Nightingale (22 page)

Mrs Parsons looked relieved to show her the door.

‘There's no grave, I'm presuming?' Claire wondered as they walked into the hall.

‘No, she's buried with the others in France,' Bill replied for his wife. ‘Well, farewell, Miss Nightingale. I hope you find your book and that your young man returns to you.'

She smiled. ‘Thank you again.' She shook his hand and followed his wife to the front door. ‘Um, please say goodbye to the girls for me. I'm sorry I didn't bring them anything, but I shall send something.'

‘No need, Miss Nightingale,' Rosie's mother said, her voice as leaden as it had been since their eyes first met.

Claire had ambled through the warren of narrow streets that centuries earlier had been the alleyways of fishermen and smugglers in the old town of Brighton. The crowded lanes later developed as cheap housing for workers servicing the gentry of Brighton in their fashionable villas by the seaside. More recently the myriad alleyways had become popular with antiquarians who gobbled up the creaking, shabby houses and shopfronts to give them a new lease of life and value.

Nevertheless, in parts it felt intriguingly medieval to Claire as she began asking in various shops and eating houses about Leo Fotheringham; she was rapidly losing hope when an extremely elderly man in a dusty gold and silver exchange shop frowned for a long time and said he vaguely knew Fotheringham but hadn't seen him in a while and the place to find him was likely the Sussex Arms where he drank with his friend. Again the word sounded loaded but Claire was not interested in Fotheringham, only in what she hoped he still had in his possession.

She found the pub and while it might not be seemly for a young woman to enter alone, she didn't give herself a second's hesitation. She gazed around the dim interior where dust motes hung lazily in the thin shafts of light from small windows, feeling deeply self-­conscious as men leaning against the wide bar, or huddled over tables sharing a mumbling pint, regarded her.

The man behind the bar looked up from where he was lifting a large glass, overflowing with froth, onto his counter. He glanced her way. ‘Looking for someone, luv?'

‘A Mr Fotheringham,' she murmured.

His friendly expression gloomed over and she watched his gaze shift to where a man with a sweep of silver hair sat alone and hunched at a table over a glass of amber.

‘Bernard?' he called.

‘What? Can't you see I'm drowning my sorrows?'

‘Er, there's a young lady asking after Fotheringham.'

She leaned further into the pub from the doorway where she stood so that Bernard, whoever he was, could see her and she noticed silver eyebrows meet in the middle of his frown. ‘Do I know you?'

She shook her head and then glanced around, further embarrassed to be drawing attention. ‘May I speak with you a moment?'

He stood. ‘No. I'm busy.'

‘Mind your manners around the lady, Bernard,' the barman warned. He nodded at Claire with encouragement.

She approached the man. ‘I'm Claire Nightingale.' She held out a gloved hand.

‘
Enchanté
,' he growled with a flawless French accent that was loaded with sourness.

‘I'm very sorry to interrupt you,' she said, noting his half-drunk whisky.

‘Then do me a fine favour and leave me alone.' He lifted the glass but didn't drink from it, instead banging it down on the table.

‘I just want to ask a question, um, Mr Fotheringham.'

‘You've got the wrong person, Miss Nightingale.'

She looked over at the publican.

‘Bernard Jenkins, don't make me come around and shake you. That'll be your last drink if you don't act politely.'

Claire was confused. ‘I'm sorry, um . . .'

He looked up from red-rimmed eyes. He wasn't drunk, not yet, but she sensed he was planning to be. ‘Ask your wretched question and leave me to another Scotch, will you?'

‘Do you recall the Parsons family from Hove?'

He considered her question, downing the rest of his nip of liquor as he did so. ‘If I do, I can't bring them to mind. Now, excuse me,' he said, standing, adjusting his cravat before reaching for his hat and pushing past Claire. ‘See you later, Don.'

She was so surprised at his rudeness that she watched him until the pub door closed behind him and it was only the sound of its slam that stung her into action. She rushed out after Jenkins.

‘Mr Jenkins!' she called, soon catching up. He used a cane to walk but swung it in an affected way, clicking it down every third step on the pavement. ‘Forgive me,' she began again.

‘No, I won't. Stop following me. Just leave me and Leo alone.'

She halted, unsure of what next to do, watched him cross the narrow street and head down another alleyway.

If you let him go, you let Jamie go
, breathed a voice loud in her mind, silent to the world.

