Nightingale

by Fiona McIntosh

  ‘Pain is a strange feeling,’ he admitted.

  She gave him a still slightly blushing, sideways glance of puzzlement.

  ‘Why do we press bruises or let our tongues search out the aching tooth? It alerts us that something is wrong, yes?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But it can also divert us, and when you stop hurting me with your instruments I know I shall feel relief that it is over but it would have distracted me from the original injury with a capacity to hurt a great deal more. Plus, I shall be stitched and healing.’

  ‘That definitely confirms it for me – your mind is odd.’

  He laughed, and she hadn’t seen such a spontaneous, unguarded moment in him. It was momentarily intoxicating, like smelling a beautiful bloom or tasting an exquisite treat . . . or kissing Jamie.

  ‘I mean, you speak about simplicity through your numbers but you actually think in such a complex way.’

  ‘I’m a mathematician.’

  ‘I pity you. Life doesn’t need to be so complicated,’ she whispered.

  ‘Mine is, though, Claire,’ and he shocked her by reaching with his hand to touch her hair, feeling its curl between his fingers with an expression of wonder. ‘So soft. I’ve wanted to do that since I saw you seated on the bench in the gardens. Your hair shone as though it was gilded with the golden paint of angels.’

  His whimsical words helped her to move on from the shock of his action. ‘A poet as well as a mathematician?’

  He smiled, dropped his hand. ‘You have made turbulent what was a straightforward, routine life.’

  ‘Right, I think that’s as disinfected as we’re going to get it,’ she said, dabbing at the wound, still oozing.

  ‘I’m glad the stinging is done,’ he admitted.

  ‘Ah, well, the best bit is yet to come,’ she said, pointing to her needle and catgut. ‘I can give you an injection for some local numbing if you wish?’

  ________

  He shook his head in answer. The bright pain as her needle worked kept him in contact with her. If she’d numbed the area he wouldn’t be able to feel her ministrations and he wanted to experience every moment of Claire Nightingale’s touch, even if it hurt to do so.

  ‘Tell me. How does a man – a near stranger – hold on to a woman’s heart when she hasn’t seen him in nearly five years?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask yourself that?’ Claire replied, drawing the thread taut and expertly knotting and snipping its end. He had been absently wondering, as he watched her stitch, why they called it catgut when he knew her thread was made of sheep’s intestine.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ he replied, puzzled.

  She fixed him with a stare and he knew she had attempted to speak with surety but her eyes betrayed her and he knew if he was ever going to kiss her it was now. He desperately wanted to taste her . . . even if it was just once . . . even if she pushed him away. And it was as though she knew he was poised on the threshold of doing something that defied the neat rules of his life – and culture – or following instinct like the dreamer he had once been.

  Claire decided for him. ‘I want you to accept that maybe now you and Sehr can be together.’

  Sehr. He closed his eyes. Now, that truly was unbearable pain. Kashifa’s mouth had certainly been busy.

  ‘It’s none of my business, but —’

  ‘No, Sehr is not your business,’ he muttered, feeling windows in his mind opening that he had thought he’d barred shut.

  ‘Rifki?’ She shocked him by moving around from the side and bending to cup his face in her cool, healing hands. ‘Do you remember how it felt to be in love with her?’

  She was determined to make his sutured wound feel shallow by comparison to the deep cut of her words.

  ‘You don’t forget how love feels,’ he groaned.

  ‘That is how I feel about Jamie.’

  He watched Claire’s expression soften from earnest to compassionate. She reached for a chair nearby and pulled it over so she could sit close enough that their knees touched. Whether she was aware of that innocent yet forbidden kiss of flesh beneath clothes he couldn’t be certain but he felt it within himself like a candlewick flaring into life.

  ‘Rifki, you represent a dangerous precipice.’

  He grinned. ‘Good.’

