The Nightingale's Nest

by Sarah Harrison

  ‘Felicia?’

  ‘His wife. I don’t believe you’ve met her; she came late to our last party, but you weren’t there.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re bound to encounter her some time. Oh, Pamela . . .’ Amanda breathed reverentially, ‘be prepared – she’s the most beautiful woman in England!’

  This exchange stayed with me for some time. I don’t know why I should have been surprised that John Ashe was married. Of course, a wealthy, middle-aged businessman was bound to have an attractive, capable wife to run his house and help him entertain, to be a social asset and an adornment, the presiding goddess of hearth and home. Far more unusual had he been a bachelor. But everything about Ashe was unusual. Try as I might I could not picture Ashe the married man, taking breakfast and dinner à deux, submitting to the rule of domestic and social arrangements, keeping another person apprised of his whereabouts. And as for sharing a bed with ‘the most beautiful woman in England’ – no wonder that in spite of his fearsomely damaged appearance he exuded such unshakeable self-assurance. Here was the stuff of the redemptive fairy tale, yet I could not bring myself wholly to believe in the essential nobility and selflessness of this twentieth-century Beast. Felicia Ashe, I considered, must be a remarkable woman in more ways than one. Either that, or a stupid one.

  Summer crawled on. It was late July and the Jarvises were due to take off for Italy, where they had friends who owned a large house near Siena. Georgina would be going with them and not for the first time I wondered what her parents made of it all. But she had said herself that they were desperate for her to become engaged, so perhaps they saw this jaunt with her godfather as an opportunity to meet the right young man.

  Christopher Jarvis encouraged me to take some time off while they were away.

  ‘It’s going to be busy at the gallery in September, but thanks to you we’re pretty well ready for the off. You deserve a holiday.’

  ‘Thank you. But what about the office? If there’s no one here—’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s the silly season, and I’ll make sure to tell everyone who matters that we’re not around.’

  At Ashe Enterprises there was no talk of holidays, and having only been there for a short while I would not have dreamed of asking. I had begun to find the silence less oppressive, and to feel, if not exactly at home, at least more at ease. I was also increasingly aware of the nature of John Ashe’s business and the people he was dealing with.

  What emerged most clearly from the correspondence and calls with which I dealt, and letters already filed, was my employer’s power. Not simply the authority of the boss, the man in charge, but the inbuilt, intractable, absolute power of a man who inspired fear. I sensed it in the urgent, careful, somewhat overwrought tone of his subordinates. They were plainly terrified of him, though in my hearing he never used anything but the coolest, simplest, easiest language. His communications were never effortful, because they didn’t need to be.

  One particular exchange was typical. The manager of a place called the Calypso in Bredan Street near Berkeley Square wrote to Ashe concerning the cost of the champagne currently served in the club. There was, it seemed, an issue of how much it was reasonable to charge the customers.

  ‘. . . while we must, of course, maintain the standards to which our patrons have become accustomed,’ wrote the manager, ‘the price of the champagne we offer has risen to such an extent that I am unsure if it is any longer reasonable to charge those patrons a corresponding price. I therefore wonder whether, with your approval, we might not consider ordering a less expensive label, for a trial period at least . . .’

  This tentative suggestion, tinkling with trepidation, padded out with an obsequious preamble and a final paragraph that was the typewritten equivalent of a nervous grin, met with a reply which took less than ten seconds to dictate:

  ‘. . . if our patrons are accustomed to the best champagne then we had better not disappoint them. If they are not, and can’t afford it, they need not remain our patrons. Yours sincerely etc.’

  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the wretched recipient.

  Apart from the normal business of the clubs, there were two other organisations with which John Ashe had dealings, whose function and identity were a mystery to me. They were Libellule – ‘Dragonfly’ – of Paris, which maintained a London office in Belgravia; and Ben Dimarco Associates of Ninety Dean Street, only a few hundred yards from Ashe Enterprises. I believe they were suppliers of some kind, because the correspondence tended to concern the delivery and condition of orders, identified only by a date and reference number. Communications, unlike those of the unfortunate nightclub managers, were crisp and businesslike on both sides, exchanges between equals. Once, I had occasion to place a call to Mr Dimarco on Ashe’s behalf. The voice on the other end was softly accented and charming, a voice that contained a smile and invited one in return.

