The Nightingales Are Singing

by Monica Dickens

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  "I'm sure I could if I really set about it," Christine said, irritated by Sylvia's submissive acceptance of everything she was told. "There were two women won a case about it some years ago. Don't you remember? I'd manage it somehow, and if I had a child — "

  "Well, don't let's stand about in this cold hall all day/' said Sylvia, going towards the drawing-room. "Don't you want to go and get rid of that tray?"

  Christine had wanted to continue the conversation where she was, with the unappetising tray of dressings balanced on her hip. The most interesting things never cropped up when you were sitting comfortably in chairs. It was always in transient places like halls or staircases or bathroom doorways that the really important things started to be said, and you had to discuss them then and there, because the mood was lost if you moved away to a more suitable place.

  Some of the major events of her life had come to her when she was passing through this wide chilly hall, with its grandfather clock that told the months and days of the week, its loaded hat-stand, and its huge gilt-framed print of Queen Victoria's coronation. It was here that her father had come from the telephone and told her that her mother had died in the nursing-home. It was here that Maurice had plucked up courage on his way out of the front door and looked back over his shoulder to ask her to marry him, and here that she had stood in her nightdress and read the letter from Jerry, which said that he was on leave in England.

  But Sylvia did not like halls, and she was not interested in the problems of a woman who loved children, but had no husband to give them to her. She went into the drawing-room and poked the fire, and Christine took her tray out to the kitchen arid then came back to pour sherry for all the family.

  That Sunday was like so many other Sundays. It started

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  off with everyone friendly and glad to see each other, and ended with a dyspeptic bickering, after they had eaten too much lunch and tea.

  At one o'clock Mr. Cope came in from his study, rubbing his eyes to show he had been writing.

  "Hullo there, Aged P.!" called Roger from the fireplace, where he was straddling to warm his behind. "How's the magnum opus?"

  "Pretty fair. I make slow progress though, and the publishers want it in a month's time. They never will realise that translating is a highly meticulous art and can't be rushed."

  "Philistines, all of them." Roger shouted his laugh, which went: "Ha-ha-ha!" on the air, like a bubble coming out of the mouth of a character in a comic strip. "What are you on to next? Why don't they give you something Parisian and sexy for a change? It would warm the cockles of your old age. Get the old glands gushing again."

  His father ignored this. He did not think Roger should talk like this in front of Sylvia. She was a favourite with him. He considered her one of the few really nice girls he knew.

  She played up to him. She called him Copey, and made a great point of fussing over him and paying him respect, as if she did not think he got enough of it from his family. She brought him his sherry now, and settled him in an armchair, telling Roger to move over so that his father could get some of the fire.

  Aunt Josephine came in from the kitchen with her face and hands red and some of the hairpins slipping out of her heavy hair. Christine went out to fetch the children, who had already got themselves dirty. She helped them to wash in the little lobby under the stairs. If she left them alone they would just hold their hands under the cold tap and wipe some of the dirt off on a towel, so she washed their hands in her own,

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  She washed their faces with the corner of a wet towel, and they shut their eyes -and pursed their soft mouths. She looked in the mirror over the basin and imagined that she was their mother. When she was drying Jeanette's face she bent and kissed her.

  "Why do you do that?" asked Clement with interest, swinging on the towel rail. "You always kiss us/'

  "Don't you like it?"

  "Oh, we don't mind/' His face shone and his black hair was combed wet and flat to his round head.

  "It's because I love you/' Christine said, untying Jeanette's bow, which was slipping off the end of her forelock. "Doesn't Mummy kiss you?"

  "Not too much," said the boy. "She says it's unhygienic."

  "She often has a cold, you know," said Jeanette seriously, admiring herself in the mirror. "She suffers terribly with her sinuses/'

  Sylvia always did sniffle a bit. Her small coloured handkerchiefs were often at her freckled nose, and her voice had a slightly nasal pitch.

  At lunch Roger carved the roast beef at the sideboard, and the children took the plates to Aunt Josephine, who added vegetables and gravy.

