Nightingale (34 page)

He bowed, even clicking his heels gently. ‘Let me walk with you.'

‘Thank you,' she said, and rose gracefully as she beamed him a smile and let him accompany her back into the hotel foyer. Claire glanced over her shoulder, hoping to glimpse a familiar figure, but the lobby, though busy with people with somewhere to go, was empty of Jamie.

She swallowed her disappointment and moved towards the entrance of the Palm Court where chamber music had recently struck up. ‘I can find my own way,' she murmured and her companion beamed her a final smile and departed. Claire stepped past the alabaster-white columns to where the fronds of palms looked as though they were opening their hands in welcome to her. Dark shiny fingers trembled in the gust of stirred air that the gleaming silver-and-gold glass doors made as another two page boys opened them for her entry.

She could smell the overriding sweetness of sugar from the baking cakes and pastries mingling with floral scents of ladies' perfume, gentlemen's pomade and the sulfurous aroma of boiled egg that wafted out of nowhere.

‘Good afternoon,' the
maître d'
said.

‘Er, yes, I'm Miss Nightingale. I do hope you have a table. I . . . er, didn't think to reserve one.'

‘A table for two, Miss Nightingale?'

‘Please.' She looked around hopefully, scanning desperately in case Jamie had already arrived and was waiting eagerly for his first glimpse of her. ‘Unless of course, he's already here,' she added, already knowing it was an empty hope. The only lone gentleman was dressed in a day suit and buried behind a large newspaper near the string quartet. She could only see his hands around the edges of the broadsheet. Jamie would be looking for her, not lost in the news headlines of the day.

The string quartet moved seamlessly into some bright Vivaldi and soft laughter from the other patrons mocked her mood.

‘Follow me,' he said, with effortless charm.

He showed her towards another velvet chair – a club chair, this time, of pale green at a small table in the corner of the room alongside another matching chair. This was definitely a quiet table for two and at the other end of the room to the orchestra. She trod softly across the thick Persian rugs and caught smatterings of chatter.

‘Darling, are we going to Maidenhead this summer for Ascot Sunday?'

She walked past them all and appreciated the quiet niche where she now had a view of the length of the room, especially its doors, which she positioned herself to focus on.

‘Thank you, this is perfect,' she said with a sigh of relief.

‘Shall I send a waiter over once your guest has arrived?'

‘Thank you, yes.'

________

Rifki had arrived early as he'd planned and seated himself in the Palm Court near the quartet, believing that would be the least popular end of the chamber. He had presumed correctly. He was exceptionally mindful of his dark features arousing suspicions given that Britain had been at war in Turkey just a few moons ago. But he was dressed as if he'd stepped out of a Savile Row salon and presented no obvious interest so long as he remained as unobtrusive as possible.

His tea had been served and he was munching on the strangest of food called sandwiches when he'd seen the flash of golden hair as Claire arrived. He'd had his newspaper ready to hide behind but forgot to do so, mesmerised by the sight of her again, and he only managed to flick it up in time as she had naturally begun to scan the room. He'd stopped chewing, stopped breathing momentarily, and was sure it was only luck that the
maître d'
had led her in the opposite direction. Rifki watched her walk, straight-backed, to an almost secretive table at the other end of the room. She couldn't have been placed further away from him.

Swallowing at last, Rifki flapped his broadsheet again and disappeared behind it. The temptation to watch her every move was tugging at him but he remained hidden, stealing an odd glance around the side of his newspaper every now and then. He couldn't ignore the resplendent afternoon tea or it may have attracted the attention of the staff, so he reached for his tea, which was instantly flavourless. All he could taste suddenly was sage
çay
to the sounds of an Istanbul tea garden and the thrilling memory of accidentally touching Claire Nightingale.

________

Conversations pressed in on her.

‘Really, dear? Five years, is it? Yes, of course, that's right, it
was
Cambridge. Oh well, they say we'll have a boat race next year. Here's to the Dark Blues, eh?'

The summer sporting season did seem to be on the minds of the wealthy, Claire decided. ‘Thank heavens we'll have the tennis championship back on this year,' one woman bleated as a towering silver tiered tray laden with food arrived to soothe her. Talk of the Chelsea Flower Show also, she noted, occupied much of the nearby trio of women and their conversation.

