Nightingale

by Fiona McIntosh

  Claire watched Shahin nod, impressed.

  ‘On a summery moonlit night it does look very pale, but I suspect it has earned that name because of the many thousands of blue iznik tiles that line its walls.’

  ‘Iznik?’ she repeated.

  ‘Nicea. South of here. It was famous for its distinctive porcelain favoured by the sultans.’

  ‘Ah, thank you. The mosque is so very beautiful. I was up on the hospital roof marvelling at the six minarets.’

  ‘And nine domes,’ he continued. ‘It’s not dissimilar to the Hagia Sophia,’ he said, pointing towards the great Roman Catholic church in the distance, ‘in terms of the Byzantine elements, but it does show off its classical Ottoman influences. Are you interested in history, Miss Nightingale?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, classical history of this whole region has intrigued me since school days. It’s all so very . . .’ He looked back at her quizzically as she searched for the right word and she liked the eagerness in that expression. It struck her that Shahin was genuinely interested in her responses. She wanted to say ‘biblical’, but instantly thought perhaps that might offend and finally the right word erupted. ‘Epic,’ Claire finished, and this drew a brief gust of laughter from him that she sensed was a rare show of his thoughts.

  ‘Have you been inside, Miss Nightingale?’ Leavers enquired.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Another time, perhaps,’ Shahin said, glancing at his watch. ‘Forgive me, but I have a lecture at four. You would need to sit in the women’s gallery, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, surprised to feel indignant at the mention of segregation. It was another culture, another custom, but still she felt vaguely affronted.

  ‘I thought we might take some tea. Would that be agreeable?’ he asked. ‘There’s time.’

  ‘Absolutely, old chap,’ Leavers answered for them both. ‘At nearing three-fifteen, every Englishman and woman is thinking tea, what?’

  Claire smiled faintly at Shahin and nodded. She followed the men, happy to hang back slightly as they strolled, retracing their footsteps to the victory column and on to the portico that would lead down to the harbour. Here, a row of small, stepped canopied areas served as tiny tea gardens and she was relieved to see several European women were also taking their afternoon beverage.

  Shahin gestured towards a table beneath the tall trees. Claire seated herself, making soft kissing sounds to the mother cat and two kittens curled up in a tiny hollow near their table. The tabby cat meowed at her and yawned; her babies stretched and resettled themselves, too warm and comfy to even open their eyes.

  ‘Hello, lady,’ the man in charge rushed up to say to Claire in his pale suit and fez. She smiled back, stroked the cat once and sat down in the chair that Shahin offered.

  Meanwhile Leavers raised a hand and began laughing as he spotted someone in a small crowd of people. ‘Good heavens! It’s Lacey. Haven’t seen him in donkeys. Will you excuse me briefly? Er, don’t wait. Do order.’

  They watched him approach another grinning man of about the same age and pump his hand before finally Claire and Shahin felt obliged to return their attention to each other.

  ________

  Rifki Shahin had not looked forward to this meeting. Good manners prevented him from avoiding it. What’s more, he was busy. He would have been late if it hadn’t been for his new acquaintance, Professor Leavers, who said it would be extremely ‘poor form’ to keep the young woman waiting. He’d muttered in soft despair that in Istanbul everyone ran late for everything and no one made a fuss. As it was, he’d had to ask Leavers to accompany him.

  Even so, he was not ready for the person who awaited him. For no obvious reason, he had anticipated a stout, dour-looking woman in thick stockings and a starched white uniform with hair piled behind her head. Instead here was a nymph-like creature, with skin the colour of blushing almond blossom, and he was sure beneath that shawl was defiantly short hair bouncing near the sweet line of her jaw that shone like rose gold beneath the winter sun. And her smile! The horrifying result was that this slim, angular English nurse was making him feel like a moonstruck youth. He was nervous. And he abhorred it!

  ‘What would you care for?’ Shahin asked, clearing his throat.

  ‘Um . . . what would you recommend?’

