The Nightingales Are Singing

by Monica Dickens

  "Alice would have, if she'd seen him first," Christine said. "I was slow. I missed my chance, and I shan't see him again."

  He was back the next evening, just before closing time. He looked better in his uniform. He stood looking round, and Alice pranced pertly up to him, but he saw Christine and went over to her. It was nearly five-thirty, and the last customers

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  were being hustled gently out of the department. Christine was tired and wanted to hurry home, because Aunt Josephine was waiting to go out.

  "Can I help you, sir?" she asked briskly. 'We're just closing/' She was piling up books as she spoke, and then she was sorry that she had been offhand, because he looked down at his shiny black shoes and said: "Oh, I wasn't going to trouble you for a book. I just wondered, if you had the time, whether I could take you for a cup of coffee or a drink, or whatever you'd want."

  Christine was surprised. He was looking at her expectantly, with his cap under his arm and his narrow head with the clipped black hair tilted to one side, like a bird. His mouth was pursed up, judging her reaction.

  When she said that she was sorry but she had to hurry home he looked crestfallen, and a little regretful of having asked her. With the clock at five-thirty and the commissionaires beginning to lock the doors, she could not embark on an explanation about Aunt Josephine and Geoffrey, and she was afraid that he thought she was making an excuse because she did not want to go out with him.

  If Aunt Josephine had known about it, she would have said: "Don't come home. You might get some nylons," but that would have meant telephoning and all sort of complications, and, anyway, she had said she could not go.

  "I'm sorry," she said, feeling a lift of the soul because he had liked the look of her enough to come back. "Look, you'll have to go if you don't want to get locked in." She began to move away, but he still stood there looking at her with deep-lidded eyes that were peculiar because they did not blink.

  "Could you come out another day?" he persisted, like a man who has set himself a task and means to carry it through. "Tomorrow maybe?"

  "All right," said Christine, even more surprised than she had been the first time he asked her.

  "Thanks a lot. I'll look forward to it," he said. "Goodbye now."

  He went over to one of the Piccadilly doors, which had been locked by the commissionaire, who was now drawing across the iron grille outside. The American coolly tapped on the glass, as if it was part of the commissionaire's duty to let him out whenever he wished, and the man unlocked the door for him. He would have done the same for anyone who tapped on the glass, but an Englishman would not have tapped. He would have been distressed to find the door locked, asked for help inside the shop, and been shown out through the delivery entrance in Jermyn Street.

  Christine set her hair carefully that night, and asked Aunt Josephine to iron her white blouse with the ruffles. She did not say why, because Aunt Josephine would have cried: "Romance!" and it was not romance. She was just going to have a drink with an almost strange man, who would probably turn out to be a bore. He had undoubtedly only asked her because he did not know anyone in London.

  The next morning she put on her grey suit with the white blouse, told Aunt Josephine that she would be late home, and looked forward all day to the evening.

  She was enjoying the anticipation more than the reality. She knew that she was dramatising something that might turn out to be quite dull, but by the middle of the afternoon she began to get a little excited, and to glance towards the street doors, although he would not come for some time yet.

  Alice was often fetched from work by young men. Christine seldom was, and certainly never by a stranger about whom she knew nothing. This was something different. This was an adventure. She had quite a lot of friends, and sometimes went

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  on to a cocktail party or out to dinner after work, but after the age of thirty all your friends seemed to be old friends. You did not live perpetually in the expectation of gathering to yourself new people, as you did when you were experimenting with life at twenty.

  The American was in the store at five-twenty-five. He was wearing his uniform and his rather solemn expression, which eased into a smile when he saw Christine. He did not smile easily. His small, full-lipped mouth weighed up situations before it relaxed to accept them.

  "Hi there!" he said, as Christine went over to him. "Good to see you/' He behaved as if they were already old friends, which rather damped her spirit of adventure. However, he was there. She had decided by five o'clock that he would think better of it and not come back.

  "Ill have to go out by the staff door and punch the clock," Christine said. "Will you meet me there? Do you know where Jermyn Street is>"

  "No, ma'am." He shook his head. He wore his cap very straight, and he kept pushing at the knot of his tie, to make sure he looked correct.

  It seemed funny to think of anyone not knowing where Jermyn Street was. She told him where to meet her, and shepherded him out of the department before the doors were locked.

  "Who's the boy friend?" Alice asked her, while they were getting out their handbags from under the humorous books.

  "What boy friend?"

  Miss Burman, collecting paper bags, was listening with pinpoint eyes.

  "The sailor. American, isn't he? Nice going, Miss Cope." Alice went click-click out of the side of her mouth and wiggled her hip.

  "I'm off home," Mr. Parker informed them, coming out of

  his office with his Dr. Coppelius shuffle. He always said that, as if he could possibly be going anywhere else at that time in the evening. "Did you check those Everymans for reordering, Miss Cope?"

  "Yes/* lied Christine, because he might have expected her to stay and do them tonight.

  "Good girl. Good girl. Well, good night all." He lifted the musician's hat to his women and made for the door.

