balcony above the sea. Since it was early summer, the air was clear as the sun rose behind this piece of strand and revealed itself gigantically by breakfast time far down the coast. An embarrassment of recreations were at their command—they could ride along the coast on light horse mounts. They could attend picnics in the Botanic Gardens or accompany a British education officer on a tour of the antiquities from which their bush ignorance would come back amended. There were bathing parties they could join with swimming costumes provided by the Red Cross. And then the afternoon thé dansant— to which they were so used now and so worldly at.
It was at the end of an excursion to the Temple of Poseidon and Pompey’s Pillar that an officer approached them and asked, was it true they were from the Archimedes? In that case, what did they think of the Archimedes going black?
Black? they asked.
Becoming a troop carrier, I mean—traveling blacked-out.
He could tell they knew nothing and could barely understand him. Not to worry, he said. I believe it’s only temporary.
When they returned to the Eastern Harbour and the Archimedes, they saw Egyptian workers were hanging from the sides painting out all trace of red crosses. Approaching the ship along the mole they could also see its lower doors were cast wide open. Through these doors provisions were generally lumped aboard, but now it was mules and horses that were being led by bridles. Soldiers ascended the gangway with rifles and kit. Men with rifles on their backs already looked down from the railings and possessed the ship the nurses had thought of as theirs.
As they drank tea in their mess with jackets off to release the musk of the morning’s scurry through ancient places, Sergeant Kiernan himself arrived and said the colonel wanted to see them in their lounge. They went there straightaway. As they entered, the colonel seemed to nod to them individually. Fellowes and a new surgeon to replace Hookes stood there too—and near them Mitchie and another newer matron with set, uninterpretable features.
They all found seats and the colonel told them that for military necessity the authorities had decided to make the Archimedes a black ship pro tem. It was his recommendation that the nurses should choose to be left ashore until the higher authorities decided to transform it back to its true calling.
Nettice asked a question bearing on the point. Wasn’t it true that nurses traveled on black ships?
Not in great numbers, he said. Perhaps one or two per ship. Very much volunteers.
Captain Fellowes wanted to speak and sought the colonel’s nod.
You are entitled to leave the ship, he told them when he got it. The colonel cannot say so—but it seems to me an act of recklessness to chop and change the nature of a ship like this. For this journey we will replace you with competent orderlies. I heard a staff officer say that surely they—whoever that is—did not contemplate that you would sail for this journey, in any case. We’ll wait then and see what happens next to the ship.
When the colonel and the other surgeons left the room the nurses rose—militarily adept now—to honor their military ranks. Then Mitchie told them to resume seats.
Well, it’s all lunacy as usual, she declared like a reassurance. There’s the risk of submarines—you see—on a black ship.
That’s so, confirmed the other matron as if they might doubt Mitchie’s word. That ought to be taken into account.
The enlightened above us, Mitchie declared, intend that the ship go to the Dardanelles black and that we see these horses and mules and men off. Then the Archimedes will transform itself back to white and take on patients and go to Mudros and thence to Alex. Of course it is a folly and you must not let yourself be subject to it.
But are you going? Honora asked her.
Our situation is different, claimed Mitchie. They need us to guide the orderlies who—I am pleased to announce—fear us. But it is different with the rest of you.
But of course it was at once apparent—by eyes lowered to avoid the force of her argument as by exchanged looks with the same force—that they were all to go.
They waited all day. The loading of these men and ponies and mules of the Inniskilling Fusiliers ammunition train finished and then the soldiers sat on deck talking and smoking and contradicting each other in an accent sharp as an ax. They gave off a sort of discontent—the growls and mockeries of men who had just been worked hard and could foresee harder still. This unexpected form of soldier—all rifle and webbing—came hobnailing it through the main deck of the hospital. One of them turned on seeing nurses and—instead of the applause or the brotherliness of shouted greeting when soldiers on other ships passed the Archimedes—hooted with harsh delight.