It Was the Nightingale (26 page)

“Of course, of course! Ought we to arrive on the Norton?”

“I don’t see why not. Grannie doesn’t fuss, like Aunt Jo.” She added, “Although Aunt Jo is a dear.”

“It was all my fault. Mrs. Gilbert must have thought badly of me, bringing you there after midnight!”

“But you couldn’t help the weather, could you? Anyway, what does it matter?”

“I still think it might look a bit strange, arriving on a motorbike at your Grannie’s.”

“Oh, I am sure Grannie won’t mind. But if you would rather go in the Tamp, the Boys will lend it, I’m sure.”

No, not in that canoe on wheels, not after Bédélia——

“Well, thank you very much, but I’m not a very good driver, and it looks as though it might turn over at the slightest accidental flick of the wheel. Are you sure that it won’t matter if we go on the bike?”

“No, of course not! I love the dear old Norton!”

Mrs. Chychester lived in Belville Cottage, not far from the gates of her old home, Tarrant, a Palladian-styled building standing amidst trees on a hill west of the town. Lucy had told Phillip that Tarrant had been sold on account of some trouble through an uncle, Grannie’s younger son. Thereupon Grannie had gone to live in the late butler’s cottage, at the invitation of Ennis, her lady’s-maid, who was seventy, and ten years younger than Grannie. Ennis had been the butler’s wife. When the butler had died he had left the cottage to Ennis; but really, said Lucy, the cottage had not been his to bequeath. It was Grannie’s cottage. Of course Grannie had not told Ennis this, but had secured it for her in her own Will.

“Now Grannie lives there with Ennis and Martha, the undercook from Tarrant.”

Belville Cottage was meticulously clean, with copper kettles and pans polished on the shelves along the walls of the lower room, an oak dresser with china, an oak table and chairs—these, he understood, belonged to Ennis. Upstairs was Grannie’s own room, containing a few of her cherished belongings, including the campaign clock that had accompanied her husband throughout the Crimean War, and later, with the regiment in India.

Ennis, otherwise Mrs. Rawlings, received them at the door. She was tall and stately in mid-Victorian bodice and skirt from which the bustle had been removed, the embodiment of simple dignity. Mrs. Rawlings had accompanied her lady for more than half a century in her travels over half the world with the regiment. Mrs. Rawlings had a complete set of the paper-backed sixpenny Railway Books which she had bought in India when the young Mr. Kipling was beginning to be talked about, not always favourably, in the hill-stations; he was considered to be a half-and-half person, not exactly a gentleman, for he went to the bazaars and talked among the natives as though he were one of them. That had been towards the end of the Colonel’s soldiering, when he was about to be retired, to return home to spend his days as a country gentleman. Mrs. Rawlings had held Lucy’s mother in her arms; she had nursed Lucy herself, not as a duty of course, but as a privilege. She knew all the grandchildren, and their many cousins, and had seen them all grow up; to the young men she was always ‘Mrs. Rawlings’; to the daughters and grand-daughters, she was ‘Ennis’, which may have been either her maiden name, or her name before she was married.

“Hullo, Ennis,” said Lucy, happily.

“Good afternoon, Miss Lucy, good afternoon, Sir,” replied Mrs. Rawlings, with a slight curtsy to each in turn. “Mrs. Chychester is in her room. She is much better than she has been lately. Her cold is nearly gone, I am most thankful to say. What do you think of our garden?”

The little square of garden was formal as herself: lobelias, geraniums, and arabis with other plants arranged within small beds of correct earthen slope, and set with a minute border of clipped box. Not a weed was to be seen. The coconut mat behind the oaken threshold of the door seemed not to have a fibre out of place.

After praising the flowers, the two visitors went up the stairs to Mrs. Chychester’s room. She had seen them arrive from the window, but had drawn back to greet them as they climbed the stairs.

