The Nightingales Are Singing

by Monica Dickens

  "Don't be horrid, Tommie."

  "Never will discuss him, will you? But I gather from things youVe let slip that he's a snob. Snobbish and selfish and conventional and jealous —and probably a bore. My God, Christine darling, you got yourself into a hell of a mess that day you sat on a bench in Grosvenor Square/'

  "No I didn't. Vin isn't like you think. My marriage isn't any worse than most people's. It would have been all right if I hadn't met you."

  "How can a marriage be all right unless it's perfect?"

  "You don't understand. You get fond of a person. You — you get used to them. If they have faults — or perhaps not faults, but things that just aren't right for you — well, you do mind when you first discover them, but after a bit you get used to them and it doesn't matter."

  "It must matter. It must get worse and worse."

  "No. You don't understand. It isn't like that. You don't understand about marriage."

  "I understand about your marriage," Tommie said. "It's all washed up."

  "It isn't! Be quiet, Tommie."

  "Christine darling, don't snap my head off every time I mention divorce/'

  "Why not? I've told you Vin would never divorce me. He's a Catholic."

  "But would you get a divorce if you could?"

  "What's the use of asking me that? I can't."

  -386-

  "But would you?" Tommie took hold of her shoulders painfully and made her look at him.

  "I couldn't. Oh — one can't. You get married, and you have to go on with it. Let me go. You're hurting me."

  She turned away and went to look out of the glass door at the dark bare garden. Above the rooftops the sky was orange in the city's glow, and two shafts of beacon light stood straight up from the airport across the river.

  "It's like what Stevenson wrote about marriage," she said. "There can be no by-path meadows. 'The road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave.'"

  "A dismal picture," Tommie said. "But, anyway, Stevenson didn't mean it. He'd only been married about a year when he wrote it, and he was madly in love with his wife. She was full of sex and mystery, they say. Listen, darling." He came and stood behind her. "If it was you and me it wouldn't be long and straight and dusty." He rested his chin on her shoulder and they looked out at the city night together. "I know I told you on the ship that I'd never ask a girl to marry me because of my tin leg, but that was just making an excuse. Trying to be noble, or something. If I'd met you it wouldn't have mattered. Would you have married me if you'd met me before Vinson?"

  Christine did not want to say Yes. She was afraid to say it. But when he turned her round and saw her face he did not need an answer.

  Christine was driving along the U.S. i highway to New York, where she was going to greet her husband and say goodbye to her lover. It should have been a very poignant drive, but Christine felt dead and without emotion, driving automatically, unable to think about the future towards which she was heading, the end of a dream. Tommie did

  -387-

  not talk very much. He behaved as if this were a drive like any other. He played with the radio, trying all the different stations, sang a little out of tune, and seemed quite happy.

  He should not have been like that. Christine glanced at his guileless face and was suspicious. Did it mean that to him this drive was not the end of the journey, that he was not going to try very hard to persuade the other English professor to change places with him, or that even if he did, he was not going to let two hundred and fifty miles keep him away from Christine?

  Christine was afraid. She did not trust Tommie not to write to her, although she had told him that Vinson was quite capable of opening her letters if his suspicions were aroused. She did not trust him not to ring her up. He might even turn up at Arlington with a charming smile and an innocent alibi that would not deceive Vinson for a moment. It would be terrible, unthinkable. Christine was afraid of what Tommie might do to the lives of all three of them, yet at the same time she could not help cherishing at the back of her mind the thought that he would still be in America and that she might see him again after all.

  When Jerry had not written to her for two years, the thought that he was somewhere in the world and that she might see him again had been something to cling to. After he was killed she realised how much store she had set by that hope. She and Tommie were parting, for ever she thought, but he was not dead. He would still be there, just

  in case.

