She told herself to breathe as she paused. He was going to come through this.
‘Luckily that German bullet didn’t hit too much on the way through. You’ve opened up the older wound so that renders your other shoulder equally useless for the time being. Meanwhile you took some shrapnel to your rib cage and had us all baffled – two broken ribs and, impossibly, no organs hit. The angels are watching over you, Trooper Wren.’
His intense expression hadn’t changed, pinning her with that depthless green gaze of his to where she perched on the side of his cot.
Being out of uniform was disconcerting too. Her professional, unflappable manner had fled with her chambray, exchanged now for a butter-coloured cotton walking suit, which left her slightly nervous and feeling naked without her armour of starched crispness. She took a hurried breath. ‘The surgeon got the offending shrapnel that broke through your ribs and dug itself in deep. It was smooth enough, though, fortunately.’ She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny piece of shell casing, a triangle of metal not much larger than a grain of rice. ‘Here, I thought you might like it as a keepsake. It’s smaller than the pieces we flushed out of your shoulder, I’m glad to say.’
His gaze finally released her, shifting to her palm where the shrapnel lay, but it soon found her eyes again. His scrutiny felt as though he could see behind her words, past her overly bright tone and to her hammering heart.
‘And . . . er, there was also this,’ she said, hoping she sounded triumphant as she retrieved a dull grey bullet tip. ‘This, rather amazingly, was dug out from a small book of Arabic found in your uniform pocket. It seems the pages saved your life because that bullet was on a trajectory to claim your heart.’
‘Too late,’ he said, his voice gritty. ‘My heart’s already given.’
Claire had the breath knocked out of her. ‘Well . . . er, that’s a marvellous outcome then, isn’t it. Your girl back home can —’
Jamie reached for her hand, wincing at the obvious shock of pain that surely ripped from his wound. ‘There is no girl back home for me any more,’ he rasped. ‘I told you that before. There’s only you. You have my heart.’
Claire’s defences fluttered away like autumn leaves on a blustery day. The dull pain of anxiety for his safety since they’d met had blended with the new and unnerving feeling of profound despair to see him unconscious, bleeding, dying, which had turned her building fear into a soup of stress in her gut.
There had been no more histrionics after the transfusion, not even a tear: only relief and heartfelt thanks for his survival.
But Jamie’s declaration undid her now and the pressure boiled and bubbled until it foamed like cinder toffee she’d watched being made in her childhood. The tremor came up from her toes and travelled like an incandescent path of lightning towards her crown. She couldn’t smile, struggled to even breathe in that heartbeat of understanding of what he meant with the words There’s only you.
‘I thought you were going to die,’ she murmured. ‘It was the blood loss and the shock of concussion, plus —’
Somehow he found the strength to shift himself enough to squeeze her fingertips to cover the metal fragments that had tried so hard to take him from her. ‘How could I die knowing that a single kiss from you was never going to be enough?’
Claire looked up. She bent to gently touch his hand to her lips. ‘Thank you for living.’
Jamie continued to find reserves of strength that impressed her. This time he raised his hurting arm so he could stroke her hair, gently caress her face again. His voice was hoarse but he could talk freely now. ‘You kept me alive. I’ve thought of nothing and no one else since we met. I thought I had imagined being kissed. By the time I was back in the trench, I’d convinced myself I’d made it up, but still I kept telling myself I had to find out if you could possibly feel the same —’
‘I do!’ She trampled his words with her own pledge.
He paused, as though making sure he understood her intent. ‘Will you say that before a chaplain?’
Claire stared at him, speechless momentarily. ‘You want to marry me?’
‘Marry you, take care of you, live with you, cherish you . . . I will love you until my arms are too withered to hold you and my lips too shrivelled to kiss you.’
She laughed, defying her tears that sprang helplessly.
‘Marry me, Claire. I know I sound like a lunatic and you probably don’t want to rush into —’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘The next time I say those words will be over a Bible and a vow with you next to me.’