  Christine renovated her face in the cloakroom, put on her grey beret, took it off, put it on again and finally decided to go without it. Most of the crowd had gone by now. She imagined the American standing in uniform by the staff entrance, watching all the girls coming out and being scrutinised by them, bold because they were in pairs or groups and he was standing alone.

  Miss Burman had stayed behind to tidy her locker. She pressed up the stairs beside Christine, who wished she would not stay so close. If they went out of the door together she could not introduce the American to Miss Burman, because she did not know his name. She hurried on, while Miss Burman showed the receipt for her pastry to the timekeeper, but Miss Burman caught her up and punched the clock just behind her, and was at her side as they went out of the door.

  The American was waiting with his arms held a little out from his sides, one foot on the kerb and one in the road. He stepped forward with a small salute and smiled. When he smiled his eyes closed up, so that you could not see his odd, unwinking stare.

  Miss Burman, who had been holding Christine's arm — she always had to touch the people she was with — let go of it. "Oh, excuse me," she stammered, and melted away, as if she had surprised some clandestine intrigue.

  "Gee," said the American, "I thought you were never

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  coming. I never saw so many girls in my life/* They both laughed, and then he suddenly saluted again, stood to attention and was very formal. "Commander Vinson Gaegler, United States Navy," he announced, as if his name were the most serious thing in the whole world.

  "Oh — thank you. My name is Christine Cope/* said Christine, quite embarrassed by the sound of her own name, although it was far less embarrassing than his.

  "Well, fine," he said, shaking hands as if they had never met before. "Now, Miss Cope, where would you like to go? I'm not too familiar with this city/'

  She was the native and he the stranger. It was up to her to suggest somewhere, but she was suddenly shy, not knowing what kind of place he had in mind.

  "We could go up to the Air Force Club on Park Street," he said, "if you'd li
ke that/'

  She would have agreed to go anywhere, since she had no ideas of her own.

  "We'll get a cab."

  "It might be difficult, this time in the evening — " she began, but a taxi was already following his lifted hand to the kerb. That was her first experience with an American of being able to get anything you wanted whenever you wanted it, even in London.

  It was one of the new taxis, longer and shinier and less like a horseless hansom.

  "I love these funny old London cabs," Vinson Gaegler said.

  "But this is one of the newest ones."

  "I think it's marvellous," he said, not understanding.

  Christine could never ride in a taxi with her feet on the prickly mat without remembering Jerry and how painful it was to the knees when you were kissing on the prim leather seat and slipped off it. She had not kissed anyone in a taxi

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  for years, but she rode in them little enough to think of them still as creatures of the night, their interiors dark buckets of love. It always seemed wrong to be in a taxi in the daylight.

  The American sat far away from her in the corner and read out the names of streets. She asked him how long he had been in London.

  "Not too long. Just ten days. The navy flew me in to Bovingdon at eighteen hundred hours, and I came to London and found they had no hotel reservation for me. I had quite a time finding accommodation that night."

  "Where did you go? 0

  He named a hotel in which nobody that Christine knew would ever stay. People took a room for one night, or perhaps just a few hours. She smiled, because the American seemed rather proper, and she wondered whether he had known what kind of place he was in.

  "I'm not there now, of course/' he said. Tm at the Mount Royal. I like London pretty well, but I plan to get out and see some of your country as soon as I get time. I never was here during the war/'

  He was easy to talk to, because he gave you information without you having to ask for it. All you had to do was to sit in your corner of the taxi and let him talk in his slow level voice.

  "My family originally came from Birmingham/ 1 he said. "I'd like to get up there some time, and there are a lot of other places I should see/*

  Christine wondered whether she ought to offer to take him to Stratford or Blenheim or somewhere, but it might sound too oncoming, even if she only meant it to show that English people were not all standoffish and stuffy.

  "How long are you over here for? 0 she asked. "I mean, are you stationed here now? 0

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  He leaned forward to read the scale of increased fares pasted under the meter. "I'm afraid, with regard to the section I'm with, I can't tell you that/' he said carefully, making her feel like a spy, when she was only making polite conversation. It seemed so odd, when England and America were supposed to be allies, that they were perpetually having secrets from each other and setting up complicated organisations to try and find them out.

  "There are many people at your Admiralty here who would like to know just what I'm doing," the American said, with some satisfaction.

  The taxi stopped at one of the narrow houses in Park Street, which used to disgorge G.I.s with canteen mugs and tin cutlery every day at noon during the war. Inside, Commander Gaegler spun his cap on to a counter and took Christine upstairs to a lounge with an ornate fireplace, whose windows looked onto a small paved garden. It was easy to imagine it as a drawing-room in its private days.

  There were two air force officers with sleek-haired American girls who laughed a lot, and a spectacled soldier with his wife and two small boys, who had shaved blond heads and drank Coca-Cola through straws solemnly, as if it was a rite.

  Commander Gaegler put Christine on a sofa, asked her if she would settle for a Martini, and rang the bell. When the barman came to take their order, he said: "How's it comin', Commander?" He was English, but he had been at the club long enough to speak the language.