“My dearest Lucy, what a happy surprise for me! How well you look, my dear!” She took her grand-daughter’s hands lightly, drawing her to be kissed gently on the cheek. “And this is Phil!” as she turned to him and clasped his hand between hers, and it
seemed natural that he should incline his head and touch the back of her hand with his lips. “Now come and sit down, draw up the chair, my dear Phil, and tell me about your work—I hear such good account of your country essays——”

From the first glance at Mrs. Chychester’s face and sound of her voice, Phillip had felt at ease; he could be nearly all of himself in her presence; more so than with Pa—in fact, he could be only about one-tenth of himself with Mr. Copleston. But now, with Mrs. Chychester, he could talk freely. Was it because her father had been an architect, as she told him—a soldier turned architect. “A square peg in a round hole, dear Phil, he was never really happy when in uniform, but with sketch book and pencil, he was the dearest of fathers.”

After tea Mrs. Chychester said, “Do smoke, won’t you—have you your pipe? I do so miss the scent of tobacco, you know!” When the Navy Cut was burning well, having been first rolled on the palm, the old lady gave him an ivory paper-cutter, the handle carved in the likeness of an eagle about to tear a snake which was coiled round the bird’s body; open beak menacing open fangs. She said she had had it more than half a century, and she would be so glad to think of him having it on his desk, as a small token of her regard and affection for one who henceforward would be taking care of her dear Margaret’s girl. Would he accept it as a mark of her esteem? She spoke with so soft and charming a voice that he found himself wanting to say that he wished he could take care of her, too; he stammered a phrase of conventional thanks and added that as all his grandparents were dead, might he call her Grannie?

“Indeed you are to be my new grandson, my dear,” she replied. “And I do not know of another so kind and considerate to go through life with dear Lucy.” Did her voice tremble ever so slightly as she spoke? He could not be sure, for he felt the tears coming to his eyes, and thinking to blow his nose, noticed with dismay that he had no handkerchief in the breast-pocket of his jacket, as was the correct thing.

As they were about to say goodbye, the door opened inaudibly and Mrs. Rawlings glided into the room with something in her hands. It was a folder of tissue paper, and some light blue silk riband.

“Ah, Ennis, how thoughtful of you,” she murmured, as Mrs. Rawlings took the ivory paper-knife and discreetly, a few feet
away, wrapped it with care and tied the blue riband with a neat bow, before giving it back to Mrs. Chychester.

“With my love, dear Phil,” she smiled, her faded grey eyes looking into his as she took his hand, patted it, and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. “You will forgive an old woman for not coming to your wedding, won’t you? I shall be thinking of you on the day. And be sure that my thoughts will follow you to London tomorrow, on your adventure to work hard and win further successes. Now do come and tell me about it, won’t you, when you return at Christmas? Good night, Lucy dear, you look so well and happy.”

Mrs. Chychester went to the door, and stood there with a smile as they went downstairs, to be shown out by Mrs. Rawlings, who remarked confidentially that Grannie was not so well as she would have liked, but it was nothing to worry about. Martha came from the kitchen, with her face of a young girl, though she must have been nearly forty; curtseying to Lucy, and pressing something into her hands, a wedding present he thought, as he pretended not to see, for Martha looked shy. Mrs. Rawlings came to the little green-painted gate, and as he got astride the Norton, praying that the engine would fire as soon as he paddled off, with Lucy perched on the carrier, down the road. It fired beautifully; and on the pilot jet they went slowly and almost silently down the lane past the demesne walls of Tarrant Park.

*

In bed that night, lying in the chalet, he meditated upon this experience of meeting a lady of a past generation. Was her graciousness more than the effect of good manners practised since before she could walk in the nursery, in the school-room, and later with her governess abroad; or were hers the natural manners of a clear nature reinforced by training? Was human nature perfectible, under a balanced economic system? That seemed to be the problem that Willie thought he had solved.

While the wind moved in the branches of the trees beyond the little lawn, he sought to find some fixed truth in human nature, other than that aspiration and emotion of the mind which saw the poetic truth of life; and considering this now in relation to Mrs. Chychester, he wondered how much of the balance of her character was made by environment, and how much of it was born in her.

Mrs. Chychester was what was called an early Victorian—by popular literary accounts she should have been a woman of frustration and unnaturalness. Or was that phenomenon only of the aspiring middle-class commercial and professional families: of the rise of the Victorian and Edwardian middle-class, coincident with the growth of factories and slums in a dark period of England’s history when the influence and stability of the landlords were waning, and the power or money of the nation was being transferred, through trade, to a class which outwardly imitated the landed families but lacked their traits of responsibility and obligation?

