Nightingale (6 page)

‘Luckiest blokes both of us, Spud.'

‘Bugger me. I'd ask you to marry me, nurse, if I wasn't about to head off,' he wheezed.

‘Don't, Harry,' Wren pleaded.

Claire swallowed. It was far harder to watch a man die with his mate at his side than if she were alone with him. Wren backhanded away some tears.

‘I'm checking out, Heartthrob. I told you I wouldn't make it. But you will. Keep playing those sad songs and stick around.' His breathing became even shallower. ‘Are you holding my hand, mate?'

Wren nodded through watering eyes. He sniffed hard.

‘Are you holding my other hand, nurse?'

She took it immediately. ‘Yes, Harry, I am.'

‘Put my hands on my chest,' he urged. ‘I can't feel anything.'

They did so and their fingers touched.

‘He scrubs up well, nurse. You'll see. Most handsome of all us fellas. You'll fall in love with him like I did.' Spud was struggling badly to string his words together. It would be just moments now. Claire ignored Gupta's anxious pacing nearby. ‘See you at the big pub in the sky, mate. Kiss him, nurse. You know he's a bloody virgin. That's gotta change . . .' Harry sighed his last breath quietly as he chuckled to himself.

Wren blinked, seemingly holding his breath.

‘He's gone, Jamie,' Claire said gently.

It was excruciating to watch this man, who couldn't be a lot older than her, wrestle his emotion back under control. It wasn't seemly for Aussie blokes to cry – she knew that. She took his hand, not sure if it made things worse. ‘No more pain,' she whispered and his gaze lifted to hers. It was only then, holding his hand awkwardly linked with Spud's, that she saw fresh blood trickling beneath his sleeve, running in tiny rivulets through the mud.

‘Jamie, you're wounded and I need to see how bad it is.'

‘I'll be fine,' he muttered.

She was on her feet moving around Spud and insisting Jamie undo his jacket before he could protest again.

‘That isn't going to heal itself,' she breathed, staring closely into the jagged tear in his skin on his broad, tanned chest. The rip ran from the top of his shoulder to beneath his arm. ‘You actually covered this up before you left?'

‘You don't leave your uniform.'

A moment of dawning arrived; that was what had nagged at her. ‘You're from the Light Horse Brigade, aren't you?' she said, suddenly recognising the distinctive uniform.

He nodded miserably. ‘I'm 9th Regiment.'

She smiled sadly. ‘I used to know some of the officers from the 8th. Always thought you were the smartest dressed in the whole army.'

‘They suggested just lying him down in the trench. At least descending that bastard cliff made me feel as though I was trying to save him.'

She squeezed his wrist. ‘No one could have saved Spud . . . you need to know that. But what you've done is open up this wound further,' she said, trying not to glance at his taut belly and the outline of his ribs. As with every other man here, the diet of bully beef and hard biscuit was taking its toll. ‘It has to be rinsed out, checked for grime, foreign bodies, properly sutured.'

He looked back at Spud as if needing to remind himself that the recent events had indeed happened. ‘Don't worry about me. Look after the others.'

‘I will. But you do need that wound seen to, or it risks gangrene, and the next time you see me I'll be the one administering the chloroform so the surgeon on board the ship can take your arm off. Is that what you want?' Her voice had hardened.

His gaze narrowed. ‘You're tough.'

She shook her head and immediately let go of the tension in her tone. ‘Not tough enough, my matron complains,' she sighed. ‘I've just seen too much horror in the last few weeks and seen too many limbs amputated and tipped into the sea for the fish to feed on.' She stood. ‘I'm really, really sorry about Harry.' Claire nodded at the wound. ‘I must go or Matron will hang me out to dry but promise me you'll get that seen to. Better still, just follow me down to the jetty and walk onto the ship. Everyone else does. Right now you can walk on, have your wound dressed and be back with your unit.'

He didn't move.

She pleaded silently that he would but tried her best to sound matter-of-fact. ‘It's your decision. Bye, Jamie. Good luck.'

‘Er . . . Thanks, Claire.'

She turned back. ‘For what?'