  ‘No, not good for me. The promise Jamie and I gave to each other has evolved and become something spiritual for me. When I was at the Front, personally witnessing men die by the dozens each hour, I think all my innocence was torn into hundreds of pieces and rode the winds in all directions. Meanwhile my dreams rushed inward and coagulated into a hard lump of despair. There was nothing of me any more, Rifki. I was like a doll: immaculately groomed, with a permanent soft smile of encouragement painted on my face but inside was the void. I was hollow – no anger, just dutiful, but empty. It was as though the universe had decided to strip me of all hope and the harder I worked to save lives, the faster they slipped from me. Within a few months of seeing so much death I was lifeless myself, except for one tiny flickering flame in the corner of my battered mind. The flame was all I had . . . my warmth, my light, my hope. And the flame was the promise that Jamie made to me and it transcended a naive pledge between new lovers and became religion. As long as I trusted it, as long as I stayed faithful to it, there was hope for me in a world that felt hopeless. And the reason I came here to honour your son was to stay busy, have purpose, hold the faith that was Jamie . . .’ She clasped his good hand, sending fresh sparkles of sweet agony through him. ‘And now here you are, threatening to disrupt my spiritual wellbeing.’

  ‘So we were simply an excuse for you?’

  She gave a disappointed sigh. ‘No. Your family was my lifeline. Açar’s book was a symbol of hope – if I kept the promise, I hoped the gods would smile favourably on me . . . on Jamie.’

  ‘How do you feel about me, Claire? The truth.’

  She risked stroking the wiry, close cut of his pepper-and-salt beard, not appearing guilted by it. ‘In a different world, Rifki – and if I had known you before the war – I would be helpless in your presence and I’d defy your culture and your age to be with you. But I met Jamie first and he has my heart. This is my world . . . and it revolves around James Wren. So I’m asking you not to risk me unbalancing on the dangerous precipice that you are. Fate guided me to Jamie; it chose for us to meet but it was nothing so ethereal between you and me. Jamie guided me to you for a specific reason.’

  ‘You truly believe him alive even though there has been no word in nearly five years?’

  ‘I know this is going to sound very strange, but I hope you can grasp this. I’ve made a spiritual pact that if I don’t move from the path of remaining faithful to his love, then Jamie will come back to me. In less than two weeks I will know if my private religion has been misguided. But it kept me alive when bombs were exploding around me and killing others. It inflicted terrible sights and experiences upon me and now it’s testing me with you to see if I am true. I cannot and will not betray that religion.’

  He nodded, experiencing a river of admiration swell for her and wishing he were on the receiving end of that kind of faith in love. Twice now he had fallen deeply for a woman and both were unattainable.

  ‘Are you finished?’ he said, glancing at his hand and the ugly black pattern of eight stitches running down the meaty flesh at the base of his thumb.

  ‘I’m finished when I say so,’ she instructed.

  ‘You are quite frightening, Claire, for someone nearly half my age.’

  She began daubing a bright orange solution on his wound. ‘Are you angry with me?’ she asked, sounding hesitant.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s Sehr you long for, not me. It’s the memory of that yearning that I’ve likely reignited. Others got in the way of you and her. You don’t love me, because you barely know me. You want me. There’s a whole world of difference between the two. But you loved Sehr; you knew everything about her. Perhaps she’s waiting f
or the day she’ll see you again. And don’t say she’s married because I happen to know her husband has been dead for years.’

  ‘I shall punish Kashifa for this.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, or I will never forgive you. We are kindred spirits, Rifki. We both have lost loves. I don’t know if mine will come back to me but you’re a coward if you don’t remind Sehr of how you felt . . . possibly still do.’

  The truth of her words slipped through his defences as easily as her needle had punctured his skin and the pain was just as bright and sharp.

  ‘You’ll never know unless you stop making the numbers add up neatly, Rifki. Love is messy. Be untidy for once – take a risk.’

  ‘I thought I was.’

  She smiled sadly at him. ‘Yes, but with the wrong woman. The right one is Turkish, lives in Istanbul, shares your faith, your culture. The wrong one has silly short hair that goes frizzy in the damp, likes the miserable cold and rain of London and is hoping a fairy­tale is going to come true.’