  One side of her was glad of that; the other feared it. She looked again at Tommie, grinning at the mournful crooning of an amateur on the radio. He should have been a pathetic person, a person you could feel sorry for because he had lost a leg and lost a girl who would not wait the war out for him and lost his chance of the army career he had always wanted,

  -388-

  but he was not pathetic. You could not be sorry for him. You could only fall in love with him and be a little sorry for yourself and afraid of his power to complicate the future.

  Timmy, who did not like riding in the back of the car, jumped over to the front seat and turned Christine's thoughts to the problems of the more immediate future. She had not written to Vinson that she was bringing the dog over. If he was going to be angry about it, there was no point in letting him foster his anger beforehand. She had not meant to bring Timmy to New York. Vinson would be pleased to see her at the pier, and she was not going to spoil that at least, but when she had shut Timmy in the house, he had begun to jump up at the window and knock down plants as soon as he heard the car start up, so she had had to go back and bring him with her.

  She would not take him on to the dock. That would be too much. Vinson might look for her from the ship and see Timmy and start to get angry before she had a chance to explain. She would leave him in the car and try and find some way of breaking it to Vinson while he was being happy to see her and glad to be home. But however happy he was to see her, whatever words she found to tell him about Timmy, Vinson was sure to be angry. She had disobeyed him flatly, as she had seldom done before. Vinson had told her not to bring the dog from England, and she had brought him. There was^going to be trouble.

  There was going to be trouble too if she did not get to New York on time. Vinson hated her to be late. He was never late himself. He was always ready much too early and he could not understand that circumstances could ever make anyone else late. He would certainly not understand these circumstances, because she could not tell them to him. She was late because when she had finished getting her home ready for Vinson's arrival and had gone to the little red house to fetch

  -389-

  Tommie he had not been ready and he would not hurry.

  If she was late in New York and Vinson had to wait for her, he would be angry already before she told him about the dog. She must not be late.

  "You're driving awfully fast/' Tommie said. "Do you always go at this speed with this much traffic about*?"

  "We're late," Christine said. "It's all right. I'm a better driver than any man ever gives me credit for. I wish this horrible great truck would let me pass. It's been holding us up for miles."

  "You're thinking about the man Gaegler," Tommie said. "Hurrying to meet him. Oh well."

  "If I obeyed my instincts I'd be crawling." Christine looked at him. He was smiling. She would never forget what he looked like. She said: "You are the most attractive man I ever met."

  He leaned across to see her face in the driving mirror. "And you," he said, "you're beautiful."

  "You know I'm not."

  "You are, and you know when you're most beautiful? It's when I tell you you are."

  If she had not turned her eyes to look at him in the mirror she might have seen a split second sooner the car racing towards her in the middle of the road as she pulled out to pass the big lorry. ... If she had not swerved to the right away from the other car it might have avoided her. ... If she had speeded up to get past in time. . . . What was the use of these thoughts chasing round in her brain aft
er the lorry had crumpled the side of her car like tinfoil, and she stood unhurt by the side of the road, while the clustering aftermath of an accident gathered round her*? Someone had kept Timmy alive for half an hour, but there was nothing anyone could do for Tommie.

  -390-

  V inson was very patient, very understanding, very kind, but he could not arouse Christine out of the numb lethargy in which she moved through the long days. He tried. He tried very hard to help her. He had a theory that the best way to get over the shock of an accident was to talk about it, and Christine sometimes felt that she would scream when he started once more on the subject of the hitch-hiker, and how Christine must not feel responsible for his death, because if a man was foolish enough to take lifts on the highway he deserved all he got.

  He was very forbearing. He did not upbraid her for her careless driving — although he would not let her drive the new car — and he never reminded her that she had promised him that she would never stop for anybody on the road. Utterly cast down, guilty and despairing, Christine found herself wishing that Vinson would be cross with her* His tolerance of her reckless mistake, his assurance that he would pay anything to get the best defence for her if she were charged with dangerous driving, his easy acceptance of her story about the hitch-hiker all piled reproach upon miserable reproach into her secret thoughts.

