‘I don’t know how you do it,’ he said. ‘You must see so much horror.’
‘Even if we win this war, we’re all going to lose.’
‘Most of us don’t even know why we’re here, not in Europe.’
She remembered all those jovial boys back in Mudros Harbour who had been winking at the nurses from the decks of their troopships – yelling out promises of undying love and pledges to marry her once they’d seen off Johnny Turk. How many of those braves were now dead?
The Allies and the Germans had effectively ground each other to a standstill on the Western Front. Britain’s inspiration to secure the Dardanelles and prevent Turkey from having any effect on opening up valuable military routes for the Central Powers had detoured many Australians into the eastern Mediterranean.
‘Apparently we have to help take the pressure off the east, according to our First Lord of the Admiralty. I overheard one of the diplomats’ wives while powdering her nose at Shepheard’s Hotel. Churchill says he’ll be damned before he lets the Germans run rampant through the Mediterranean.’ She gave a long inward sigh, weary of wondering at decisions of the power brokers. ‘I think that wound is clear of debris now.’
Was it how shattered she sounded in that moment? Or perhaps it was the way she happened to look up from tending his wound at the precise moment he raised his gaze to meet hers . . . Whatever it was and whichever forces had pushed them to meet this day, those same powers now propelled them forward. She presumed he felt a similar, uncontrolled need in that heartbeat because the gap between them closed helplessly, rapidly, as Jamie gently cupped his left hand around her neck and pulled Claire towards him. Their lips touched so briefly, so softly, she could probably later convince herself it hadn’t happened, as vague guilt over his sweetheart snagged briefly in her thoughts but was then overlooked. Alice was the least of her problems; right now, notions of duty and responsibility clashed with yearning and desire. She was exquisitely aware of every rule being broken, while all her senses were enchanted by this Australian.
She stared at him in disbelief, her hands still clutching the bowl and syringe. ‘Jamie . . .’ she whispered.
He shook his head, his expression mortified. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Claire, I . . . forgive me.’
‘Alice?’ She felt lost for what to say next.
‘It’s over between us; I have no intention or desire to marry her,’ he groaned. ‘Even so, I . . . I’m sorry . . .’
It was as though someone else took control of her body in that moment; his vulnerable expression melted the core of her emotions that as a nurse she had worked so hard to defend. Suddenly all the barricades were lowered. Claire put the implements down, and after a quick glance along the corridor, she put a finger to his lips. ‘Hush.’ She leaned forward and kissed Jamie again tenderly, lingering just long enough so he knew she wasn’t simply comforting him. She dare not be caught, though. This was far more punishable than to be found stealing a kiss with one of the naval officers on board.
Jamie stared at her in blank silence when they parted. Her message had been received but they both shared the feeling of how hopeless their situation suddenly was.
‘Claire . . .’ he began again, his voice thick as if a million words were clogged in his throat.
They both heard footsteps and she noticed he shifted his slouch hat more squarely across his lap. She was sure they were both furiously blushing.
‘. . . and that now looks to be clean,’ she said in her best matter-of-fact voice. ‘We can get you sewn up, dressed and back to your . . . Oh, hello,’ she said to the returning nurse. ‘All good, not a sound from any of them.’
‘Thanks, Claire. You’re a brick. Oh, bet that hurts,’ she said, eyeing Jamie’s open wound. ‘All cleared?’
Claire nodded. ‘Yes indeed. All done.’
‘Do you want me to stitch up? It’s pretty quiet around here as all my patients are miraculously sleeping. It won’t last, but I’m happy to help?’
Claire desperately wanted to remain exactly where she was: feeling the warmth of Jamie’s body through her hands, which were still resting on his skin, still tasting his desire on her lips. She wanted to hold him and allay the anxiety she could read in his eyes that he had taken advantage of her.
‘Claire?’ her colleague prompted.
‘Oh, sorry,’ she gushed. ‘I was miles away. Um, Jamie, remember me to your family when you write home. I’d better report back to theatre. We’ll get you sewn up and back to your unit.’
