Nightingale (19 page)

‘Stop it, Rosie,' she pleaded, her throat husky from the emotion she was struggling to keep under control.

Her friend's complexion normally matched her name, but Rosie's cheeks were pale and her usually ready smile was failing her today. ‘I lie to patients all the time, Claire . . . tell them that we'll have them back on their feet in a jiffy, that they'll be swimming in the surf off the Sydney beaches or watching the footy again in Melbourne soon – avoiding telling them that they're probably going to be buried in the Mediterranean. I can lie to them effortlessly because it's my job to reassure a patient who is dying, but I can't lie to you. You're my friend and you're a nurse who knows better. You'd see through my lies straightaway and hate me for them. I have to tell you what I know or what kind of a friend am I?'

‘There's no proof!' she growled. It had become her mantra.

Rosie shook her head. ‘You're precious to me so I have to be honest with you and admit there's more proof of his death than there is of his survival. I'm so sorry.'

She reached for Claire, who finally surrendered to the river that had tried all day to flood her, and she wept with low, shuddering sobs. And in that moment of heartbreak as Rosie hugged her, Claire decided that without Jamie, there was no more hope – especially not in a world at war with men dying by the thousands daily. Was he one of them? Had this war killed him? It seemed it may have – others certainly believed so. The thought struck her that she should remove herself, get away from everything that might be familiar and prompt her to think of him, especially Egypt . . . and Turkey. Running away from pain was something she was good at. Claire knew that time alone would soothe her pain. Fate had brought her together with Jamie and if it now wanted to break her by taking him away, then she'd go where fate had the opportunity to throw everything it had at her. She would apply for the Western Front . . . immediately.

________

Jamie watched as the nursing team was pushed well beyond its limit and still it dug deeper and found more hours, more speed, more determination to heal wounded men. The letter he wanted to have written to Claire just didn't feel important enough as he watched the committed women move through their duties on far too little sleep or food or down time. He'd asked once, mentioned it again later; they knew he needed a letter scribed but days had passed and suddenly he was being moved again into a different, tented ward.

Days drifted by, feeling was coming back into his shoulder and soon he would write that letter for himself.

Finally he was well enough to leave nursing care and was thrilled to be reunited with the horses at the old Cairo camp at Mena. He was issued with his new regimental colour patch of black over white so he could be distinguished as belonging to the 3rd Light Horse Regiment. Here, just ten miles from the Cairo hospital where he had last seen Claire, Jamie underwent fresh training and integration into the regrouped mounted corps as more survivors of Gallipoli trickled in. There was talk of pulling out of the Dardanelles, which he was glad to hear, but for now he was content to look after the horses and spend the weeks coaxing his body back to full strength. His right arm still wouldn't work properly for him – not enough to write a letter, and he couldn't write with his left but he began to put out enquiries with everyone he could, hoping the army grapevine might help him find Claire. This morning he'd persuaded one of the other blokes to scribe a letter of brief enquiry via Claire's Alexandria base. He anticipated a couple of weeks before he may be lucky enough to hear back.

It was late afternoon and the worst of the day's heat had passed. He was walking alongside one of the horses he was gently leading up Artillery Road to stretch out a sore leg the animal was nursing and he marvelled at the small town that had grown up in the desert with its canvas tents. Soldiers boiled billies in the sand with a vast pyramid to their backs that they barely noticed any more. Jamie paused to check his horse's leg when a bloke he had come to know well drew level with him.

‘Hey, Wrennie?'

‘Johnno, where have you been?'

‘I had a dose of the trots. I'm fine now.'

‘Good. How's that kangaroo mascot of yours doing? I haven't seen it in days,' he said, impressed at how well he'd learned to use his other arm for rubbing down the animals. His right side was still healing, the arm in a sling to prevent him becoming too enthusiastic.

‘I had to give Banjo to the Cairo Zoo while I was sick. Miss him, actually. I guess they won't be giving him back anytime soon. Best for Banjo I s'pose.' Jamie grinned and waited. ‘Anyway, that friend of yours, the nurse you were looking for?'

He swung around. He hadn't told Johnno anything more about her other than that he'd met her a couple of times during his time at Gallipoli and that she was good to the men. ‘Claire Nightingale? Have you heard something?'

Johnno shrugged. He was a good sort and Jamie liked that he worked hard, loved the horses and had not complained about being left behind in Cairo, even before the horror stories of Gallipoli had begun to filter back. They'd become friends, looked out for each other; he couldn't replace Spud but having someone to rely on, drink with, joke with, helped ease the loneliness.

