‘And the Turk was different?’
‘Yes,’ Claire said, letting out a sigh of relief. ‘So different.’
‘Obviously you made the right decision.’
Claire sat down and sipped her coffee, sighing inwardly at the tarry, licorice flavour, mellowed by the steaming milk and rounded off with the smallest lump of sugar she could find in the bowl. Her spine curved as her shoulders relaxed. ‘Did I? What if Jamie doesn’t come?’
‘Keep faith with him, Claire, we’ll know soon enough. What are your immediate plans now that you’re home?’
‘“Home”. I like the sound of that. Well, I refuse to mooch around. I still need distraction and packing up the house in Berkshire will take a couple of days. I also want to get a new dress.’
‘Perfect!’ She glanced up. ‘Yes, Joy?’
‘Forgive me, Mrs Lester. I meant to mention this to Miss Nightingale on her arrival and her comment reminded me. My apologies for being remiss.’
Both of them frowned. ‘What is it?’ Claire asked.
Joy slipped her hand into the pocket of her black long-sleeved, drop-waisted dress over an embroidered white camisole. She wore it as a uniform; Claire had never seen her wear anything else but she’d not noticed the pockets before. She gasped softly as Joy withdrew an envelope, recognising the stamp immediately as one from Australia. And then she noticed the spindly writing in black ink.
‘Jamie’s father . . .’ she whispered, unable to say anything more.
The housekeeper held it out to her, looking immediately uncertain as Claire’s hands remained steadfastly by her sides.
Claire suddenly had no desire to take that envelope. It was larger than average, and clearly containing more than a polite response. She could tell by the bulge. Had Jamie’s luck run out? The sinking feeling turned dangerous. Claire felt she was drowning. She began to swallow.
‘You didn’t mention that letter,’ Eugenie said in a tone with a scolding edge to it.
‘Mrs Lester, it was delivered only this morning,’ Joy said in bleating defence. ‘The postman said it was redirected from Berkshire.’
‘Claire, dear?’ Eugenie said with an edge of concern.
She rallied her courage and nodded. ‘I asked for my post to be sent on to this address,’ she murmured, still not reaching for it.
They all stared at the envelope from Australia.
‘It’s not going to open itself, darling girl.’
Claire cut Eugenie a misty glance. ‘I don’t think I want to read what’s inside,’ she admitted in a small voice, backing away from Joy.
They watched the housekeeper place the letter on the table between them. She stepped away. ‘Maybe it’s good news,’ she offered, her features suddenly and uncharacteristically softened.
Claire was reminded of how many loved ones this woman had lost to the war and guilt danced across her fear for one person’s life. Joy nodded encouragingly and Claire felt her heart give a little for the woman. ‘Let me get a fresh pot,’ the housekeeper murmured and turned away.
Now it was just the two of them staring at the envelope that looked scuffed for all of its travels. It lay harmlessly next to the tray, but Claire felt it carried within it the power to breathe life into her world or to snuff it out, like a candle starved of its oxygen. She realised she was holding her breath.
‘Open it, Claire. Whatever it says won’t change for the waiting. Whatever it contains we shall face together.’
Claire became acutely aware of her breathing as well as the pound of her heart. She could hear Rifki’s gentle voice querying her commitment to a daydream.
‘Would you like me to open it?’ Eugenie’s voice reached her from what felt like a much farther distance than she knew to be true.
She shook her head slowly and picked up the letter. The stock felt furry, almost gritty, from its journeying and she imagined all the different strangers who had handled it on its voyage to find her. She knew she was putting off the inevitable and so did Eugenie but her friend remained silent.
Miss C. Nightingale was looped in a small but bold spindly script and beneath it her address in Charvil, the forwarding note scrawled above.
She finally turned the envelope over and realised she had no letter opener but the flap yielded beneath the barest of pressure, and the glue released easily.
Claire inhaled softly and deeply. This was it.
Birds trilled happily in the garden and she heard the drone of a single bumblebee nearby, exploring the spring daisies that had flowered in pots on the patio. Claire felt an immediate kinship – they were both searching to start their life – and she slid the letter and its accompanying contents from the envelope.
