The Nightingale's Nest

by Sarah Harrison

  When I’d caught my breath, and my balance, I went back down the stairs, and went at once, without hesitation, into the Jarvises’ room – I had no feelings of guilt, after all I was simply checking and airing it according to my brief. It was pleasant and light, the beds covered with white broderie anglaise, a painted linen chest at the foot, colourful cushions at the head. The walls were painted china blue, and there was a pretty light wood armoire with mirrored doors opposite the window, to my right. Facing me, and ajar, were the doors to the bathroom and Christopher Jarvis’s dressing room. I opened the window on to the garden, and peeped into the dressing room. In contrast to the main bedroom it was plain, austere and masculine, Jarvis’s ivory-backed brushes and shoe-horn, bearing his initials in silver, lay on the chest of drawers, and there was a framed pen and ink sketch of Crompton Row, signed by Paul Marriott, over the bed. On an impulse I pulled back the bedspread, leaned over and sniffed the pillow. It exuded Jarvis’s scent. This, undoubtedly, was where he slept.

  ‘Hello! Mrs G, you up there?’

  It was Dorothy. She must have taken the chance of coming in through the front door.

  ‘Coming, Dorothy!’

  We met in the hall. She hadn’t yet put on her apron and cap, and wore a cotton dress patterned with strawberries. She herself was like a strawberry, rosy and ripe after her holiday. Her hair was soft and untidy, a little fairer than before, and her skin lightly coloured by the sun. I saw for the first time that Dorothy was a beauty.

  ‘You look very well,’ I said. ‘Did you have a good time in Brighton?’

  ‘You could say that.’ She smiled coquettishly. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’

  When we were sitting with our tea at the kitchen table, she said: ‘He was called Jimmy.’ And then, as if this needed explaining: ‘The good time I had – Jimmy Doyle.’

  I knew Dorothy had plenty of admirers; she made casual references to one or other of them from time to time, but something in her manner told me this one was different. She was smitten.

  ‘Does he live down in Brighton?’ I asked. Of all the things I wanted to know about her new boyfriend this intrigued me least, but I was hoping that given an opening Dorothy would tell me more.

  She shook her head. ‘Over the water. He’s Irish.’

  ‘So he was on holiday too?’

  ‘Working on the pier. On the funfair. I took one look, and thought, “That’s for me.” He’s the handsomest bloke I’ve seen outside the cinema, and wicked as sin. All the blarney in the world.’

  I said drily: ‘Which didn’t work on you, of course.’

  ‘I let him think so! Mind if I have a smoke?’

  They weren’t allowed to smoke in the kitchen, but given the general tenor of our conversation it would have seemed unnecessarily pompous to enforce this rule especially with the Jarvises themselves not due back till tomorrow.

  ‘Carry on.’

  She fetched cigarettes and matches from her bag, and lit up. ‘Truth is, I’m stuck on him.’

  ‘I can tell,’ I said. ‘But if he’s down in Brighton . . . Will you see him again?’

  ‘Every chance I can. I’ll save. It’s not far on the train and you can do it in a day.’

  ‘And I suppose he could come up to town as well.’

  ‘Not really. It’s still high season, and weekends and evenings are his busiest time. I don’t mind.’

  It was silly – Dorothy was far more a woman of the world than me and could, as she’d often remarked, look after herself, and yet I experienced a sudden wave of almost maternal tenderness and anxiety on her behalf. I could all too clearly picture Jimmy Doyle, the darling of the dodgems, black hair, merry brown eyes, soft brogue, blarney and all, and it was not a picture that nourished hopes of fidelity. I didn’t for a moment doubt that he had fallen for Dorothy – what red-blooded young man wouldn’t? – but in his life there would be Dorothys galore, a continuous, ever-changing parade of them, some not so pretty, some prettier, but all his for the taking.

  I tried for a light, teasing tone. ‘Careful you don’t make things too easy for him!’