‘Thank you, Claire,’ he said, not even glancing at the other nurse. ‘Thank you for saving my arm . . . no, my life.’
‘Stay safe out there, Jamie,’ Claire replied. His gaze hadn’t moved from hers. ‘I don’t want to see you back here,’ she lied; she already wanted to see him again.
Claire turned away, hating to leave him and determined not to look around for a final glance his way. Untying her apron, she hurried to the stores area where she leaned back against the shelving and took some deep calming breaths. What was she thinking? Wren would, in all likelihood, not survive the next week, let alone the lifetime her suddenly love-struck mind was letting itself skip down. Love? She knew so little about it. Romantic love had never found her, nor had she looked for it. Yet kissing Jamie felt like the most natural, delicious healing sensation she had ever experienced in her lonely life. Claire blushed at the memory, recalling how a channel of pleasure had traced through her like an arc of lightning across the sky when he’d pulled her towards him.
Who would have thought she’d find romance in a battle zone? But now a new, far darker thought rode in to spoil her moment of awakening. Now she had a reason to live in real fear. She’d found Jamie. She couldn’t possibly lose him.
________
The nurse inspected her stitching of Jamie’s skin. She had to be a decade older than Claire, he guessed. ‘I’ll just dress it,’ she said, reaching for the sterile pad of sphagnum moss.
Jamie nodded. ‘Thanks. How well do you know Nurse Nightingale?’
The woman shrugged. ‘There’re so few of us on the wards, we get to know each other quite well.’
‘Does she have a bloke?’
She gave him a quizzical look over her mask that felt like a reprimand.
‘Sorry, it’s none of my business, I know, but I didn’t get a chance to ask her . . . I . . . er, thought I’d pass on the news to home that I’d seen her. Guess we don’t know the next time we’ll see each other . . . or even if we will.’
He saw her expression relent. ‘You keep your head down, Trooper. I only like to patch my soldiers up once.’ He grinned and was surprised how its effect made her gaze soften on him. ‘Claire tends to keep her feelings to herself on most subjects,’ she continued, ‘but I sense she’s a bit of a dreamer and doesn’t let her defences down. She’s enormously liked by the doctors and patients – all of us – but she’s hard to get to know. Did you find that?’
‘I really don’t know her well. It’s more our parents who know each other.’ He winced inwardly.
The nurse tapped him gently on the non-injured shoulder as if to say he was all done. ‘If she has a fellow, she doesn’t speak about him.’
He was happy to hear that but kept his expression neutral. ‘Well, as I don’t plan to get blown up again or shot, I probably won’t see anyone from this ship again. I’m grateful to you for this,’ he said, testing his arm as he moved it. ‘Feels all right.’
His polite manners worked. The older nurse gave him a beaming smile. ‘Well, it will for now because I’ve put some local anaesthetic in the wound but it’s going to be sore as it heals. Keep that dressing as dry as you can. Once it starts to itch, you can let it air. The casualty clearing station can take the stitches out.’
She showed him the way out and even though he remained vigilant, craning his neck to peep into every doorway they passed, he didn’t catch sight of Claire again. His Claire. He had to see her again.
‘Up that flight and you’
re on deck. Take one of the transports back to the shore. Bye, Trooper Wren. Stay safe.’
He followed the Indian bearer, surprised as he emerged onto the deck that there were no sounds of gunfire. Afternoon had slipped into dusk and his fellow troopers would be thinking about some bully beef; he imagined the raft of jokes Spud would normally be making about dinner or how curious it was that the smell from the latrines seemed to intensify at meal times. A new wave of sadness rolled over him and he felt he was being drowned again by the grief of his fallen mate and, of course, Swampy and Dickie. Jamie reached for the deck rail.
‘Sir, are you all right?’ Gupta asked.
‘Just a bit light-headed.’
‘Take a moment and rest. You must favour the wound for a day or two, sir.’
