Nightingale (32 page)

Claire, with the practised motion of a nurse, eased Eugenie out of the wheelchair, realising sadly that her greatest friend felt birdlike in her arms, weighing far too little. ‘All right, we'll take this slow. How far?'

‘Just there, darling. It's this one,' Eugenie held a wavering finger towards the tree. ‘It hasn't changed a bit,' she continued, and Claire heard the tremor in her voice. She wasn't sure if it was from exertion or emotion. They took four unsteady steps to the tree. ‘There,' Eugenie said again, proudly.

Claire looked to where a curious arch-shaped gnarl appeared on the tree. It was a smooth patch where the bark had fallen away. It was grey and weathered, and she could see that a heart had been carved into its centre. An arrow bisected the heart, alongside the initials
EL
and
EL
.

She sighed at the romantic symbol. ‘You and Edward?'

Her friend nodded and Claire saw with surprise that her elder was weeping softly but smiling.

‘He brought me here for a picnic. It was the day Eddie first kissed me and then told me he loved me and couldn't imagine he could spend another day without knowing I shared his initials.'

Claire smiled in spite of her mood. ‘He asked you to marry him here?'

‘On bended knee when this whole area was a meadow of buttercups,' Eugenie admitted, waving an arm expansively, even though the action cost her a wince. ‘I was even dressed in yellow, I seem to recall. We toasted ourselves with beakers of my homemade lemonade and swore we'd never be parted except in death. We kept that promise.' Eugenie touched her gloved fingers to her lips and with difficulty she bent to place her fingertips on the centre of the heart. ‘Now it's your turn, Claire.'

She frowned. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Well . . .' Eugenie motioned towards the chair and Claire helped her back to it, assisting her friend to be seated comfortably again. ‘Do you see that the gnarl of that tree is arched?'

Claire looked back and nodded.

‘Eddie said to me that's the fairy door.
It is a secret opening into another kingdom
, I recall were his exact words.'

Claire smiled at the whimsy of this notion. She loved Eugenie for bringing her here; already she was feeling a fraction more optimistic.

‘The fairy kingdom?' she said.

‘Yes, Claire,' Eugenie continued, proceeding with a more droll tone. ‘If you were a pretty little five-year-old, you'd be quite excited to hear this but because you are a beautiful 25-year-old, I'm going to have to rely on you to accept the idea based purely on the romanticism of this notion.'

‘I will,' she promised, surprised she could feel even as vaguely lighthearted as she did in this moment.

‘Good. We all know that it's the fairy world that grants us our wishes, agreed?'

‘Agreed.'

‘So, Claire, as Eddie made me, now you must knock on that door and after you do so, make a wish. Eddie said the fairies would be listening on the other side and if they like you they will grant you your wish. They granted me mine, which was to convince my parents to let me marry Edward Lester. I wish I'd thought to include in that wish that he might live as long as I.' She smiled sadly. ‘Go knock and make your wish. You'll be surprised who is listening.' Claire stared at Eugenie for a moment. ‘Do it, Claire,' she whispered. ‘If you say it and cast out that wish, then you'll believe in it as I did; hold his memory close, bring him home.'

Claire felt moved by these words, but they were soft, plump tears of swelling joy rather than despair this time. ‘Thank you,' she mouthed to her friend before she turned to the tree.

Claire bent and, with all of her heart open, she tapped gently on the fairy door and prayed they were there and paying attention to her.

‘If you're listening, fairies,' she began, ‘please bring Jamie Wren safely back to me on April Fool's Day. I don't want to believe he is dead. Just make him safe. Bring him to me – even if he's hurt – and I will heal him . . . I will believe in you forever and help set up Eugenie's clinic to help heal others as my namesake did so faithfully.' She touched her fingers to her lips, and as Eugenie had done, she placed her fingertips to the centre of the carved heart.

Claire turned. ‘There . . . satisfied?' she said, affecting a tone far drier than she felt.

‘Completely,' Eugenie admitted. ‘Thank you for coming here with me.'

‘It's a very special spot,' she agreed. ‘So beautiful. I think I could live here beneath this canopy of beech trees forever.'

Eugenie smiled. ‘First you have a date to keep, yes?'

Claire nodded. Eugenie was right.
Why would I give up on him now?
‘Every time we've met you've had to remind me to keep faith with Jamie. Maybe you're the fairy, Eugenie.'