He thought again of Willie—he saw his cousin’s life suddenly in perspective. He must write the last novel of Donkin’s short life. He could not write it where he was; he must go to London in the morning. It was as though Willie was urging him to write it for him.
Speak
for
us,
brother;
the
snows
of
death
are
on
our
brows.

On a dull and rainy London evening Phillip drew up his chair to the green baize table, uncapped his pen, wrote the words
Chapter 1
, paused, lit a cigarette in a sudden mood of excited satisfaction, pushed back the chair, and began to pace the floor of the room. It was a thrilling moment; he felt that the breath of creation had come upon him, its servant. Then he closed his eyes and tried to think of Willie.

In one corner of the otherwise empty room were his camp-bed and sleeping-bag, and an army hold-all. A coal fire burned in the grate. Every footfall was magnified with echoes in the empty house. Uncle Hugh had died in the very place where now he sat, alone with what spirits of love and hope. His footfalls resounded on the floorboards; the vibration gave him power. When he listened, silence fell as dust; and the peculiar stuttering flap of coal-flames came intermittently from the hearth.

He sat down, and began to write in the green-covered book, bought with two others for a shilling each at a stationer’s shop in Ludgate Circus. Now he was moving away from the ancient hopes and torments of Gran’pa and Hugh Turney, Uncle Charley and all who had been in the room, to the wraith of cousin Willie in the silence of sandhills and the snow, while frost held earth and water in its thrall; shadowy figures were moving about a house remotely holding the dull growl of the winter sea. But he knew little about the figures with his conscious mind; he only knew they were there. The place was ghostly for him, the figures insubstantial, save that of one, to whom went his reawakened love.

What she would do, how appear, he did not know; he was trusting himself to the spirit of creation, which caused a strange dissolution within. He did not know what he would be writing on the page a moment before it happened. Trusting himself to the imaginative flow, in the secrecy of the empty house, he wrote steadily, light replacing shadow, living creatures the still figures, sunshine the candlelight of the empty room.

At midnight he put down his pen, arose stiffly, and regarded a sandy tom-cat that had entered through a broken window, and after yowling about the empty corridors, had come to sit by the embers of his fire.

“Zippy! Poor old Zippy——”

*

There were irruptions in the state of dream.

“You see, Phillip, I bought back Gran’pa’s house for a special reason. Your father does not understand, but that does not matter any more.” Spoken sadly, with resignation.

The house had been sold a year or two ago to a childless couple who had lived in two of the rooms only; they had moved away, put the place up for sale, and Hetty had—on what, according to Richard was one of her foolish impulses—bought it back for the same price for which she had sold it.

“Are you sure I am not interrupting you, Phillip?”

“No, Mother. All is fish in my net.”

“But you won’t tell anyone what I am saying, will you, dear?”

“My mouth is sealed.”

Her face brightened. “You see, Phillip, I begin to feel that I have not many more years to live, and I want to see my children, and their children, happy. When Elizabeth and Doris come to
live next door, how can that possibly interfere with your father’s life, as he insists?”

“Why, is Doris leaving Bob?”

“Phillip, he has threatened her! He has actually struck her! And while she was nursing her baby, too! Can you understand that?”

“Oh, yes. Doris is very stupid and obstinate at times.”

“Elizabeth went over one evening, and soon came back. She thinks that Bob is going insane.”

“Mother, can’t you understand that Doris,
and
Elizabeth, both in the same room with Bob, both disliking him, can cause a break-down of manners?”

“Ah, but it is the little one I think of, Phillip my son!”

“Of course—so does everyone else, including Bob, Hetty my mother! However, I’ll try to explain your point of view to Richard Maddison.”

“Do be careful what you say, won’t you, dear?”

Phillip said to his father, “I suppose that Mother feels lonely during the day, and it’s rather a journey to go across London to see Doris at Romford, and be back in time for your homecoming——”

“And pray, why is it necessary that she has continually to be gallivanting about to see Mrs. Willoughby? Whose fault is it that she has made such a disastrous marriage? Who connived at it, who encouraged the secret marriage, and helped to arrange it? Now your mother proposes to make the house next door into two flats, and no doubt will become the servant, in due course, of her two daughters, while neglecting her duties in this house!”