A soft evening breeze stirred his hair and sighing in with it was the question: was he imagining it, or had he fallen in love? This sensation of experiencing something so special and then having to walk away from it felt so different to leaving Alice Fairview. People spoke about the power of first love but he’d never grasped it because he accepted now that he’d never properly felt it before.
But as he clutched the ship’s rail, he believed this new feeling of dizziness was not due to his wound but the result of kissing Claire Nightingale, that reckless kiss that had been returned. He’d been gripped by madness and yes, he was sure the pain of losing Spud was part of it, but most of the blame he laid at her feet. Those soulful grey eyes that revealed little and yet were balm to his pain. He imagined himself unpinning that sun-streaked hair he glimpsed beneath her veil and raking it gently between his fingers. He already loved the way her mouth moved in her heart-shaped face and how dimples creased either side of her mouth as though there was always secret amusement on her lips. They were strangers and yet they shared birds for a surname and Spud’s death for a reminder that life can be taken so easily, and a kiss that told him love could be discovered instantly and without warning. He heard Gupta chuckle.
‘What?’
‘You just said, sir, that you loved her more in a single look than years of being with Alice.’ He smiled at him.
‘Did I?’ he asked, embarrassed.
‘I think you speak of Nurse Nightingale, sir. All the patients love her.’
There was no point in denying it. ‘And the doctors too, I imagine.’
Gupta’s bright smile from his dark complexion dazzled him. ‘We all do, sir.’
Jamie nodded and felt a needle of jealousy sting him and knew how ridiculous that was. ‘Mate, can you get a message to her from me?’
Gupta’s smile narrowed.
‘I know that’s probably not the drill but Gupta, you know how it is out there. I could be dead tomorrow.’
‘No, sir. I don’t sense that about you at all.’
He smiled back. ‘Can you read the future, Gupta?’
His companion waggled his head. ‘My grandmother had the sight. They say I have inherited it.’ He gave a little shrug. ‘I don’t see that for you. Not here,’ he looked out across the beach.
‘Then give her a message for me, just in case.’
‘What is it?’
He reached for what was safe but cryptic to say. His eyes were drawn to the rough position of Walker’s Ridge and where, he hoped, death wasn’t beckoning.
‘Can you bring her here and point like this. That’s where I am, Gupta. She’ll understand.’
‘I can do that for you, sir.’ The little man touched his forehead.
‘I owe you, Gupta.’
‘Repay me by staying alive, sir.’
‘I have no intention of making a liar of your grandmother’s gift,’ he said and that made his new friend rumble with laughter.
‘The next barge leaves shortly, sir. Good luck.’
Jamie stepped down onto the barge, waved to the Indian bearer and then he turned away to stare at the beach, so innocent-looking from this distance, like a fishing cove.
He had to be with Claire again. He thought about her all the way up the climb, keeping his head low, using all the familiar nooks and overhangs in the rough terrain to rest his shoulder and catch his breath while staying safe from sniper bullets. It took him more than twice as long to reach the summit, by which time the earth he was moving over had taken on an orange glow and he knew the sun was setting over his shoulder and that meant only one thing to Jamie.
He deliberately paused in a gully, pushing his back to the stone wall so he could face the sea, aware of all the scrabbling activity around him of men fetching and carrying. He raised a hand but not too high – just enough to acknowledge the men nearby who were dragging up some water. He recognised them.
‘You all right, mate?’
‘Yeah. Just taking a breather.’
‘We heard about Primrose. Sorry he’s gone.’
‘He’ll be missed.’ He didn’t want to linger on Spud; it was too painful. ‘Not much gunfire,’ he remarked.
‘Yeah, real quiet this arvo. We’re hearing about this ceasefire. Anyway, enjoy the brief peace.’
He nodded, looked away and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was able to peer back down over the gnarled landscape he’d traversed. A series of sharp-topped ridges fell away, then rose steeply to The Sphinx, hiding the tiny beach where Spud had taken his final breath.
