It Was the Nightingale (37 page)

“Eight hundred pounds?”

“Actually it’s sixteen hundred,” said Tim, in a low voice.

“Sixteen hundred? Walls one-brick thick, and on end? Four-and-a-half inches thick? The woodwork already warping upstairs? And that plastering, which looks as though kids have been having fun with a whitewash brush, already cracking!”

“I know,” said Tim, his voice nearly inaudible. “And that’s not the worst of it, I fear. You see, the insurance surveyor said we can insure the buildings for sixteen hundred if we like, but in the event of a total loss by fire, his company will only pay replacement value, which he puts at six hundred.”

“Overcharged one thousand pounds! Surely you won’t pay the bill?”

“Unfortunately Fiennes has already paid it, without telling either Ernest or me. He’s in charge of the office, as you know, and says it’s none of our business what he does. Oh well, it’s done now. Dashed poor job, though, in my opinion.”

The next day ‘Mister’ arrived with a story he had heard of Pidler the builder in the town having hired a horse-cab in order to visit, with a barrel of beer, various friends and relations to celebrate his good fortune.

“It’s a jolly shame, I can tell you,” said ‘Mister’. “The trouble is, old chap,” as he turned to Tim, “if you don’t mind my saying so, you are too kind-hearted. By the way, before I forget, I’ve a message from my wife. May I have a private word with you?”

He moved, arm linked with Tim’s, towards the Works, now congested with other purchases from the War Disposals Surplus Board at Slough—file cabinets, typewriter, fire-extinguishers, swivel desk chair, oil-stove, etc. When he came out again, Phillip thought that he looked just like one of the illustrations of Old Mister Rat in a story in
Little
Folks
Annual.

“By Jove!’ cried ‘Mister’. “How time flies, Phillip! In little more than no time I’ll be playing Mendelssohn’s
Wedding
March
on that rotten damp organ for you and Lucy! Well, I must be gettin’ back, I suppose. Why, I don’t know, but there it is, old chap! Give me a push off, will you? I’ve got this confounded asthma, now the hawthorn’s out in blossom. Can’t stand the smell of flowers, you know. The Onion’s a bit more racketty than usual, I fancy—needs a rebore badly. I’ll be glad, I can tell you, when the Works get goin’, and Ernest can do the job for me. Right—push away—keep goin’—she’ll fire soon, I hope—don’t stop, whatever you do!—keep her goin’—any moment now she’ll fire—don’t stop——”

Phillip had to stop, with thumping heart. After bending down to recover, he said, “Did you turn the petrol on?”

“No, dash it all, I forgot to! She’ll go now, I’ve flooded the carburettor—Ready?”

Another fifty yards, and Phillip stopped again.

“I expect I flooded the dashed thing too much, don’t you know. The plug is probably wet. That’s very good of you, old chap!”—as Phillip prepared to remove the plug. He dried it by setting fire to the petrol on it.

“I say, look out, old chap. The Onion isn’t insured, you know!”

Phillip dropped the flaming plug on the ground beside the rubble by the hedge where the new petrol pump and tank had been installed, and sucked his burnt finger.

“Any damage?” enquired ‘Mister’, as Phillip picked up the plug.

“None at all. This should give you a quick start.” He refitted the plug. “Ready?”

“You seem to want to get rid of me in a hurry, old chap.”

“I thought you wanted to go back to Ruddle Stones, ‘Mister’.”

“Not on your life, old chap. Between you and me and the gatepost, I’ve no desire at all to get back.”

He looked around him, the straps of his leather helmet hanging below his ears. “I can’t see any profit from this petrol pump, you know. They had to plank down fifty pounds and guarantee to pay off the balance for the pump within twelve months, and all they get is twopence for every gallon sold. That means they’ll have to sell close on five thousand gallons during the next year. I doubt if they’ll do it. Now Ernest is thinking of installing a cigarette machine beside the pump, to help matters. But I can’t see how it will work. There’s only a few cottagers here, and the
men smoke cheaper cigarettes. Besides, the packets will get damp very quickly, you know. Ah well, it will all be the same in a hundred years’ time.”

“Perhaps someone will light a cigarette and set fire to the pump, then they’ll get the insurance money!”

