The Nightingale's Nest

by Sarah Harrison

  At the Jarvises I remained the efficient, unflappable, soberly dressed young woman they’d employed, I made sure of that. I flatter myself they’d never have guessed how altered I was on the inside.

  It transpired that Suzannah, when she left the house that day last week when I’d been into her room, had gone to stay with other people. Dorothy, of course, was the source of this information, which related to Chef’s annoyance about numbers.

  ‘Don’t ask me where,’ she said. ‘She’s a proper fly-by-night. One day she’s here, the next – whoosh. But her stuff’s still here, so she’s coming back.’

  I couldn’t resist asking: ‘Do you clean in there?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Pull the other one! I changed the sheets, that’s all. Not that they needed it. It’s stifling up there this weather, I reckon she’s been sleeping on top. In the buff probably.’

  I made no comment. I knew Dorothy was dying to know more about me and what I got up to when not at Crompton Terrace, and these little sallies were intended to test the water, to get a rise out of me which I wasn’t going to provide.

  ‘That Mr Rintoul’s a messy bugger,’ she offered, by way of a second go. ‘But he’s not working, so I do clean in there. D’you think they teach them at art school – oil-painting, watercolours and how to live in a pigsty?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Bet your place isn’t like that.’

  ‘Put the kettle on would you please, Dorothy?’

  Christopher Jarvis and Rintoul had gone out together somewhere, so I was entirely at his wife’s disposal. I didn’t have to ask about Thursday’s arrangements; it wasn’t long before the issue of the menu came up.

  ‘I wonder if the weather’s going to hold?’ Amanda murmured. ‘It makes such a difference if it’s hot – no one wants a big cooked meal. That would make it easier for Chef, too. He’s always so put out when we can’t give an exact number.’

  I could see both sides of this, but it seemed to me that some factors at least could be established which would help the poor man.

  ‘Let’s see,’ I said. ‘You won’t be fewer than, say, four, will you?’

  ‘Good gracious, no.’

  ‘And not more than . . .’ I plucked a figure from the air. ‘Twelve?’

  She thought about this. ‘Not as many as that . . . Eight, I should say, unless – no, no, not more than eight.’

  ‘Then perhaps you could tell Chef there will be eight? If it turns out not to be so many that won’t matter.’

  Her face puckered with worry. ‘He does so hate waste when he’s been to a lot of trouble.’

  I noticed that it was not the Jarvises but their cook who hated the waste, but he couldn’t have it both ways. For all his glumness I rather liked Chef, but the tyranny of his disapproval had to be overthrown, for everyone’s sake.

  ‘There won’t be that much left over, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘And why don’t you order a salmon? Then you could have it hot or cold, depending on the weather.’

  ‘That’s a very good idea, Pamela.’ She brightened up, and I was really pleased to have been the cause of it. She might be ineffectual (Dorothy’s ‘ninny’ was too harsh) but hers was a genuinely sweet, generous nature.

  I fetched a pad and pencil to write down her grocery orders, asking casually as I did so: ‘Has one of your guests left? There seem to be fewer people in the house.’

  ‘Suzannah, no, she hasn’t left. She’s gone to stay in Eastbourne for a few days. I believe she comes back tomorrow’

  I made a mental note to tell Chef. ‘Perfect weather for a trip to the seaside,’ I said blandly. She agreed, fanning her hand in front of her face.

  ‘A sea breeze would be so welcome . . . I find the heat quite trying. We go to Italy in July, it’s Christopher’s favourite place in the world although I’m afraid it’s out of the frying pan into the fire as far as I’m concerned. But the house is beautifully cool so I loiter in there through the middle of the day.’

  It was the first I’d heard about them going away, and I wondered how that would affect me. July was only a few weeks away; it was so like them not to mention anything about their plans. Would they want me to take my holiday at the same time? Or would they leave me with enough work to keep me occupied? Or – and this was the most attractive option – would I be left with no specific tasks, but simply required to keep an eye on things in their absence? I was a little ashamed of myself for thinking it, but the prospect of being free to observe, and perhaps to explore, was irresistible.