  Mr. Cope said, as he said at every Sunday lunch: "It was a relief to me when you got old enough to carve, Roger. The carver never gets a chance at his own food before people are wanting second helpings."

  'Ton hardly ever carved," said Aunt Josephine. "Catherine used to do it when she was alive, and after that J did."

  "Isn't there any more horse-radish?" he asked, digging in the bottom of the jar. "This stuff is growing mushrooms."

  "You know there isn't," said Aunt Josephine. "We had all that out at supper last night."

  "At school/' Jeanette said, going carefully round the table with a plate, "we aren't allowed to have seconds, even when there's heaps left."

  "They don't starve you," said Roger. "And don't say seconds." He pointed the carving-knife at her with a threatening grimace.

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's common, dear," said Sylvia, patting her mouth with a napkin, although she had eaten nothing yet.

  "Well, everybody says seconds," persisted Jeanette, "and everybody isn't common, or you wouldn't send me there."

  "Quiet, Boots," said her father. "You don't know what you're talking about."

  "I'm afraid she does," said Aunt Josephine. "Cut me a nice thin slice for Geoffrey, will you, Roger, and someone can take up his tray."

  "Let me, let me!" clamoured the children. They did not like Geoffrey, but now he was exciting, because he was in bed behind a closed door and they had been forbidden to go in.

  "No, troops," said Roger. "You'd drop the tray."

  "You can come up with me if you like," Christine said, "but you must be very quiet."

  "I don't approve of all this getting up and running about at meals," said Mr. Cope. "We never get a peaceful lunch. Let those children sit down and get on with their food."

  But they were already out of the door after Christine. They tiptoed into the spare room and stood at attention at the end of the bed, staring at Geoffrey, He did not speak to them, and so they did not like to say Hullo.

  Christine rearranged the pillows and put the bed-table aero ;s his knees. He had been smoking, and there was ash on the s, icets and on the front of his pyjamas.

  "The doctor said you weren't to smoke yet, she told him.

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  "Might as well be dead," he said. "What's this?" He poked at the food with a fork. "I don't know that I want any/'

  "Now, youVe got to eat that all up," ordered Christine, to save his face, because she knew that he really wanted to eat it, but was afraid that he would not be thought ill if he did.

  She went out with the children, and they asked her eagerly on the landing: "Is he dying?"

  "Not yet/' she said, "but he has a terrible big wound, you know. The doctor had to put eight stitches in it."

  She knew that they would enjoy hearing about the stitching, and they did. She told them about it as they went downstairs, and about how much blood there had been. They would retell it to their mother when they got home, and Sylvia would disapprove.

  Christine suspected herself of trying to curry favour with the children by telling them things that they would not hear from other grown-ups. She knew she should not try to make them find her better company than their parents, but she could not help it. She was jealous for their affection. Once, Jeanette had said to her in one of her rare moments of clutching warmth: "I
love you better than Mummy!"; and although Christine had said: "Hush, of course you don't," she had exulted in her heart.

  After lunch she played cricket with the children on the lawn. They screamed and yelled, and Geoffrey kept ringing his bell to complain about the noise. The family had tea too soon after lunch, because Roger and Sylvia had to get back to Farnborough. Aunt Josephine had made cakes and scones, and everyone ate them, although they were not hungry.

  Sunday was a day of eating and lying about in chairs with the Sunday papers. It was a day of earned indulgence, but it made you feel unhealthy.

  The family had said all the fresh things there were to say

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  after a week's separation. Local gossip had been exchanged on both sides. Aunt Josephine had given Sylvia her new recipe for ice-cream without cream. Sylvia had told what the doctor had said about Clement's ears, Roger and his father had discussed the Budget, and now there was a lull, when they were all a little tired of each other.

  The children had been careering about all day, missing their usual afternoon rest, and were ready to quarrel with each other or anyone else. Clement reached for the jam, Jeanette slapped his hand in a prissy way, and he spilled his milk on the carpet. His father shouted at him to go and fetch a cloth and his face dissolved in tears.