It all felt alien to her. She had nothing in common with any of these well-heeled people and, though she knew it was deeply unfair to think this way, she wanted to yell at them that the end of the Great War was only months behind them. Millions dead. Thousands still dying as a result. Countless numbers of broken people and damaged lives. Surely talk of who might win the Derby this year was irrelevant? Instead she checked her watch again, knowing that she was on edge but that her well-practised calm appearance meant that no one else could guess her tribulations, and if anything she should admire the fact that these people – who had surely lost sons, brothers, fathers – were getting on with life: putting on a brave face and relentlessly going forward.

If Jamie was coming, he was now running late by six minutes, she realised, but Claire waited, as silent and still as one of the columns around the Palm Court, and hoped she appeared as unobtrusive. His transport could have been held up. Another twenty minutes cruelly passed her until she wanted to stand up and scream her fears to all the people around her, absorbed by their discussions on Wimbledon or this year's Deb ball. Her trauma, she knew, didn't show but she was tempted to stand and flee until the
maître d'
chose that moment to return with a soft glance of apology.

‘The traffic, I hear, is turning hostile and to add to the congestion it's begun raining. No doubt people are running late all over London,' he said kindly as if answering a query. ‘Let me organise a pot of tea for you, while you wait for your companion.'

‘That would be lovely,' Claire replied, surprised by her outward composure but knowing she needed to occupy her hands, distract herself from her watch and her nervousness.

‘What is your pleasure, Miss?'

She looked back at him, lost for a moment for what to order.

He immediately helped out. ‘The second flush Darjeeling is most fine. The quintessential tea for a cool afternoon.'

She smiled and played along, determined not to be po-faced. ‘And yet I am always persuaded by the Nilgiri Frost,' she said.

He beamed. ‘Exceptional choice: ever-so-slightly grassy and with a fresh, tart apple finish.'

‘Delicious. Thank you.'

The paraphernalia of tea arrived in a clinking array of fine silver and exquisite porcelain featuring an exotic bird. Claire could see light passing through the near-transparent crockery when it was laid out expertly, followed by the silver teapot and its accompanying finery. The teapot's handle was tied with a starched white napkin so that neither she nor her attendant might inadvertently burn their fingers, and in that moment she was reminded of an Istanbul tea garden, the salty smell of the Bosphorus lapping below, the cry of gulls, the purr of a cat and – before she could stop herself – a dark-eyed man who seemed entirely unaware of his charisma. But these thoughts were chased away by memories of a man with eyes the colour of woodland and his effortlessly bright smile through his pain of being wounded and robbed of his best mate. She remembered how she had given him her tea that day and his boyish delight at tasting sugar in it. Jamie, and his pleasure in the simple treats of life and uncomplicated way, was all she wanted.

In another life
 . . . the remembered words rode in on the scent of the steaming pot but it was the smell of antiseptic she tasted, remembering that precious first kiss with Jamie. He would come. She had to believe it. She had to trust him. He'd been held up. Traffic, rain; it was all conspiring to test them,
but he would come
.

She blinked as a waitress repeated her request.

‘The tea has drawn, Miss. Shall I pour?' the young waitress asked again in a sweet voice.

‘Please.'

‘Lemon or milk?'

‘Milk,' she answered without hesitation. After years of doing without, fresh milk in her tea felt luxurious and decadent.

‘One lump?' the girl said, reaching for the tongs.

‘Smallest one you can find,' Claire replied.

The doors swung back and her attention was caught, but it was two women strolling in laughing, arm in arm. They were immaculately dressed in fur-collared coats that slipped easily from their shoulders to reveal gorgeous mid-season garb of rich, bright colours and hinted towards their obvious desire to cast off winter and move into pastels and florals.

Claire bit her lip with disappointment. She thanked the waitress and began stirring her tea soundlessly as she had been taught. To keep occupied and distracted she reached for the menu but didn't read it; it lay redundant in her lap and it was only now she realised she hadn't yet removed her gloves. She spent another few mindless seconds picking those off and unpinning her hat. Claire regarded her tea, could smell the scent of the brew from the gentle steam from her cup and politely took her first sip of Nilgiri Frost.