  We made the list, and I placed the orders, including a five-pound salmon from the fishmonger’s. These days I always scouted round the kitchen before Chef arrived to ensure we missed nothing, and didn’t buy things she already had. We wrote out the menu for Chef, ‘for eight’: artichoke soup (hot or cold); salmon (hot or cold) with peas, new potatoes and hollandaise sauce; strawberries and cream. I brought the household bookkeeping up to date while she wrote some letters, and then I offered to walk up to the village and post them. She asked, apologetically, if I’d collect some shoes of her husband’s from the mender’s while I was there. I was only too happy – it was another beautiful morning, and she always worried that I didn’t have enough to do when her husband wasn’t there, so this suited both of us.

  Before I left I reminded her to give the menu to Chef as soon as he arrived. We smiled at one another, like children discussing a grumpy adult co-conspirators, becoming friends.

  I noticed as I left that the swallow-babies’ heads were visible. It would soon be time for them to learn how to fly. This would present quite a problem for the parents, because of the nest being on the inside of the porch. The entrance to the porch was wide and open, with wooden arches on either side, but the little ones would need to begin their maiden flight with a swift, difficult swoop if they weren’t to collide with a wall. And then there was a tiled floor . . . I did hope that nature and instinct would protect them. Like the Jarvises, I’d begun to feel proprietary about the swallows. Perhaps later today, with the lunch party in mind, I would suggest to Amanda that I make a discreet sign warning visitors about the nest.

  It was mid-morning and the sun was hot, but not yet oppressive. I took my time. Now that I was working at Crompton Terrace, Highgate village appeared different. When I had first come here for my interview I had thought it terribly smart and exclusive, perched on its hill far above town. Now I saw it with different eyes. This place couldn’t fool me: it had a double life.

  The cobbler was a chatty soul. ‘Top-notch shoes, these,’ he remarked as he wrapped them up. ‘Lovely leather, made in Italy. I shouldn’t say it, but the Italians know what they’re doing.’

  I acknowledged the compliment on Mr Jarvis’s behalf. It flashed across my mind that this sort of detail would have delighted my father, but unaccountably incensed my mother, who would have filed Italian shoes under ‘unnecessary’, the male equivalent of ‘showy’.

  The cobbler glanced at me with a twinkle of curiosity. ‘Staying with them, are you?’ I told him I worked there. ‘They’re an interesting couple,’ he said. ‘Always have a houseful.’

  It occurred to me that as a local tradesman of long standing he’d probably picked up a good deal about the Jarvises, and it certainly wasn’t my place to gossip about them. I paid for the shoes and left, buying a sandwich at the baker’s before returning down the hill.

  When I got back I put my swallow-notice idea to Mrs Jarvis, who was delighted.

  ‘I think you should definitely do that, Pamela. It would be too awful if anything happened.’

  ‘Mr Jarvis won’t mind?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite the opposite, he’s dotty about our swallows. He always says it’s an honour to have them here.’

  She supplied me with a wide-nibbed pen and some black ink, and I spent the next hour writing out the notice in my best calligraphy, taking a childish pleasure in each smooth ‘O’, downward sweep and upward flourish. I was almost done when she popped her hea
d into the office.

  ‘Pamela – oh, doesn’t that look nice, you are clever . . . Listen, I don’t feel like eating any lunch today so I’ve let Chef and Dorothy go, and I want to lie down in my room for a while. Will you be all right?’

  I assured her that I would. It occurred to me, perhaps unworthily, that her decision to give Chef the day off was not unconnected to her having handed over the luncheon menu for eight. Still, what did it matter? It was rather nice to know the house was empty but for the two of us.

  ‘Have you had something to eat?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘I bought a sandwich in the village.’

  ‘Do please use the garden if you’d like to,’ she said. ‘It’s a little untidy, but there are plenty of chairs, and cushions and what-have-you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I might well, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’

  ‘No, no, you must, you do so much for us . . .’ Her gratitude was touching when in fact I felt that where she was concerned I did very little, and none of it at all demanding. She made to leave, then added: ‘There’s a parasol out there if you want to use it. It’s a bit of an awkward thing, but I’m sure it won’t give you any trouble . . .’

