Nightingale (4 page)

He'd followed his father around onto the platform, checking he had his ticket, which they'd bought the previous evening, safely stashed in his pocket. People gathered beneath the verandah awning and he could hear last snatches of advice from fathers to sons, while the womenfolk predictably began to drag out handkerchiefs. His mother had offered to make the journey to Quorn but Jamie had preferred to enjoy a final family meal in the home he'd been born in and to remember his tall, slim mother in her apron, near the stove, forever producing delicious food from her range for her five hungry men.

It had been backslaps and fierce handshaking from his elder brothers, who made jokes about the French women who were going to fall in love with him, reminding him to keep score of the hearts he broke and the Germans he killed. He'd ruffled his youngest brother's hair before going out on the verandah to watch him ride off to school, his dog Bingo chasing after him, barking.

Finally it was just him and his mum. They'd stood by the large, scrubbed pine table in their kitchen. After the activity of a noisy breakfast, all he could remember hearing in that wrenching moment of farewell was the solid tick of the clock above the mantelpiece surrounding the Metters wood stove; the clock seemed to be marking time with his heartbeat as he reached for his slouch hat, signalling it was time to leave. His mother had wiped her hands nervously on her apron as he stepped forward to hug her. She had accepted his squeezing embrace, hung on to him far longer than she normally would when saying goodbye, and when his mother finally let him go she had reached out to caress his face. He couldn't remember the last time she'd been so openly affectionate, but her large brown eyes were damp and he realised she was smiling with an effort.

‘Now you take care of yourself, Jamie Wren. And you come home to us?'

He nodded, swallowing away the sudden claustrophobic sensation in his throat.

‘I need you to promise me,' she insisted.

‘I promise, Mum. I'll come home.'

‘Not in a box, mind. It will be all my birthday gifts for the rest of my life to see you walk through that door.' Laura Wren had stepped back then, her hands gripping his arms that were slack either side of his broad chest. She nodded, as though fixing a final image of him in her mind as she shifted a swatch of his mid-brown hair to get a better look at his eyes, which she'd said on occasion reminded her of unshelled macadamias, the delicious nuts that she'd only eaten once but had never forgotten, their richness encased in burnished green-brown shells. ‘You're a good boy, Jamie. Don't fall for some French girl, either. We need you here.'

Curiously, saying goodbye to the one border collie not working this morning was the hardest farewell of all for Jamie. She leapt up from where she'd been waiting patiently since breakfast, and gave him her special grin, mouth open, tongue lolling, tail thumping the boards. He'd won her as a pup at the local tombola night three years earlier. William Wren had said if he was going to bring home another mouth to feed, he'd better make her earn her keep and so Jamie had been given the task of training the fluffy black-and-white pup that simply wanted to chew everything or sleep. She was so small he called her Pipsqueak. Years on she had become a valuable working dog, one of their best, but from today she'd have to get used to his brothers issuing her commands. Her expressive, chocolatey eyes suggested that she already knew.

‘I'll be gone a while, Pippy.' She panted her understanding and stroked a paw across his bended knee. He took it, gave her a scratch beneath her chin and then leaned to kiss her head, glad his father wasn't around to see it. ‘Look after them all, Pippy, and watch out for those snakes in the tall grass, all right?'

He'd got lost in his memory of farewell and it was his father being hailed by another man that dragged him back to the present. William Wren was shaking hands and nodding at Jamie. His companion cocked a thumb over a shoulder to where another young man was kicking at a stone, among a group of women. Jamie didn't want to talk to anyone or be introduced. He suspected his father had already guessed this.

He let his gaze be drawn to the north where his family lived and stared at the tracks that ran across the dry, rusted earth and tricked his eye into believing they met at the base of the range, purple in the distance with highlights of gold slashes. It was as though a careless painter had daubed odd splotches of yellow paint and yet he knew those he loved were beyond that rise of craggy hills where the scudding drifts of frothy clouds seemed to part right where his family's property was. A small misshapen oblong of piercing blue sky opened right above where he pictured the homestead, Bingo probably barking at a sleepy lizard from his vantage on the wide, shady verandah.

He heard his father clear his throat and blinked away from his sentimental thoughts. The other fellow had drifted away and William Wren was pushing something into Jamie's hands.

‘You'll need this,' he said brusquely.