With tears gathering, she opened up Jamie’s father’s letter with a rustle of crisp paper.
Dear Claire,
We were glad to hear from you. I hope, even though we have not met, that you are not offended by my familiarity. We share a common love and now a common grief, so suddenly etiquette seems irrelevant.
Claire gasped aloud, felt as though she were struggling for breath, eyes watering to blur the words, but hurriedly she read on, unable to stop herself now.
I am enclosing the originals of the letters we have received from the Light Horse. I think you will find them self-explanatory. Please return them at your convenience to our address at the top of this letter when you have finished with them. Frankly, my wife, Laura, wanted to burn them. I am at a loss for how to console her in her grief.
She stopped, dizzy and suddenly nauseous.
‘Claire?’ Eugenie asked softly.
‘It’s not good news,’ she choked out, now presuming the worst as she forced herself to read on.
Jamie is – was – her favourite. I know that’s unfair to our three other sons but . . . well, I feel sure I do not have to explain why to you and I am also sure her secret is safe.
I am deeply sorry to deliver this grave news contained in the accompanying letters and I wish we were closer so that we could meet you and offer comfort. We are strangers but loving Jamie has made you family to us. To find a perfect love as you describe is likely impossible for most people. I was lucky and it seems my son was blessed with the same lucky streak to have found you, dear Claire, in the most dire and bleak of situations. We will keep you in our thoughts and prayers as we grieve either side of the world for a fine young man who by all accounts carried out his duty to King and country with courage.
I regret with all of my heart that I failed to tell him just how proud I was of him and I regret that it has taken his death for me to be able to write with such affection about a child I loved but never told. I am glad you did.
Sincerely,
William Wren
All other sounds had been swallowed by a single long buzzing in her head like the drone of a machine; she could no longer hear, speak. Even colour had drained from her vision so her world had turned down its tones to blue-grey and narrowed to the manila package from William Wren. Without wanting to, yet inexorably drawn to the enclosure, Claire put Wren’s letter behind the bundle and confronted the second envelope.
It too was buff and grimy from plenty of handling. She ran her fingertips over the navy-coloured stamp, absently flattening out a tiny triangle of its rouletted corner, then drew out the pages to confront her deepest fear. The first had an address at Victoria Street, London SW, and was typed.
Dear Sir,
I enclose details of witness accounts of Wren Tpr J W 799 that we have been able to compile. As you can see these are –
Claire lost patience and slipped the introduction to the back of the sheaves and hungrily scanned the next, which was headed up Australian List A.I.F. Ist A.L.H. It was from Egypt. Her gaze was drawn to the title Unoff.M. Oct 1917 W.&.M. but before she could fully grasp the meaning her desperate need for detail pushed her headlong into the main body copy.
Witness said he believed: Trooper Wren may have been killed in a charge in the Jordan Valley during the escalating b
attles to liberate Jerusalem.
Hope withered but still she needed to read more. Claire ripped another sheet out and sound returned to her senses as an anguished mewl escaped her tightening throat as she scanned. Her gaze tripped across the blotchy font of the typewriter as the queen bee merrily buzzed on, tripping from petal to petal. Except for Claire there was no golden pollen to be gathered but only cold, harsh, black words that bounced against her heart like pebbles stoning it.
. . . body not recovered. Ref:- F.D.Grant. Desert Mounted Div. Ward 19, Harefield. Note: Informant seems a quiet man who knows what he is talking about.
Claire helplessly read another page.
Witnesses thought that Smithson (division) of the ANZAC mounted division was out all the day that Wren was lost, not coming in till the following morning, and that he might know something about him. Smithson is 4th or 5th reinforcement. Witness Smithson thought Wren was felled during the Es Salt raid. Described him as a handsome fellow from South Australia.
Reference Trooper T W Smithson 1 A.L.H. Squad B.
Montazah Hospital Alexandria
E.M. Foster
6.12.17
She read the first line of the final page through her helpless tears and then could not read on.