‘Wait!' She hurried after him and caught up, panting and pulling at his arm.

He shook her hand away. ‘Oh, for pity's sake, leave me to my grief, you wretched woman!'

Grief. She thought she could swallow the rising anger but it beat her, quickly finding its way out. ‘Mr Jenkins, I too am grieving. The world is grieving!' He turned. ‘I am not here to interfere with your life but I believe you have something that belongs to me and I would like to get it back, please. I will trouble you no further once I have.'

He looked at her from those slightly glazed, red eyes, which she now understood appeared sore from weeping. ‘What the hell are you blathering about?'

‘Well, if you'd pause long enough to let me explain, perhaps I'll stop bothering you.'

‘Damn it! Not here!' He stomped off. Then turned around. ‘Well, come on, then. This is your idea.'

She ran to catch up again, following him at a hurried walk as he strode, ignoring her, down one street and another until Claire had lost her sense of direction and her vision had narrowed to following the polished heels of tan brogues peeping from beneath brazen, caramel-coloured trousers. It only struck her now that she thought about it that Jenkins was a dapper dresser, flamboyant, even, given the tweed jacket and matching waistcoat that was far more colourful than most men chose to wear.

Suddenly the brogues crossed into a garden-like setting and she was following him into a sweetly scented courtyard of bright freesia. She hadn't expected anything so pretty but didn't let her gaze linger. He unlocked the door, stomped across the threshold and up some stairs. Claire quietly followed, disconcerted and embarrassed, but she was on her mission now and refused to leave empty-handed. She closed the door and tiptoed up the flight where he met her at the landing.

‘Right!' he growled, swinging around. ‘You've pushed your way into my house. Whatever this is about, let's get it over with.' He marched to the cabinet and pulled down a decanter.

‘Mr Jenkins, let me quickly say this and then you can return to your, er . . . day,' she said, glancing at the fiery liquid being sloshed into a crystal glass.

He turned back and swallowed the contents defiantly while watching her. Claire breathed in through her nose, adopting her serious nurse's expression.

‘Say it, then,' he demanded. ‘I'm already bored of you.'

‘Why are you being so rude?'

‘Because I hate you for being here and talking to me because it means I'm alive and having to get through yet another bloody day.' His voice had escalated to a shout.

‘Be quiet!' she snapped. Stunned initially, Jenkins then began laughing to himself. He tottered deeper into the house. Claire looked around her and was treated to a sumptuous and tastefully furnished sitting room. The colours were bold with a rich yellow and green palette. She'd not seen anything like it. Jewelled colours reminiscent of Egypt. She stared at the chuckling man and knew she needed to rescue the situation before he really did drink too much to make sense.

‘I . . . I admire your art, Mr Jenkins,' she said, glancing around at the post-Impressionist landscapes.

He blinked, clearly not ready for the compliment. ‘Thank you. I've been acquiring them for nearly ten years. A French artist, and I suspect he will be “highly desirable”, as we say in the trade. We used to spend whole nights discussing them.'

She looked around. ‘We?'

‘Leo and I,' he said in a dull tone. ‘We were lovers, Miss Nightingale, does that shock you?'

She paused. ‘I know you want it to,' Claire admitted. ‘Look, I told you, I just want to claim back something that belongs to me. As I understand it, it was wrongfully sold to Mr Fotheringham by a Mrs Parsons.' She briefly recapped the situation.

His mouth twitched with a heartless grimace. ‘This is not my problem, Miss Nightingale.'

‘Do you have the prayer book?'

He sighed. ‘I do.'

She closed her eyes briefly against the instant watering of relief that welled. She reached for a chair back, leaned against it as she aimed for a steady voice and forthright tone. ‘May I see it, please?' she asked, achieving neither. Claire cleared her throat of the gathering emotion.

He lurched to an elegant writing bureau near the window and pulled back the desk door, reaching inside to retrieve the familiar book. He held it up and Claire felt a moment of dizzied desperation to wrestle it from him. The book felt like a talisman winking at her when the sunlight caught the golden gilding.

She rapidly calculated what it might cost to persuade him to return it. ‘Mr Jenkins, how about —?'