Her friend snorted a laugh.

‘I think I shall head back to Charvil – I need a couple of days to navigate through the shock and I'll go to London from there.'

‘Let me organise a car for you so that you don't get rained upon or blown about and so you look your picture-perfect best for Mr Wren.'

She didn't think it would matter to Jamie how she looked. ‘Thank you, Eugenie, but I think I'd prefer to find my own way; it's good thinking time on the bus.'

‘Well, at least let me send someone to pick up your belongings from Berkshire and bring them here.'

Claire nodded. ‘All right, thank you. My belongings will be ready in a couple of days.'

Eugenie cast a glance backwards. ‘Best we don't keep the others waiting much longer. Plus I don't believe I can feel my nose any more.'

Claire grinned. ‘Just for a while, in fairyland, it was easy to forget the cold, wasn't it?'

‘Keep your wish close in your thoughts, Claire. It will keep you warm these next couple of days.'

Thin sunshine peeped through the morning drizzle of the twenty tall, small-paned windows of the ward and lit all corners softly. Anything that was white seemed to be bathed in a special glow of starched, spring purity. It was cold enough to snow, though, and the heating in these long draughty wards at Dartford was struggling.

It was a kind team here, mainly involved in nursing neurotic soldiers returned in a state of anxiety and suffering more from stress than from their injuries. It was slightly different for him; his wounds were so blatantly obvious but he was mostly here to recover from the shock of an explosion that at the same time as wounding his arm had bounced him up into the air and flung him beneath two huge animals. He'd heard later that he'd been fortunately dragged out immediately, or perhaps he would have perished on Arab soil beneath his beloved horses.

All was relatively quiet on the ward save the irregular thump of his wooden crutch on the long, light-coloured floorboards. Mornings were easy here. The men with the broken minds seemed to find peace enough to sleep from the early hours through to full daylight. It was the dark hours that were nightmarish, when all the demons would be at play; he understood, but he was free of those nightmares now and if not for the wails and shrieks from his fellow soldiers, he was sure he might heal even faster. Instead he lay awake a lot of the night to the sounds of his comrades' mental anguish and felt guilty for conquering his trauma, and returning from the stupor.

Nurse Jane rustled in her crisp white uniform and gave a sigh of approval. ‘You are doing so well, James. You really shouldn't be here but I haven't got the heart to move you to Southall Hospital, where you should be now, and give you all that upheaval again.'

‘I'm happy here.' When he nodded he was aware of droplets of perspiration flicking off his face, landing on the newly dusted fronds of the palms in pots. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't be. That's a clear sign of the effort you're putting in and it's being rewarded. Look at you. Already up on your feet. It's a marvel.'

‘I need to go faster.' He shifted the single crutch and pushed off again, negotiating his way down the straight corridor formed between the neat row of equally spaced black enamelled iron cots.

She caught up, gave him a look of caution, and he paused again, sweat running like an opened tap down his back and dampening his shirt. ‘Listen to me now. I was at the 3rd Auxiliary Hospital in Cairo when it opened at the sporting club in June 1915, also when it closed just over a year later, and I was right here the day we re­opened 3AAH in October of 1916. I have seen a steady stream of wounded, broken soldiers, some men with almost identical injuries, James, not once or twice, but repeatedly. And I can assure you that I have not seen anyone make the kind of rapid recovery that you have made.' She helped him to sit down in a wheelchair. ‘You cannot push too hard or there'll be a price. You could relapse, or you could damage something else. There's no race.'

‘There is for me, Nurse Jane.'

Her lips narrowed in a sympathetic gesture. ‘I know. Claire Nightingale.'

‘Have you heard anything of her whereabouts?'

She shook her head. ‘I would have told you. I would have run in here and screamed it at you.'

He gave a sad grin.

‘But I don't want to bring it up for fear of sending you into a bleak mood when you're doing so well. When you arrived here you couldn't speak a word; you seemed altogether lost in your mind from the trauma. Now look at you. We're all so impressed. Have you written to home?'

He nodded. ‘One of the nurses scribed it for me. She posted it yesterday but it will probably take an age to reach South Australia. They probably think I'm dead,' he joked.

‘Well, you'll be out of here soon.'

‘I'm leaving on the first of April,' he promised.