  I finished the notice, and put it on top of the bureau in the drawing room for her final approval. Then I collected my sandwich, and a glass of lemon squash from the tidy and deserted kitchen, and went out to the garden. I was very conscious that this was another turning point, a very definite step forward in my relations with the Jarvises. Or at least with Mrs Jarvis, but I couldn’t believe that he would object to or countermand the granting of this small privilege.

  Her description of the garden as ‘a little untidy’ was an understatement. Seen from the house it was a sunlit area of brick terrace and daisy-spattered grass, with a thick shrubbery beyond. Once I was out there I realised that the shaggy grass was at this time of year scarcely more than a clearing on which the romping vegetation threatened to encroach unless cut back – something which had been attempted with more energy than expertise.

  I tested one of the chairs and sat down. As I found a spot on the ground where my glass would stay upright I noticed one or two cigarette stubs and a wine cork among the daisies. Bees hummed, and a cloud of small yellow butterflies hovered over a sweet-smelling bush covered in white flowers. Admittedly I was no gardener, but I rather liked it – I could have been out in the countryside. About to bite into my sandwich I glanced self-consciously up at the Jarvises’ bedroom window, but the curtains were drawn.

  When I’d finished, I decided to have a look round. It wasn’t a large garden, perhaps eighty foot long I judged from its neighbours, but the end seemed mysterious and far away, cloaked by trees and shrubs. An inviting little stepping-stone path led into the jungle and I followed it. It wound away so that almost at once I felt cut off from the house and the open garden behind me. The air was deliciously cool and the glossy dark leaves of rhododendrons seemed to breathe moisture. There were several quite tall trees, and when I reached the wall at the end I found a couple of giants growing in either corner, like the pillars of a four-poster. Ivy crawled over the ground and up the wall which was damp and green, as if covered in verdigris. It was another world.

  I stood there for a moment, savouring the cool, shaded seclusion. I wondered if anyone ever came here, and why. Just then my question was answered by the gleam of a small object among the moss and ivy at my feet. I bent down to pick it up. It was a hairslide in the shape of a cluster of strawberries and white strawberry-flowers, the fruit and petals prettily enamelled. I was about to put it in the pocket of my skirt when I saw something else in among the leaves, near where the slide had lain. It was, to my astonishment, a bird – a tiny, brown bird, sitting on its nest, frozen with fear, trying to be invisible. I too kept still as a statue, full of a sense of wonder, and privilege, desperate not to alarm her. I knew that skylarks nested on the ground, but suddenly I remembered something Amanda Jarvis had said and it gave me a childish thrill.

  I was looking at the nightingale!

  With exquisite care I took a step backwards . . . And another . . . Another still . . . until I could turn without frightening the bird and make my way back between the sheltering branches, leaving her safe.

  When I emerged on to the grass my heart was pattering as if I’d run a mile and I felt ridiculously pleased with myself. I had absolutely nothing left to do indoors, so I remained in the garden. I collected up the cigarette ends and corks (there turned out to be more than one) from the grass, and did some simple weeding around the edges, only pulling up those plants of whose identity I was certain, like thistles, plantains and dandelions, and putting them in the dustbin. Rather pleased with the effect I’d achieved, I went to the lean-to at the side of the house, next to the outdoor lav. There didn’t seem to be a lawnmower, but I found a stiff broom and swept the terrace, collecting the rubbish up with a dustpan and brush and emptying that into the dustbin too.

  With the bit now well and truly between my teeth I went round to the front of the house and started on some weeding there. This, being a smaller area, responded even better to my efforts. Setting aside my complete ignorance of all things horticultural, I began to wonder if care of the garden might not become another of my responsibilities, but the look on the face of a passing neighbour, and her faint, baffled, ‘Good afternoon’ told me that I didn’t yet look the part.