“Mother and Doris are good friends, apart from the fact of being parent and daughter, Father——”

“Can you say the same thing about your mother and Elizabeth? She continually uses your mother for her own selfish purposes! She is a little bully, too, the way she gets money repeatedly from her! And now, if you please, your mother proposes to set up Elizabeth in a flat next door, together with Mrs. Willoughby for whom, apparently, she is to provide a home, apart from her husband! Why, bless my soul, has she not heard of such things as Conspiracy, and Alienation of Affection? A wife’s legal position is with her husband, unless she can show cause otherwise—in which case she is entitled to ask for a legal separation; and in this
case, on what grounds, pray? It’s a case of ‘marry in haste and repent in leisure’, if you ask me, Phillip.”

“Yes, I understand how you feel, Father. Human life is very much like rookery life, I sometimes think.”

“What’s that got to do with it, pray?”

“Well, I only meant it as a joke, Father. You know how the established rooks sometimes drive off the young birds——”

“I don’t see what that has got to do with what I was saying, but then you are a nature writer, aren’t you? Well, I’m off to the moving pictures down in the High Street, to see Blanche Sweet in
Anna
Christie,
for the second time. There’s drama for you!”

“Yes, Eugene O’Neill is a real writer, Father. All great drama exalts us in our loneliness.”

“If you want my opinion, most people are lonely, Phillip. Well, I’ll see you when I get back, if you’re still here.”

“I shall probably be next door, writing, Father, but good-night in case I don’t see you.”

Phillip sat with his mother over a cup of tea in the kitchen.

“What has
really
happened about Bob Willoughby? Can you give me hard facts, rather than opinions, Mother?”

“Doris is very unhappy, dear.”

“I know that; but what about Bob? Do you realize his point of view?”

“I realize that he is being led astray by a so-called friend of his.”

“Why ‘led astray’, Mother? Men aren’t ‘led astray’! They go the way they want to go. It’s like the old Fleet Street joke—a man spent his life in the West End of London trying to find a ‘well-known man about town’ of the evening newspapers gossip columns. The search wore him out, for he never found one, and when he dropped dead in Piccadilly, all the evening newspapers printed, ‘Well-known man about town drops dead’.”

Hetty laughed. “By the way, dear, Julian Warbeck called here this morning to ask if you were home again.”

“Oh, no! What did you tell him?”

“I said you were in London, and I would tell you that he called.”

“Then he knows I am here? Oh, hell and the devil! Couldn’t you have said I wasn’t staying here?”

“He asked before I had time to think, I’m afraid, dear.”

“Well, don’t tell him I’m next door, whatever you do!”

“Certainly not, Phillip. Now tell me about your little son. Have you had a photograph taken yet?”

“No, Mother—I sent you the newspaper cutting, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Phillip. Will you let me pay for a proper photograph? I would so like to have one. I haven’t seen him since—since that winter day when I came down to you, dear!”

Her voice trembled. She saw again Phillip, so pale and upright at the funeral; the sleet on his bare head, as he stood to attention, his jaws clenched like his hands, which later almost tore at the frozen earth to drop the first soil on the lowered coffin.

“Well, my dear son, I must now sew some buttons on your father’s shirts. Don’t work too hard, will you?”

“Mother, I want to finish my book before Christmas, for a very good reason. I’ll tell you in confidence, if you promise to keep the secret to yourself. I’m going to be married again in the spring. But you won’t tell either of the girls, will you? Or Father? Yes, of course she loves Billy, otherwise it wouldn’t be any good. Now, Mother dear, I don’t want to talk about it, otherwise I shan’t be able to write. Yes, you’ll see Lucy before we’re married, of course you will. Now I really must think about my story!”

“Yes, dear, of course, naturally! Kiss me, my dear son! I’m so very, very happy for you!”

*

Fire made up, fresh candle stuck on guttering stump, chair settled firm on wooden floor: against memory of the vanished lives of his grandparents, uncles and aunts—who were not characters in the story, that was for time ahead—the scenes of the book created themselves, as a plant grows out of soil composed of ruinous tissues. Every evening he went to the gate, tip-toeing down the darkness of the porch to let himself in at the front door, stealthily, feeling, as he shut it silently behind him, that he was a conspirator in a world beyond life and death. Evening moved into night, which carried him onwards with his story in the silence of the house disturbed only by the soft padding of the cat, his own footfalls, the stealthy noises of the fire. The packet of candles grew smaller, shadows flickered on the walls as he got up, speaking aloud with excitement of the life arising before him.