  ‘Play hard to get, you mean? No . . .’ She tapped her cigarette on the saucer. ‘Not this time. I want to be with him while I can. He goes back to Ireland at the end of the season.’

  ‘You’re going to miss him.’

  She shrugged, then sighed. ‘I will, yes, but what can I do?’ I wanted to say ‘forget him’, but it would have been too cruel, and anyway, Dorothy said it for me.

  ‘It’s a case of forget him now, or forget him later. I may as well make the most of him while he’s around.’

  I was overcome with admiration for her strength of feeling, her fatalism, her confidence in her chosen course. A kind of nobility shone through in Dorothy’s attitude towards this young man; a heroic acceptance that her brief period of bliss would have its price, but one she was prepared to pay. There was nothing else I could say.

  ‘And what about you, then?’ she asked. ‘Been up to no good down there in Soho?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That would be telling.’

  The Jarvises came back from Italy, and August gave way to September. The difference between one month and the next was no more than a name, a single tick of the clock, but as always I felt the change in the air. No matter how hot the sun – and that September was very hot – I had a sense of the curtain slowly closing on summer.

  I wasn’t sorry to see it go. It had been a long one, and I liked autumn. The sharper air and shorter days concentrated the mind. London was more itself in autumn and winter. Already I felt more energetic, in anticipation.

  Not everyone shared my feelings, but Amanda Jarvis did. I had never seen anyone so pleased to be back from holiday. Both she and her husband looked well and rested, but she had found the extreme heat unbearable.

  ‘I can’t understand how anyone lives in a climate like that!’ she confided in me. It’s like a furnace, from dawn till dusk, day after day . . . They close the shutters to keep the house cool, but what’s the point of hiding away in the dark all the time? If I went outdoors I had to sit under a tree and even that was too much. Christopher and the others went swimming, which I should have liked to do, but the sand and the rocks were too hot to walk on . . . It’s so lovely to be back, and you’ve looked after everything beautifully, Pamela.’

  ‘We only came in yesterday,’ I pointed out, giving Dorothy her due as well. ‘And very little needed to be done.’

  ‘Still, it gave us peace of mind knowing you were around. We’ve come to rely on you, is that awful?’

  This was the sort of question, typical of Amanda, to which there was no appropriate answer. I could scarcely agree, but neither could I tell the truth which was that no, it was not awful, but it might be unwise. Instead, I smiled politely and asked what she’d like me to do.

  Naturally there were house guests expected. The American artist, Bob Sullivan, was coming over for the launch of his exhibition. The small bedroom was being kept free for Georgina; though she had been commanded to report back to Wiltshire following the Italian holiday it was not expected she’d remain there long. Edward Rintoul would be using the attic room to work in for an extended period. I didn’t know why they put up with it. He had his own flat, and was surely quite successful enough in his field to have his own studio, too, either there or elsewhere. The only possible reason he came here was to take advantage of the Jarvises, and batten on their good nature. I found him tedious and boorish, but they were endlessly, indiscriminately hospitable. I was glad that much of my time would be taken up with work at the gallery.

  My mother, though she complained of the heat, was not looking forward to the turn of the year. I sensed her foreboding, and could understand it. In her changed circumstances how she must have been dreading the long, dark, lonely evenings. And though she liked to keep herself to herself, there was a difference between fending off unwanted visitors and having almost none to fend off, which I feared might happen with the onset of winter. I tried
as gently as possible to encourage the idea of fostering friendships. The best way to do this was to compare her circumstances with less favourable ones elsewhere.

  ‘You’re lucky to have such nice neighbours,’ I said. ‘I don’t even know everyone in my house, let alone in the ones on either side.’

  She gave the little rabbit-like twitch of her nose and mouth which only politeness prevented being a sniff of disparagement. ‘I don’t like too much to-ing and fro-ing.’

  ‘At least you have friends nearby. People you can ask round whenever you want.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call them friends, exactly.’

  ‘Mum – people were kindness itself when Dad died.’

  She bridled. No taint of indebtedness was going to attach to her. I’d do the same for them, they know that.’