‘She's gone.'

‘Gone? What do you mean?'

His companion shrugged again, bigger this time. ‘I don't know what I mean, mate, but that's what I was told through a bloke who works on the docks.'

‘Which bloke?' Jamie demanded.

‘Wentworth. Bluey, he's known as. I did a pick-up today in Cairo and he helped me load some stuff. As he drives an ambo for our mob I thought it was worth asking at least.'

Jamie's insides churned with worry as he nodded. ‘Go on.'

‘According to Bluey, she's gone from the hospital ship. He seemed to know her but says she hasn't been in Alexandria for a few weeks now.'

‘Where's she gone?'

‘Not sure exactly. But Bluey seemed to think she's left for the Western Front.'

All the optimism that he'd worked hard to breathe into his mind began to deflate. The demons pressed closer, their voices louder.
She's going to get killed in a field hospital
.

‘Sorry, mate,' Johnno offered. ‘He said a few of the nurses he'd got to know and liked had moved on into Europe.' He shrugged, frowning. ‘You weren't sweet on her, were you?'

Jamie didn't want to explain. ‘She's a lovely girl. Everyone liked her.' The horse he was grooming butted him gently as it swished its tail against the flies. ‘Anyway, I'd best get this lovely girl back for a feed.' He wanted to run into the desert and scream his despair but instead, he touched his slouch hat in farewell.

‘By the way, our orders have come through,' Johnno called to his back.

‘What are they?' he said, distracted with thoughts of Claire in a Red Cross tent near the frontline.

‘We're off to somewhere called Jordan. Any idea where that is, mate?'

Jamie shook his head. He no longer cared where they were sent. All that mattered now was getting through this war and coming out alive so he could find Claire.

The war had been officially over for two months but it was now approaching four years since she had last kissed Jamie Wren and felt the warmth of life. For all she knew he could be in a cold grave, but until she did know, she clung to hope and a date in less than twelve weeks when they'd promised to meet.

The passenger seated next to her on the bus had a floral scarf tied under her chin and had clearly been bursting to chatter, casting sidelong glimpses at Claire as they'd rumbled down Oxford Street crowded with people and the traffic of motor vehicles and horse-drawn ones. The woman with small dark eyes who Claire suspected noticed everything finally popped her question. ‘Not wearing a mask, luv?' she said, pointing at her own.

Claire shook her head as though the answer wasn't obvious enough. ‘I think I'm immune,' she added, forcing a smile, while inwardly wishing the Spanish flu that was rampantly killing across Britain and Europe would find her – it might solve a lot of problems.

‘I'm not sure anyone is, luv. I heard yesterday that the wife of a friend's friend had woken with the shivers. She put it down to it being winter and the fire burning too low.' Over the top of the triple-layered muslin mask, Claire watched her companion's eyes widen. ‘Well, within three hours she'd turned a nasty purple – just like the colour of spring violets. She couldn't speak for the sore throat. And then the shivers turned to sweats – her sheets drenched and she retched herself to death in the early hours of the following morning.' She gave a huge, sighing shrug.

Claire's horror at the tale didn't change her expression. She'd heard similar tales of despair. People were dying by the hundreds up and down the country. It was worse in the cities but the country-dwellers were not spared. Claire knew there were myriad ways to contract the flu. And no one could say she wasn't trying her damndest to find it.

‘Poor dear,' her companion continued. ‘I blame all the celebrations in London. They've said it doesn't take much to catch it. All those people cheering and coughing. So easy to spread.'

Claire nodded, said nothing.

‘Do you live in London, luv?'

‘No. A village in Berkshire.'

‘Then you should stay there. Must be safer. I wish I could leave London. But my son, bless him, he came home but left a leg behind in France somewhere.' She chuckled at her grim jest. Claire didn't. ‘He needs a lot of help, you see.'

‘He's fortunate to have his family around,' she offered.

‘I do my best for him. So, why d'you think you're immune, then?'

Claire didn't, in truth, but she had to say something now to back up the claim. ‘Well, I nursed at the Front,' then instantly regretted sharing so much.

‘Ohhh . . . Where?'

‘Belgium.'

‘My son was at Ypres.'

She nodded. ‘Does he talk about it?'

‘No. Won't even talk about the day he got blown up . . .' She shrugged again.

‘I understand. I don't like to talk about it either.' She smiled. ‘Oh, here's my stop. Excuse me,' she said, standing and easing past the woman's large knees.

‘You look after yourself, luv.'

