It Was the Nightingale (4 page)

She moved into his arms; he stroked her hair, and kissed her eyebrows; but it was not enough; behind his eyes waited the apparition of magnesium flares and gun-flashes, of toiling men upon the brown, the treeless, the grave-set plain of Flanders——

“Come on, let's get a move on!”

They continued along the track by the shore of a waveless sea, stopping to bathe and swimming apart in order to enjoy coming together again. “Oh! quick, let's get out!” She had seen a fleet of Portuguese men o' war, their single blue sails adrift, their poisonous strings below in the water. The sky was beginning to look sulky; she said the mistral might blow, so they went on to Sète, to wander among the quays of the old port until it was time for dinner.

“I wouldn't mind living here.”

“You mean always?”

“Why not?”

“I'm so fond of Devon——” She thought, I want my baby to be born there, where first I saw Phillip, I want to play with my baby on those very same sands of Malandine.

*

Across a flat plain of stones, through the torrid air with its mirages of shifting dark blue levels, they came to a desert of sandhills, and beyond the sands was the sea.

A welcome wind blew from the short wash of waves which revealed with every retreat glints of mica in the lapsing sand.
Throwing away their clothes they ran into the sea, then lay upon the shore. He was restless, they walked back to the sandhills, into the intense heat under a motionless air. There they sat down, she letting the cub crawl in her shadow.

He wandered away, and leaning upon an elbow, watched her playing with the cub until his feeling became detached from her, beyond his abiding personal happiness, until he felt himself to be bodiless, a mere consciousness in the timeless elements.

Everything was so still, the sound of the little waves a mere whisper. Yet each moment the sandhills were changing. Every beetle toiling up the hot slope, every touch of gossamer bearing tiny Linyphia, every vibration of wing of sand-wasp and butterfly caused a stir among the grains of sand revealed by a glint, a spill, a change.

Never for an instant did the elements cease to cry their sharp and mindless cries of creation, even on the most still day of summer, under the vast blue silence of the sky.

When the mistral blew, the shape of a dune might be changed in a day, diminishing and streaming away in the coils and re-buffets of the wind until the damper, finer sand of the interior hillock was exposed, to be carved cliff-like, so that roots of the binding grasses hung loose when the wind had blown itself out.

Here the elements of air and sun and water strove to abrade all form, living and dead, in the ceaseless percussion of the sands. Bottles rocked upon the shore of the tideless sea received the blast of grains driven by the wind until the glass was dulled to a beauty like the fathomless light of ocean's floor.

Moving the sand with his fingers, he saw that they had buried the skulls of water birds and the shells of snails; wind and sand wore them thin, they broke, and joined the sand-blast, to help polish newer bones and shells, now lying white, momentarily at peace, under the shimmering sky.

He went back to her, and taking her hand, trudged over the scalding sand, feeling himself to be thoughtless as a gossamer drifting in the air. He was part of her, she of him; they were one in spirit. How vain and unreal was his former conception of love, arising from longing. With her beside him he shed the shuck of experience, to exist within a freedom which, before he had truly known her, had lain always beyond the horizon of life.

With her he felt himself to be of the very air of the shore, of the light of ocean, without body, beyond desire.

Walking on, they came to a lower plain extending to another range of sandhills, where torrid air arose in mirage all around them, where even the skiey whisper of the tideless sea was shut out. Such was the heat upon that dried-up plain that they were forced to put on their
espadrilles
; even then the heat burned through the rope of the soles. In silence they came to wind-ribbed slopes, and ascending to a crest, pale green with marram grasses, met the cool shocks of the breeze moving in through the gaps in the dunes torn by old storms bearing across the sea the yellow dust-clouds of Africa.

The sandy hollows were strewn with the battle-wreckage of air and water—jetsam of rusty tins and bleached corks, litter of pine and cork-tree bark, cast feathers of sea-birds, bottles, sea-coal, shattered lengths of bamboo reeds and roots of olive trees torn from mountain ravines by floods of melted snow.

Beyond, the shore was stony. Unknown wading birds flickered away, to alight and run over the line of pebbles anciently rolled smooth by the Rhône. Among black and brittle bladder-weed the shore-birds would gravely pause to pipe their thin notes, to run on again and pretend to pick up food. Somewhere their young were crouching above the verge of the sea, speckled as sand and gravel. He knew their fears and hopes, and led her away.