  ‘But why wait for a sad occasion? Or any occasion? You could have someone in for a cup of tea any time.’

  ‘I could,’ she said, allowing the possibility but denying the likelihood. And that ended the matter.

  ‘I don’t know what she imagines will happen if she invites another person over the threshold,’ I said to Alan, in some exasperation. ‘She’s her own worst enemy.’

  ‘She’s never less than welcoming to me,’ he pointed out.

  ‘She likes you.’

  ‘And thank God for it! One thing’s certain, she’s not going to change just because we want her to. She’s an independent, strong-minded woman, and you’re very like her, Pam.’

  ‘I’ll try and take that as a compliment.’

  ‘That’s the idea.’ He put his arm round me and kissed my temple. ‘But you’re quite right, she is going to feel isolated. We shall have to make a special effort.’

  I was touched by his use of ‘we’. I thought of Dorothy and her elusive Irish boy, and recognised once more how right she was to pursue her quixotic passion, and how fortunate I was to have love, and to hold it. Not a year ago my life had been airless and dull – becalmed. Now, there was wind in my sails, and on my face. I was by no means sure where I was going, but the voyage was exhilarating.

  He did not expect to have a reply to his application for the Edinburgh course until September when the academic year was underway, and then an interview and a written exam would follow. We had decided that to make any plans before we knew the outcome of all this would be to tempt fate. We were absolutely confident of our feelings for each other, and of our shared future. For the second time in my life I made the mistake of imagining there was plenty of time . . . If I could go back, I would not have allowed our being together to depend on other things.

  I would not have waited. And it would have been a whole different story.

  In the world of John Ashe, I was beginning fully to understand the nature of my relationship with my employer. He presented me with a mask; there was no pretence that it was anything else; my job was never to question or examine the mask, and to turn a blind eye to whatever I might occasionally glimpse behind it. What was required of me was not so much discretion as a selective blindness. He knew I was no fool, that I would catch on to the terms of engagement without them having to be explained. What was neither acknowledged nor spoken of could be deemed not to exist.

  This strategy worked, to the extent that I was spared having to confront, or make judgements about, the less savoury aspects of Ashe Enterprises. But Ashe was right, I was no fool, and I could not deny their existence. The clubs that he owned prospered, but it was the people he owned who maintained the ‘palace’ in Kensington. His empire consisted not of bricks and mortar, but flesh and blood, and was founded not on cash, but on human weakness.

  It became increasingly obvious that Louise was one of these. Since her visit to Soho Square there was no denying that she flourished as the green bay tree. She had given up the job at Maison Ricard, but showed no sign of missing the borrowed finery – on the contrary, she appeared in an endless array of sumptuously elegant gowns, always set off by a fur stole, or satin wrap, and the sort of jewellery she could not possibly have afforded herself. On top of this an extra sheen enhanced her appearance, a poise and polish which money could not buy. She had moved to another level. I did not care to think how.

  She was happy, though; she positively sparkled. And when she discovered my nascent interest in fashion, she decided to take me in hand.

  ‘Let’s go shopping!’ she cried. ‘And buy you a dress to go with those scrumptious shoes.’

  I demurred, invoking a general unwillingness to overspend on something I might never wear, but she sucked her teeth in impatience.

  ‘That’s the old Pamela talking. I want to go shopping with the new one.’

  In truth I was in transition. Not still a dull grey cygnet sculling along at the rear, but not yet a swan, either, spreading its wings in the sunlight. Perhaps I needed a creature like Louise, already in gorgeous flight, to pick me up and help me fly.

  On the Saturday morning in question she instructed me to wear new stockings and the blue shoes. When we set off, she hailed a cab in the Tottenham Court Road and asked to be taken to Maison Ricard. I was appalled.

  ‘Louise – we can’t go there!’

  ‘Why not?’ She was insouciant, ‘I know them, and they have lovely things.’