‘You too.' She hurried off the bus. It wasn't her stop and she'd had no intention of getting off in Regent Street. She had just wanted to ride the bus and forget herself and her sorrows for a while. Claire had discovered that, as curious as it was, travelling with a busload of strangers who ignored her was quieter than being at home . . . for her mind, anyway. At home her thoughts spoke too loudly and crowded her head with images of men dying as she tended them, listening to their final words. Nothing had changed from Gallipoli to Flanders. They still died bravely and horribly. They still cried for their mothers and wives.

She was neither, though.

No soldier would die with her name on his lips . . . or maybe he already had. She prayed this was not the truth and that Trooper Jamie Wren remained alive somewhere in the world. Was he back in Australia by now, or was he buried in the sands near Palestine or Egypt? Maybe he had travelled with mounted troops into Western Europe, or he'd transferred regiments, if that were possible, and died at Ypres, or the Somme, or any one of the number of romantic-sounding but horrific killing fields. The voices in her mind were loud and persistent. That's why she needed the bus and the distraction of others – their coughs, their conversations, their chattering children and whispering elders. And she needed London passing by, feeling the push and pull of the groaning bus – it all soothed the inner voice and allowed her to escape the fetters of her imagination and live in the moment that had no memory. There were also times, like now, when Claire wondered if she rode the buses around London simply to reassure herself that she was still alive, still connected to life . . . even if it was other people's lives.

‘Watch out, darlin',' a rag-and-bone man said, leading a horse and trailing a cart laden with oddities. She stepped back, realised she was lost in thought and watched him move on into the distance, wondering why he might be in such a busy district of central London. She scanned absently to get a fix on where precisely she was. And it was only in that moment that her breath caught to realise where she was standing.

She was at the juncture of Portland Place and Regent Street, and towering in front of her stood a grand, honey-grey brick building of fussy late-Victorian design. She recognised it instantly from childhood and in the gloom of a winter afternoon the lights that glowed from behind the arched windows looked like eyes staring out at her. Were they mocking her? She walked around to face the classically shaped portico that proudly displayed Union Jack flags flying from its balcony balustrade and she remembered walking up the short flight of stairs beneath that portico, holding hands with her father and her aunt to enter the foyer of the Langham Hotel.

Coincidence?

The soft chuckle of a woman she hadn't thought about in three years echoed through her mind. She'd been surprised and delighted only yesterday to receive a letter from Eugenie Lester. Eugenie had somehow tracked her down as simply Claire Nightingale, care of Twyford Post Office. No doubt her sharp mind recalled Claire mentioning living in the village of Charvil. Her note was brief, yet Claire felt the familiar affection reaching out from the few words like a soothing hug.

Dearest Claire,

I've been thinking about you, wondering how you are. Do visit – the address is on this card. Just come . . . anytime, my dear, but make it soon. Yours, Eugenie.

They had once shared a discussion on coincidence and she was sure that Eugenie would scoff that Claire standing outside the Langham was anything but divinely crafted. On the two occasions they'd met, the older woman had found just the right words to set Claire back on sturdy track when she'd felt so lost. And here was a letter from her out of the blue. Perhaps Claire should see it as a sign that Eugenie might guide her wisely again?

Maybe it was Eugenie's age that gave her such perspective, but Claire now wondered how to find balance in a world gone mad. Millions were already dead from the war, and now a new killer was on the rampage, as effective as bullets or mortar but it rode the explosion of a sneeze or a cough, a laugh or a splutter. It attacked through something as tender as a kiss and didn't restrict itself to killing enemies. Family member infected family member, friend infected friend, stranger infected stranger as they passed in the street. Perhaps she
was
immune . . . immune to everything, though, including the invitations she'd received from men, eager to get on with their lives and back to normality.

She'd not demobbed to Australia. It had felt easier to get lost in Britain, but she couldn't outrun the demons that hunted her. Where was he? She'd written two letters since the end of the war. All she had was an acknowledgement of her first enquiry that she'd made just before Christmas 1918 when she'd come out of the nursing corps at the Front. It had been easier through the years at the Casualty Clearing station in Belgium to get lost in the war and its bloody work. There were more staff, less time to get involved with the patients who seemed to pass by her care on a steadily moving queue – in one day for intensive treatment, gone the next.

Nevertheless, although other medics admitted that every wounded soldier began to look the same, Claire endlessly searched the slack-jawed faces of her patients, always looking for him, clinging to the hope that one day he would come back into her life. If he was broken, she would mend him. If he was bleeding, she would staunch him. If he was dying, she would save him.

