It Was the Nightingale (2 page)

“Thanks. It's not bad stuff for a franc a bottle.”

Marvellous girl, putting away the wine!

At Arras they stayed the night at a small hotel, newly built and decorated, called the Strasbourg. Barley did the bargaining: dinner, petit dejeuner, and room cost 50 francs, about 8
/6d.
—far too much, they thought, but the English had always been rooked by the peasants.

They walked around the town, still in ruins, and at 10.30 a.m. the next morning made for Cambrai on the straight N 39. The pavé was bumpy with brick-filled shell-craters … but where was Bourlon Wood, which had overlooked the Siegfried Stellung in November, 1917? It should have been on the left of the road—a hill one hundred metres high, which the Guards had not taken
and so the break-through had fizzled out. Where was Bourlon Wood? He looked bewildered, lost.

“I am sure it was on the left of the road! I saw it a hundred times! The company came out of the line on 30th November, we had to wear our masks, even the horses—the place was drenched with lachrymatory and phosgene. That's how I lost the way and led the company right over there”—he pointed south—“to the other flank of the salient, and got stellenbosched—kicked out.”

“There's a wooded hill over there, Phillip.”

She pointed to the right, to where a low long mound a couple of miles away rose under the midday sun. “It's the only wooded hill around here, so far as I can see.”

“That's not it. It
can
'
t
be!”

A mile down the road, with Cambrai looming near, he stopped to ask a woman standing in a village partly rebuilt in red brick. She said it was Raillencourt.

“Ask her if it was called Fontaine before the war.”

“She says Fontaine is over there.”

“But it couldn't be!”

Again the woman pointed. “She says that's Bourlon Wood.”

“But I'm sure it was to the
left
of this road! I saw it many times. We all did. It was shelled day and night—on the left of the road as we went up from Graincourt.”

“She says Graincourt is beyond the wood, lying off the Bapaume road.”

“Ah, yes! Of course! This is the
Arras
road!” She wondered why he looked so relieved, as though he had found something he had lost, and dearly loved. They went on to Cambrai and turned right at the fork before the town.

“Of course!
This
was the road to Bapaume!”

The wreckage of Bourlon Wood was covered by green scrub. Far away on the horizon lay the old Somme battlefield, like a distant sea fretted by waves of wild grass and poles of dead trees. He longed to be once again in the desolation of that vast area, so silent, so empty, so—forsaken. Somewhere in the misty distance were the failed objectives of July the First, that dream-like day of terror and great heat; and below the horizon of fear was Albert, and the Golden Virgin.

“It says Albert on the map, Phillip. Would you like to go there?”

“But there won't be anyone there, now.”

She took his hand and they walked into the wood. The forest floor was still rough and cratered, barbed wire among its brambles; half-buried dud shells, yellow gas canisters, faded stick-bombs, rusty screw-pickets—rifle-barrels—shreds of uniform—shattered helmets. There was harshness and distress in the air, the sun had no real kindness. He turned to living flesh for relief from thoughts of the dead, and lay down beside her in an area of sunlight amidst the shade of new leafy growth tenderly covering black and splintered trunks and branches of dead trees. He held her in his arms, at peace before rising on an elbow to regard the beauty in her face. One thought came from his blood into his mind and thence to his will: to make this calm and self-possessed girl pregnant.

“Barley, let's go on south!” he said, after they had lain in the sun. “I don't want to see the battlefields.”

*

Cambrai, shabby and bleak like Arras, was left behind to gay toot-toots of the snail horn, hands waved to children. Onwards to St. Quentin, through the last of the Hindenburg Line country, grave of Gough's Fifth Army in March, 1918. Comrades, I will never forget. Sausage and bread and wine and a sleep in the sun before going on to Laon and thereafter it was all new country as they approached the fabulous Champagne department.

Six hours after leaving Arras they were in Rheims: 142 kilometres in 3 hours running time, and not one miss of either cylinder since leaving Calais. “O Bédélia, Bédélia, she must be christened with the
vin
du
pays,
a bottle of Veuve Cliquot bought in a wine store!”