He shrugged. There was nothing to say and as she started to turn away again, he spoke. ‘Spud lied. He's the virgin,' he said, clearing his throat. ‘I just let him think I was so he didn't feel alone.' He fixed her with a stare from out of the bomb-blasted mud that seemed to cut through all the noise and activity, all smell of blood and sweat and seaweed, and penetrate into her heart, she was sure. ‘I think of all ways to go, he was happy to have died holding a pretty woman's hand.'

The intensity of his stare, in which the sun lit golden glints in its green depths, caught her unawares and her throat constricted as she felt a quickening in her chest, as though something new had come alive. Across the invisible yet suddenly taut frisson that linked them, she also felt the exchange of pain and loneliness, wished in that moment she could just hold him, reassure him, feel his heartbeat against hers.

‘I . . . I wish I could do that for every man here,' she said, sounding awkward. Could he read her thoughts from the way he was looking at her so deeply? Was she blushing? Wren reached for his slouch hat, which she hadn't noticed on the ground nearby, before he nodded his thanks again and she was reminded of what the surgeon had said about tin helmets.
Please save this one
, she cast out.

‘Well, as rude as it sounds, I hope I don't see you again,' she said, trying this time to sound jaunty.

‘I'll risk it,' he said and gave her a crooked grin to mask the hurting wound he was obviously trying to hide and the sorrow he couldn't.

________

Jamie watched Claire Nightingale walk down the beach with one of the Indian stretcher-bearers hurrying at her side, and impossible though it seemed to him, overriding his grief was a sense of intoxication. It could be the shock, the heat, the blood loss, thirst . . . but he was sure it was simply Claire Nightingale.

His mind catapulted him back to being four years old and the day his father lifted him onto his first horse: a beautiful dappled grey he called Chalkie. The thrill of sitting on her back and in his own saddle had made him feel like a king on his throne, and when his father had begun leading her around it was so exciting he'd begun to cry. But that day had paled by comparison with the morning he'd ridden Chalkie alone, taken her out for her first gallop alongside his father and elder brother. He'd felt the first delicious stirrings of independence and with it came a sense of adventure. He'd been six. By twice that age kissing Sarah Potter behind the sheds had come close to being right up there with winning Best in Show with Chalkie when he was ten, but then kissing Beth Fairview and stroking her breasts through her thin summer frock five years later really did make him wonder if life could ever deliver a better prize. It had. Beth had let him go even further at nineteen but neither of them had ever shared that fact with anyone. That ungainly, inexperienced and yet utterly incredible moment in her treehouse, with only the magpies warbling across the vividly golden plains to sing them through a rite of passage into adulthood, was their secret. And then along had come Alice from her good family with her good manners and had claimed him away from all other women. It was as though he'd been under Alice's spell because he'd become lazy, happy to go along with her ideas and her long-term plans for them both. She'd even taken him into her bedroom when her family was away and allowed Jamie to share the breathless, bone-shaking thrill of stolen pleasure to convince him there would never be a moment to match for his entire life.

And yet, while he'd given himself physically to her, even maybe mentally in accepting she would be Mrs James Wren one day, emotionally his heart had remained aloof. Alice was too controlling. It wasn't sinister, it was just bossy Alice, who knew best, wanted a big country wedding and a big country house, precisely two children – a girl and a boy, who'd be schooled in Adelaide, privately, of course. It was a healthy, normal desire, Jamie knew that, but still he felt cornered. He didn't want a big country wedding, he could live in a cottage, he wanted a full nest of laughing Wren children who would go to the local school, learn to ride, be taught their father's and uncles' and grandfather's work on the land. But he'd never mentioned this to Alice; he'd run away to war instead.

Their families were both well off and they were undeniably a good match on paper, but it wasn't until his father had queried the relationship that he'd realised all he really felt towards Alice was duty. His ability to love her to the exclusion of all else was not in the equation; in fact, he didn't love her in that pure sense of how he knew he should. He loved his family, he loved Pippy, he loved Spud. All more intense and loyal than anything he felt for Alice.