  Vinson had come back determined, as she had been when she left England, to start their marriage off again more hap-

  pily and forget the sorry time they had been through. He was expecting his promotion to come up at the next selection board, and he was always reminding her of that, promising her that she should be a captain's wife, as if he were offering candy to make a child happy.

  Christine moved dully and purposelessly through the long days, and the nights when she lay awake, haunted by her thoughts. The only thing she saw clearly was that Vinson must never know about Tommie. It would be the end of even this pretence at marriage that they had between them now.

  She did not let Vinson see her cry. She did her weeping after he was asleep, or when she was alone in the house in the afternoon when the day seemed never-ending. The only time she wept before him was one Saturday morning when they were sitting late over breakfast and the letter came from Margaret. Christine opened the letter unthinkingly and had read half through it before she came to the bad part.

  "Did you ever meet our friend Tommie Burns on the boat?" Margaret wrote. "I wonder if you heard about the terrible thing that happened to him. He was hitch-hiking to New York — just the sort of crazy thing he would do — and he was killed by some fool of a woman driver who gave him a lift."

  Christine did not move. She sat stiffly at her end of the kitchen table with tears rolling down her face, unable even to raise a hand to wipe them away.

  "What's the matter, honey? What on earth's the matter?" Vinson got up and came to her.

  "It's nothing." Christine crumpled the letter in her lap. "A letter from Margaret. Somebody — somebody that she and I knew is dead, that's all."

  "Someone you were fond of?"

  Christine shook her head.

  'Well, you mustn't cry for that. Your nerves are all upset these days, honey, that's what it is. I wish you'd go see a doctor."

  If it were as simple as that. If only she were a neurotic woman who could go to a doctor and get solace from injections of sterile water and egotistical hours of lying on a couch and being psychoanalysed.

  Once she drove with Vinson past the narrow little red-brick house in Georgetown that looked like a slice of a house instead of a house. Vinson liked to drive through Georgetown whenever he was in that part of Washington. He liked to point out its old-world beauties to Christine and tell her that when they had made their million that was where they would live. What would he have said if Christine had turned to him and said: "When you were in Coco Solo I lived in that red house with the white door for a week with a man I was in love with"?

  The white door had a black-and-white notice on it saying FOR RENT. Down the hill of Thirty-fourth Street and over the crossing of Volta Place, two fire engines sped with sirens screaming, as Christine had so often heard them come screaming through the night from the fire station on Q Street.

  "When you were in Coco Solo, Vinson," she would say, "I lived for a week in that silly red house with a man I was in love with."

  Because she would never say it, it was interesting to toy with the idea of how Vinson would react. Would he really have said and done all the things she had told Tommie he might if Tommie did not stay away from her? She would never know now, any more than she would ever know whether he would have tried to make her give Timmy away or have him destroyed. All her problems had been solved, very neatly, by tragedy.

  -393-

  Admiral Hamer would be on the selection board which would either make Vinson a captain or leave him a commander for another year; therefore Admiral and Mrs. Hamer must be invited for cocktails.

  "Oh, Vin, why)" Christine said. "Surely if they want to make you a captain they'll do it whether you pour the old man full of Martinis or not."

  "That has nothing to do with it," Vinson said stiffly. "It's simply a friendly, courteous gesture that we should make at this time. You ought to get to know Mrs. Hamer better. I'd like to have them just sit down here with us and feel at home."

  It seemed an unlikely picture, but Vinson was bent on it, so Christine acquiesced. She would make some delicate canapes and polish up the silver tray, but she would not wash the white paint of the mantelpiece as Vinson said she must.

  "Why should I? Good Lord, you talk as if they were royalty. A house is supposed to look lived in, and you can't have fires without getting smudge marks. Everyone knows that, even Mrs. Hamer, I should think, though she doesn't know much."

  "What's come over you, Christine? You used to be so particular about the house."