He was one of my mates. I saw him shot.
Claire watched her hand shake as she placed the sheaf of papers onto the tray, heedless of how the pages landed across the small sugar basin and milk jug. Although she considered folding herself into the empty chair conveniently nearby, she turned and walked away from Eugenie’s anguished glance and stepped down from the patio. The sun was bright but its fragile warmth of early spring couldn’t touch the chilling pain that was wracking Claire’s body. Talons of bleak, aching fury grappled their way through the blur of disbelief until the weight of her sorrow felt so burdensome it forced her knees to bend and Claire sank in a slow, collapsing motion to the damp lawn.
Jolly birdsong cruelly continued and she was eye to eye with a dancing white daisy that seemed to throw all the brightness and hope of a new spring back in her face. She could hear Eugenie calling to her but she needed a few moments to gather up the pain, turn it all back neatly like a well-folded sheet that nurses were so adept at achieving with sharp creases and perfect lines. She needed to pack the hurt away and accept that she’d been building a future on make-believe. Rifki had been right. Jamie’s and her ridiculous promise was always a dream, nothing more. She’d seen what war could wreak and she’d been involved daily in what bullets and shrapnel, bombs and firepower could do to flesh. Dear, sweet, affectionate Jamie. Forces more powerful than their pact had pushed them apart, kept them apart and now shattered their chance to come together again.
‘Hopeless . . . helpless . . . hapless,’ she murmured beneath her breath, echoing an alliteration game she used to play with her father.
Let’s see who runs out of words first, he’d laugh. All the words have to begin with the same letter and relate to the original situation. She had never beaten him until the last time they’d played on the way to the hospital in Hobart before he died. He hadn’t run out of words. He’d run out of hope. This is how she felt now and just as she wanted to fold in on herself, Claire felt strong arms embrace her and she smelled the curiously spiced fragrance that she had come to associate with Eugenie’s housekeeper.
‘Let me help you. You’ll catch your death in this damp grass.’
‘Maybe catching my death is a good thing, Joy.’ She was surprised she could talk.
Joy’s voice broke into her musing. ‘Nonsense! Come along now, help me and push up.’ Claire obeyed. ‘There you go.’ She was back on her feet but a tremor began, she didn’t know from where; it seemed to radiate from her core and soon her entire body was trembling. ‘This is shock, Claire. You of all people know it. And for shock you need quiet, warmth, and I’ve always believed tea works wonders but I’ve never known why.’
‘It’s the sugar,’ Claire replied, feeling entirely disconnected as Joy supported her. ‘What is that smell?’
Joy seemed to know precisely to what she referred. ‘It’s tincture of benzoin, sometimes called Friar’s Balsam.’
‘Ah, they’re different, of course.’
‘Yes and this one has rosewater.’
Of course it does. Attar of roses. It was haunting her. ‘Are you using it as a styptic?’ Claire found it easier not to confront the envelope or its contents, or her pain. It was far easier to discuss Joy’s ailment.
‘No, my hands react poorly to soap. I’m using it on chapping to prevent blisters,’ Joy said, making small talk as she guided Claire back to the patio step.
‘They say you learn something new each day.’
‘So they do.’ The housekeeper soothed.
‘And I’ve learned today that the man I want to marry is dead,’ she replied in a tone to match her final word. She gently shook off Joy’s hands.
‘Claire Nightingale, if I had the strength I would wash out your mouth with my highly scented lavender soap,’ Eugenie threatened from her chair. In her hands she waved the leaves of the letters. ‘Nothing in here confirms he’s dead.’
Eugenie’s look of disgust dragged her from the self-pity she so badly wanted to lay down in. ‘Did we read the same pages, Eugenie?’ Claire gasped as she arrived back onto the patio, shoulders slumped and the trembling more intense.
‘Unless I’m blind, we did. But clearly I have perspective that you lack. You’re presuming more than what is given here,’ Eugenie continued. ‘These are unofficial accounts. They have no body, no proof, just statements of war-weary men more than capable of confusing one trooper for another.’
‘Tell me how you read it differently,’ Claire whispered.