He must swim! Leaving her with the cub he ran into the water, to plunge through the translucent shells of waves, to glide with open eyes over blurred sand, and then to jump up, shake water from his eyes before turning on his back, hands behind head, to float there bodiless.

They returned the next morning with a tent; they were the only human beings on miles of shore, their faces gilded by hot, quick-silvery reflections of the sun on the pale green wavelets losing their brief water-shadows as they tinkled on the sand.

He built a fire of sea-wood and grilled a fish, which they ate with their fingers while the engine beats of a coastal steamer came to them, a ship dissolving and disintegrating before their eyes as the medusas of the mirage strove to reduce it to scrap.

Now where was the tent, and their clothes? Where was Bédélia?

“Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“I believe the sun feeds us through our skins.”

They walked for an hour, and there was Bédélia, apparently uplifted, surrounded by legless black ponies which scampered away into the mirage as they approached.

“I don't want to wear clothes ever again.”

“Nor do I.”

Cicadas flipped against their legs. Thin and pale in the sky hung a new moon above the Algerian glare of the sun.

She pointed to the sky, where yellow clouds were gathering. “The mistral may be on the way.”

“Let it come.”

They sat by a driftwood fire and ate biscuits and bananas as the sun followed the moon now upon the rim of the sea. He lay, his dark hair curled with salt, with his head on her lap.

“When does Irene expect us?”

“Oh, any day.”

“Won't she be anxious about us?”

“Why should she be?”

A cold wind fanned the flames. The sun was round and red. It was time to leave. They had no light but the moon upon the wastes.

*

The next day they drove with a view of the high peaks of the Pyrenees. Carcassonne, with its old walled town dark on a hill, was passed; they were making for Pamiers. Before them lay a route of steep ascents with many coiling bends, or
virages,
which so wore the belt of the smaller pulley that they had to change it over at Mas-d'Azil for the climb to St. Girons. The air was cold with patches of snow still unmelted on pastures where sheep grazed upon the subdued grass.

There was a further climb to the Toulouse-Tarbes main road, a steady ascent to St. Gaudens and on to Montrejean—over sixty kilometres from St. Girons. Would Bédélia's belt hold out?

Up again from Montrejean, and on to Lannemezan, which according to the Michelin map was nearly 600 metres high. Could they get there on the belt now frayed and ragged? They took the wrong turning and found themselves on a small stony road, leading with many bends to St. Laurent-de-Neste. She suggested turning back; he went on until the belt-fastener tore loose. He repaired it and fitted a spare link and continued along the twisting
route to Bagnères. The engine had plenty of power; up they went in low gear until Bédélia, long and narrow, stuck at a hair-pin bend. They managed to lift round her tail. But how to restart the engine up a slope? It was hopeless.

They lifted the tail round a complete circle and returned the way they had come, spending the night in an otherwise deserted auberge at Bonnemazon, sitting before a wood fire in the dining-room after a dinner of small thin trout and tough mutton. In the morning, back to the main Tarbes road beyond Capern; and from Tarbes along N 117 to Pau, the adventure nearly over, for at the end of the road was Laruns.

It seemed almost the end of the old life together when they stopped at the villa and sat still for a few moments before looking round to see Irene as she came down the garden path to greet them.

“Well, P.M., what do you think of France?”

“A marvellous country, Irene!”

“And how is my brown, brown daughter?”

“Happy, Mummy!”

Hitherto he had thought of France as all one Départment du Nord seen in those areas occupied by the British forces. Now he had known a new France—varied, vast, magnificent—mountains, rivers, bridges, cathedrals, meadows, vineyards—France as she had endured for centuries, France now majestic in his mind.

*

A week later Bédélia, her rear tyres worn to the canvas, was sold—after some hesitation, for they had shared so much with the faithful little 'bus. Still, there was satisfaction in knowing that seven one-thousand-franc notes were folded in his hip pocket, as he sat in the Paris train at Bordeaux, thinking that the blossom of the hawthorn would be white upon the hedgerows when they returned to England. It would be great fun, too, to ride the Norton motorbike again.

And yet——

As the train ran through the old battlefields she said to him, “Are you sorry we didn't go there, after all?”

“No. It may have been so different from what is in my head.”

She took his hand. “When my baby can walk, we'll all come here together, shall we? On our way down to the Camargue?”
She laid the cub, now active and fat, against his neck. “We'll bring ‘la loutre', too, shall we? You look after him, and I'll look after Billy! I'm sure it will be Billy!”