________

The limping man had to lean against a lamppost to check his watch and anyone glancing at him might have seen his look of horror and guessed he was drastically late for an appointment. Jamie couldn't run, he could barely hurry with his new lopsided gait and even though the air felt frosty to breathe, he could feel his face had become moist from his exertion. He did his best to dodge the shoppers, sometimes needing to veer clumsily into the road and take care from the pandemonium of horses dragging their carriages and the loud call of drivers, their passengers talking, animals braying. It was like the press of war again . . . and just as alien after so long in the desert or quiet hospital wards.

He finally drew level with the five-storey, palatial Waring & Gillow furniture store on Oxford Street – hard to miss with its bronze façade and fussy white stonework. Why today of all days was everything, including the elements, against him? He reached the mammoth frontage of ‘the Richly Stocked Dress and Drapery Warehouse' of the Peter Robinson department store that ran the length of the street to the corner and hurriedly limped around it into Regent Street, just missing hurtling into a corpulent woman leading two poodles with jewelled collars. She said something churlish but, although he had no spare arm to lift his hat, he muttered his apology and was already moving past her.

Among the abundance of advertising messages desperate for his attention – from Pears soapmakers to Piggott & Company dyes and furniture cleaners – he could finally see frontage of the Langham Hotel towering in the distance. He was nearly there. What should have taken him half an hour had taken well over an hour. Had she turned up? Would she still be there, waiting inside for him? Maybe he should have waited and tried to hail a taxi or, better still, gone to the general post office and asked for someone to call the hotel, but that would all have taken precious time . . . time he did not have. Time leaking away from his lifeline of Claire like blood from his body, killing him with each passing second he wasted not getting to the Langham as he'd promised her he would all those years ago.
Be there, Claire
, he begged the universe.
Wait for me.

As he limped, trying to hurry, he distracted himself by imagining what he would he say when he saw her.

What would she say?

It all seemed deeply romantic, which was the whole point, he supposed. He paused briefly in the doorway of Wayre's, one of the numerous furriers that had set up shop nearby to the fashionable and huge hotel, to draw a breath. He'd pushed himself too hard for that last half mile. The sign above him read ‘Grand Depot for Rich Furs and Seal Skin Jackets'. Only Langham guests, surely, could afford those. He leaned against the shopfront, took another deep lungful of London's moist air, pulled up the collar of his coat – because he couldn't use a brolly against the freshly falling rain – and ducked out of number 249. He would be there in minutes, so long as the rain and snow didn't conspire against him.

His heart began to hammer afresh but not from exertion. Now the shortened breath and tightness in his chest was about Claire. Had she stayed true to their promise and trusted that no German, no bomb, no sniper, no distance, no injury would keep him from her on this day?

Be there, Claire
, he repeated silently in his mind as a mantra to distract him from each increasingly painful step.

________

Rifki glanced at his watch. It was now ten minutes shy of four o'clock. The diners had thinned but not enough to make the room feel empty and the quartet played gaily on. He peeped around the newspaper, having not read anything but a single headline repeatedly since he'd opened it. He could not even remember what that headline actually said. He knew it was about war reparations from Germany that would cripple the country. He didn't care; Germany had dragged his country into a war it didn't win and with its surge for power it had taken his son with it to his death.

Rifki pilfered another sly look at Claire. She was far prettier than the sweet waltz being delivered by the accomplished musicians nearby. She was far prettier than any woman in the room . . . in fact, prettier than any of the pretty women he had ever been lucky enough to know, except Sehr perhaps. But they were night and day. Sehr so dark and exotic, with that husky laugh and provocative manner, while Claire Nightingale was dazzling, like bright sunshine in his life that could throw light on his bleakness, untangle his complexities and make life sound straightforward. If she had taught him anything, it was that a life no matter how successful was unfulfilled without love in it: love for family, romantic love and a love for life. He knew she had discovered this the hard way too but she had urged him not to stand back from life as he had been but to confront it with all of its shadows and highlights. That's what he was trying to do now, he assured himself . . . confront what he thought he most wanted out of life . . . her.