‘I will, but first let’s go inside. I can’t watch you shiver like that a moment longer. Joy?’
‘Leave everything,’ the housekeeper replied. ‘Claire needs tea.’
Claire. Since when had Joy started calling her by her first name? It sounded pleasant, comforting even, as though suddenly she had family pressing around her. She let them fuss, Eugenie giving directions while Joy settled them both into the sitting room and lit a gas fire. The sunshine had fooled them.
‘Claire, listen to me.’ She raised her gaze at Joy’s voice. ‘I don’t know what is in those pages, but I’ve experienced enough pain of this nature in my time to assure you that unless the Red Cross or the military clearly confirms in writing the sighting of your young man’s body and can confidently identify him, then don’t give up hope.’ She nodded before turning. ‘I’ll get a pot of tea,’ she announced softly and left the room.
‘I hope what Joy just said is getting through to you because all I’m reading here are accounts.’
‘His family accepts them. They’re witness accounts,’ Claire groaned.
‘And where does it say anyone witnessed the death of Trooper James Wren?’
‘The last —’
‘Unless I can’t read English the last one says he was seen shot. It doesn’t say killed.’
‘You’re reading into the words, Eugenie.’
‘And I could argue that you are also! We’re reading them differently, though.’
‘What would you have me do?’
‘Anything but give up, dear Claire. Now, unless I’m mistaken, today is 27 March, yes?’
She nodded miserably. It was only her sense of good manners that was keeping her pinned to the armchair. She wanted to run from the room; she was convinced now that this episode of her life was not meant to end happily ever after. The heavens had conspired to allow her to glimpse a potential life but the universe had already clued Claire to its intentions during her teen years. It had moulded her to expect a bleak future and had first taught her how to cope with death and loneliness and sorrow; then it had trained her as a nurse and sent her to war so she faced nothing but death and despair. It had teased her with Jamie, tested her with Rifki, and now it was showing her how cruel it could be in taking both from her.<
br />
‘. . . organise a car for you,’ Eugenie muttered.
She blinked. ‘Pardon?’
‘To London.’
‘London?’ Joy arrived with the tea tray and Claire no longer minded that the housekeeper shared her conversations.
‘The Langham, Claire!’ Eugenie said with a tone of admonishment.
‘And punish myself just a fraction more?’
Eugenie held up a warning finger as Joy seemed to hesitate between pouring and remaining statue-still between the two women. ‘He made a promise.’
‘Oh, Eugenie, aren’t these letters and all the anguished waiting sufficient torture?’ she wept, finally breaking down. ‘It’s enough!’
‘There’s nothing final about what those letters say. Even the Red Cross explains that nothing is official.’
‘Witness accounts,’ Claire growled through her tears.
‘I don’t blame the Wren family for reading it as final. Heaven knows my heart breaks for them. But witnesses can be wrong in war. Fatigued, hungry, parched, fearful soldiers are disoriented, memories get muddled, facts distorted . . .’
‘Or maybe it was Jamie,’ she challenged, her voice dull, eyes cast downwards. She sniffed. ‘And you’re not prepared to accept it.’
Eugenie sighed with obvious disappointment. ‘No, I am not at all prepared to accept it. I say you give that young man who loves you the benefit of the doubt and you make sure you keep that date with him. For all you know it’s the promise of seeing you again and holding you again that has kept him alive through all the terrifying situations he’s encountered.’
No one said anything and Joy remained still. The clock on the mantelpiece monotonously ticked away the seconds of her life as Claire considered the potential for yet more pain if she kept the meeting. The fire guttered as though there was a break in the gas supply, and she heard Eugenie clear her throat gently as the silence lengthened. ‘Why give up on him now?’
She closed her eyes and cast her mind towards Jamie, reaching to see his handsome features against his tanned complexion and his slightly crooked smile. Amazing that now in the presence of his death she could see him clearly in her mind’s eye. But then Jamie’s vision dissolved and she was left with Rifki Shahin’s face, which was neither smiling nor sad.
Nightingale Page 30