After which Bédélia ran south in top gear on full throttle, leaving behind the Chemin des Dames—name inducing compelled thoughts of a hundred bombardments, attacks, and counter-attacks—now but a crest of young tree growth among chalky patches receding behind Barley's curly head. Bédélia rattled and bumped across the plain to the country of the Marne.

Within the hour they were in Châlons. Boys and old men actually fishing there—ah, the
Marne,
a word, a name—he said to Barley's candle-gilt face across the small
table
à
deux
in the dining-room of the Hotel d'Angleterre—that had the power to raise eighty thousand ghosts of the original B.E.F., ghosts of both dead and living.

“For we were all ghosts, whether in or out of the flesh,” he went on, as he raised his sixth glass of vin rosé. “Can ‘a necromancer raise from the rose-ash the ghost of the rose'? I shall do it one day soon! Meanwhile let's have another bottle of the ghost of the grape!”

“Vin rosé is fairly strong, you know. I don't want any more, but don't let that stop you. Another half-bottle?”

He sighed. “I'm only in a fume of words, words, words. The necromancer will never raise from the rose-ash the ghost of the rose.”

She pondered this remark. Did he think there was a rose essence in the wine.

“I think it's made from a pink grape, isn't it?”

“You don't understand, you are all matter-of-fact.”

He drank another half-litre in silence, and when they were in their room, she said, “Did I say something stupid?”

“Not in the least. It was I who was stupid.”

“Look at me, Phillip!” She forced him, not unwilling, to stand before her, while she held his shoulders to look into his eyes. “How can I know what you mean, unless what you say comes from your real self? I can only understand you when you feel what you say! If you make yourself clear, in other words! Why should you allow yourself to be hurt, because people don't know what you mean? At first, when you spoke about the necromancer, I didn't remember that it occurred in one of the poems you read in your cottage to me when I first knew you. I do remember, now. It was in
The
Mistress
of
Vision,
wasn't it?” She shook him playfully and said in a quieter voice, “Anyway, you've no need to worry, you
will
one day write a splendid book about your friends in the war. I
know
it. I know also that you feel that time is passing, and you're not working. But it is growing, all the time, in your mind.”

He could hardly believe that it was not a dream that he was beside her in deep-feathered softness, sharing the delirious warmth of a girl, all of whose softness was for him: that the dream of love had come true: and most wonderful of all, she wanted him in the same way that he wanted her: all thought between them was a silk gossamer binding them as one person.

“Darling, darling,
darling
Barley, it's too good to be true!”

“Isn't it fun to be friends, as well as married?”

Yet once more he wondered if such bliss could last—to drift into sleep beside her with no more thought than scent was thought to a flower. Deep, deep sleep; to awaken and see the sun shining through the window; and what fun, another day lay before them, on their way to
thalassa!
,
thalassa!,
the sea of ancient Athens, and the radiance of the Greek poets!

After coffee and rolls and butter they went on their journey, travelling towards the sun above the mountains of the Massif Central. But after a while the sun went in and it rained; it rained harder; it poured down and there was no hood to put up. The belts slipped, the engine went dud, with water in the magneto.

They pushed Bédélia for a mile and came to a garage-shed where a new condenser was fitted to the magneto; very cheaply, he thought, giving the mechanic a
pour
boire.
The engine fired at once, the rain ceased to fall, they went on happily through a damp twilight into Chaumont, to leave Bédélia in a side-street barn while Barley looked for a small hotel. It was a relief to him that she decided the price (while he waited below) and all he had to do was to be beckoned upstairs. Safe for one more night! No waiting by the road-side, walking about until dawn: the room, lit by electricity, was a refuge against the darkness of memory. The war was over!

They washed and changed, she collected their clothes to be dried; they went down to a wonderful dinner with a bottle of wine, most of which he drank before going to bed, half-blotto and wonderfully lucky to be safe under a roof with a girl, to watch the trim little female creature undressing quickly and lightly, to see her shape, her gentleness, the small breasts and thin arms and tiny waist and beautifully shaped legs and feet with their high insteps and broad toes; feet which he held one in each hand while determined to make her pregnant. She sighed, she kissed, she nuzzled his throat and cheeks and brow like an animal already enjoying its young.

