Nightingale (15 page)

Jamie's lids batted open and he looked around fearfully, trying to make sense of his surrounds. It was no longer a lice- and disease-ridden trench but a sunlit, draughty ward in the Australian General Hospital 1. Claire was officially off-duty but couldn't help herself. Dressed in civvies, she still lent a hand around the ward but now all of her focus snapped to the man who had brought her here.

‘Jamie,' she murmured close to his ear where she bent. ‘You're safe.'

His eyes searched wildly, then settled on her before disbelief crept into them. He croaked, trying to say her name. She nodded, thrilled by his recognition and smiling through her misted gaze. He said something unintelligible but she was already reaching for the cup of water nearby. She helped to raise him slightly so he could sip before his head fell back on the pillow.

‘Let me talk,' she urged, ‘until you get used to where you are and your throat isn't so dry.' She smiled and nodded, calming his thoughts that she was sure were racing to convince him this was a dream. ‘We're in Cairo,' she assured and watched his eyes widen with surprise. ‘Do you remember the armistice?'

He nodded.

‘Well, at the end of it you managed to catch the rage of a shell. We gave you a direct blood transfusion, a procedure that's fraught with dangers, but everyone was so desperate to save you that we went ahead anyway.'

She hurried on, frightened by how his tender gaze made her feel so vulnerable. ‘A sniper bullet hit your wrist and used your bones as a guide to rip up your arm and out through your shoulder. Pretty clever bullet, eh?'

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.