“It’s all very well to joke, old chap——”

The hot plug did the trick. The engine fired, the Onion disappeared, wheezing irritably. Phillip sought Tim. He found him in the narrow annexe built beyond the office, one side of which was a showcase for electric bulbs, car-polishing wax, rubber sponges, goggles, and hand-tools sold to Fiennes by visiting travellers. One row was taken up by a great variety of 1916–18 aeroplane plugs, also from the War Surplus Disposals Board.

“Aren’t you going to try and sell the Tamp, Tim?” said Phillip kicking one of the flat tyres.

“The trouble is, no one seems to want it.”

“Haven’t you advertised it?”

“Now I come to consider the matter, I don’t think we have.”

“Is all this stock you’ve got here paid for?”

“Dashed if I know. Fiennes is in charge of the accounts.”

“Is the machinery in the Works paid for?”

“Well, some of it is. But we have a month’s credit, of course, for what isn’t paid for.”

“Tim, forgive my interfering: but how much of the money from selling your reversions to Mr. Thistlethwaite is left?”

“I don’t really know, Phil. We sold our three shares, of what we would have coming to us when Pa died, for a thousand pounds the share.”

“What was the marriage settlement worth?”

“Eighteen thousand, I think was the sum.”

“And how old is Pa?”

“Getting on for seventy-four.”

He went on another line, away from Mr. Thistlethwaite. “And you don’t know how much you have spent, in all?”

“I’m afraid not. But we plan to live on the fifty pounds or so a month coming in for the sac-machines.”

“Is that profit?”

“Oh, yes. It’s the amount of the cheque, you see.”

“But the sac-machine material must cost something?”

“East Anglia sends us all materials, except the phosphor bronze
castings, which we get made in Shakesbury, and pay for ourselves.”

“And you’re always behind with delivery?”

“Well, yes we are, as a matter of fact. But when we get the Works really going, we should be all right.”

“Has the Gas Works paid you anything on account?”

“Well, no.”

“You’ll have to meet the bills for all the materials, won’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose we shall.”

“How’s the job going?”

“Well, we have struck a snag, as it happens. You see, the blueprint included a louvre in the roof, to ventilate fumes, but did not specify of what it should be made. So Joe, our blacksmith, made it of one-eighth-inch sheet-iron. Then, during the lunch hour a week or two ago, someone from the Gas Office came out and looked at our louvre, and expressed the opinion that it wasn’t substantial enough. It would corrode quickly in the sulphurous fumes, he said. Ernest and I deeply considered the matter, and came to the conclusion that the louvre should be made of cast iron, to withstand the corrosion. So Ernest worked all night and the next day making a wooden pattern for the mould, and we sent it off to a foundry at Bristol and had it cast. As a matter of fact, it was delivered at the Gas Works only this morning, and to our horror it weighed nearly ten hundredweight. When the manager saw it, he said it would cause the entire roof to sag. We didn’t agree, having worked out the stress on the main trusses of the roof, which are of six-inch T-section mild steel, but he said he wouldn’t accept the new louvre. With the result that the original louvre is to go up. The cast-iron louvre cost sixty pounds, I’m afraid.”

“But why didn’t you specify sheet iron before you signed the contract?”

“It didn’t seem necessary then. Joe told us that all louvres were of sheet iron.”

“Who told you it wouldn’t do?”

“As a matter of fact, it was the Gas Works junior clerk, who had only been there a fortnight, as it turned out. We told the manager, who questioned the clerk, who denied all reference to the matter.”

“I expect he was afraid of losing his job. Now, Tim, I know I’m an interfering bore, but did ‘Mister’ borrow any money from you?”

“Well yes, as a matter of fact he did.”

“You must stop that, Tim! Or you’ll go bankrupt!”

*

The next day Phillip went to the bank in Shakesbury to ask the manager how the Boys’ account stood. The Manager said he could not tell him without a written authorisation.

“I would be relieved,” he said, “to discuss matters with you, in that event.”

Phillip called on Mrs. Chychester at Belville Cottage. When she asked how her grandsons were getting on he said, “They are very keen, and work hard, they know the mechanics of the jobs they do, and they are competent as engineers, Grannie. But they need a business adviser.”

“I was afraid that that would be the trouble, dear Phil. Of course, what you have told me shall be entirely between us. Now do not let it worry you—you who have an entirely new career before you, which will take all your strength, you know.” Her wrinkled hand touched his. “My grandsons have grown up a little wild, perhaps, lacking a mother’s care. Adrian, their father, is hopeless. But there, he was my dear Margaret’s choice.”

“Lucy told me that they were ideally happy.”