  ‘Well, normally coffee,’ he said in a slightly arched tone that made her chuckle and he wanted to hear that sound again. He hadn’t even tried to be amusing. ‘But that has been impossibly expensive during and since the war. So I would suggest çay.’

  ‘Chai?’ she repeated.

  He smiled helplessly at her gentle manner. ‘Yes, it’s a simple black tea that we grow on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Of course there is any number of floral or herbal teas that Turkey is known for.’

  ‘Like apple?’

  ‘I sometimes think that’s all we Turks will ever be known for. Yes, apple of course, or pomegranate, sage, linden, lime, rose hip . . . our teas are endlessly varied.’

  She grinned. ‘Sage sounds lovely.’

  ‘It is, although strictly speaking it is more of a . . . how you say, tisane? A herbal infusion.’

  Claire nodded, understanding. ‘Why would a Turk drink it?’

  ‘Calming. Cleansing. I doubt you need help in either area, Miss Nightingale. You look entirely calm and may I say extremely clean.’ He wanted to say ‘beautiful’ but bit back on that last one, which would have been an error to mention, even though to him it was simply the truth. She giggled again.

  ‘Oh, have I trespassed?’

  She shook her head and her eyes sparkled at him with delight. ‘Well, a bit of calming, cleansing infusion couldn’t hurt. Besides, clean is every nurse’s mantra. So no, Mr Shahin, you have not offended but instead given me a fine compliment.’

  ‘You should try the wild sage, then.’ He signalled a waiter and ordered briskly in his own language. ‘Would you like simit, or gözleme?’

  ‘I don’t think I need any more delicious bread or pastry today, thank you. Tea is perfect.’

  He nodded at the waiter and muttered a few more words before turning back to her.

  ‘Your English is excellent,’ she remarked.

  He shrugged. ‘It is the language of the world.’

  ‘Thank you for coming today.’

  He looked into the pale, rain-puddle blue of her eyes and for a moment was completely mesmerised. The pause made her uneasy; he saw her hesitation.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.

  Rifki shook his head slowly. ‘No, I was just thinking that the porcelain painters of Nicea would like the colour of your eyes.’

  She blushed. And he felt more helplessly charmed by that furious, instant show of her self-consciousness than any of the dozen or more women who had tried to lure him into their lives since the death of his wife, save the one woman who had not.

  He banished her name from his mind. ‘I suspect it is my turn to seek an apology. I did not mean to make you feel uncomfortable.’

  She shook her head, and he could see her relief when the tray of tulip-shaped glasses arrived and were set down together with the double pot of sage tea and the other plain tea. A small coloured square of cloth was expertly tied around the metal of the handle to prevent a burn.

  ‘Te ekkür ederim,’ she murmured and Rifki nodded, impressed.

  ‘Very good, Miss Nightingale. Perfect pronunciation too.’

  ‘The hospital orderlies are teaching me,’ she admitted, smiling at his praise. ‘So how does this contraption work?’ she wondered, regarding the double pot.

  ‘One has the steeping tea, the other is extra water. I like mine strong.’

  Claire poured her and Leavers’ glasses and gestured at the lumps of brown beet sugar. ‘Do I?’

  ‘Yes, if you wish. It’s nice with the sage.’

  Leavers’ tulip of dark tea steamed untouched and Rifki was suddenly glad that the nurse’s chaperone was distracted and his chatter was no
t peppering their tense silence, which seemed to thrum with an excitement that was novel for him. He poured his own glass and pretended to search for the smallest lump of sugar, all the while watching the neat fingers of his companion hold the spoon delicately and stir her tea. He watched the sugar in her glass disintegrate and cloud the brew momentarily before dissipating into its invisible sweetness.

  ‘Can you hear that, Miss Nightingale?’

  She frowned at him.

  ‘This sound of metal against glass is like a symphony through Istanbul – everyone stirring their tea. It’s how to find a nearby tea garden, even in unfamiliar surrounds.’

  She smiled, looking pleased with the notion.

  ‘Except you. You stir silently; so carefully, I note, that your spoon does not touch the glass.’

  ‘Ah, now, there’s a reason for that.’