He gave a lopsided grin. ‘Am I on morphine?’
She beamed. ‘Just a little.’
‘Then I shall have to ask you again properly tomorrow.’
She felt dizzied by his promise and fell back on practicalities while she caught her breath. ‘Well, then, you should know that they’ve closed the wound that we were irrigating on the ship. Your healing power is miraculous, I have to admit.’
‘Just good country stock.’ Jamie put the bullet back into her hand. ‘I want you to keep this.’
‘Don’t want to show it off to your mates?’ she asked.
‘No. That bullet was meant for my heart, you say. Then you must have it, so you know you hold my heart in your hand. Now you know I’m invincible. Every time you look at that bullet you tell yourself that no matter where they send me, they can’t kill me and I’m coming back to you.’ He gazed intently at her. ‘Understand?’
She let out an inaudible breath to slow her chaotic heartbeat. ‘I want you to have this too,’ he said, wincing as he reached to undo his identification tag.
‘No, we’re not allowed . . . Jamie, you need that.’
‘I’ll tell them I lost it. Quick, help me please, before anyone sees.’
Reluctantly she aided him as he continued.
‘Hold my name – that way it’s yours already and the priest will only confirm it. I don’t ever want it back from you.’
‘I didn’t think graziers were so romantic,’ she said.
‘Then you should read some bush poetry,’ he grinned.
Claire could feel the warmth of the metal tag in her palm, his heat against hers. He seemed to sense what she was thinking.
‘I’ll feel you holding me until the war ends and then I will come and find you.’
She couldn’t tell him this suddenly felt like a farewell.
‘The last moment I can remember on Walker’s Ridge was never feeling so sad in my whole life. Meeting you and not knowing if I’d ever see you again, losing Spud, then discovering friendship with a Turk who had a death wish. That’s when I must have got caught by the sniper, because I reacted to his voice, and then the shell.’
She frowned.
‘He called out my name, you see.’
‘Who?’ Claire asked.
‘His name means hawk,’ Jamie began and for the next few moments she listened silently as he told her about the young man he called Shahin, who played a flute and talked like a holy man. ‘I’ve got friends back home that I don’t feel as close to as I felt in those brief moments with him. We stood among our dead, feeling repulsed and yet bonded. We exchanged smokes and gave each other a gift and, I don’t know, we sort of made a promise. It was like brother to brother. He was convinced he wouldn’t outlive the war. I suppose in the emotion of the armistice he just decided to end it, rather than wait for death. He was shot by the men in my trench, just before the shell exploded around me.’
Claire waited but he said no more. Finally she spoke, her voice soft as a mother caressing her sleeping child. ‘You’re sure he’s dead?’
He nodded. ‘It was the periscope I stupidly grabbed to look at him that gave away my position. I saw his bullet-ridden body. Moments earlier we’d stood as family might and then as easily as flicking a switch, all the goodwill was gone and we were back to killing. My name was the last word he spoke.’
Claire stood to reach into the pocket of the jacket hanging on the
end of his cot. ‘I made sure we saved your belongings. The jacket has been repaired for you.’ She held out the book she found. ‘The Arabic book is his?’
He nodded. ‘His book of prayer. I gave him mine. It didn’t save his life, though.’
Claire offered him the book of hieroglyphics he would never be able to read, its middle pierced by the bullet it absorbed. She watched him regard it in soft awe. ‘I found a letter as well. It’s addressed to Shahin. I tucked it into the book.’
‘Will you keep the book and letter please? It’s to his father.’ Jamie explained.
‘I’m a stranger to your friend, though.’
‘Claire, as soon as I heal they’re going to send me back, whether it’s Turkey or Europe. There’s even talk of the mounted troops fighting new fronts across the desert. The letter is safest with you until I can get it to his father. It’s something I have to do – I gave him my promise as I am giving you my promise that we will marry and have a farmhouse full of children.’
She laughed and it sounded like she didn’t believe him.