  ‘Excuse me – who am I addressing?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Griffe – Mr Ashe’s secretary.’

  ‘Welcome, Mrs Griffe!’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll put you through.’

  The only other employee I saw, albeit very occasionally, was Ashe’s driver who I found out was called Parkes. I wasn’t entirely happy calling this pleasant and dignified young man by his surname, but he never invited me to do otherwise and like ‘Chef it soon became a habit. Not that we spoke much. From time to time when I left the building at six o’clock he would be waiting outside in the Hispano-Suiza, or polishing the glossy metalwork to an even higher shine with a shammy leather. Sweetly, perhaps because he considered it rude to demote me after his original mistake, or because he had noticed my wedding ring, he continued to address me as ‘madam’. This made me feel a little older and grander than I was, and I’m afraid I rather played up to it. Our exchanges were confined to small civilities, the currency of goodwill between strangers.

  ‘Good evening, madam,’ he would say. ‘How are you this evening?’

  ‘I’m very well thank you, Parkes. The car looks splendid.’

  ‘She’s a beautiful car. I look after her.’

  ‘You do. Keep up the good work.’

  ‘I will, madam.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, madam.’

  I would have called Parkes ‘beautiful’, except that it seemed an inappropriate epithet for a man. His skin was smooth as velvet, his eyes large and dark as a deer’s; he had the kind of curly black hair usually given by artists to the god Pan, and a wide, sculpted mouth; when he permitted himself an unrestrained grin, his teeth were perfectly white and even.

  I was always left reflecting that John Ashe, in spite, or perhaps because, of his disfigurement, had surrounded himself with beauty: his car, his chauffeur, his clothes, his office, his ‘palace’ of a house, his art collection, not to mention his fabled wife.

  I didn’t, of course, include myself in this litany of loveliness. I filed myself under ‘functional’. I considered that now I was becoming a fixture in Soho Square Ashe in all probability scarcely noticed me. But I was wrong. One afternoon when he came into my office to dictate letters, he said:

  ‘Was that your young man I saw you with the other day?’

  ‘That depends,’ I said. ‘Where did you see me?’

  ‘A perfectly fair question. In the square outside my window.’

  I was suddenly hot and flustered. ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘He waits for you very faithfully. He was on the seat in the garden for a quarter of an hour before I realised he was there for you.’

  This observation was left to hang, and for me to comment on, which I chose not to do. Ashe stood next to me, leaning on the cabinet, ankles crossed and arms folded.

  ‘What does he do?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s a doctor.’

  ‘M-hm.’ He made it sound as though this was what he’d expected. ‘Where does he do his doctoring?’

  ‘In south London.’

  ‘So it’s a long journ
ey for him.’

  ‘He’s used to it.’

  ‘He must be devoted to you.’

  The word ‘devoted’ sounded slightly odd in his mouth, as if it were a term he had never used before, and of whose precise meaning he was unsure. I said nothing.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Shall we make a start?’

  Next time Alan met me I gave my head a little shake as I walked towards him, and linked my arm through his rather than exchanging our usual kiss.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Secret police after us?’

  ‘No, but Mr Ashe saw us last time.’

  ‘So? What does it matter?’

  ‘It doesn’t, really – but I don’t like to think of us being watched.’

  ‘Perhaps it cheers the old boy up.’

  This idea of Ashe being a sad, lonely individual who gazed indulgently at courting couples made me smile, as it was intended to.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Alan, ‘let’s not talk about him . . .’

  My mother on the other hand, when I next saw her, was keen to talk about everyone, in order to be horrified by what she heard. I’d hoped that now she was on her own she might make some closer friends among her neighbours, but after the flurry of activity surrounding my father’s death, and his funeral, she had returned to her former aloofness. As a result I felt more than ever obliged to visit as regularly as clockwork, and when I was there to submit to a barrage of questions. I was her link not just with the world at large, but with parts of it as foreign to her as Timbuktu.