At the Dover customs there was nothing to declare. Fortunately Lutra—Phillip had given the cub its Latin name—slept soundly against her heart, so there was no bother about quarantine.

Their return to Malandine was unexpected; Mrs. Crang had agreed to clean up the cottage, but Phillip had forgotten to send her a postcard. So it was exactly as it had been left.

“Please don’t bother, Mrs. Crang. I rather like to see dust over everything.”

“My goodness, you’m married now, midear! And you mustn’t slape in thaccy bade, you’ll get rheumatics! Walter hasn’t hoed your garden, and just look at the mores (weeds) growin’ up to the cabbages! If only you’d a-sent us a card, us’d had the place all clane for ’ee!”

“Never mind, Mrs. Crang, we can sleep on the floor tonight.” Then to Barley, “I’ll go and get Rusty.”

“My, what a dear l’il kitten you’m got, Miss Barley!”

“It’s an otter cub, Mrs. Crang. We found it in France, the mother had been caught in a trap.”

“What a shame! ’Tes a bootiful li’l hanimal! Will it bite?”

“No fear, it’s quite tame.”

“I hope Rusty won’t titch’n! Nor Moggy, her’s got kittens in your place, her comes in our place ivry day for milk and what us can give’n.”

Phillip walked to the Ring of Bells to fetch his dog, who by now was used to master going away. The spaniel no longer ran frantically after motor-bicycles with a low drumming exhaust note; no longer waited half-way up the steep lane for sight of master turning
the corner; no longer climbed upon the church wall at one particular place, to stare towards the horizon of the land leading to the sea.

Sometimes Rusty had come down to the cottage, Mrs. Crang said, to look through the cat-hole and whine before returning up past the pump and back to his base, the Ring of Bells. Rusty had almost ceased to grieve, with that deep grief of the single-minded mammal which has been removed from its natural life and, through the agencies of food, warmth, and affection, become a vehicle for extended emotion fixed on one superior object. Rusty had found relief from mental pain in the affection of the landlord of the Ring of Bells and his wife; a feeling of safety varied by calls at the Crang’s, where, upon a mat made of scraps of coloured rags, both wool and cotton, he would stretch himself before the fire, or, if it were a day of south-west rainy wind, upon the broken armchair which Crang would give up to “th’ ould dawg”. Rusty had now spread his thoughts, usually called up by the sense of smell, the most powerful agent to influence his mind, over most of the village: his points of call at which one or another of his hind legs obligingly gave way, including the foregoing places as well as a number of garden trash heaps, coign of village shop, Methodist chapel iron gate, a field of grazing to roll on disguising sheep-dung if the wind were what fox-hunters called a good-scenting day, and the blacksmith’s shop where once master had gone to have a piece of iron welded and a rat had run out of a hole in the wall and into a pile of scrap iron.

Now the spaniel whined on seeing his master, and followed him half-way to the cottage before standing still. Phillip knew that Rusty had to thaw out, and went on home.

Barley had waited for his return before introducing the cub to Moggy. She gave it to Phillip, who let Moggy smell it before putting it on the table.

“Stand still, and watch.”

Moggy leapt upon the table, arched her back and growled. Then she crept forward cautiously, sniffing. She made as if to clout with her paw—Barley’s hand ready to stop her—while Phillip spoke to Moggy, stroking her head. Her neck lengthened, the paw went out, she tapped it, like a kitten in play. The cub uttered a faint mew, at which the pupils of the cat’s eyes were expanded full. She glanced away, as if to escape; and swearing
softly, jumped off the table and went up the stairs to where her kittens were lying in the dog’s basket.

“No good,” said Phillip. “She doesn’t like its scent.”

“Wait!” replied Barley. She crept up the stairs two at a time. Moggy was sitting in the basket beside her kittens. She mewed as though in appeal as Barley lifted two kittens and returned downstairs, to put them on the table beside the cub and rub them gently together before putting them on the floor, the cub between kittens. One, feeling the cold, began to cry. Chirruping reassuringly, Moggy ran down the stairs. She made several attempts to lift it by the scruff, and looking up, clearly asked Barley to carry it up for her. Barley picked up cub and kittens together and sat on the edge of the table; and when Moggy sprang up lightly beside her, rubbed the cat’s ear. Moggy crept upon her lap. She put the cub and kittens against Moggy’s fur, they snuggled into the warmth. Moggy purred, so did the kittens. Barley pulled one from its teat, and put the cub there. It fed.