She gave him another gentle smile. ‘The most recent information I can offer is that she was repatriated with a group of invalid soldiers in September 1918.'

‘So she's given up nursing?'

‘I wouldn't be at all surprised, would you? But no, it doesn't mean that at all. She could be in Australia looking for you right now for all we know. Why don't you have an address for her?'

‘I never had an address for her,' he said. ‘It was such a strange, unreal sort of period in Gallipoli and then in Egypt – me in hospital . . . we just thought there was time for all that. But all I have of her now is April Fool's Day.'

‘So you're determined to go?'

He nodded. ‘Too right. I'm determined to arrive at the Palm Court Lounge of the Langham Hotel at three o'clock.'

‘Have you thought that she may feel differently now . . . I mean, the war plays havoc with our hearts and minds, doesn't it?'

‘This date and the promise we made is all that has kept me going. I nearly lost my life in the August offensive at Gallipoli, and then all the battles in the desert campaign. Gaza, Es Salt; they were lucky escapes but I was injured at both. And each time I forced myself to be well because Claire would be waiting for me.'

‘I know. I understand.'

‘As for someone else . . .' He tried to shrug but couldn't. ‘How? When?'

‘Oh, doctors, officers . . . she's been in Europe, after all.'

He shook his dark head with confidence. ‘Not my Claire. We're in love, we're going to marry. Besides, I can't think like that or I might as well give up.'

‘Well, you're an inspiration, Trooper Wren. I hope your dream comes true. I'll see what I can do about getting you a lift to the station in a couple of days but you'll be on your own from then.'

________

The previous week had been wet and miserable in Berkshire but today, March thirtieth, snow was predicted. Packing up at Charvil had kept Claire occupied, but only briefly, and had been far easier than she'd imagined. In her mind as she'd hugged Eugenie farewell it had felt as though she was facing a mountain to climb in starting to pack up her life.

However, the reality was that her life was now summarised by a few trinkets, some photos, some books and two suitcases of clothes. Standing in the small hallway of the tiny two-bedroom cottage, she looked at the luggage and the three fruit boxes of belongings and felt instantly embarrassed that this was all she could muster to speak for her quarter of a century on this earth. The old adage that a rolling stone gathers no moss rang loud in her thoughts. She had been on the move, skittering from place to place and deliberately not staying long enough to gather possessions, friends or even many happy memories. Her aunt had left her this cottage and yet it felt unlived in, unloved. She couldn't sell it but she didn't feel she belonged here either.

There were few people she could say she loved. And of the one she had loved the longest, her father, she had only his shaving kit left, the single physical memento his second wife had permitted her. No, Claire corrected herself – the shaving brush that was made of badger hair was the only memento she had chosen to take with her. The watch she had admired as a small child – the one she would have loved to own of his – Doreen had kept. And she could understand that now.

Claire reached for ‘badger' now, touching it against her cheek the way her father had used to when she'd watched him lathering up for his morning shave. She caressed the white-tipped hairs of the brush and remembered the smell of the suds, her father's wide grin from beneath the lather and their shared laughter, which had stopped with the arrival of Doreen.

Claire realised now that she'd been running away from the lonely, often mirthless life she'd imposed on herself ever since. She baulked as the horror of this truth washed through her mind. Running away to England from Australia, then running away to war from her non-life in England. After losing Jamie she had fled from Egypt straight to the battlefront in Europe, taking more and more risks. Then she'd deliberately exposed herself to Spanish flu in a bid to run from the reality that there was no more war and only a lonely existence here in Charvil. And then there was Istanbul and its temptation. Had she failed the test? Somewhere in the back of her mind she'd almost convinced herself that the recent news was punishment for her emotional entanglement in Turkey.

And now she was running away again from Charvil in the hope that she could reinvent herself alongside Eugenie . . .

‘But Eugenie is dying,' she murmured to the boxes in the hallway. ‘Then what?' Claire asked into the silence of her loneliness. She pushed her hand into her pocket and found his identification tag.
J. W. Wren
its letters challenged. She raised the metal to her lips and kissed his name. ‘Stop me running, Jamie. Come back to me.' As she made this plea snow began to flutter past her windows and paint her world white.

She took it to be a sign. A fresh start? Virgin white. Definitely a new life. And if she was going to keep her date in London, then she needed a new outfit; she would wear it like armour.