Jamie had stared at it, confused. ‘Won't you?'

His father had shaken his head. ‘I can tell the time from the sun.'

‘So can I.'

‘Not to the minute and you're going to need this to make sure you keep good time for when you're on duty.'

‘Dad, it's precious. Too —'

‘I won it playing cards.'

Jamie remembered now how shocked he'd been to hear this. ‘I thought . . .'

‘Yeah, well, you know what Thought did, son. It's not mine. Originally belonged to a fellow called Bailey. He was a good man, useless at cards, though, and best he lost to me because I was his mate during the war. I always intended to give it back but he took a bullet to the belly from an Afrikaner musket.' Jamie remembered how his father's voice had taken on an uncharacteristically wistful tone.

Jamie weighted the silver watch in his hand now, recalling how it had felt then on the station platform, with the pressure of his father's hand on top of it. ‘It kept me safe and now it's going to keep you safe and bring you home to your mother. She knows you have to go, son, but it doesn't make it any easier for her.'

‘How about you, Dad?' he'd found the courage to ask as the train wheezed into the station and everybody seemed to move at once.

‘I'll be fine. Your brothers can manage.'

‘I didn't mean that. I meant —'

‘I know what you meant,' his father interrupted in a gruff voice, fixing him with a stare. In that pause Jamie understood that even this conversation was hard for him and about as close as Jamie might ever get to revealing William Wren's closely guarded emotions. ‘Take the watch. Keep your head down. I know you'll make the Wren name count for something over there.'

Whistles had blown and doors had begun slamming closed. His father hadn't hugged him, but he'd shaken his hand tightly and hadn't let go quickly, William's lips thin and working hard to keep all words contained behind them. Jamie had turned and felt his father squeeze his neck gently in the way he used to when Jamie had been a boy. The affection in that heartbeat had been unmistakable.

‘OP time, mate,' Spud said, kicking his boot and dragging him fully into the present. ‘When you write next, tell your mum I love her jam.'

All the men took regular turns at the observation post at the parapet. Their only defence was sandbags at the lip and the Turks had the high ground, so periscopes were their only way of assessing the enemy camp.

‘Come on, let's head to the shooting step. See if we can't catch us a couple of Turks.'

Jamie buttoned the watch away and with it his memories as he fell in step. Swampy and Dickie Jones pushed in front of Spud.

‘Hey!' Spud said, shoving Swampy.

‘Let them go. Age before beauty, eh?' Jamie mocked.

‘Beauty was a horse, mate,' Jones chortled.

‘Oh, so you
can
read, Jones? That's a surprise,' Jamie remarked.

Just then a bullet cracked into the sandbags above Spud. ‘I swear they can see me,' he growled.

Impossible though it seemed to Jamie, the smell of decaying corpses was even worse here than further back in the trench they'd just navigated. The zigzag design hadn't made sense at first but it soon became evident that if the Turks did overwhelm one end of the trench, the enemy couldn't see past more than a few feet.

These tiny salients, jutting out into no-man's-land, cut so close at times to the enemy trench that they could hear the Turks talking. He'd heard rumours that in other places the trenches were close enough to touch a Turk's head. It made no sense if you could shake hands with your enemy. Was there any point to this war? One fellow from the opposing trench, with some sort of penny whistle, was beginning to play his instrument alongside Jamie's harmonica most evenings. It made beautiful, haunting music and the pipe's mellow timbre complemented Jamie's melodies; its owner was clearly adept, weaving lovely notes and trills around the mouth organ's slow, sad meanderings.

‘Play us a jolly tune,' Swampy was always asking but Jamie didn't seem inclined. It didn't feel right to him, given how many dead lay all around them. But the Turkish piper and he understood one another, and their combined breath wove songs of regret and sorrow that did feel right on behalf of the fallen.

Jamie watched Dickie Jones take a trench-fashioned periscope, which comprised a broken piece of shaving mirror attached to a length of timber, and gingerly position it just above the parapet. Swampy meanwhile took position on the fire step with the trench's single periscope rifle and began sighting through it. Spud was standing right below them, giving Swampy a bit of a baiting.

Jamie tuned out and began to wonder if his father secretly worried about his middle son's safety. Maybe his mother had been right all along that his father loved his sons as much as she did.
He just doesn't know how to show it to you boys
, she'd said on several occasions.