  ‘I love your hair,’ he admitted.

  ‘And I love your expressive eyes.’

  ‘So you do love something about me?’

  She nodded. ‘There is plenty to love about you. That’s what makes you dangerous.’

  ‘You said in a different life . . .’

  ‘Yes, Rifki, I would say yes. But in this life, it’s no.’

  ________

  She had worked in silence, dressing his hand, and when she’d split the bandage and tied it off neatly, she once again ignored protocol and bent forward to softly touch his cheek with her own before laying a tender kiss of farewell.

  ‘I couldn’t do that out there in front of your family so I thought I would say goodbye properly to you here.’

  He touched his cheek, looking surprised and moved by her gesture. He stood, waited a heartbeat or two to test that he wasn’t dizzy. She smiled at him and he nodded. ‘Goodbye, Claire. I hope Jamie finds you.’

  ‘And I hope you will go in search of the happiness that might still be yours if you take the real risk.’

  ‘Total chaos?’ He grinned.

  ‘What’s to be lost?’

  ‘Thank you for this,’ he said, raising his wounded hand.

  ‘It’s going to start throbbing soon.’

  ‘It already has.’

  ‘Those stitches can come out in about ten days. I’m sorry I won’t be here to remove them for you.’

  ‘It’s probably for the best.’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll see you out.’ Rather brazenly, she linked her arm through his good one and he didn’t protest. Rifki was starved of affection and she needed him to go in search of it again. She dropped her arm as they rounded the corner and emerged into the waiting area.

  His sister and husband helped each other to their feet and pointed at his hand, laughing nervously. He exchanged some Turkish with them.

  ‘I told them it looks worse than it is.’

  Claire kissed Rifki’s sister and said goodbye in her modest Turkish. The sister stroked her cheek.

  ‘She says you are beautiful,’ Rifki translated. ‘And for once I agree with my eldest sister.’

  Claire blushed, shook hands with his brother-in-law. ‘I’d like to hug him too.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d like it but best not to.’

  ‘And now I want to hug you but I am forced by your tradition to do this,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Remember all we’ve said. Think of me when you hold Açar’s prayer book.’

  ‘I shall kiss it perhaps and pretend.’

  Claire swallowed. He was not going to make it easy for her. She nodded and smiled as though she was simply saying a goodbye.

  He clasped her hand, his warmth transferring as a frisson of energy up her arm.

  ‘And I shall often think about that alternative world you spoke of and imagine what it might be like. Most of all I shall try very hard not to think of you naked in your tin bath at home.’

  She laughed, half embarrassed, half delighted. ‘Don’t translate that.’

  ‘Laughter like that needs no translation.’

  The elder couple turned away, began lightly arguing with each other over something, and Rifki turned back to her with feigned despair in his expression. Claire laughed gently but realised she was also crying, her eyes damp and threatening to spill tears. He nodded, understanding, and this time when he led his quarrelling relatives out of the main door he did not look back and she did not follow . . . and soon he was nothing more than a deepening shadow in a moonlit Turkish night.

  22

  27 MARCH 1919

  The taxi dropped Claire outside the gate of Eugenie Lester’s home and as the cold March wind welcomed her back it carried with it the scent of freesia and lilacs to remind her that spring had arrived.

  The housekeeper met her with her usual suspicious countenance. ‘You’re back already.’

  ‘Hello, Joy . . . er, may I call you Joy?’

  ‘It’s my name,’ the woman replied, taking Claire’s umbrella, hat and gloves. ‘No luggage?’

  She shook her head. ‘I went back to Berkshire first. I still have to pack everything up there. But I couldn’t bear not to visit immediately.’

  ‘Well, she’ll be thrilled to see you, Miss Nightingale.’

  ‘Do call me Claire.’

  ‘She’s having a good day. She’s on the patio, expecting you. I’ll serve some coffee shortly.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll see myself there.’

