And how did that relate to Freud? Which had the attacker wanted to punish in Freud’s case—the face or the figure? Did men divide up women in this way? If they did, it made the brutality more understandable.
And now Naomi was there. Getting down on a knee, she murmured to Sally, If Freud is like us, no periods, I mean… Well, at least no risk of pregnancy.
A pregnancy would be unspeakable. They could not want to understand what it would be like to bear such a child, waiting for the monster’s face to emerge. Would you love and hate it at once? Would you send it to an orphanage? Would you murder it at birth?
So nature has some wisdom, asserted Naomi. Then she kissed Sally and went.
Next morning the supreme matron—the colonel’s consort in spirit—entered the tent. She trod on ground grown cold overnight and on the rubble left by moles. She spoke to Freud, who was dressing determinedly and wanted to work. Clearly the matron was offering her a choice of wards. Post-operative, Freud decided. No, she said, she did not want to mope about, but a new ward was advisable because it was in the dysentery wards she had been seen and speculated on and become prey.
They ate their poor, cheerless breakfast of hardtack and—though condensed milk sweetened the tea—then went to their duty. Freud inherited the post-operative, the young men as dazed as she was, and the gravity of what was done to her matched by the gravity of what had been done to them. Here, they were reduced to an awful humility by anesthesia and their wounds. Here, pale, blue-lipped boys were dependent and someone’s children. The holiness of man could be again believed in.
The following day was cold, but there was a distraction of a kind. A car grinding up the hill pulled to a stop outside the nurses’ mess tent. After car doors were heard being slammed shut, a male voice called, Anyone in?
Sally—Of Human Bondage in her hands—was one of the dozen or so who were in the tent. The inquiry was so genial and so markedly different from the snarls of orderlies that a number of voices called, Yes. Two Australian officers in their slouch hats entered. One was on crutches. He moved easily and had the reddish, pleasant, broad face of a future publican or auctioneer—or at least a town worthy. The other was leaner and taller and watchfully shy. He looked to Sally like someone remembered from a vastly distant time. They were both well tailored. They shamed those nurses from the Archimedes who, despite the kindness of their sisters, were still wearing little better than army shirts and pants or else drab skirts—the sackcloth of their survival.
Both visitors were from the rest camp of Lemnos, and a closer look at their uniforms showed them to be not quite as flash as at first blush.
The shorter one declared, We heard you were here. Our battery is over there in the rest camp. We had a visit from a certain Sergeant Kiernan, who said he had heard you young ladies have a hard time of it here. Rather upset about it, actually. So we thought we’d come over with a small box of things.
They had heard of the attack on Freud, of course. But they would not say that.
Just hang around a tick, said the lanky officer. He went out of the tent and as he ducked his head to go out, Sally remembered him. Lionel Dankworth, who’d been keen on Honora.
Well, said the genial, huskier man left behind. He rubbed his hands as if the day was actually colder than it was. This tent is a bit draughty, isn’t it?
Except when it is stifling, Naomi conceded.
Did you do yourself an injury? Sally asked him.
The old femur, he said. A bit of a knock, but a clean break. I’m hoping to go back when the boys do.
Sally and Naomi exchanged glances. Femurs took longer than that.
The tall gunnery officer was back, toting a bully-beef box. But when he put it down on the table by the giant enamel teapot there were better things than bully beef in it. He said, A little contribution.
The stockier man asked if he could take a chair. He did it with his stiff leg stuck out in front of him. He recited the contents of the hamper. Canned asparagus, he said. Canned salmon. Then there is some cocoa, he declared. Chocolate—it goes a bit white when it’s been in a ship’s hold in the tropics. Never mind. Oh, and some biscuits—macaroons, not hardtack. Marmalade too.
Lieutenant Dankworth, said Naomi. We met in Egypt. Honora’s here, but sleeping. Off-duty. I could go…
No, said Lionel Dankworth, let the poor girl sleep for now.
He seemed frightened of the reunion—or at least of it being public.
The women pulled the cans and packages from the box and squinted at the labels like scholars trying to read hieroglyphics. Nettice spoke.
There is a young officer who is blinded. He’s a jeweler, you see. Rather down. Since the supply in the ward has run out, if you’ve no objections I might take him some of this cocoa.
Why not? asked the tall man. If the others don’t mind.
The shorter man with the femur injury gave the sort of smile over which no shadow had ever fallen. And yet he had been on Gallipoli and been part shattered there.
Sally inspected Nettice. It was strange that she would mention one soldier in that way.
Look, said the officers, we should introduce ourselves.
The lanky one said his name was Dankworth—as Naomi had already said. The man with the femur injury was Lieutenant Robbie Shaw.
Shaw lowered his voice. We heard one of our girls was having a bad time here.
They told him Freud was on duty. At her own insistence.
We don’t like that sort of thing happening to Australian girls, the lanky one grumbled. If there is anyone you’d like us to talk to…
It was the normal male proposition—we can take your enemies aside and box their ears for you. That would fix everything.
She wouldn’t want you to do anything just now, Naomi told them. They have promised to find the man.
You just let us know if they mess about, Lieutenant Shaw advised.
In the meantime, said Dankworth, there’s a depot ship full of tea and frozen lamb and other delicacies in the harbor. Comfort from home. The laziness of quartermasters and other people meant the goods on board just sat there. They had the other day grabbed a fistful of quartermaster’s invoices and filled them out and gone on board and collected the goods that they’d brought here.
So this isn’t the end of it, Robbie Shaw promised.
Lieutenant Dankworth surveyed the mess. He referred to Naomi’s face and then his eyes moved to Sally’s. You young women are sisters, I seem to remember?
Yes, Sally admitted.
The two men seemed to welcome the idea, as if it were some sort of souvenir of home. On their way out, Dankworth paused by the tent flap. Remember that we are willing to protect you, he growled with his eyes lowered. But the shield he offered them was not the right one for the time.
Honora was outraged they had not woken her to meet Dankworth, but she was half pretending—she seemed invigorated to know he was on the island. Soon they’d be promenading the foreshores together, and that would restore something that had been lost here.