Jamie heard the sound of the shell arriving but barely had a couple of seconds to register that Spud and the others couldn't. In that heartbeat of realisation, death arrived laughing at them. The explosion rocked the land around them like the jellies his mother used to unmould on his summertime birthday in February, arriving quivering to the table in a rainbow of colours that were now echoed in his dazed vision. His sight cleared into the stunned silence that followed the explosion before sound too gradually filtered back and so did his wits.

He was buried to his shoulders and most of this end of the trench, where they'd been joshing just seconds earlier, had entirely collapsed. He could taste the sand from the bags, spitting and coughing, and as he blinked away the initial stupor he realised he was staring straight at the sightless eyes of Swampy. He could see his mother's apricot jam still clinging to the side of Swampy's slack mouth, except his body was no longer attached at the shoulders. Meanwhile the slumped form of Dickie Jones, still holding his periscope, was in the near distance.

Spud was nowhere to be seen.

________

Jamie half ran, half staggered. The other two were dead and there was no time to mourn them because Spud was alive but badly injured; he needed to get his friend down to the beach and onto that hospital ship.

‘Spud?'

‘Yeah,' he croaked from where he was slumped across Jamie's back.

‘How are you?'

‘How d'ya reckon, ya mug? I'm just bonzer! Let's go dancing later.'

Beneath the weight of Spud and his private escalating fear, Jamie still laughed. ‘Well, you feel like a whole sack of potatoes right now.'

It was Spud's turn to chuckle but it sounded dry and sad. ‘Oh, mate, this is bad. I can't feel anything. Did my legs get blown off?' he groaned.

‘You're all there, Spud. Just hold on.'

Sniper fire began to crack nearby as they became the new sport for the Turkish trenches.

‘Ah, bugger! I know you're using me as cover. Shoot the short bloke first,' Spud accused in a weak groan.

Jamie bent his knees to lower Spud beneath an overhang for a few moments of respite. He was panting but could tell Spud was breathing with a struggle.

‘Spud?'

His friend gave a grunt. ‘What?'

‘Are you dead yet?'

They both began to laugh . . . the sort of out-of-control laughter like children have at someone who just made a farting sound. It felt good to release the tension but it cost them both. Jamie was aware that other soldiers, clambering up with water or supplies, were crouched in crags and gullies around them, also avoiding the sniper bullets and staring at the lunatic spluttering, bleeding duo, but he knew if he didn't laugh with Spud right now, he might just sit back and cry.

‘We're going to the field hospital, Spud, and I'm getting you on that hospital ship. All right, mate? No more talking. I need my strength to get to the bottom and not fall or get shot in the process. You need yours to stay alive. Ready?'

‘Heartthrob?'

‘Yes?' Jamie could hear his friend's seriously laboured breathing now.

‘Tell Mum it was me who broke her granny's vase all those years ago, not Eddie, and that I'm sorry.'

Jamie paused, the muscles in his thighs complaining loudly beneath the weight; he was grateful for his rigorous training with the Light Horse Brigade, which had taught him to push through the burn of muscles and to keep moving at all cost. ‘You tell her, Spud, when you get home. Now, be quiet. Save your energy. Ready?'

Spud didn't answer and Jamie didn't wait for his approval. He pushed off, moving as quickly as his burden and the terrain would permit, not a thought in his head – it was like a white light had flooded his mind; a searing white of emptiness with only the burn from his body begging to unload the cargo, and a distant voice that only he could hear now bleeding into that space with urgings to look at his boots. Concentrate on each footfall and the potential traps beneath. Time, space, his whole life distilled to where he would place his next stride – left, right, straight ahead? Watch that crevice, look out for that bush, don't get too close to the edge, stay close to the edge, follow the main ravine down to Anzac Cove. He couldn't see the beach from here, especially from his crouched stance, but he knew it was there, knew how to reach it.
You've done this descent enough times!
Suddenly his inner voice sounded like his father.
You fetch water every other day from the beaches. It's no different. Zigzag, Jamie!
His father yelled as a sniper found his range and a rifle cracked on the heights and its bullet whizzed at him, ripping through his uniform, and he felt the sting of it against his calf. He'd been grazed. Lucky.
Control is everything
, his father used to say when teaching him to ride, even though Jamie had been eager to gallop.
Take her one step at a time
.