  She listened with thrilled disapproval as I told her about Ashe’s car, and driver, and the champagne party with the jazz musician, and the state of the back garden at Crompton Terrace. House-proud woman that she was, she was particularly keen to know how Suzannah’s mural had gone down with the Jarvises.

  ‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘What did that poor woman say when she found her guest-bedroom wall all covered with paint?’

  ‘She was delighted,’ I said. ‘They both were.’

  My mother shook her head in a positive ecstasy of shocked disbelief, and relieved herself of a torrent of platitudes. ‘Well I never, would you believe it, there’s no accounting for taste . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ I went on, determined to give her full value while we were on the subject, ‘the only thing that concerned them was whether some future owner of the house would paint over it and blot it out.’

  My mother bridled. ‘I would, I can tell you.’

  I decided it was time to move on. ‘You’d like Mr Ashe’s office. It’s absolutely spotless. The main office is all white, and not a thing out of place.’

  ‘All white? I’m not sure I’d care for that.’

  ‘With big mirrors on either side. I try not to look.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Pammie.’

  I took this somewhat faint praise as a compliment. Such was the store she set by cleanliness and neatness that almost nothing else mattered. Other people’s children were always judged by these exacting criteria: ‘lovely, clean, well-turned-out youngsters’ was her most ringing endorsement, whereas ‘a scruffy lot’ condemned the relevant offspring to outer darkness. When she said I had nothing to be ashamed of she meant that I was clean and neat, all that was required of a nice young woman in my position. Outstanding good looks were somehow suspect, as though the person concerned were trying to pull the wool over the eyes of ordinary, decent people. Make-up, especially noticeable make-up, was ‘muck’, and fashionable clothes ‘showy’. Anything truly showy in the dress line was ‘common’, which meant tarty. I couldn’t think of a single one of my new circle of acquaintances whose appearance would have met with her approval, particularly Louise . . . Heavens above! It was fortunate that she was unlikely to encounter any of them.

  There were two people, however, who met her exacting standards.

  ‘How’s that friend of yours,’ she asked, ‘that tall girl, who works at the tailor’s?’

  ‘Barbara.’

  ‘That’s the one. She came to your father’s funeral which was very civil of her, I thought.’

  I couldn’t help wondering what my mother would have thought if she’d known that Barbara had committed the unpardonable sin of getting herself in the family way (always how it was expressed – the girl ‘got herself into the mess, the man was rarely held responsible). But Barbara’s secret was safe with me.

  ‘She was quite ill a while ago. I believe she’s better now, but I ought to get in touch with her.’

  ‘You should,’ said my mother. ‘Especially if she’s been poorly.’

  The simple truth of this tweaked my conscience. She was absolutely right. I resolved to go and see Barbara the minute the Jarvises went to Italy.

  The other person who came up to scratch, thank heavens, was Alan. She didn’t actually say so – in her book that would have been to invite trouble – but her manner made it plain that he had been placed under the heading ‘suitable’. True to her word, there was always a cake in the tin, and the ‘visitors’ sherry was regularly replenished.

  Some Sunday afternoons, if the weather was nice, Alan would leave the Morris outside my mother’s, and we’d go for a walk. Quite often we went via the churchyard and visited Dad’s grave. It didn’t feel in the least morbid to do so, but friendly and peaceful. It was nice to go there with Alan, who in a very short time had instinctively understood what made my parents tick. We’d buy half a dozen blooms from the flower seller on the corner, fill the metal container at the tap in the corner of the churchyard and arrange them in it. If the sun was hot we’d treat the place as a park and sit down in the grass with our backs against the stones. Dad would have liked it – company for him.

  On one such afternoon, as he tried to fire plantain heads at a stone angel, Alan said: ‘I’ve made a start, Pam. I’ve applied for the Diploma in Psychiatry.’

  I was taken aback, even a little awed to have played a part in this big decision.

  ‘Well done,’ I said. ‘When would you start?’