________

Claire caught the bus into Reading the following morning with the vision of treating herself to an entire outfit, from new silk underwear to hat and gloves. It had been far too long since she'd splashed out and it wasn't as though she didn't have money. Claire was well aware that stepping into this calibre of salon would likely cost her a small fortune; she'd barely spent anything of her savings in years and it felt exciting and just a fraction wicked. Perhaps more than anything this was all part of turning the page and starting the new chapter she had promised.

‘Good morning,' the woman said, approaching. She had to be fifty, Claire decided from the skin at her neck, but she looked amazing for those decades: so svelte, and of course her day dress was dazzling in its simplicity. ‘Welcome, I am Jemima Dove, owner of the salon.'

Another bird name. Another sign. Claire grinned, extending a hand. ‘Claire Nightingale.'

‘Ah, what a beautiful name you have, but then I'm biased.' She smiled. Her make-up was immaculate, hair coiffed in perfect waves to her chin in the most up-to-date style, even though it was graphite grey. Claire felt positively dowdy standing before the elegant woman. ‘What are you looking for today, Miss Nightingale?'

‘Well, I'm looking for something special. I don't really know what it is yet, but I'll know it as soon as I see it.'

The woman smiled evenly and it crinkled the corners of her eyes with amusement. ‘Is it for an occasion?'

‘Not really.' Claire fingered a silken gown in the window. ‘Oh, this is beautiful.'

‘To make an impression?'

Claire shook her head, moved on to the next outfit that was standing on a mannequin. It was a suit, appropriate for a day in the city.

‘For someone special?'

She turned, let out a breath. ‘Yes.'

‘A man, I am presuming.'

‘I haven't seen him for years.'

The woman shrugged. ‘This is not so unusual. No need to be nervous – I suspect this gentleman would like you in a bed sheet.' It was meant as a compliment but the unintended innuendo made them both blush. ‘Oh, do forgive me – that came out entirely wrong.'

‘Call me Claire,' she said, ‘and why don't you tell me what you would suggest?'

‘First, over a cup of tea, you will tell me about this young man.'

Tea was briskly served by an assistant and while that occurred, Claire began to pour out her heart to a stranger she felt instantly at ease with, speaking about Jamie as though he were alive. It helped her mood immeasurably.

‘. . . you see, look at you, it's so effortless,' she said, waving at the women's chic attire.

Jemima Dove's gaze narrowed. ‘It looks that way, yes,' she said in a wry tone to make Claire smile. She put down her cup and saucer. ‘Claire, this is a man you see yourself marrying, so I like the idea of you wearing a colour that reflects this, especially given the romantic nature of your reunion. Wait here. Let me show you a dress but be prepared to fall instantly for it. It will fit you too, so you won't have any excuse, I'm afraid.'

She whispered to her assistant standing nearby, who disappeared and returned with a long muslin bag on a hanger. Jemima pointed to a railing and the woman hung the bag there and withdrew.

‘Now,' she said, unbuttoning the bag. ‘I defy you to say no.'

Claire gave a low gasp as a creamy-coloured dress emerged.

‘We call this buttermilk,' Jemima explained, ‘it's a play on ivory so there's that slightly bridal undertone to it, but it's definitely not white and it's too warm to be pure ivory.'

‘It's magnificent. How much is —?'

‘Do not talk about the cost yet. Try it on.' She gestured to the assistant. ‘I have stockings and shoes to go with this. Just trust me.'

Within minutes Claire was staring at her reflection in the long mirror, barely recognising her glamorous self. The colour reminded her of the pale cornsilk she'd seen poking out from the husked cobs roasting on open fires in Alexandria on the day she and Rosie Parsons had gone in search of a chilled drink on a cool verandah, the same day she had met Eugenie. The dress whispered towards the most pastel of yellows and yet somehow remained firmly in the group of rich creams. Its sheen reflected in her hair and suited the hint of sun-bronze that her hands and face had caught in Turkey. Its waist was fashionably dropped, and stockinged ankles that would not have been shown a few years ago now brazenly peeped above her low-heeled navy and cream shoes.

‘Yes?' Jemima said, coming up behind her.

Claire shifted her gaze to Jemima's reflection. ‘Yes,' she murmured. ‘This is what I want to wear.' She cocked her head to one side. ‘I'm just imagining my old brown coat on top of this. It will spoil the look.'