  "I wish you wouldn't shout at him," said Sylvia mildly.

  "If it wasn't for me," Roger said, "there would be no discipline at all in this family. You're much too soft with them." Jeanette watched him narrowly, nibbling the icing of her cake.

  "It's all very well for fathers," Aunt Josephine said, scenting a quarrel, and entering battle with alacrity. "They're out all day while the mother copes with the children, and then they come back and behave like God Almighty for an hour or so, until the mother takes the children away and has the trouble of trying to get them to bed after the father has upset them."

  "You're right, Aunt Jo," said Christine. "Men are an awful nuisance in a family."

  "Without the men," said Roger, guffawing, "there ain't going to be no family. Isn't that so, Aged?" He dug his father in the ribs. Mr. Cope edged his chair away.

  "I think men are hell," said Aunt Josephine placidly.

  Sylvia frowned and shook her head. She did not like words like hell used in front of the children,

  "Just because you could never get one for yourself — " began Mr. Cope and stopped himself before he could commit sacrilege on his sister's far-off broken romance. "This tea is

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  abominable." -He drained his cup. "I don't believe you ever boil the water before you make it."

  "If you know so much about it/' said Aunt Josephine, "why don't you sometimes come out to the kitchen and help me? Slave, slave, slave for you, and all I get is criticism."

  "Destructive criticism at that," put in Christine. "The worst kind."

  "Now don't you all be mean to poor Copey," said Sylvia. "He's the easiest man I ever — "

  "Don't be smug," said her husband. "Sucking up to the old man, as if he had something to leave you. I suppose you're trying to imply that I'm difficult."

  They argued on, half joking, half disgruntled. Jeanette sat on the edge of her chair and looked uncertainly from one to the other. The Alsatian lying by Mr. Cope grumbled in his throat, and the two love-birds in the cage by the window began to shuffle up and down their perch and squawk in accompaniment to the voices.

  Clement came back from the kitchen still whimpering and began to mop up the carpet. Christine and Aunt Josephine both noticed that he had brought a clean dish-towel, but said nothing.

  They bickered on for a while, keeping the argument going for argument's sake, and when it was time for Roger and his family to go they were all quite pleased that Sunday was over. Aunt Josephine wanted to clean up the kitchen, Christine wanted to listen tQ a programme on the wireless, Mr. Cope wanted to go to sleep, and Sylvia wanted to get back to her tidy polished house where, even if Roger did make a lot of noise, no one answered him back.

  In the hall, Clement tried to put on his sister's coat, and Jeanette screamed and hit him. He screamed louder than she did and fell on the floor.

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  "Overtired," said Aunt Josephine crisply. "Take them away, Roger."

  "Boots! Champ!" he bellowed. "Stow that, and get on out to the car. We're sick of you."

  The children went out looking very small, with their hats pulled too far down on their heads. They walked far apart from each other down the garden path. Christine wanted to run after them and kiss them goodbye, but Sylvia might not like that, and the children were in no state to like it either.

  Everyone kissed in the hall, and said how lovely it had been, and almost meant it. It had been like most other Sundays, and Sundays were always supposed to be lovely, with the family all together.

  "I'm going to close my eyes for five minutes," said Mr. Cope, as Aunt Josephine waved from the door and shut it as the car drove off. "Don't anyone come into the drawing-room."

  Christine said goodbye to her wireless programme and went upstairs to see how Geoffrey was.

  He was hot and cross and complaining about crumbs in his bed, although he had put them there.

  "Those children are the noisiest ever," he said, sitting huddled in a chair while Christine made the bed. He was wrapped in an eiderdown, and with his bandage askew and two days' growth of beard on his yellow skin he looked like riffraff saved from drowning. "I'd just got to sleep this afternoon when they started raising the devil in the garden."