‘You said you envied my large family. We’re going to make one of our own but in the meantime I’m going to take you to meet mine. We’ll travel into the heartland and whisper our love to Australia’s largest mountain range that holds ancient secrets. And I shall take you to where I come from because everyone will love you . . . except Alice, of course! And you can ride with me . . . oh, wait up, you do ride, don’t you?’
She mocked an apologetic expression and shook her head.
‘Well, as Mrs Wren you will surely be learning to ride and herd sheep.’
‘Herd?’ she squawked, making him laugh and wince at the pain. ‘And where will we live?’
‘Under a tree if we have to, but we won’t have to. I’ll be the first of the Wren boys married and Dad will give us our own farm. We can build a house or take over an existing one – there are plenty of cottages that just need a bit of elbow grease.’
‘Oh, Jamie, I like this daydream.’
He turned earnest. ‘It’s not a daydream, Claire. You have to believe it. They’ll send me away as soon as I’m well enough so we have to promise each other that we’re going to do it.’
‘I don’t think I’ll be much of a farmer’s wife.’
‘And I’d be a shocking nurse’s husband if I didn’t have animals to tend to and fences to mend. I . . . I’d be no good in a city, Claire. I belong in the outback.’
‘I have no ties, so we go where you need to be, but what shall I do with myself? I don’t want to be a burden.’
‘What wouldn’t we give to have a permanent nurse on hand, to patch us up after accidents or to help the midwife, and care for the anklebiters?’
Claire grinned; she hadn’t heard that phrase for years and felt surprised how comfortable it sounded. Perhaps her years in Australia did count . . . maybe she could belong again.
‘And how about taking care of the people of Farina?’
‘You have no hospital?’
Jamie smiled. ‘Well, there’s a lot of bush medicine going on. We don’t fuss much about minor injuries, you just wait for the next visit from the sisters. To have someone permanent would be a dream come true.’
‘That sounds exciting,’ she murmured truthfully.
‘You could make such a difference to the town. You never were an apple eater, right?’
‘Apple eater?’
He grinned crookedly. ‘You don’t have good memories of Tassie, so why not make my home your home?’
Why not indeed? ‘Tell me about Farina. Such an odd name.’
‘Yes, I think it means flour in Latin.’
‘Why call it that?’
He shrugged. ‘The mayor last century thought it would become an important wheat region but it never did. There’s not enough water. It became more important as a railway hub. We were the end of the line for the Ghan, our railway that’s named after the camel trains and their Afghan drivers.’
‘You like your history, Jamie,’ she remarked.
‘It’s more that I like my town. I thought I wanted to leave it . . . you know, go adventuring while doing the right thing for my country, but . . .’
She nodded. ‘You don’t have to explain. None of you brave boys knew what you were letting yourselves in for.’ She held his hand, entwining her fingers with his.
‘Everything I have or ever will have is yours now, Claire, including my hometown.’ He smiled. ‘Population three hundred but once we get there we can make it three hundred and ten.’
‘Sounds as though I’ll be permanently pregnant rather than permanent nurse.’
He raised both eyebrows suggestively and she giggled, barely believing the delight she was feeling. It was spreading through her like the first glow of dawn after a long, cold night. Yes, her life had been a long, cold night for too long and Jamie was the sunlight, warming her.
‘Claire, I don’t know how long I’ll be here but I’m grateful to you for keeping that book and letter safe for me. It’s the first thing I’m going to do when the war is finished . . . after kissing you, of course.’
‘I don’t want to talk about a dead Turk any more,’ she admitted. ‘I have only tomorrow until midday before I must report back for duty in Alexandria. We sail tomorrow night.’
They talked for another hour about inconsequential things, from Jamie’s longing to taste a good South Australian beer again to Claire’s admission of a new dress she’d bought on a whim during her last break in Alexandria, and her meeting with Eugenie Lester.
‘I’d love you to meet her. She knows all about you. She’s going back to England, though; she lives in a place called Radlett. I’ve promised to visit her sometime.’ Claire’s shoulders drooped. ‘We’re all making promises we can’t be sure we’ll keep.’