Again they were on the road early, a clear bright day, the engine running well; through Dijon with its vineyards and rose gardens, stopping to eat their midday meal on a bridge over the Sâone—white wine, cheese, sausage and the usual long loaf of bread. He felt muzzy in the intensely hot sun, and she was sleepy too, so they slept on the river-bank, waking to throw off their clothes and swim naked in the water.

The river turned its course there, the flow had carved a pool at the bend. The water moved gently over a sandy bottom at the verge, and, towards the farther bank, it deepened over a stony pit. While they were swimming to the other side he saw what at first he took to be a water-vole on the bank; but coming nearer, he saw it had a flatter head and curiously small eyes with apparently no nose. It was scarcely seven inches long, with a stub tail, dun brown like its fur. Through the wimpling current he swam, nearer and nearer the animal, which did not move, but opened its mouth in an inaudible mew when the hand of his extended right arm touched the bank. He waited for her to draw level with him, and put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself while treading water.

“I've never seen anything like it.”

They got out, and picked up the mite. It was cold, she breathed upon it for warmth, while feebly it sought with its paws to burrow between her fingers.

“It's hungry,” she said. “Poor baby.”

Phillip, looking down into the water, cried out, “Come here!”

On the stony bottom of the pool lay an animal slowly swaying in the current. It was on its back, it was dark except for a light patch on its throat. As they stared, the body lifted slowly and half turned over; the current checked this movement, and they saw something upon one paw, attached to a chain.

“It's an otter, it's been trapped! The chain is nailed to the top of that sunken post! The weight of the trap has drowned it!”

He swam underwater and hauled at the chain, drawing up the body until its spiky fur showed above the water. It was heavy with the weight of the trap; he released it and sinking down gripped the top of the post, to work it to and fro to loosen it. It was driven too deeply to be shifted.

“What a shame. They trap otters at Laruns, for their fur. I wonder if there are any more cubs?”

“They have them in holes of trees by the river, I think. I wonder how this one got on the bank? It's too small to swim.”

“Perhaps she was carrying it to another nest, Phillip.” They could find no other cubs, and walked down-river to find a ford.

“We'll get some milk in the next town. I can feed it with my fountain-pen filler.”

As soon as they had dressed they went on to Dôle, where
Barley bought some milk and, mixing it with hot water, fed the cub on the rubber squeezer of the pen-filler.

“Good, it's sucking!”

It took three fills of the glass container, then closed its eyes. She put it inside her jumper, next to her collar bone, and seeing an hotel, decided to spend the night there, because of its name, the Pomme d'Or.

Next morning the cub was still alive; with joy they went on south, a new view of mountains immediately before them. They climbed up to Poligny, the engine sharply crackling through the tree-lined streets partly in shadow; and continuing along route 83 they came to Lons-le-Saunier and after filling the pointed cylindrical tank over the engine with
essence,
made for Bourg-en-Bresse, their objective being Lyons—187 kilometres on the map from Dôle. They ran non-stop the last sixty kilometres to find that Lyons was the Birmingham of France, except that it had trees around its great square, and no grime. Even so it was a business town, the hotel they entered for a drink was filled with sallow-faced, podgy men in black coats and trousers, so let's go on to Vienne, he said.

The mountain peaks were ruddy as they rattled down the valley route beside great Rhône whose leaping snow-waters were visible on their right.

“Just fancy, this town is exactly 500 kilometres, 300 miles, from Paris,” he said, lying on the hotel bed and reading the Michelin guide, while she pulled off her jumper and put on a silk blouse. After fondling her, he tried to draw her to the bed. She resisted. “I must get some goat's-milk.”

“Come back soon, and we'll feed the cub here.”

When she did not come back he went to look for her and found her sitting at a table in the
salle
à
manger,
a young waiter standing beside the table. They were looking at the cub. He saw that the waiter was young, perhaps eighteen, a handsome youth talking excitedly in French. On the table was an open stamp book.