“Yes, I suppose they were. But happiness, as you know, should not come before duty.” She sighed inaudibly. “Adrian was forty, when he first saw Margaret, and somewhat stilted in manner. They were first cousins. His mother was one of the Oxfordshire Chychesters.”

Phillip had already noted that she pronounced ‘aunt’ as ‘ant’, just as Pa did; while referring to the insect as an aunt. He had made up a doggerel rhyme about some of the strange (to him) terms of this family. The raised wall of the garden, where it bordered the meadow to the south, with a vallum below, was called a ha-ha wall; the lavatory a loo; while the small, broken-down summerhouse was a hoo.

“You are smiling, dear Phil!” She took his hand, and looking into his eyes, said, “And now you are to be married to Lucy! I
was so glad to see your Uncle, Sir Hilary, the other day, he has great hopes for you, you know! And when you are married, you will bring your little son to see me, will you not? Lucy tells me he is the dearest boy, and she is already most attached to him.”

Her voice quavered almost imperceptibly as she leaned forward to pat the hand she held.

“Phillip, you will look after my dear Margaret’s children for me when I am gone, won’t you? You are so wise, in many ways, for so young a man! I am sure, from what you tell me, that a word of advice now and again will be just what the Boys need for success.”

He saw Mrs. Rawlings hovering outside the door, and got up to go. “I promise you I will do my best for them, Grannie.”

“Dear Phillip!” She kissed him on the cheek. “But you must not allow yourself to forget your own work, you know!”

Phillip made up his mind to finish the story of his search for Lutra before he was married. He returned the next day to North Devon and shut himself in his cottage, sitting at the table upstairs through much of the day and night; coming down to eat food brought over by Zillah, and then up again; possessed by what he thought of as the luminous fume of the mind, in simple words, by his imagination.

The countryside was in flower, the nights becoming shorter; and when the village lights in cottage window and inn were out, he wandered over the fields and beside the estuary, trying to believe that the spirit of Barley was with him, trying to believe that the source of all life was the Imagination, that God was the Image Maker, that the species were but images which must pursue their ends to perfect God’s purpose, which was to create beauty in form, sound, colour, and scent: from the co-ordination of which
came the higher love which was above and beyond the personal image.

Opposed to God, or the Image Maker, were forces of destruction, nihilism, darkness, all exploiting the lower feelings by which individual life was maintained, but which if not transmuted into greater love, by their release in individuals, would frustrate the purpose of the Image Maker.

With fear he realised that, when he thought of Lucy, this idea became brittle, a mere personal wish: an illusion arising from fatigue and consequent inability to face the truth of competitive living on the earth—which meant his own personal weakness and failure as a human being. And yet——

*

During three days and nights, with intervals for walking and sleeping, he wrote nearly 50,000 words; and was about to lie down one morning as the clock struck seven times when Zillah knocked at the door, opened it, and called up the stairs.

“Mis’r Mass’n, please listen! You told us that you wanted a top hat, and asked me to remind you to buy one. Well, have you done so?”

“God’s teeth, no! It quite slipped my mind! Did my morning suit come this morning?”

“I don’t know. Father doesn’t take round parcels until second post, you know that, they arrive about eleven by the van every morning. You had better look what you are about! This is Tuesday, and you told us your wedding day is Friday——”

He rolled off the bed, and went down the stairs in his bare feet. “I’d forgotten it was so near, Zillah. I must get a move on!”

“Look at you, Mis’r Mass’n! Are you going to the altar with Miss Copleston in a beard? And that hair over your ears? You look a proper old mommet, you do!”

“I must stop writing. It’s no good, anyway. When can I have breakfast? I must go into town and see about things. Send off telegrams. Get measured for the hat. How does one take measurements for a hat?”

“Try one on, of course!”

“But men don’t wear them any more, there aren’t any for sale locally. I’ll have to measure my head on a piece of paper and send it off to a London hatter. Right! I’ll wash and change, and be along soon for breakfast.”

“Don’t forget to shave, will you? Mother says you look just like some old moucher!”

“My razor’s blunt, I’ll get a shave and haircut in town. I’ll be over soon.”

He lay across the table and made a list.

The list appalled him. He lay in the armchair, heavy with fatigue; and then prayed without words, ending with three words,
Help
me,
Barley.

Footfalls of Mules came to the door. There was a telegram among the envelopes.

He must be resolute and open the letters later. He put them on the chimney shelf. Now for a wash and breakfast. £200!!