‘I shall keep mine. You will marry me, won’t you?’
She lifted her gaze from their hands: his large and battered – but warm and reassuring – encompassing hers and making her feel like a little girl again holding her father’s strong hand, feeling safe. ‘In a heartbeat. I love you, Jamie. I don’t need a ring or any fuss . . . just your promise is enough.’
‘I know everyone will think us mad.’
Claire laughed. ‘Madly in love.’
‘I know I am . . . but there’s guilt as well in feeling this way in the midst of war.’
‘Guilt is for those who have led us to war, not for those who are prepared to lay their lives down for it. Spud, Shahin, the men who fought beside you . . . these are the shameless innocents and they would celebrate your ability to survive, to find happiness in the darkness.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. Why don’t we just marry tomorrow?’ he said suddenly. ‘I can ask the hospital chaplain to perform a ceremony,’ he pressed.
She watched his eyes cloud at her hesitation. The summery woodland colour she loved turned to a night forest.
She kissed his hand. ‘I do want to marry you more than anything in the world, but not tomorrow. I want to marry you in peacetime when I can hear birdsong rather than men weeping. I want you to stay focused on staying alive . . . not worrying about your wife. You could be back in Turkey or sent somewhere else with your regiment. It’s very likely I could be sent into Europe any minute. Everything could change again in a blink.’
He nodded. ‘All right, let’s swear a different sort of oath to each other.’
She looked at him quizzically. ‘What sort of oath?’
‘A pact. When is your birthday?’
She frowned, amused. ‘April the eighteenth.’
He grinned. ‘Mine’s March the seventeenth. So the midpoint between that is roughly . . . April the first. Agreed?’
‘April Fool’s Day!’ she said.
‘Righto, then. No matter where we’re both posted, or where we end up, whatever happens, let’s make this promise to each other – from the moment peace is declared, let’s meet on the first day of April that follows. And on that day I’ll ask you again to
marry me.’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, feeling swept up in the romance of it. ‘April Fool’s Day, in peacetime.’
A nurse arrived pushing a trolley and Claire hastily sniffed back any threatening tears.
‘Bath time, Trooper Wren,’ the nurse said brightly.
He winked at the nurse and beamed her a smile that Claire imagined could win him any heart he wanted. ‘My favourite time, nurse, is surely going to be with you and your sponge.’
‘Oh, go on with you now, cheeky fellow.’ She smiled at Claire and then frowned with dawning. ‘Unless you’d like to do the honours, Nurse Nightingale?’
Claire cleared her throat. ‘I’d be delighted to,’ she said as she pulled the screen around them.
Claire rolled the trolley closer. ‘So, let’s get your nightshirt undone.’ She moved Jamie to his back and undid the ties to lower the shift carefully over his shoulders and down to his waist.
He grinned for her to go right ahead. ‘Guess you’ve done plenty of these before.’
‘Hundreds,’ she said, giggling.
‘Come on now,’ he insisted. ‘Where’s that strict nursey look?’
She was annoyed at herself for blushing at the sight of his exposed chest, the hollowed belly of starvation dipping beneath the sharply defined rib cage that now had thick dressings above it. Claire squeezed out the sponge. ‘Let’s start with your bare shoulder, shall we?’
‘You start where you like, Nurse Nightingale. I’m going to close my eyes and enjoy myself.’
She began gently passing the sponge over his skin, and the normal distance she kept from a patient closed itself as the noises of the ward around her diminished and she could hear only her heartbeat. The smell of antiseptic was overridden by the soapsuds and the aroma of his skin, earthily male. Helpless desire now pounded inside as her knuckles grazed his stubbled jaw, and her hand followed the line of his prominent right clavicle across to his injured shoulder.
‘That feels so good,’ he admitted, eyes closed, which she was glad about because he would see her staring at his body in a state of building longing.
Nightingale Page 14