There was a whine at the door. Rusty, too fat to squeeze through the cat-hole, stood waiting. Climbing into the arm-chair, the dog went to sleep.

*

When the year opened into July, Lutra was strong and active, playing with dog, cat, and kittens, racing round the room and pulling at everything with its mouth. The cub loved water, and at first had to be kept from the stream. Barley filled a pail for the cub; it would run to it, slip over one side, slide in and turn over, and emerge from the same place, sleek and spiky-haired.

She bought a large, coffin-shaped galvanised bath, in which the cub, now as long as the cat, rolled and reversed in the water, rocking most of it over the edges. One of its joys was to lie on its back in the bath, when most of the water had been sluiced away, and clutch with stumpy forepaws at the jet poured from a watering-can.

Lutra went with them on the Norton to Malandine sands, starting the journey in the pack on Barley’s shoulders, for they were afraid of rabbit gins. Rusty sat as usual on the tank of the motor-bicycle, but halfway there Lutra sinuated out of one corner of the khaki valise, squeezing through until Barley asked Phillip to stop, fearing that the cub would hurt itself by falling on the road.

By now the otter had grown a long tapered tail. Its movements
were eager and quick; it raced over the sands in a low rippling movement, sand spurting from behind short legs: suddenly it would stop in full gallop and try to slide, rolling over and over before springing away to make for one or other of its favourite pools, into which to dive.

Underwater its stumpy, rather dumpy shape was transformed to a silent, streamlined tapering from pointed nose to end of tail, smooth as ribbon-weed and as glistening when momentarily its head broke the surface. Sometimes it kicked with all four webbed paws; more often it tucked in its forepaws and kicked with hindlegs together, so that its body moved rather like a loop-caterpillar, drawing itself together for the impulse and then straightening with the thrust.

One night it slipped through the cat-hole and was gone. They spent an unhappy hour calling it all the way down the stream to the sea. At midnight, as they were going to bed, there was the familiar noise of wet fingers drawn down a window pane; and Lutra slid in through the cat-hole, to lollop up the stairs, wet, and belly filled. There was eel-slime on the dun patch of his throat.

“As long as he doesn’t get caught in a rabbit gin, I don’t mind if he goes wild,” said Barley.

As the days went on, they realised that Lutra had nothing to fear from local dogs or cats. Indeed, most cats, once they had crossed its scent, made off rapidly, their hair fluffed out.

There was another couple like themselves living in a cottage in Malandine. They had a young child. One afternoon when the Maddisons went down to the sands Lutra galloped over to see them, for they were doing something near the stream which overflowed from Malandine Mere, which filled several acres of the shallow valley. When Lutra did not return Phillip strolled over and found him frisking about in a dam made by the couple, while their child slept under a parasol near by.

“We’re seeing how high we can build this coffer dam before it bursts!” said the man. “Your otter is doing his best to wash it away, look at him!”

Lutra was rolling on his back, twisting and turning underwater, then dragging himself on his belly over the thin sandy wall.

“May I help you?”

He ran to get clods of sandy grass, to place round the arc of the dam. Lutra enjoyed this, and dragged the grass into the water.
Phillip pulled him out, and told Rusty to see him off. While dog and otter were having a rough and tumble the three managed to rebuild the wall.

“Well, after your kind help, may we offer you tea?” said the mother of the baby, politely. “You are most welcome to share our Thermos and bread-and-butter. Perhaps your wife would care to join us?”

She was tall and fair, and wore a print frock with a large straw sun-hat, complete with blue ribbon tied under her chin. Her face was pale, in contrast to that of her bronzed husband, who was smaller than his wife, and dressed, like Phillip, in shapeless old grey flannel trousers and shirt. It had seemed incongruous that she should have worked so hard on hands and knees, with that hat, more suitable for polite Deauville society (as seen in
The
Queen
photographs).

When Barley arrived she said, “Georgie, won’t you do the honours?”

“My name is Pole-Cripps, the old pater’s rector of Mary-Tout-Saints at Queensbridge, and this is my wife,” replied Georgie. “We know who you are, in fact we thought of calling—didn’t we, Boo?—but you were here before us, so, as a matter of fact—not to make too fine a point of it—we have been expecting you to call on us! However, why stand on ceremony? Let’s all have tea together, how about it? I know you have a kettle hidden in the reeds, as a matter of fact I nearly borrowed it the other day, when you didn’t come down, and the old pater came over for the day with the mater. By the way, she got one of your books out of the library, but I haven’t read anything of yours yet. I’m doing a course of the Metropolitan School of Journalism, to help eke out my army pension, aren’t I, Boo?”