  ‘For one thing you’ve just left and they might not appreciate you returning in as a customer. And for another I shan’t be able to afford a thing!’

  ‘Believe me, they will be delighted to see me. Madame’s a frightful old hypocrite, she knows I mix with more money these days than she’ll see in a lifetime. She’ll practically force us to take something even if she has to give it away.’

  ‘But I don’t mix with money,’ I protested.

  ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘She’s not going to know that.’

  ‘Louise – look at me.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She did so, eyeing me up and down expertly. ‘Not so long ago I might have agreed with you. But these days, there’s something about you . . . Don’t worry, I shall have no problem passing you off as a rich man’s plaything.’

  Her devil-may-care mood was infectious. What did I have to lose? When we arrived, I played along shamelessly, on the grounds that Madame and her cohorts didn’t know me from Adam and were most unlikely ever to see me again. It was true, they did have lovely things, but most of them were quite unsuitable. Even masquerading as something I was not, I refused to be cajoled into buying something that had no place in my life.

  There was one dress though – a silvery-blue moss crepe, bias-cut, with cap sleeves and a skirt that brushed the knee . . . a dress that seemed to flow round my body like water slipping over a statue . . . a dress that I fell in love with. The blue shoes might have been made for it. I stared, wordlessly, at my reflection in the mirror, quite overcome at my transformation. Madame’s aide-de-camp was saying something which I could not hear, but Louise appeared at my shoulder, and whispered in my ear:

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘You know it is.’

  ‘Yes, but Louise—’

  ‘Ssh! Leave it to me.’

  Ten minutes later we left the shop, and I owned the dress of my dreams. Louise had not only negotiated a favourable price with Madame, but insisted on paying half. I protested vehemently, but quite apart from the fact that the sepulchral hush of Maison Ricard was no place for a vigorous altercation, she was quite simply, and charmingly, intractable.

  I resumed my protests less self-consciously outside, but she was having none of it.

  ‘I’d have paid for the whole thing if I thought you’d let me. It was my idea and I press-ganged you into it.’

  ‘I’m not that feeble. I didn’t have to buy it.’

  ‘But you might not have done if I hadn’t hovered like Satan at your shoulder, breathing temptation in your ear.’

  This was such a vividly accurate description of what had taken place that I had to smile, and then we
both began to laugh.

  ‘Let’s go to the Ritz!’ cried Louise. ‘And have a glass of champagne!’

  This time I didn’t argue. She was unstoppable, and I was the owner of a beautiful dress which I knew suited me down to the ground. We sat in the hotel’s marbled halls like two high society ladies, sipping our champagne and discussing the other patrons, making up for what we didn’t know with shameless flights of imagination, and laughing like drains at our own cleverness. My mother would have been appalled.

  Louise and I laughed rather more that afternoon than Barbara and I did at the Laurel and Hardy film we saw on one of our now regular Tuesdays. She was morose and withdrawn, and my own laughter died in my throat next to this grim, silent presence. I couldn’t help feeling a little impatient with her – couldn’t she make at least some effort? She did nothing to help herself, or to improve her circumstances. She moped. Compared to Louise, Barbara was a dour and unrewarding companion.

  She might have been reading my mind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as we parted company at her bus stop. ‘I’m not much fun.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, adding hastily: ‘And anyway, you’re not.’ But we both knew it was too late. I had agreed with her.

  ‘Let’s meet again next week and I promise to be jollier.’ She framed the last word as though it were some strange-tasting substance in her mouth. ‘Agreed?’

  I did agree, but as I walked away I had to face the bleak fact that I no longer wanted to see her. She had been a friend, but was becoming a duty.

  On the Thursday, my next session at Ashe Enterprises and my next meeting with Alan, I took my courage in both hands and wore the new dress and blue shoes. I was at the gallery all day, helping Christopher Jarvis take receipt of the American pictures, but at half past three I retreated to the cloakroom and got changed. I hoped to slip away unremarked but I’d underestimated my employer’s antennae for such things. The moment I emerged, he swooped on me.