‘This belongs to me,' he said. ‘It was a gift from Leo . . . the last thing he gave me. I loved him, Miss Nightingale, and I don't expect you to understand that or be anything but repulsed by it, but he was everything to me and when he gave me this book he was perfectly well, filled with laughter at having escaped married life in Hampshire to live six glorious, secretive weeks in Brighton with me. Within two days, Miss Nightingale, the only person I've ever loved was dying in my arms. I had to deliver him to a hospital so he could die there alone, frightened, but at least his family and their name was protected from scandal. All I have now of darling Leo, apart from memories, is the faint smell of his pomade on my pillows, some clothes hanging lifelessly in my wardrobe and this Arabic prayer book. He knows my interest in the Levant.' He gave a mirthless grin. ‘No word of a lie. The world of the Arab and the Muslim faith is thoroughly intriguing to me.' His voice returned to its cut-glass sharpness. ‘Leo lived off his wife's inheritance, Miss Nightingale, and he lived off me. I didn't care. He made me feel alive in a way I haven't since a happy childhood in Berkshire.'

Claire blanched. ‘You could be describing me, Mr Jenkins. I was born in Berkshire as well and I recall being very happy. And then, perhaps like you, I simply was no longer happy, not for many years, until I met someone called James Wren. And I feel about Jamie as you clearly do about Leo: that Jamie has no equal. And my world has been dismantled since I lost sight of him in a Cairo hospital.' She said that deliberately to pique his interest and saw a flame light in his gaze at mention of the Eygptian capital. She continued, pretending she hadn't noticed. ‘I'm a nurse. He was gravely wounded, even died once in a hospital ship's theatre en route to Egypt, but both times we managed to revive him. This was the man I loved but now I have no idea where he is or even if he is still alive. Just as you do, I have some short-lived memories and a couple of curiosities, one of them that prayer book that he gave to me.' She didn't believe Jenkins needed to learn the truth.

‘How do I even know it's yours?'

‘Look!' she said, holding up a hand to stop him saying another word before dipping into her pocket and retrieving the bullet tip she carried habitually. ‘May I?' she asked, gesturing towards the prayer book.

Jenkins stared at her suspiciously initially and then relented, handing it to her. She stepped closer and showed him. ‘See how this bullet tip fits into that depression?'

He let out his breath in a sigh of wonder; his expression briefly allowed a flash of a smile. ‘I have been trying to imagine what occurred.' He surprised her with a small chuckle as he rubbed his finger across the depression. ‘That's exciting.'

‘I can give you more,' Claire pressed. ‘I can give you the provenance of that prayer book.' She'd pinpointed his weakness and waited only a heartbeat to see the glimmer in his gaze at the suggestion. ‘This prayer book belonged to a young man called Açar Shahin, a Turk from Istanbul, fighting in the German allied forces in the Dardanelles. From what I learned, Shahin was an ascetic, a poet, a dreamer, Mr Jenkins. He played music, he wrote stories, refused to kill any of the enemy deliberately. I gather from someone who knew him briefly that Mr Shahin wanted to follow the ways of the mystics, but he believed wholly in some manner of his own heightened awareness that he would not survive the war. During a day-long armistice he met Jamie and he gave him this book,' she said, loading her voice with as much gravity as she could muster, ‘and Jamie responded in kind.' Yes, she would tell the truth, she decided in the tense moments as he watched her, and Claire didn't pause to consider this decision any longer. After she'd told him, Claire ended with a shake of her head. ‘It is a journey of forgiveness,' she breathed, suddenly understanding Shahin's gesture, and her voice warbled slightly in that moment of dawning. ‘Shahin called Jamie his friend . . . no, brother. And Jamie admitted to me he felt closer to this Turk during that bright, brief, heartbreaking time of the silenced guns and the thousands of dead than to many people he'd known all of his life. These two men have come to represent for me all the suffering innocents who were bearing the burden of other people's greed, desire, anger and power.'

She watched Jenkins swallow his anger.

‘And what do you wish to do with my book?'

‘It is not about whether this is your book, my book, Jamie's book. This is about honour, Mr Jenkins. You honoured Leo's family at the last, even when you were at the height of your suffering. I am suffering now and I wish to honour the dead too. Shahin wanted Jamie to have this book.'

Her words had guided him to a place of peace, it seemed, for he regarded her now with what felt like respect; it was grudging but he straightened.

‘That's not entirely correct, Miss Nightingale.' She blinked in annoyance. ‘The Turk did not wish your friend to have this book. He wished his father to have his book returned. There's a difference.'