  I was clipping the top of the hedge with some rather blunt shears when I heard Amanda calling my name. I’d been in a world of my own and felt suddenly quite guilty as I rushed round to the back, pink, perspiring, grubby-handed and wild-haired. But she displayed only relief, putting her hand to her breast and closing her eyes with a smile.

  ‘Pamela – thank heavens! I thought you’d disappeared!’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, Mrs Jarvis. I had nothing else to do so I was amusing myself with a little tidying up in the garden.’

  ‘Tidying? Oh!’ She looked about her, noticing for the first time the results of my amateurish labours, ‘Oh!’ she cried again, putting her hands together, her eyes and mouth round with astonishment. You’d have thought I was Capability Brown and had created nothing less than a sweeping prospect with a neo-classical gazebo and artificial lake. ‘Pamela! Is there no end to your talents?’

  I beamed. Her reaction was more than I could have hoped for, as well as far more than I deserved. ‘I was really just fiddling about – and I was very careful not to pull up anything I didn’t recognise.’

  ‘Of course you were . . .’ she breathed. ‘It’s marvellous the difference you’ve made.’

  ‘I did a bit at the front, too,’ I said. She at once flew round there, with me in her wake, and again declared herself completely overwhelmed.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘we could do with help, but Christopher objects to the idea of some stranger wandering about in the garden. He likes to feel that any of us can come out here at any time and have peace and quiet. He sees it as a sort of sanctuary, but the trouble is that at this time of year it runs wild.’

  The word ‘sanctuary’ reminded me of something and I took the hairslide out of my pocket.

  ‘I found this,’ I told her, but not where, or what else I had found.

  She took it from me and examined it, rubbing her thumbs over the bright enamelled surface. ‘What a pretty little thing . . . I think it might be Suzannah’s. Could you bear to go up and pop it in her room?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I was only too glad to. For one thing I needed to wash my face and hands and comb my hair, and for another this meant that I had not just been allowed, but sent, into the attic room, and could feel less guilty about my previous visit. I believe Amanda had an almost superstitious aversion to going into her guests’ rooms for fear, perhaps, of what she would find. She could have had no idea how justified those fears were in this case!

  Cooler and cleaner, but already beginning to feel quite stiff from the unaccustomed exercise, I went u
p to the top floor and into Suzannah’s room. She couldn’t have taken much with her to Brighton; it looked exactly the same as before. But for one thing – the sketchy lines on the easel were now taking shape, and it was possible to make out the beginnings of a portrait. Or at least a picture containing a seated figure. I put the hairslide on the washstand, and stood back to get a better look. The shock of dark hair, the heavy drooping shoulders, the big hands clasped between the knees – there was no mistaking Edward Rintoul.

  I found this both surprising and pleasing. Surprising that one artist should come here for the express purpose, as far as I could see, of sitting for another; and pleasing because I had recognised it. What with Christopher Jarvis’s comments on my art appreciation, and his wife’s on my gardening, I was in danger of becoming quite big-headed. Except that the nagging sense of things I didn’t know, or understand, kept me in my place.

  I went back to my desk, and having nothing to do took a book on the Dutch Masters from the bookcase and sat reading, and staring open-mouthed at the pictures. When five o’clock came Mr Jarvis and Rintoul had not reappeared, and I went to find Amanda to say that I was going.

  She was in the drawing room, also deep in a book, a novel. She had changed into a pale blue bias-cut dress with a soft frill around the scoop neck and looked pretty and, for once, relaxed.

  ‘Are you off, Pamela? You’ve done so much today. I can’t thank you enough.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure, really.’ I didn’t say, ‘It’s what you pay me for,’ because I fancy it rather pleased her to think of me as an exemplary, competent soul who did things out of the kindness of my heart. In spite of the comings and goings at Crompton Terrace I was sure she was lonely.

  ‘Before you go,’ she said, closing the book, ‘I wanted to ask if you’d join us for lunch on Thursday?’

  I was taken aback. ‘That’s very kind of you. I don’t know – I mean, are you sure?’ What I meant was that I wasn’t sure. I’d become used to being an observer. My pretensions to being one of them had never extended to sitting round the table with them and their artistic friends.