Claire reached into the pocket of her drop-waisted jacket and felt for her touchstone, his identity tag, clutched it to warm it through her gloves and to remind her why she was feeling so rudderless. She kept the bullet tip at home, took it out from time to time to rekindle his promise that he wouldn't be killed.

She had to stay busy, distracted, until April. It felt like a lifetime ahead of her but it had been more than three years since they'd kissed, so what was nine weeks more?

She moved back to the bus stop and waited. The fierce wind turned the area where she stood into a cauldron of bright, thrashing cold and she pulled her velvet cloche hat closer to her turned-up collar, and as she shivered she was reminded of how they used to complain of the heat in Turkey and Egypt. Oh, for a little of that sun now . . . just a few minutes so she could warm her bones. But Claire knew it was her soul that needed warming.

She looked up, tried to imagine the warmth of the Middle East and, curiously, instead of seeing herself laughing on the verandah of Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, she saw herself on a different hotel verandah: it was Alexandria and she was sipping tea and smiling with Eugenie Lester. As her bus heaved towards her, one that would take her to Paddington Station where she would leave the city and take the Reading line for Twyford, she thought about Eugenie's invitation and pondered whether there was a hidden message in that line that she should visit soon. She'd read it three times and couldn't shake the notion that the underlying prompt was cryptic.

Without dithering further, instead of boarding the bus she marched in the direction of Oxford Circus Tube Station. Descending into the stale air of the Underground, she was grateful for the warmth and press of people and moved with the swarm onto the platform to board the next train that would hurtle through the catacomb of tunnels and deliver her to London St Pancras and a train to Radlett and some more of Eugenie's wise perspective.

________

Claire stood on Watling Street, which the stationmaster assured her cut a direct path south to Marble Arch in London or north all the way to York. Radlett was a hamlet, barely a speck on the English map, and only relevant because it sat on the ancient highway from the capital to the northern cities where travellers would blink and pass it on their way to the abbey town of St Albans.

From what Claire could tell on first sight, Radlett – despite its proximity to London – was located among a thickly wooded area, even now boasting little more than its railway station, a couple of pubs, a church, village hall and the usual array of shops – butcher, fruiterer, grocer, bakery, post office. Claire watched her breath steam and dissipate, feeling oddly comfortable in this small settlement. At this moment on the edge of winter, it looked vaguely dislocated and lonely, and that suited her. She moved towards the railway inn for directions.

When she reached Loom Lane she knew instinctively which house she sought as she stood among the colourful fallen leaves beneath the giant overhang of a beech tree and its cousins. She imagined herself as dwarfed by the tall but well-clipped hedgerow on either side in the narrow country path and stared at the gabled house made of the distinctive local flint, dressed with a rich red brick at its edges and topped by the dark, smoky-coloured slate tiled roof. The windows were painted a creamy white with numerous small panes that gleamed at her, attesting to regular cleaning. It was too large to be called a cottage by her standards. She shivered, accepting that it was probably dry and cold enough to snow. She couldn't stand out here much longer without losing touch with her toes and fingers, or perhaps without drawing attention.

Claire stepped beneath the elaborately wrought arbour arching over the small iron gate and marvelled at the thickly gnarled branches of old roses that had twisted themselves sinuously and blended with a hedge of fearsome holly. The bare rose bush looked forbidding and yet she imagined in summer the blooms of heavily perfumed roses would soften the appearance of this entrance and welcome all-comers to walk through a heavenly scent.

Claire walked up the neat, brick pathway and sensed a wide garden stretching away on both sides of her and curling around the house like a meadow. She stepped up onto the porch and took a breath of hesitation before she pulled on the bell. From behind the door she heard movement and a few seconds later it was opened. A woman who looked to be in her early forties greeted her, dressed in an old-fashioned uniform more reminiscent of the Edwardian era that Britain was shaking off since the war.

‘Yes? Can I help you?'

‘I'm looking for Eugenie Lester. This is her house, isn't it?'

‘It is.'

She explained their history briefly. ‘I do have a letter from her asking me to visit.' She began digging into her bag for the card.

‘Mrs Lester is unwell . . . um, this may not —'

‘Oh, please, Miss . . .'

‘I'm her housekeeper, Miss Chambers.'

Claire gave her best smile, imagining now who was behind the fastidious cleanliness of the windowpanes and the clipped precision of the lawn. ‘I've travelled a long way today to keep a promise to visit. I should have written ahead, I realise that, and I'm very sorry to hear she's unwell, but if I could just see her for a few moments please, I would love to pay her my respects.'