Jamie allowed his gaze to move beyond the rock formations to the now glimmer-grey of the sea at dusk. In the far distance, at the base of the islands Imroz and Samothrace a mist looked to have gathered, giving the overall scenery of the waters an ethereal ambience. And into that place beyond the fighting was a shimmering, golden stretch where the lowering sun cast its last light for this day. To Jamie in his sad mood it looked like a pathway to heaven, too bright to stare at for long. So intense in its golden light it had turned the water luminous white, gilded either side in a glittering halo of pinkish gold. He noted now that the hospital ship had already pulled anchor and was moving slowly, inexorably away.
‘Don’t fly away, Claire,’ he whispered before he repeated her name in his mind. Nightingale . . . Nightingale. Jamie watched in a state of appalled sadness as the ship gradually slid into the molten gold and was swallowed into the fiery firmament until it was merely a shadow, and then a moment or so later not even that. It was as though the ship had melted. His angel had flown and although he could not remember before now the last time he had cried, Jamie felt tears sting for the second time today as he lost another person precious to him.
Now he believed he understood the pain of being in love. And just for a single beat of his aching heart he wished he had not met Nurse Nightingale, for now he was smitten, destined to be inwardly miserable until he could find her again.
He wiped his sleeve across the damp of his face and began the ascent of the final few feet to clamber over the ridge and into his trench.
‘Keep yer head down, mate,’ someone called.
‘You too,’ he choked out.
He would play his harmonica tonight, to farewell Spud and his fallen mates, but particularly to serenade the heart of Claire Nightingale in the hope she’d somehow hear him across their divided planes.
5
Shahin. His name meant hawk. He wiped a hand across his brow to scatter the flies sipping from the sweat. Açar Shahin possessed the keenest sight in his unit and with the hawk of his namesake for inspiration, he drew on that skill in the twilight murkiness to spot the enemy. However, he needed every motivation he could muster because pulling the trigger on his rifle and taking a man’s life was a long way from the poet and storyteller he wished to be.
In his earliest memories he recalled how his serious-minded father had insisted he take up a profession, yet whenever Rifki Shahin was out of earshot his mother had urged him to be whatever his heart desired. By the time he turned twelve summers he was already showing leanings towards being reclusive; she was a year dead from a shaking fever, leaving him to live with a man whom he was convinced he was disappointing.
I
t was not until a married couple was killed in Sarajevo by a young Serbian conspirator that Açar Shahin felt the first stirrings of response to the politics his father murmured of constantly; suddenly they were both standing on the same side of the fence, united in interest as much as fear as to what the incident might provoke. He listened to his father’s rational explanation that the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand would be the flame to the kindling of a fire that had been threatening to ignite within the major European powers at odds.
To the wistful Açar, who wrote poetry and composed music, there was something darkly romantic about his Serbian peer who had found the courage to cast aside fear and stand up for what he felt was right. As if the stars had deliberately conspired to align on his behalf, war had been declared and young able Turks were pressed to take up arms against the Western powers who threatened their independence, their religion, and their history of imperial power.
Açar had surprised his scholarly father with his fervour to join up even before the conscription order came through. Rifki Shahin had said little but Açar had sensed approval settle around his shoulders. It was as though for only the second time in his life he had impressed his father. The first was being born male.
Nevertheless, Rifki had made him wait until the neighbourhood’s news carrier, Bekci Baba, had walked down their street in Istanbul, banging his stick and proclaiming that all men born between 1890 and 1895 must report for duty. Açar and his fellow soldiers had been loaded onto carriages bound for training grounds in the south. Not permitted access to him on the railway station, Açar’s numerous aunts and female cousins had gathered at the side of the rail tracks like a small flock of silken birds in their dark robes, weeping and waving as the train rushed by. He’d glimpsed them, recognising first his father, who had escorted them. Rifki had stood slightly apart from his women, wearing traditional garments in sombre grey, but in his hand was a multi-coloured linen square that his son had sewn for him when he had been only seven, but hadn’t realised until then that his father even recalled it. Had he misjudged his father through his teenage years? Had his mother inadvertently tarnished his attitude to the complex, often silent man who sired him? Big questions travelled on that train south with the 26-year-old soldier.
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