  The drinks were very large and very strong. There was more gin in them than in the Martinis Christine made. The American, however, screwed up his lips and said: "You can't get a really dry Martini anywhere in London."

  He was more sophisticated here in his own surroundings than he had been in the store. Christine thought that perhaps

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  she liked him better when he had been diffident and a little lost in the book department

  However, he was easy company, and by the time she had finished the Martini Christine began to feel as if she knew him quite well, although she had a suspicion at the back of her mind that if she really had known him quite well, with all their personal information already exchanged, there would not have been so much to talk about.

  He asked her questions about herself, and was gratifyingly interested in her answers. She told him about Goldwyn's and about her family at home and what she had done in the war. She told him about all the animals at Roselawn.

  "Do you like dogs?" she asked.

  "Oh sure. My mother has a chihuahua/*

  She did not mean that kind of dog, but never mind. He told her about his home town of Kaloomis, Illinois, and about his sister's marriage to the eldest son of one of the oldest families in the town, and about his mother, who wore a badge of the Mothers of the Purple Heart, because her other son had been slightly wounded in Korea.

  When Christine looked at her watch, she had been there more than an hour and had had two of the outsize Martinis. Probably her nose and her full cheeks were shining. She took out her compact. They were.

  She powdered her face and said: "I must go now. I mustn't be back too late/'

  'Til see you home/' said the American, getting up with her.

  "Oh no, that's all right. I live rather far out, you see. It's much too far. I can get a bus right here at Marble Arch." She admired herself for being able to produce so easily the Americanism of "right here/' After an hour of his company it came quite naturally.

  "I have a car/' he said, pleased that he had this to offer her.

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  "A brother officer lent it to me while he's in Germany. We'll go and collect it, and 111 run you home/'

  She did not want him to take her home, because there would be the difficulty of whether or not to ask him to stay to supper, and what her father would say if he did, and whether there would be enough food, and she remembered that Aunt Josephine was making shepherd's pie tonight, which was not one of her most successful dishes.

  The American had made up his mind, however, so they walked up to a garage at Marble Arch. The car was a beautiful cream-coloured Buick convertible, such as Christine had never ridden in in her life.

  She felt wonderful as she drove out to Barnes with Commander Gaegler with his gold braid and his coloured ribbons, directing him and pointing out items of interest, like the Albeit Hall and Olympia.

  He did not know that to live on Barnes Common was inconvenient and rather suburban. For all he knew, it might have been the grandest place to live in London, and he was delighted with the gorse-scrubbed open space before the house, and with the house itself, which he called an Interesting Old Place, although to Christine it was only shabbily Victorian.

  He seemed also to be quite pleased with all the animals. "This is real homey," he said. He made a noise like tearing silk at the budgereegahs, and ran his finger-nail along the bars of their cage. The cat that was asleep with its front paws over the fender would not come to him, but Christine's gregarious dog put its head on his lap, and he stroked it while Christine mixed him a Martini, mostly gin, because that was how he had said he liked it. She mixed it in a glass jug, as Geoffrey had told her she must, although she would not submit to doing this for Geoffrey.

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  Presently her father came in, and Vinson Gaegler sprang to his feet and was introduced. Christine could see that her father was a little suspicious of him. Who is this Yank? he was thinking. We haven't heard about him before. He wandered about the room, not looking directly at the guest, and the American was
very respectful to him. He offered to mix him a drink, which Mr. Cope thought was not respectful, but presumptuous.

  Christine got them both sitting down and tried to maintain an easy conversation. She knew that her father was worrying about whether the American was going to be asked to stay to supper. Vinson Gaegler gave him a little brisk information about the American Navy, and Mr. Cope grunted in response. He used to be like this when Christine was young, and brought new young men to the house. If they dared to come again, he had been capable of greeting them with: "Good God, you here again?" He thought that was funny, a joking reference to their persistence after his daughter, but the young men did not think so.

  During a lull in the talk, when Christine was wondering what she could say to recover the easy relationship she and the American had had at the Air Force Club, a piercing shriek came suddenly from above. It was followed by another, and then a reverberating groan. The house was like Nightmare Abbey in a Gothic tale. Christine and the American had sprung to their feet, but Mr. Cope remained seated and said: 'It's only Geoffrey. The doctor has come to take out his stitches."

  "It's my cousin/' Christine explained to the startled American. "He had a slight accident here on Saturday/ 1 It sounded silly. "Christine has had a slight accident" was what her nurse used to say when she hustled her upstairs to change her knickers.

  "That's tough/' he said. 'I'll be going. I'm sure you wouldn't want me here at a time like this."

  "No, that's all right. Do sit down and finish your drink. They won't need me up there." By the time she had seen him off and gone upstairs the operation would be over, and she would have sent the American away for nothing.

  Geoffrey continued to fill the house with horrible noises. "Good God," said Mr. Cope, getting up, "I can't stand this. It's worse than a maternity home."

  The American looked at him, surprised that he should have come out of his monosyllabic grunting to say this. Mr. Cope went out of the room, calling to his dog, and they heard the front door bang with her father's slam that sometimes brought a hat down off the stand.