  He listened to her tale of taking an afternoon tea in an English upper-class establishment with all of its pomp and finery. He smiled as she spoke and he sipped, allowing the pleasant bitterness to warm his tongue, waiting for her to sample her tisane. Rifki watched her lips finally close gently around the glass, blowing first, then tasting her wild sage tea. He blinked, as deeply embarrassed as he was aware of how sensual her mouth had looked to him. Suddenly it felt as though he was sipping from a forbidden cup in that heartbeat. It must stop.

  He put his glass down and feigned the polite smile. ‘You have something for me?’

  He saw her nod, replace her glass in its saucer and reach into a small cloth bag.

  ‘I know I’ve already said so in my letter but again, Mr Shahin, I am so terribly sorry for your loss.’ With her gaze dipped, he took in the soft fall of the silken blouse against her breasts, desperately wanting to look away but his treacherous eyes refused.

  She drew the familiar book from her bag. Since her letter had arrived he hadn’t so much as considered that the sight of Açar’s prayer book would make him feel like someone had just punched as hard as they could into his exposed belly.

  He stared at it, unable to breathe.

  ________

  Claire was glad to get onto the business at hand as she was finding her tea companion helplessly disarming. While Shahin deliberately kept a physical distance, that unnerving glance of his had an intimate quality she felt neither equipped nor prepared for. He was hardly a chatterbox, clearly a person who chose his words with care, but even so she was taken aback by his sudden stillness and silence at the sight of the book.

  ‘Mr Shahin?’ she finally said after an uncomfortable half a minute or so. Claire glanced over to Leavers, who was still in the thick of exchanging news and memories with his friend. He wasn’t even looking her way. She swallowed. ‘They say that tea is very good for shock. As a nurse, I can attest to that.’

  He lifted his eyes to her and she saw in that moment of pain that all of this man’s defences were lowered and she glimpsed deep anguish. He reached for the book but appeared suddenly frightened to touch it.

  ‘Tell me about your friend,’ he finally murmured. ‘The one who knew my son.’

  Claire put the book down between them, letting go of her penultimate connection to Jamie, deliberately withdrawing her hands in a motion that to her felt like her job was done. She had kept Jamie’s promise to Açar Shahin at risk of losing one of the final fragile threads that bonded her to the man she loved. It was triumphant but at the same time the parachute had just slipped off her. She was now falling alone, no umbrella of silk to slow her descent, just a rushing sense of fear.

  ‘Please, Mr Shahin, drink your tea while I talk.’

  He sipped obediently, silently, showing nothing in his expression. She noticed that he did not watch her eyes but her mouth, as if he preferred to read her lips rather than hear. Was it less painful that way, she wondered? Shahin, she decided, appeared determined to fix every nuance of the words she was choosing as carefully as she could to explain what she understood about the death of his son. She gave him the details concisely, taking care not to embellish, and yet she felt each word was like a fresh blow, striking at an old wound.

  ________

  He had received the news four years ago of his son’s death together with Açar’s musical pipe and few belongings; he’d noticed then that his son’s prized Sufi prayer book was not in the small parcel. His intense grief had buried the thought until the letter from Claire Nightingale had explained the mystery.

  Death had brought profound pain and he wished he could travel back in time and say much more to his son that he had unwisely left unsaid. He thought time had created sufficient distance between him and his loss but he realised now as this stranger spoke in her tone like a cooling flannel to a fever that he had inflated a fragile vacuum around himself. With each word she punctured that vacuum, deflating it, until Açar was alive again in his mind but bleeding on the soil of the south and he was helpless to save him.

  ‘. . . strong sense of kinship between them,’ she said. ‘And so this journey felt important to honour your son’s wishes.’

  He watched her lips stop and wished they would go on moving for eternity. As long as she kept talking he could keep the pain at bay but now all he had to stare at was the bow of her lips that he had already spent far too much time contemplating. It occurred to him that finally he understood; at last here was the incarnation of what poets referred to as Cupid’s Bow. It was true that the double curve of her upper lip resembled the exaggerated shape of the bow supposedly used by the Roman god of erotic love. He liked the way her lips, even in repose, turned up ever so slightly at their edge. It spoke of invitation.

