But at breakfast Leo told them no visits were permitted to the rest compound. Nettice was as unreachable as Freud.
The sisters slept deeply after their morning failure. Defeat and fiasco, loss and stalemate acted on them like a drug. Yet when Sally was awakened by the evening bell, she saw Naomi across the room washed and half-dressed and still wearing an air of purpose. Sally observed her and hurried to keep pace with her for fear of what she might do when she was ready to go out. They left the tent together, and the now relentless autumn wind blew them across Turks Head and down its slope.
British hospital, Naomi declared.
They came to the British general hospital and found at last the nurses’ mess. As they knocked on the pole at the tent flap the dusk meal was in progress. Asked in, they could see at once that it was a place of far kindlier climate than theirs. Someone had had enough spirit and license to paste pictures of the English countryside on the walls. Everyone seemed properly dressed in white pinafores. The record of a soprano singing folk songs turned on a table-top Victrola. The women were talking over the music with a liveliness—thought Sally—which bespoke their greater confidence in the world. A young woman noticed them standing at the entry and rose and said, Hello there, Kangaroos, come and have some tea.
How can you tell we’re Australians? asked Naomi.
Those great gawky overcoats, said the nurse.
She made her friends move up and found them chairs at the table. They all exchanged names. The one who had welcomed them in was Angela. She had young, glittering, impressive eyes. She had not yet had the goodwill pummeled out of her. She introduced them to two other Englishwomen there. These are the poor girls who were sunk on their ship, Angela explained in wonder, as if the sinking had been an achievement of theirs.
Poor things! one of the girls said. It’s really too bad you have to wear those old clothes. We should take up a collection for you.
Please, said Naomi, don’t go to the trouble. We’re dressed the way the colonel chooses we should be dressed.
That can’t be true, said Angela soothingly.
No, we are meant to be degraded, Naomi insisted.
The three English nurses frowned at each other. Sally felt a duty to show them her sister did not overstate the case.
It’s true, sad to say, Sally confirmed.
Naomi said, One of our friends has been put in the rest compound for no particular reason than being sweet on a blind officer. You British nurses look after the rest compound. We’d like to send a message of cheer to our friend.
Oh, said Angela, you must talk to Bea over there. She’s rostered in the compound. Angela lowered her voice and confided not in Naomi and Sally alone but in her three friends as well. Bea got in hot water herself for getting too friendly with one of our boys here. You see someone with a terrible wound who looks like your brother or your cousin or a boy you used to know… It’s easy to get a bit infatuated with them. But you know that.
Naomi and Sally both studied the girl who had been pointed out. She was very pretty, with ringlets. She was the sort of girl who would have one of them hanging down her forehead—in defiance of the strictures about keeping hair enclosed. She looked childlike. But no one could be a trained nurse here and be an utter child.
Nonetheless, said Angela, I can’t imagine someone being actually binned and diagnosed as mental just because she liked the soldier. Come, we’ll see Bea.
She got up and led the Durance sisters across the room. The sisters stood off a bit as Angela spoke to Bea and indicated them. Bea scraped back her chair and got up. The four of them moved into the corner by the Victrola. Bea had a less posh accent than Angela. It was Yorkshire or some such. But she was—Sally thought—by far the prettiest mental nurse a person was likely to meet. Yes, she said, she was the day nurse in the women’s compound. She knew Nettice—there weren’t many patients in there. Just nurses who’d gone a bit unsettled. There’s a guard with a rifle by the gate but that was to protect the women patients from the males’ mental compound because the behavior from those men was not to be predicted. A boy will think he’s at home and go off wandering down to his local pub.
Some of the fellows were so awfully upset by the thunder of the other night, she said. Jabbering mad from Gallipoli and Cape Helles to begin with. There is one of yours who hid under his bed, poor kid—a boy of about sixteen or seventeen. Whoever let him into the army should be shot.
But Nettice, said Naomi, what sort of company does she have?
There are only four of them. One is a girl who got a big crush on another woman and one is a girl who doesn’t speak at all. The one who doesn’t talk sits there until she pees herself. I do the changing, of course—we couldn’t allow one of those orderlies. And then another girl who can’t stop speaking. These two are both pitiful cases and will be sent back to Alexandria, or else home. The sooner the better too. We don’t have any mentalist here worthy of the name.
But Nettice? said Naomi again.
Obviously sane as you and me. And a great help.
It’s too much, said Naomi, rendered reasonable by the geniality of the English nurses, to ask you to let us visit. But if we gave you letters for her—letters to cheer her, I mean…
Bea laughed. It was a lyrical laugh. I’m in enough trouble myself, she said.
But she had not said no. It was because she had an excess of good nature—a tendency not without danger on Lemnos.
Maybe just one, she conceded.
She and Angela provided the pencil and some British Red Cross notepaper.
You write first, Naomi said to Sally, offering her the pencil.
For Lord’s sake, said Bea, don’t mention me.
Sally wrote,
Dear Nettice,
I hope you know we are all thinking of you and we will send you some comforts if we can. It goes without saying you should not be in this position. Our minds are set on finding an answer to your situation. It must be hard to get by in the compound. Lt. Byers is well and says that he looks forward to seeing you again. So do we all.
Your loving friend,
Sally passed the pencil to her sister who took it up with energy and wrote in a conspiratorial, certain, fast hand.
Just keep it brief, said Bea, brushing aside one of her ringlets.
Naomi produced from the pocket of her coarse dress a little slab of chocolate.
Is it too much to ask that you give her this too?
Bea laughed in disbelief. But she said, In for a penny, in for a pound. Don’t worry. I slip them all a few extras myself.
They could believe in this beautiful innocent who tended the supposedly mad.
Sally would stop on her rounds and talk to Lieutenant Byers, who had been moved from the general medical ward to a more sparsely populated tent. It was as if he had incurred isolation too. Her conversations with Byers needed to be discreet. There was an embargo on talking to men unless it was to ask them symptomatic questions or order them to lift an arm or a leg or open a mouth. The rules had been reiterated after the Nettice matter. After a time, the wounded themselves became parties to the discipline of the wards rather than land nurses in trouble. But Byers wanted to know everything about Nettice.
They’ve taken her off duty, said Sally. She’s having a good rest. She’s needed a good rest since the ship.
She said a horse brought her back to the surface.
Yes, it’s true. A pony. I saw it.
Thank God for ponies is what I say. Wonderful creatures! Rosie is a real brick.
I’d say so.
Yes, he said. She believes in a divinity that shapes us. And she doesn’t worry about my background in the least, you know. My father sent me to a school for Presbyterians but we were Jewish—changed our name from Myers. The other kids could tell—I don’t know how. But the young have a high degree of discrimination in some things. Is it safe to talk?