  She followed her nose out through French windows onto the patio to where Eugenie huddled, rugged up in a wicker outdoor armchair; she didn’t turn but chuckled softly. ‘I sensed your arrival at the train station. I’ve been counting the minutes.’

  Claire was crouched at her side in a heartbeat, hugging her friend. ‘Are you a seer?’ she asked as she kissed Eugenie’s cheek with deep affection.

  ‘No, my dear, just attuned to you.’ She beamed. ‘My, my, I’m amazed at what a few weeks in a warm climate can do. You’re glowing.’

  Claire could not say the same for Eugenie. She blinked. ‘Am I? I’m sure I worked for most of those weeks.’

  ‘You look wonderful, my dear, and so I can only assume it was a happy time for you.’

  She couldn’t lie. ‘Yes . . . yes, it was and I met some marvellous local people.’

  ‘You returned the prayer book?’

  Claire nodded. ‘His father is . . .’ She hesitated.

  ‘Is what?’

  She shook her head with a small smile. ‘I think most would call him a cold fish.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘Not at all.’ She cleared her throat as Eugenie’s regard intensified. ‘He’s charming and was delighted to have his son’s precious book.’

  Her elder raised a thinly fleshed hand and Claire was struck by how much weight her friend had lost in the short time she’d been in Turkey. ‘No need to explain any more, my dear. I think I understand. And you look so bright.’

  Claire turned away, hating that she felt so guilty. ‘Oh, it’s good to be back in England, though,’ she gushed, hoping to cover the sudden memory of Rifki that came with the scent of sandalwood oil that he had bathed with on that day of celebration.

  ‘Well, it’s lovely to see you so happy and no doubt filled with anticipation.’

  ‘To bursting point. He’s going to be there, Eugenie, I know he is.’

  Joy cleared her throat from the French windows and brought out the coffee tray, taking her time laying out the accoutrements.

  ‘Thank you, Joy,’ Eugenie murmured and dismissed her with an endearing smile. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  Joy’s lips pursed slightly and Claire wondered as she watched the housekeeper leave why Joy couldn’t simply smile.

  She turned back to Eugenie. ‘I’m still waiting to hear from his parents,’ Claire remarked. She shrugged. ‘I guess I’ll know soon enough.’

  Eugenie gestured. ‘I thought you’d like
to pour.’

  ‘Of course,’ Claire replied, moving to the small table, her expression entirely back under her control.

  ‘And while you do, perhaps you’ll explain why you need to fib to me.’

  Claire put the coffee pot down on the tray with a sheepish expression. ‘That obvious?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. You’d never win at cards.’

  Claire gusted a sad laugh, relieved to be able to talk about it. ‘I nearly lost my head in Turkey.’

  ‘I’m presuming you mean that figuratively?’

  She grinned and nodded, began pouring the coffee.

  ‘Actually, you don’t have to tell me, my dear. Secrets are rather nice so long as they do no damage and can nourish us.’

  Claire tonged a sugar lump which made a soft gulping sound as she plopped it into the coffee and warmed milk.

  ‘When did you get to be so wise, Eugenie?’ she said, placing the cup and saucer into wrinkled hands.

  ‘It’s just age, dear, and years of experience that teach that one cannot control the universe, or who walks into your life.’

  Their eyes met. There was nothing rheumy about her friend’s gaze; Claire saw only alert interest.

  ‘It felt scary,’ she admitted, glad to let it out.

  Eugenie nodded, sipped. Waited.

  She wasn’t sure why she felt the urge to speak of it but having lived her life off instincts, she knew this was no moment to break faith with them. ‘I had a moment of desperate need. I can’t lie about that. He was sad, damaged, soulful . . . I could have changed his life and he mine.’

  ‘I didn’t hear the word love, Claire.’

  She lifted a shoulder. ‘We barely said more than a few dozen words to each other.’

  ‘It was the same with Jamie, as I recall, and yet you knew you loved him.’

  Claire sucked in a slow breath of enlightenment. ‘You’re right.’