  ‘Are you feeling unwell, Mr Shahin? How can I help?’

  He shook his head and they both seemed to reach for the book in the same second. She got there first and so his hand covered hers for the barest moment and it felt to him as though he’d received a jolt, like the time he’d participated in an electricity demonstration at the university. On that occasion the static shock had disconcertingly warbled through him for an hour or more and every muscle of his body had felt on fast twitch, as though his entire nervous system was sparking while fighting to calm itself.

  It was wrong on every level for him to have touched her bare skin – culturally, socially, spiritually . . . As he sharply lifted his hand to disconnect he looked around to make sure no one had spied the indiscretion. He heard her apology, was sure he shook his head as though it was nothing to be sorry for, but he laid his right hand in his lap and curled his fingers into his palm. He tried to pretend it was a way of ridding himself of the slip in protocol but he instinctively followed his true desire, which was to close his fist around that feel of Claire Nightingale and imprison it as something precious that belonged only to him.

  ________

  Claire didn’t know whether to be horrified or to make light of the way their hands had met and then how they’d both overreacted. In England or Australia it would have been set aside through a simple burst of laughter and apology but here in Turkey she realised it was a serious indiscretion, potentially a sin. She quickly tried to defuse it.

  ‘I was going to explain to you what that hole in the book is.’ She carefully pushed the book towards him and withdrew her hand to her lap. She watched his long fingers, with their neatly trimmed nails, emerge from beneath the table to touch his son’s prayer book tentatively.

  He cleared his throat lightly. ‘This is a Sufi prayer book. Do you know what Sufism is?’

  She shook her head and watched him search for the right explanation. ‘It is a dimension of the Islamic belief . . . a mysticism. This comes from Persia; to say it is old is to understate it. Sufism promotes total dedication and a complete disregard for possessions, or the pursuit of pleasure and wealth. I believe my son wanted to follow the path of an ascetic but was torn by his youthful needs, his desire to keep our family name strong. He viewed life differently to most and searched for enlightenment through his prayers, as though ever reaching for the perfect truth, the perfect unders
tanding of his own spiritualism. Does that make any sense to you?’

  ‘The way that Jamie described your son’s behaviour that day attests to those beliefs. He made the ultimate sacrifice so that he wouldn’t have to kill anyone, but also so that he was no longer answerable to a world at war.’ She swallowed. ‘I admire him.’

  His bruised glance held her. ‘I encouraged him to go . . . I ignored his leanings and —’

  ‘Here I am. Oh, do forgive me,’ gushed Leavers, arriving to explode the tender and intimate atmosphere. Claire looked at Shahin and felt their exchange of a private, silent apology and within it she sensed a longing from him, as Leavers explained how he and his friend had known each other from schooldays.

  Shahin took his chance while their white-haired companion sipped his tea. ‘Miss Nightingale was explaining the significance of this damage to my dead son’s prayer book.’

  That silenced Leavers. ‘Oh, I say, how intriguing.’

  ‘I’ve said enough,’ Claire murmured with a polite smile. She, Jamie, Rifki and Açar were inextricably linked through that book and its bullet hole. It was not necessary for Leavers to learn of it, and she had no desire to hear his take on it. She glanced at her watch. ‘Well, look at that. I suppose I should go and let you get back to your lecture. I have taken up more than enough of your time, Mr Shahin.’

  ‘Please, we have taken tea together now. Call me Rifki, as my friends do.’

  She smiled. ‘Thank you. But then I insist you refer to me as Claire.’

  He bowed his head politely as he stood. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Claire.’

  ‘I am a convert,’ she replied, gesturing at the near-empty tulip glass. ‘Wild sage tea may well be my new poison.’

  ‘“Ada çay” is how you order it,’ he said, as they lingered over pleasantries as a way of somehow holding on to each other’s company for a few moments longer.

  ‘I’ll remember that.’ She beamed. ‘Professor Leavers, it was so kind of you to come along.’