The scene in the Mules’ kitchen afterwards was almost farcical. Phillip’s idea of getting his head measured was not by means of a tape around the ’ade, as Mrs. Mules suggested, but by diagram.

“What’s the good of saying my head is so many inches round? It’s the shape that counts! The perimeter is what a hatter requires for fitting by post! Now here’s a piece of paper. Take this pencil
—you do it, Zillah—and when I bend over the table, hold the pencil as near parallel as you can to the sides of my head and draw the outline.”

“What be you about, be ’ee goin’ vor stand on your ’ade on th’ table?” cried Mrs. Mules, as Phillip bent over one end.

“Go on, Zillah. There isn’t any time to lose!”

He had to kneel on the table, and with bowed head down on the wood, told Zillah to draw its shape; while Mules giggled and bobbed, saying softly, “What times us be livin’ in, my dear zoul, I nivver zeed anything like it!”

“Now I know what King Charles felt like before his head was knocked off, Muley,” he replied, looking up.

“Keep your head down, how can I draw the line if you keep bobbing about, Mis’r Mass’n?”

At last it was done. The shape looked rather large, but there was no time to be wasted; it must be sent off marked
Special
Delivery
with a letter and cheque for £5, the difference if any to be credited to his account.

“Tie up Rusty, will you, until I am clear of the village? I don’t want him haring after me.”

So to the town, a shave and haircut; letters dispatched; to jewellers for the ring, engraved with initials as ordered. Good. Now to buy brushes, paints—white and gold for lining out—and distemper for walls and ceiling.

He had forgotten to ask for the certificate of baptism! The banns had been read (he should have gone to church to hear them) the copy of his birth certificate was in his pocket book. Pack on back, holding pots and brushes, he called at the vicarage.

“I must aplogise for not coming to church, Vicar. My only excuse is that I have been writing about my escaped otter, which is also, in a way I suppose, a search for God.”

“The search was concluded a long time ago, you know! There is no need for man to make his own search. But I understand your problem, as I think I understood that of your cousin William. Now you will want your certificate. Come into my study, my dear boy!” said the smiling priest.

On the birth certificate Richard’s occupation was described as
Banker’s
clerk.

“My father is now the Registrar of an Insurance Company, Vicar.”

“He was a banker when you were born, I see, so I will put down
Banker
in my certificate.” He completed the form and said, “I suppose Mary will be going to the wedding?”

“Do you know, sir, I really don’t know! I suppose Lucy will have invited her. But the Copleston’s are a bit vague, so perhaps I’d better ask her. There aren’t any formal invitations being sent out, I do know that. It’s to be a small, very quiet wedding. Do you think I should ask Mary?”

“I think she would like to go. She is very fond of her cousin, I fancy. I shall look forward to seeing you and your wife when you come to live here.”

“Yes, of course. Only—for a while at least—we may not be here. My uncle is starting us off on a farm near Lucy’s home, but we shall be here in the holidays, of course.”

Phillip went to Wildernesse, and asked Mary to come to the wedding. He could give her a lift there, and she could return in the same motor. She thanked him, and said that her mother was not very well, and in bed, so she must decline his most kind offer.

“I’ll write to Lucy, of course, and explain; but you’ll give her my love, won’t you? Dear Phillip,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. “You both deserve every happiness, my dear.” She smiled, and he knew she was thinking of Willie. “Look after Lucy, she is made for you, I think. Be gentle with her, Phillip, and don’t try and do too much. She adores Billy, as we all do! I often go and see him when I’m in the village. Now I mustn’t keep you, you will have so much to do just now.”

*

Pots and brushes were ranged neatly on the table. First the rooms must be cleared of junk. He began, tremulously, conscious of the rushing of time, to fill a sack with his old shoes, boots, threadbare jacket, shapeless trousers, worn socks, newspapers, and tipped them in the centre of the garden. Should he burn her shoes, too? In two minds about this, he set them aside, thinking that he would take them, with her clothes in the trunk, to the Infirmary, for poor people. Or should he burn them, give them ‘the honour and purity of fire’, in Warbeck’s words?

His idea for the best part of a year in Willie’s old cottage had been that nothing must be disturbed; all must be left as when Willie had lived there. The barest room; the simplest furniture; the grandfather clock which had never been wound up since
Willie had gone; no food whatsoever in the larder; no curtains over the windows; on the wall a solitary picture of Queen Victoria presenting a Bible to a kneeling Indian Prince; the Prince Consort standing behind her, and the quotation below,
This
is
the
Secret
of
England’s
Greatness,
England’s
Glory
—the picture Julian Warbeck had scoffed at during that evening before Willie had been drowned.