And that rare touch on his neck from his father on the day he left Quorn, the single unexpected communication of unspoken affection, could, in his most desperate moments, trump all else. It had the capacity to motivate him, make him want to survive – and if he did survive, he would fling his arms around his father and hug him, no matter what he thought.

And so he hadn't been ready in this moment of hell – in this place of cruelty and blood, of sorrow and hurt – for an angel to materialise and touch him physically, emotionally and even spiritually in a way no other had. Claire Nightingale, golden bright hair pulled back from angular features, with her grey glance like summer rain and her timely squeeze of his wrist with a long, pale hand in his darkest hour, had given him an ethereal moment of awakening. Spud in his final gasps had hit on it without even knowing the truth of his words as Jamie Wren's heart had given itself over – he could fall in love with Claire Nightingale in a heartbeat, and in a way that he could never fall in love with Alice.

He turned back just as they were covering Spud with a blanket. Jamie blinked as the pain of loss warred with the pain of realisation that he'd never understood what it was to be in love . . . until this moment. This is what his father had been referring to when he'd asked those questions in the pub.

He knelt by Spud's body, wiping his eyes again as tears sprang. Jamie pulled the blanket back so he could look at Harry Primrose for the final time. He took his friend's limp, callused hand and squeezed it. ‘I'll miss you, mate, especially all those things we said we were going to do when we got back to Egypt.' Jamie sniffed, determined to say something that felt important. ‘I'm not sure how I'll get through the rest of today without you, let alone tomorrow. But I'll stay alive, I promise. You've given me something to live for, Spud, because without you I'd never have met her. You're right, I should have just asked her to marry me.' He gusted a mirthless laugh at how ridiculous he must sound chatting to a corpse.

He saw boots arrive beside Harry's head. ‘We have to move your bloke to the cemetery with the others. Sorry, mate, we need to make room – there'll be this many again by sundown.'

Jamie didn't want to let Spud's hand go because then it would be final. He'd never see Harry's potato-shaped face again, never discuss whether ants think, or fish sleep, or argue his friend's point that Port Adelaide could beat all the best that the VFL could throw at the single South Australian club, or whether SA Brewing produced a better ale than Coopers, or whether he had noticed that old men have hair growing out of their ears.

Jamie leaned down and kissed his dead mate on his mud-encrusted forehead. ‘Sleep now,' he said, echoing something he'd heard his broken-hearted father say when he'd had to put down his dog. William Wren always was better with animals than he was with people.

‘What about the chaplain?' Jamie asked.

The soldier looked over his shoulder. ‘He's working his way here.'

‘Can I wash off the mud?' he asked, gesturing to Spud's slack expression.

‘Sorry. We can't spare the water . . .' He must have seen Jamie look towards the sea as he continued, ‘and frankly there's no time and it's a risk just gathering it from there.'

Jamie nodded sadly and heard the words ‘dust to dust' in his mind. What did it matter if Spud had dirt on his face? So did most potatoes. He gave Spud's hand a final squeeze and said, ‘Bye, mate,' before sniffing and standing.

The pain of his injury was cutting through the grief now. He could feel the pulse at the site of his wound beginning to pound, knew he should get it seen to but didn't want to queue up with everyone else. Jamie looked up the incline to Walker's Ridge where he needed to be.

What do you want?
The question blew into his mind without warning.

I want to see her again
, he answered, remembering Claire's long-limbed, straight bearing and how she seemed to float across the sand.

He didn't think twice. Jamie Wren walked away from Harry Primrose, away from Walker's Ridge, and headed for the jetty. He came across a weeping man, no more than fifteen steps from it, who was wounded in the leg but trying to support another bloke who looked to be gravely injured – a shocking gut wound.

‘He's my brother,' the man wailed to no one in particular. ‘I promised Mum I'd take care of him.'

Jamie glanced at the jetty; apparently in the last few minutes someone had finally begun supervising who was to be let aboard the hospital ship. The man was turning away anyone who didn't need immediate attention, which meant he would certainly be turned away, and so would the teary bloke, but not his brother. He needed a way to get on board and see Claire.