Sister Durance, called Major Bright, take the slips with me.
For he was standing near the wicketkeeper.
I don’t understand, said Sally.
Slips, here. I’m first slip, you be second. I see you’re a good catch. Advance Australia Fair. Come on!
She moved grudgingly to take up the position and saw Honora was profoundly asleep under the tree on the ridgeline and was not engaged at all in the game but seemed in fact sedated by it.
You see this young chap? Major Bright asked Sally confidentially, pointing to an Australian gunner they’d found in an estaminet in Deux Églises and recruited for their team. He’s a leg spinner. So be ready for a catch. It won’t be fierce. Ball off the edge of the bat. A lollipop catch.
The English orderly at the batting crease met the Australian’s less than distinguished delivery and belted it across the field so far that it disappeared over a hill.
My God, said Bright, they’re taking it seriously. That’s a bit rough.
He stood straight and inhaled.
I hope you don’t mind my asking, Sister Durance, he murmured as beyond the fall of land Australian and British orderlies and two nurses searched the grass for the cricket ball. But I would be grateful if you kept an eye on young Slattery there. It seems to me that the word of the bureau in London, and of course of our glorious military authorities, is uniform. And she is the only dissenter.
Yes, said Sally. But her work stays solid.
Of course. But she writes too often to the bureau, and she continues to do so, even though they have nothing to tell her. She seemed to be over the loss, but she’s reverted. She needs a long leave, and a chance to find the means to accept that her fiancé is dead. I am not asking you to be a spy. But there are so many letters to that bureau, I assure you—nearly daily. More—I confess—than I have actually sent off.
There were rumors Major Bright was more affected by Honora than that. There did exist, however, fifteen or more years’ difference.
Please keep an eye on her. Just to see signs of stress or of the… the abnormal. She refuses to leave here; I have no grounds to make her. But she should be observed. In case…
Sally said she would do her best in this matter. On the rim of the slope a nurse had found the cricket ball, and this was a pretext for jubilation and cheers.
A Summer of Stubborn Matrons
In the garden on a suddenly blazing day when men sat in scattered light by oaks and elms and read books and magazines—with Matron Mitchie dozing in her wicker wheelchair—Lady Tarlton took Naomi aside.
Our friend Matron Mitchie, she confided, has had an X-ray in Boulogne at Major Darlington’s insistence. There are damp spots on her lungs. She is suffering from tuberculosis. It’s urgent that she go to a sanatorium down there in the south, and take ship to Australia as soon as she can healthily do so. I am trying to recruit an experienced sister or staff nurse from Étaples or Wimereux or Boulogne to special-nurse her. Because you notice that three of our volunteers left during the winter to return home? But I can hardly blame them.
Naomi thought that given the rigors of the work and of the château as a building three departures was a modest number. At the news of Mitchie’s consumption, she thought at once of the sinking of the Archimedes. It was as if that cold and shock had caught up to her at Château Baincthun.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Lady Tarlton went on, she is refusing to move. A tear emerged in the corner of one of her eyes.
I fear she might have no family back there. And yet out of English reticence I don’t ask. I think you can ask her. And use your best endeavors. She must go, says Major Darlington, if she is to see her senior years.
That night Naomi intercepted the volunteer who was carrying a meal from the kitchens to Matron Mitchie’s room on the first floor. The girl was masked, according to the strictures of Major Darlington. Dr. Airdrie had told everyone that Darlington was about to publish an article in The Lancet on the connection between bacteria in nurses’ throats and sepsis, and on the whole issue of masks on or masks off. This—everyone felt—would validate the Voluntary and Major Darlington and Lady Tarlton and themselves.
I’ll take that meal to the matron, Nurse, Naomi said.
Would you, Sister? asked the girl in an elegant, tired voice. She was a sturdy young woman who had once well-meaningly said to Naomi, Your soldiers are extraordinary in their patois. And Naomi had said, I doubt they’d know what patois was.
Naomi took the meal from her but did not don a mask. How could you have a heart-to-heart with Mitchie through a mask?
The matron’s room—into which she was bidden after knocking—was a little larger than her own. The French owners who had fled the war had at least left their thick curtains behind—and in Mitchie’s room they were drawn. But the room was simple apart from that—an iron bedstead, a dresser, a lowboy of painted pine, a little bookcase made of pine. Matron Mitchie in bed wore a mobcap and her hands were folded across her stomach, her bedclothes neat, her prosthesis with its shoe on its false foot beside her bed. The matron grinned unambiguously and broadly at seeing Naomi.
Come, she said. You can put down the food and tea there. I’ll have the tea first. As for the rest, my appetite is not… But tell me—your visit to Paris?
Naomi found herself without embarrassment relating their meeting with Mr. Sedgewick and the other Amis in Paris.
When she was finished, Mitchie declared, I always liked that Kiernan. He was a good egg from the start.
I am so sorry to hear about your problem, said Naomi.
Problem?
Well, that you have some consumption.
Some? asked Mitchie, mock sneering. That’s not a very accurate medical assessment, Staff Nurse Durance. I wouldn’t mind betting that blabbermouth Lady Tarlton told you all about it. And sent you to plague me into going to Marseille. I simply won’t. I am better than Major Darlington and Lady Tarlton think.
Naomi said, You argued you were better than you were to get here in the first place.
Mitchie said, Is there soup on that tray? Place it there on the little table. I might have some.
Would you like me to feed you?
I’m neither a baby nor in my dotage, thank you. If I go to Marseille, they’ll have me on the Australia boat before you know. And so to a sanatorium out in the Dandenongs. I am not a sanatorium dweller. It’s not in my nature. Besides, what is so precious about me that I should be taken out of France? The countryside is weighed down by young men who need to be sent home. I’m tethered here by the same things as you are. So let’s have no argument. I really mean it. Let’s have none.
Namoi set her up with her soup.
Good soup indeed. Some of those English Roses can actually cook.
It’s none of my affair, said Naomi, but I wondered if you had a family to look after you in Australia?
Here we go! said Mitchie in disgust. A family? I have a brother in Tasmania, since you ask. But he’s totally unsuitable as a tuberculosis nurse. I wouldn’t call my brother a relative in any meaningful way. I am as good as forgotten there. Anyhow, it seems that I have been here forever. Even Mudros is distant—and Egypt’s distant beyond belief. This is my home and I won’t be thrown out of my home. Lady Tarlton owes me her loyalty on this, rather than going around enlisting you all to evict me.
You should never have come to France in my opinion, Naomi said. But I know you’ll argue otherwise.