Free The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally Page B

beneath the archways and moved amongst soldiers, Egyptian businessmen,and the poor. A person could damn well get used to this, said Honora.
    Carradine, Sally, Naomi, and Mitchie had a compartment. Naomi offered Sally a seat by the cramped window of the carriage which seemed as designed to keep the world out as much as to allow sight of it.
    Sally said, No, you take it.
    Still there lay a distance between the sisters and it struck her that the other women could see it and were making surmises about it. But for distraction from that awkward thought, there were antimacassars to lay the back of their heads against and the seats were of the softest leather. A superior foot-warming device—a canister with hot coals over which a carpet cover had been laid—was placed on the floor for their use. The women were barely settled when a conductor in a tarboosh told them respectfully that the dining carriage was open now. Matron Mitchie asked Sally, Would you be so kind as to fetch down my valise?
    Untroubled by the gentle lurch of the ambling train, Sally got the scuffed leather thing down. Matron Mitchie took an envelope from it and turned to Carradine and Naomi.
    Will you take those—be dears for poor old Matron!—and give them to the girls in the compartments? Meal tickets. Be warned and warn them. They do not cover beer and wine and certainly not whisky!
    The stipulation implied the women would fall to whisky very easily.
    Come, Sally, said Mitchie, after Sally had been handed her white meal card.
    Sally followed Mitchie as she made her broad-bottomed way down the corridor of the train towards the dining car and bounced a hip off the walls on one side and then on the other. There is useful flesh, thought Sally.
    They came into the dining room and found lamps held in lotus-like bulbs burning above each table. The tables themselves were set with brilliant, flashing cutlery and filigree-work tablecloths. The women who did the fine work earned very little, and here the grace of things sat balancedon want. And here too—as Lieutenant Maclean had said—all justice had to await the defeat of the enemy and mightn’t even happen then.
    The dining room windows seemed better placed for viewing. For a time—as they rolled beside the Nile—Sally could see feluccas as black shapes on the deep-blue night-time river. By lanterns in the bows and hung from masts, the faces of men moving along the deck were vivid for an instant then gone. Members of the same humanity she shared in and carriers of the same kind of blood. Yet their lives were unreachable to her. What did they say to their wives? What did they say to their children? And what was said in return? That was travel, she supposed. A dance across surfaces to see the face of everything and learn the meaning of very little.
    The other girls arrived in the dining carriage. Naomi was with them and seemed to look at everything as from a great distance.
    Come on, Slattery, Mitchie yelled, pointing to the two vacant seats at her table and at the table across the corridor. Come on, Carradine, sit with a poor woman, won’t you? Empress Naomi, join us. Freud the diva, sit at that one with Leonora. Ah, Nettice, welcome.
    So they settled as ordered.
    Now, your father-in-law, said Mitchie, skewering Carradine with a brown eye. He’s some great man, isn’t he?
    He is the attorney-general. And the deputy prime minister.
    Carradine absorbed without apparent shock the news that Mitchie was aware of her marriage and willing to be forthright about it.
    And your husband? Does he have political intentions?
    He hasn’t said it yet. I think he finds the military ones hard enough to keep up with at the moment. Poor chap, he’s not thought of as strict enough by his colonel. But that’s his method, you see. To appeal to people’s good natures.
    Well, said Mitchie, beaming. He certainly managed to appeal to yours, Nurse Carradine. Everyone seems content to ignore your marriage for now. A ministry letter