He took out two worn rubber tyres and started the bonfire. As the rubber began to frizzle and thick black smoke to unwind itself into the air the large, pale face of his neighbour at the end cottage of the row looked over her garden wall and cried out that the thatch would catch fire, whatever was he thinking about, he would burn them all out of house and home, it was dangerous, it was making an awful smell too, couldn’t he put it out?

“Sorry, it’s rubber, and can’t be put out!”

The flames were becoming fearsome, with the dark red flaring of the rubber; and in alarm he ran upstairs, pulled the clothes off the bed with Moggy asleep with her kittens, and began to heave and shove the lumpy old mattress through the narrow casement window. It fell at last, and he leapt downstairs to haul it on the fire, hoping it would smother the flames. White smoke was soon pouring from its four corners, joining the black smoke of the rubber.

Mrs. Mules, passing down the lane, cried out, “What hivver be the man about now, what hivver is it you be up to, what hivver be you a-doing?”

“Burning this old crennelated mattress!” he yelled through the smoke.

“Aw, there be no sense in what you’m doin’!”

“I was saying Mr. Maddison will burn us all in our beds, Mrs. Mules,” ejaculated the neighbour still watching anxiously over the top of her wall. She was the widow of a small retired shopkeeper, and considered herself to be an educated person, above the rest of the village.

“Then I suggest, with great respect, that you don’t go back to your beds for the time being,” said Phillip.

“A proper mazed man!” cried Mrs. Mules. “I allus told’n ’e was mazed as a brish! How be ’ee gettin’ on?”—to Phillip—“You won’t vinnish that yurr place by tonight you know, not likely! Better if you’d let me and Zillah tidy’n up for ’ee, and
gived that old mattress to Mules to rat (rot) down for his raspberry canes! ’Tidden right that you should be bringing your best man to thaccy ould place, you know! You can’t go on living like a moucher now you’m about to be a married man once more!”

“That’s right!” said the neighbour. “My friends all say to me, ‘What, that man an author! If he is, why does he go about in such old clothes?’”

“Only my characters can afford to wear ‘faultless Lincoln and Bennetts’, Burberries, shoes by Lobb, and eat caviare on toast for every meal,” said Phillip. “Someone’s got to pay for that, you know!”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, and I don’t suppose you do either, Mr. Maddison!”

“And you didden ait your breakfast, only a mouthful! What sort of weddin’ groom will ’ee be like, and your wife zaying us starved ’ee! ’Tidden sense, you know, goin’ on the way you’m goin’ on, ’tidden no sense at all! You’m got to settle down now, no more midnight rinnin’ about the viels, or sittin’ by a candle all night ’till cockcrow!”

When the lady and Mrs. Mules had shut up, Phillip went into his cottage and opened his letters. One from his mother said that Elizabeth was unwell, and would not be able to come to the wedding. His relief at this news changed to doubt when he read that his cousins, May and Topsy, had said they would like to come. May was on her honeymoon at Swanage, and Topsy was spending her holiday there, too; and since they were not far by train from Shakesbury they would find their own way to the church, so there was nothing for him to worry about, wrote Hetty.

So May had married Herbert! Supposing Herbert came to the wedding with May and Topsy? Nothing to worry about——? Why did the weak always destroy the strong?

*

Phillip’s first thought was to send a telegram to his mother asking her to send a telegram to cousin May advising her that the wedding had been postponed for a fortnight, by which time Herbert Hukin would be safely back at his Nonconformist printing shop. He drafted several messages, then threw them on the fire in despair and started to scrape the upstairs ceiling. He soon gave this up as hopeless and tried washing off the thick layers of
lime-wash. The water ran down his arm; he had covered less than two square yards in a little over half an hour when he gave it up: the loose flakes came off all right, but the firm patches were too hard. He tried with a knife, making shallow ruts and scratches which made the ceiling look worse than ever, before abandoning the idea.

As the hours tolled from the church tower he drove himself to work faster. He was now on the walls; the ceilings were done. White splashes were all over the beds, on his hair, face, and clothes. His right arm was white to the elbow. At two o’clock Zillah came over to ask him whenever was he coming to lunch.