  "That was before . . . That was when I ... Well, I felt like it then. Now it doesn't seem to matter any more."

  "It matters very much. I want you to wash the mantelpiece."

  "I've got better things to do." It would not take her half an hour to clean the paint round the fireplace, but it had now become an issue.

  She would not do it, and so on the day the Hamers were invited, when Vinson came home, he fetched a bucket of water and a cloth and a tin of scouring powder and went on his knees to wash the paint. He did not do it reproachfully. He did it quite happily, humming tunelessly while he worked, and imagining Mrs. Hamer saying to the Admiral what a nice

  -394-

  trim house the Gaeglers had, everything spick and span in true navy fashion.

  Christine was in the kitchen in her dressing gown, putting out the canapes. Mrs. Meenehan came in to tell her that there was a soap sale on at the supermarket, and insisted on showing her how to cut radishes to look like little crowns, although Christine preferred to cut them like flowers in the way she knew.

  "I had a letter from my friend Mary Grady," Mrs. Meenehan said. "She sent you her regards, and said how much she'd enjoyed meeting you and your cousin. How is that handsome cousin of yours, by the way? Is he still around? I thought he was just the most charming man. It was so nice for you to have him to squire you while the Commander was away."

  Mrs. Meenehan had a carrying voice. She could stand outside her back door and talk in her normal tones, and Christine could hear her quite easily from her own house. When she was close to you, she did not bother to turn down the volume any more than she ever turned down the television set.

  Had Vinson heard? Was he going to be suspicious now? Frightened, Christine began to think of how she could lie her way out of this.

  When Mrs. Meenehan had gone, Vinson came into the kitchen to empty his bucket.

  "Finished cleaning?" Christine asked brightly to disguise her uneasiness.

  "Just about. It looks much better now/'

  "It looked all right before, I thought."

  Vinson ignored this. "What was Mrs. M. saying ab
out your cousin?" he asked. "You didn't tell me a relative of yours had been here." His voice sounded casual, but Christine was afraid.

  "Didn't I?" She tried to speak airily. "I suppose I must have

  -395-

  forgotten. There were so many other more important things/'

  ' Who was he? Nice guy?"

  "Not particularly/' She shrugged her shoulders. 'Why?"

  "Oh, I don't know." Vinson went over to the refrigerator. "I thought you might like to tell me about him, that's all."

  "There's nothing to tell. He was a tore."

  "Uh-huh." Vinson seemed satisfied. How easy it was to lie. How frighteningly easy to deceive, Christine hated herself for telling yet another lie, and suddenly she hated Vinson for believing it. How silly of him to be so unsuspecting. He with his dramatic jealousies over nothing at all could not now recognise it when he had a real cause for jealousy. Now that the moment of danger was past, her relief quickly turned to annoyance. Her nerves were strung up into a hot taut thread of irritation.

  Vinson turned and said: "I wish you'd go up and take off that dressing gown and get ready."

  "Don't fuss," Christine snapped. She would have liked to scream at him.

  "But you forget," he said earnestly, "the Admiral will be here in half an hour."

  "Oh, damn the Admiral!" Christine burst out. She had thought this so many times, but never risked saying it. She would think it many times again. She saw her future in sudden desperation.

  "I'm sick of the Admiral!" she cried. "I'm sick of Mrs. Hamer too — and all of them. I'm sick of the whole navy!"

  "And sick of me?" Vinson asked calmly, taking the ice trays to the sink.

  Christine drew in her breath. So the crisis was here. For a moment she could not answer; then she said jerkily: "Vin, it's no good. I can't go on."

  "What's that? I can't hear you with the water running."

  -396-

  When he turned off the tap, she told him atout Tonunie. There seemed nothing else to do. It was time now to finish everything.

  Vinson listened without a word until her degrading story was done. It was degrading now. The romance and the glory were faded, dead as Tommie was dead. It was just the sorry little story of an unfaithful wife.