This imaginary life grew with a reality that was more vivid than life beyond the empty house. During the day, in London and
elsewhere, he avoided familiar faces and walked alone, taking his meals in coffee house or restaurant as fancy settled. He was happy to be alone, he avoided re-entry into the world of chance acquaintance; even Mrs. Neville, once his
confidante
, was avoided. He had nothing to say to her, after a brief visit.

One night, as he shut the gate on leaving, a form detached itself from the hedge and came forward to greet him in a rough, scornful voice which made him, as always on hearing it, flinch a little before fortifying himself against its abrasion. He had not seen Julian Warbeck for two years. Julian’s hands were thrust into the pockets of his overcoat. Phillip knew by his tone of voice that Julian had been drinking.

“Well, Maître, how goes it? Still like a spider getting thinner and thinner as it pulls gossamer after gossamer from its spinnerets, to launch itself into an air of flaccid dream?”

“I’m just going for a walk. On the Hill. But I warn you that I’m a very dull dog nowadays.”

“Why only nowadays? No, don’t take any notice of what I say. Honestly, I’m extremely glad to see you again! I’ve read all your books. Gossamers, I think you used to define your poetic inspiration? But you aren’t that kind of spider, old boy. You’ll never rise into that air which nourishes true poets. You’re a reporter of talent—sometimes——Otherwise you’re a wall spider, grabbing what passes. But seriously, old boy, I’m very glad to see you again.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“‘I have my methods, Watson’!”

Phillip could tolerate the image of Julian absent, for then he could see the authentic Julian, void of that scorn which was of his own exacerbating self-doubt and therefore unhappiness.

He had heard about Julian from his literary agent, Anders Norse: how Julian was deteriorating, a seedy sponger upon his old father; a haunter of Fleet Street pubs where journalists and writers foregathered, some to turn their backs upon his entry.

In the light of a street-lamp, as they left the north side of the Hill, Phillip saw that Julian’s boots were down-at-heel. His face was more puffy than when he had known him before. Walking down to the High Street, he caught a ’bus going towards London, followed by Julian: to get off at the next stop because Julian’s loud voice and manner were drawing attention. They walked
along the Old Kent Road, stopping at various pubs; at every visit becoming more remote from each other. Phillip strode on, followed by Julian, until he came to Blackfriars Bridge. On the Embankment Julian became so derisive that to escape the torment of his presence Phillip jumped on a motor-bus that had slowed down to pick him up, and jerked the cord twice for the driver to go on. Julian ran after the bus, but was soon winded. Phillip saw him ramming his hat over his eyes, before the hunched figure strode away into the night.

The next evening he was unable to write; he spent the time prowling about the empty rooms, cursing Julian’s wraith and lamenting the dereliction of his poetic talent, while dreading to hear a resounding hollow bang on the door which would entirely dissipate the vision of the manor house by the sea, of imagined figures washing plates in the scullery; while outside lay ice and snow, under a keening wind which brought the wild geese to the estuary; and in another room an old grey-bearded man took down his 10-bore fowling gun.

*

Such fancy was for the night only; by day he wrote short stories, despite the knowledge the last seven he had sent to Anders remained unsold. The chief English magazines, together with the high-paying U.S.A. editors, had rejected them. One was about a bob-tailed fox which, during two seasons, a certain pack could never kill. It had been told to Phillip by a retired huntsman who kept a pub in the South Hams. Another was an account of the last run of a pack of harriers on Dartmoor, and their destruction by the Master, officially for sheep-worrying; but, it was said, because they had worried and eaten an escaped convict. There were others, most of them arising from what he had heard at night, while sitting in various inns. One had been written in a couple of days following delivery by post of a crude pen-and-ink sketch from the United States, sent by a poor student, of baboons sitting on rocks in South Africa. Having written a story, he had posted it with the sketch to the artist who had hopes of a career as an illustrator of magazine stories, and was working his way through a mid-Western college. It was a poor bit of work, and Phillip was not surprised when the story was rejected.