During this speech of introduction Phillip had kept a straight face. However, Georgie—“Everyone calls me that, old bean, so let’s drop formality, shall we?”—was so obviously friendly that he felt mean for regarding him as a bit of a joke.

“Please borrow the kettle whenever you want to, Georgie.”

“Thanks, Phillip.”

They went off to gather dry sticks. Two upright stones supported the kettle blackened during several seasons. Soon it was singing over flames nearly invisible in the strong light of the sun which had burnt three faces to a dark brown. George explained
to them that Boo had a delicate skin, which peeled in the sun, that was why she kept her hat on.

“Isn’t that right, Boo?”

“Well, Georgie, I don’t suppose that it is of any interest——”

After tea they swam together, then lay upon the hot upper sands, the two men rubbing pennies until they gleamed bright, the while Phillip looked up repeatedly to watch the kestrel which usually hovered over the golf links towards late afternoon, its feathers seeming almost blood-coloured in the sun now standing over the cliffs to the west. Thomas Morland had such a bird in one of his books, described as with ‘blood-nourished wings’. But they looked red only when the sun was in the south-west, the bird’s front to the sun and against a blue eastern sky. Morland was half a townsman, and didn’t know; all the great writers’ details were exact, ‘precisions’ as Walter Ramal the poet had said at the Woodford’s party in Inverness Terrace when he had met him there. Ramal’s country detail in his poems was marvellous, because true.

“In your course of journalism, what sort of things do you write about, George?”

“Oh, anything! I’ve just done an article on whit-ale, which I’m brewing, by the way. I’ve got a dozen cyder flagon bottles with screw tops in the cupboard of our sitting room, it’s not mature yet, but when it is I’ll give you a bottle, and you can tell me what you think of it. It’ll be pretty potent, I must warn you, for I’ve put in all sorts of extras, including eggs, raisins, and some special yeast, haven’t I, Boo?”

“You have indeed,” said Mrs. Pole-Cripps.

“I used to make it once, but found it rather heady stuff, tangli-legs I think is the local term.”

“Oh no, that’s scrumpy cyder! But wait till you try mine! I’ve timed this brew to be mature just before my next medical board. It brings out my rheumatism. I’ve got a sixty per cent disability pension, and if I can get it increased to a hundred per cent I’ll have a chance of commuting to a lump sum, then I plan to set up an Angora Rabbit Farm, don’t I, Boo? There’s pots and pots of money in Angora hair now, all the old girls in Queensbridge are knitting jumpers with it like hell.”

*

Sometimes at night they went to the Pole-Cripps’ cottage, Phillip taking his gramophone. The carpet was rolled back, and
they danced, Georgie showing considerable agility despite his sixty per cent disability.

“I’ve often wondered about the cause of rheumatism, George.”

“No doctor knows, old bean! That’s the beauty of it! No one can find out how badly you’ve got it. And I do get it pretty badly at times, don’t I, Boo?”

“You certainly do, Georgie.”

“It may be living so near the graveyard,” he went on enthusiastically. “In the old days they used to say that it’s the vapour from the corpses which infects the air. But in my case I’m pretty sure it’s inherited rheumatism. The old pater suffers from it, so did his pater before him. Though I’ll admit the old devil used to put away two bottles of port every night of his life!”

“I used to know an old sweat in my first convalescent home in early ’fifteen, a ferocious old Liverpool Irishman named O’Casey. He had rheumatism which seemed to become worse whenever matron or the doctor was about. At his medical board in Manchester he almost crawled into the room, leaning heavily on a stick. He must have been cured suddenly, for he came out, while we others were waiting to go in, cursing, upright, and throwing away the stick. They’d passed him fit for service.”

“Ah, I know those old scrimshankers! I had a lot of them in my company in the Labour Corps, but they didn’t fool me!”

Phillip thought it time to change the subject. “How’s the journalism going, George?”

“I’ve just done an article on Tramps’ Signs! They put a chalk circle somewhere near a house where one has called, if it’s a dud house, you know, only bread and cheese and an old pair of worn-out boots which they leave in the hedge. An arrowhead for a good square meal, a cross for money, and a double cross if the occupier is a mean old devil likely to set the dog at them. Boo helped me with the facts, didn’t you, Boo?”