  "I'm sorry," she-said, making a beautiful mitred corner with the sheet, and wishing that Sister Ram, who had always said her beds were the worst in the ward, could have seen it. "I'm afraid that was my fault. I was playing with them out there. I must remember I'v,e got an invalid in the house now."

  "Yes," he said, hitching the eiderdown round him like an old woman, "you must."

  (Chapter cfwo

  As Geoffrey's condition improved he grew more demanding. It meant that Christine and Aunt Josephine could never be out of the house together, because Mr. Cope would not answer the spare-room bell, even if he heard it.

  They nursed him as kindly as they could, but it was very trying having Geoffrey in the house. Christine was glad to get off to work after she had washed him and made his bed in the morning. She had taken his car to the garage on Sunday night when it was raining, and walked back with Timmy across the common, cold and wet and feeling martyred, and hoping Geoffrey would pay the garage bill. She did not drive the car any more.

  Margaret was away from Goldwyn's all that week, which put more work on to Christine. Stocktaking was drawing near, and Mr. Parker was working his old bones up to a small panic about it. He would call Christine into his office a hundred times a day to ask her something she had told him six times already.

  On Wednesday morning, while she was searching through the shelves at the back of the department for an old novel that had not been wanted for years, a man came diffidently up to her. He was wearing a light raincoat over tan-coloured trousers and his face looked vaguely familiar.

  When he asked her if she had got a book called Communism Is Amongst Us, she was not surprised to hear his American accent. It was mostly Americans who wanted that kind of book. English people were tired already of reading about the Communist menace. They hoped vaguely to deny its existence by ignoring it, but Americans wanted to probe it out of its terrors,

  "I'll get it for you in just a moment, sir," Christine said. "As soon as IVe finished with this customer/'

  Then she remembered who he was. He was the American naval officer who had sat beside her on the bench in Grosvenor Square and offered her a cigarette the day Geoffrey cut his head.

  He looked more insignificant out of uniform, narrow-shouldered and lightweight and a little lost, standing in people's way between the counters, looking about him with his black brows drawn down. She watched him while she was wrapping up the novel for the customer before him, and wondered whether to risk remind
ing him that they had met.

  When she found him the book about Communism, he said: "Thanks a lot for your trouble/' and was so pleasant about it that she said, before she had time to feel shy: "I saw you in Grosvenor Square the other day, didn't I? We sat on the same bench."

  "I know it," he said, watching her hands as she made up the parcel for him. "I was wondering if you would remember."

  Christine found herself wishing that she were not wearing the old skirt and jumper which was all she could be bothered to put on this morning after Geoffrey had been captious about his dressing. Her hair needed washing. She knew it.

  The American talked to her for a few minutes about nothing very much, and then she saw a customer walking about helplessly with a book, and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to go."

  "O.K.," he said lightly. 'Til just wander around for a while. This is quite a store you have here/'

  "Better than Saks Fifth Avenue?" It was the only American shop she knew.

  "Well, I suppose not, but — " He meant: Pretty good for London, but did not say it. He was a very polite man, and more at his ease than most of her English male customers, who were apt to be brusquely embarrassed in the act of buying.

  Christine went away, and the naval officer stayed in the department, looking at books with the critical and slightly dissatisfied air of Americans in shops, on the defensive against the salesmanship that pursues them all their lives. Christine saw him looking at her once or twice, and then he went away and out of her life, as customers did.

  She told her aunt about him when she got home, and Aunt Josephine said: "Romance! A meeting in Grosvenor Square. It sounds like a film with Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding." Aunt Josephine loved that kind of film. She loved Ivor No-vello, too, and had seen all his shows two or three times, swooning a little in her upper-circle seat.

  "Not romance," said Christine. "He wasn't particularly attractive. It was just funny though, meeting him that day, and then him coming into the shop."

  "Think you could get any nylons out of him?" Aunt Josephine, though careless about the rest of her appearance, favoured her legs, and saved up to buy sheer silk stockings for them, which she laddered, kneeling to polish the floors.