  ‘Next year. That’s if they’ll even have me.’

  ‘Of course they will!’

  ‘Nothing’s guaranteed. Since the war it’s become an increasingly popular area. But I’m fairly optimistic. I’ve got a good clinical record and my time in general practice should count in my favour.’

  ‘Where would you be?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s the thing . . .’ He popped another plantain. ‘Missed again. I’m afraid I’d be in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said, without hesitation, ‘it’s not that far away.’

  ‘No, but – we shan’t be able to do this sort of thing.’

  I was buffeted by a small, delayed shock wave, and it made me brusque. ‘We may not have Dad’s grave or Mum’s cakes, if that’s what you mean, but we can still see one another. I make more money now, I can come up on the train to see you, you must have times off, I’ve never been to Edinburgh, they say it’s magnificent—’

  I stopped in my tracks. He was looking straight at me, his expression deadly serious. ‘I love you, Pamela,’ he said. The words were so short and plain, and timeless.

  The trouble was I couldn’t find my own voice. Seeing me struggle, Alan got to his knees and put his arms round me. My face was against his heart and I could feel its steady rhythm.

  ‘I do,’ he said again. ‘And that won’t change, wherever I am.’

  I nodded against him. I didn’t have to say anything. We understood each other.

  The Jarvises went off to Italy and the house in Crompton Terrace was locked up for four weeks. On my last working day before they left there was nothing much to do in the afternoon once I’d been out shopping for last-minute things for Amanda. I tidied the garden and had a cup of tea with Dorothy, who had all kinds of plans.

  ‘I’m going to my auntie’s in Brighton,’ she told me. ‘I always have a good time down there.’

  I realised how little I knew about her life. That was the secret of her success – she pic
ked up all sorts of information about other people while giving away nothing about herself. I didn’t even know where she lived, but in this holiday mood she was happy to tell me.

  ‘Archway,’ she said. ‘Just down the road. I walk here most days.’

  ‘Do you live with your family?’

  ‘Do I!’ She pulled a face. ‘Mum, Dad, and my two younger brothers. My sister’s married to a butcher, they’ve got a shop and two babies, rather her than me! She’s only two years older, but she knows exactly what the rest of her life’s going to be – can you imagine?’

  I admitted that I couldn’t and we spent a moment in gloomy, self-satisfied contemplation of such a fate.

  ‘But my auntie’s a one,’ Dorothy went on with a twinkle. ‘And my uncle. If I ever get married I’ll do it like them.’

  ‘How is that?’ I asked.

  ‘No babies, for a start. And lots of fun. Just ’cause you get married doesn’t have to mean no fun.’

  I thought quite carefully about this. ‘But shouldn’t things change a little when you marry? You can’t just go on pretending you’re not, surely?’

  Dorothy shrugged. ‘Not pretending – but it doesn’t have to be a prison. Anyway, you tell me. You’ve done it.’

  ‘Not for very long,’ I reminded her. I wasn’t offended by her question; this was no longer a sensitive subject between us. ‘We only had a honeymoon.’

  ‘That’s what I want!’ she declared triumphantly. ‘One long honeymoon!’

  I had my plans, though they weren’t very adventurous. I rather envied Dorothy; it would have been nice to go to the seaside, or to another part of the country, but I wasn’t entirely free. I would spend the few days at either end of each week in London, so as to be on the spot for my work for Ashe. And the middle period, from Thursday to Tuesday, staying with my mother. That way Alan and I could see plenty of each other, and I would have time to track down Barbara, too. I also wanted to see more of Louise and find out more about the Apache Club.

  As it was, I saw Louise rather sooner than I bargained for. On the first Tuesday evening after the Jarvises’ departure, I stepped out of the lift at Twelve Soho Square and almost bumped into her. She looked, as so often, almost too glamorous for six o’clock in the evening – ‘showy’, in fact – in a low-necked pink suit and an amusing little hat, in darker pink trimmed with pleated satin ribbon. I don’t know which of us was the more astonished. We both said each other’s name simultaneously, and then: