The Nightingale's Nest

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by Sarah Harrison


  ‘It’s up to you, Pam.’ She was at her most maddening in this mood. ‘Will you be seeing Alan while you’re here?’

  ‘This evening. I hope. When he’s done his calls.’

  She sighed, as if confronting a tedious but necessary duty. ‘So what about this party, then? The American fellow?’

  I’d mentioned the Sullivan launch to her some time before, but it still struck me as interesting that she remembered, let alone enquired. I suppose that living on her own, with not enough to occupy her mind and with her good memory for events, she monitored my life much more closely than I imagined.

  ‘There were too many people and too much noise,’ I said. ‘The paintings were quite nice, but not many people were looking at them. You’d have hated it.’

  ‘I dare say. It was a pity Alan couldn’t go with you, though.’

  ‘He was working, but it couldn’t be helped.’

  ‘I’m surprised you wanted to go on your own.’

  Now what was she implying? It was like one of those party games where obstacles are set out for inspection and then removed once the person is blindfolded. I was tiptoeing over, and round, objections which might or might not exist. I trod carefully to avoid them whatever they were.

  ‘I had to, really, Mum. The Jarvises like me to be around, there are usually one or two things I can help with. And it’s nice of them to include me. They don’t have to.’

  She didn’t actually sniff, but she might as well have done.

  ‘I don’t see that it’s all that nice if you’re making yourself useful.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said more spiritedly, ‘I enjoyed it. It’s interesting to go to these things. Different.’

  ‘Oh, they’re different I’m sure.’

  This was the last straw. ‘Mum – what is it?’

  ‘What?’ Immediately, she sounded defensive.

  ‘What have I done wrong? My life can’t stay exactly the same for ever, you know. And I don’t want it to.’

  ‘No, I can see that.’

  ‘After Matthew died, you and Dad always wanted me not to mope, to get on and make something of myself, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.’

  Her expression softened at the mention of Dad. ‘Pammie, all I’m saying is don’t change too much. You’ve got a very nice young man there, that Alan. Don’t lose him.’

  ‘I’m not going to!’ Even to my own ears my protest sounded too loud and insistent – too sure, when I was anything but sure. To cover my uncertainty I hit back at my mother.

  ‘Stop concerning yourself with what I’m doing, and make some friends of your own!’

  She whitened with shock. ‘I’ve got as many friends as I need, thank you.’ Her voice was tight with the effort of maintaining control.

  ‘Of course you have, Mum, of course . . . I’m sorry.’

  ‘And since when was it wrong for a mother to show a bit of concern for her daughter?’

  ‘It’s not.’ I shook my head, wishing I could put the clock back five minutes. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything against these people you work for and their friends, I don’t know them. But I know you, Pam, and I don’t want you losing out again.’

  ‘Oh, Mum.’ If we had been a different sort of mother and daughter, or living at a different time, one of us, at this stage, might have put her arms round the other. But it was a long time ago, and we were who we were. We simply called a halt, withdrew, and began again.

  Our afternoon continued along the usual lines, though not exactly as if nothing had happened, because it was there in the corner of our minds like an object thrown down in anger that no one would pick up. But we went through the motions of normality, with me offering to help and being assigned undemanding tasks, and my mother marching about as if it were Monday morning, she had six mouths to feed, and the mayor was coming to call. I longed to tell her to sit down and read a book, or simply relax, or to come for a walk with me, but I had muddied the water with my earlier outburst and had no alternative but to keep the peace by playing things her way. I did wonder, was she always so busy? Every day, seven days a week? Or did she save up all this activity in order not to seem at a loose end when I came to visit? Surely no house needed to be cleaned so exhaustively all the time?

  By the time Alan came round at half past seven we were both pretty much worn out especially since my mother, who would normally have served and eaten tea at six, had postponed it in case he wanted some. Under the circumstances I was loath to crush this hospitable thought, though our stomachs were rumbling when the bell rang.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Streeter,’ said Alan. He always greeted my mother first in her own house. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Pretty well,’ she replied. ‘There’s an oxtail in the oven, would you like to join us?’

  I couldn’t bring myself to catch his eye, but I needn’t have worried – he always managed to react in the right way.

  ‘Oh, no!’ He put his hand to his brow. ‘I should have guessed there’d be something delicious waiting here. But surgery dragged on and I helped myself to a cheese sandwich before I left.’

  ‘That won’t keep you going,’ said my mother comfortably. ‘Never mind, it’ll keep till tomorrow, if you’d like some lunch.’ She sounded quite unperturbed – there was no justice.

  ‘Why not, that sounds splendid. You’ll be here, won’t you, Pamela?’

  ‘She’ll be here,’ confirmed my mother before I could so much as nod.

  Alan looked from one to the other of us, gauging the mood. ‘I say, you didn’t wait for me, did you?’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t have to,’ I said. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘Stay and have a glass of sherry,’ said my mother.

  She had made it a straight fight, but Alan sidestepped it.

  ‘Do you know, I think I should say no? I had a nip with Dr Cardew a little earlier and that was enough to be going on with. But lunchtime tomorrow – that would be different.’

  She let us go, like a lamb. When we were safely in the Morris I clapped my hands to my face in exasperation.

  ‘She drives me mad!’

  ‘She can’t help it.’

  ‘Of course she can. She’s a perfectly intelligent woman who knows what she’s doing.’

  Alan started the car. ‘Which is?’

  Now I wasn’t sure exactly what to say. ‘She interferes,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Mothers do that. My mother used to. But now she’s gone I miss being fussed over, and you would too if it wasn’t there.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said grudgingly.

  ‘You would. Look, I’m going to buy you something to eat. After all, I deprived you of the oxtail, and food does wonders for the morale.’

  He was quite right, an omelette and a cup of tea revived me and went a long way to restoring my sense of proportion. Afterwards we drove to our hill. The evenings were drawing in and dusk had already fallen, but the long view dotted and strung with lights was still pretty. Alan put his arm round my shoulders. My mother was right – I was lucky.

  ‘So tell me about the party,’ he said.

  But I couldn’t tell him, not truthfully. There was too much he didn’t know already, too much that was complicated to explain, and which I scarcely understood myself.

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ I said. ‘You didn’t miss anything.’

  His eyes rested quizzically on my face, but he didn’t press me. It wasn’t his style. He wasn’t to know that with those few words I took a small but irrevocable step away from him.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘How’s your day been?’

  He told me, of course. He trusted that my interest was genuine, and paid me the compliment of replying in full measure. He didn’t, like me, feel the need to keep things from me because they were too complex, or for fear I might not understand. I enjoyed his account of his day, but I appreciated even more the difference between us.

  He left the important news till last.

  ‘I�
��ve got an interview in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Congratulations! So you’re as good as in.’

  ‘Not quite,’ he smiled bashfully. ‘But at least my application’s not been turned down out of hand.’

  I kissed him. I wasn’t as excited as I might have been not long ago, but I was tremendously pleased for him.

  ‘Will you come with me?’ he asked.

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘At the end of the month. The last Saturday. It’ll mean taking a day off to travel up there, but at least it’s only one, with the weekend just after.’

  ‘That ought to be all right . . .’ I tried to remember if there was anything in particular in the diary for that day. ‘I’ll see.’

  ‘Do try,’ he said. ‘It would mean such a lot to me.’

  I saw in his eyes how much. It meant far more to him than to me. The truth was that I did not especially want to go. I was so caught up in my new life that I could not bear to leave it, even for one day, an important day, with the man I had said I wanted to marry.

  ‘Of course I’ll try,’ I said. ‘They’re always very reasonable and I don’t work for Ashe on a Friday . .. I’m sure it will be fine.’

  ‘It’s a lot to ask, I know. But it’s a chance for us to be together.’

  Suddenly I saw why this was so important to him – it wasn’t only my moral support he wanted, but also the chance ‘to be together’; the chance I, too, had once longed for. And this evening it hadn’t even crossed my mind.

  He was watching my face. ‘Pamela? It is what you want, isn’t it? Because I’d hate to be rushing you into something you’re not ready for. It’s just that – you’re the woman I love, and . . .’

  He blushed, and gripped my hand in both of his. It was a moment of agonisingly awkward emotions for both of us, all the more awkward for me because I was caught between the strength of his feeling and the confused, divided nature of mine.

  ‘Yes,’ I said firmly. ‘It is what I want. More than anything.’

  He lifted my hand to his lips, laid it against his cheek. I felt him smile as he said: ‘Your mother wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘She approves of you, though.’

  ‘Only so long as my intentions are honourable. Not when they involve whisking her daughter away to satisfy my baser instincts.’

  ‘What she doesn’t know won’t worry her.’

  ‘I hoped you’d say that.’

  ‘And anyway, it doesn’t matter what she thinks. Not really. Not any more.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  I was being teased. He had the priceless ability to make me smile in spite of myself. He was a gem, and I knew it, which made everything a thousand times worse.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said, ‘I promise.’

  With autumn approaching, the house at Crompton Row took on a different character. I think it was because of the changed light, lower and more mellow after the pale glare and deep shadows of that long, baking summer. I’ve always been susceptible to the seasons, their own pace, colour and character, and this year the turn of the year held a particular significance for me. It confirmed the shift that had taken place in my life. I had been working here for only a few months but those few months had seen me move into different territory. The garden – its trees, bushes, flowers and weeds, even its grass – was changing with me. The plants I’d trimmed, tended and subdued were dying back, retrenching for the winter.

  ‘I haven’t heard the nightingale for ages,’ Amanda said. ‘I do hope she’ll come back.’

  ‘She will,’ I said, ‘in the spring.’

  Ashe had gone away for a fortnight, I didn’t know where, and had told me there would be nothing to do in his absence, so my working week reverted to its earlier pattern and tempo. With the Sullivan exhibition launched, and due to remain at the Sumpter till Christmas, business was relatively quiet, and so was the house itself. Suzannah had not reappeared as yet; there were no other house guests. Bob Sullivan had gone back to America, and Christopher Jarvis was melancholy and listless as a result – he told me he and Amanda planned to go to New York for Christmas and it was pretty obvious he was counting the days.

  I was so underemployed that I took to helping Dorothy with an out-of-season ‘spring-clean’.

  ‘Might as well,’ she said. ‘They don’t care either way, but you’ve got to take your chance when you can around here.’

  She always made it sound as though she liked nothing better than the opportunity to do extra work. I was pleased to see that in spite of Jimmy’s return to Ireland she was looking well and pretty again, and I told her so one afternoon when we were on our own, sitting cleaning silver out on the terrace.

  ‘Blimey, do you think so?’ She swiped at a lock of hair with the back of her wrist, ‘I must’ve been looking in the wrong mirror.’

  She was agog to hear about the party, especially about Felicia Ashe, whom she had seen before at the house.

  ‘She’s got the most beautiful clothes and jewels I’ve ever seen – like a queen. Imagine what it must be like having all that money!’

  ‘She was glittering,’ I conceded, and couldn’t resist adding: ‘but my friend Louise was the toast of the evening.’

  ‘Good for her.’ Dorothy gave me one of her searching looks. ‘How do you know her, then?’

  ‘She lives in the same building as me. But she’s very pretty, and she works in the fashion business.’

  Dorothy sighed. ‘Lucky girl . . . How did she get a job like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s no prettier than you.’

  She snorted with laughter. ‘Says you! Mind you, any woman with a bit of money, and the time to spend it, can look halfway decent.’

  ‘What about you, Dorothy?’ I asked carefully. ‘Are you enjoying life?’

  ‘Me? Oh yes. You got to keep smiling, haven’t you?’ She was a dab hand at these catch-all clichés, which served her very well. And because I knew that beneath all the chirpy garrulousness she was quite guarded about her own affairs, I didn’t press her further.

  I didn’t even know Suzannah had come back until I stumbled upon her, almost literally, in the garden. I had arrived one morning to find that the Jarvises had left early to spend the day with Georgina and her parents out of town. Dorothy and Chef were nowhere about. I unlocked the back door and went out. The air was quite cold and the leaves were beginning to turn. I shivered as I went over the clammy grass and along the stepping-stone path into the shrubbery. A little way in I stopped and turned; I liked to look back from here, to gain a different perspective on the house, especially with no one else about. Even if someone was in, this end of the garden was so secret one became invisible between one step and the next, and I wasn’t sure anyone else ever came here but me.

  So when I had the sensation of being watched, not from the house in front of me, but from the overgrown darkness at my back, my skin crawled. For a second I was caught between wanting to know who, if anyone, was there, and a childish fear of finding out. Telling myself not to be so foolish, I turned round.

  To begin with I couldn’t see anyone, but then I heard a voice say, softly: ‘Hello.’ I peered in the direction it had come from and now I could make out Suzannah, sitting in the corner of the garden between the wall and the largest tree, her knees drawn up and her skirt wrapped round them. She looked even more of a waif, like the abandoned changeling child of some Victorian fairy tale.

  I laughed with relief. ‘You gave me a fright!’

  ‘And then you saw it was only me.’

  ‘When did you get back?’

  ‘Last night. But I can’t stay.’

  ‘I’m sure you could, for as long as you want.’

  ‘That’s the point. The Jarvises have been too kind already.’

  She made a little movement to one side, an invitation to sit down. I did so without a second thought, in spite of my business suit.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s still here.’ With her left hand she parted the tangled ivy and dyin
g greenery between the roots of the tree. I leaned round to see. She was right – the little nest, at least, was still whole and perfect although long empty.

  ‘Will she come back?’ Her voice was dreamy, the question rhetorical, addressed to herself as much as to me, but I answered her just the same.

  ‘I’m going to find a bird book and look it up.’

  She laid her cheek on her knees, her face averted, her hand still lying by the nest. Her voice now seemed to come from far away. ‘The swallows won’t.’

  ‘I thought they always did. Once they’d found a good place.’

  ‘This isn’t a good place. Not any more. They were disturbed. They lost one of their young.’

  ‘That must happen from time to time.’

  ‘No.’ She gave her head a little shake. ‘They won’t be back.’

  A long silence followed. She was so still I thought she might have gone to sleep. Then she lifted her head and said more firmly. ‘But she might, the nightingale. It’s so secret here. And no one knows about her except me and you.’

  ‘That’s right. She’s perfectly safe.’

  We sat side by side, thinking about this, and drawing comfort from it. It was so strange – we could never truly be friends, there was too much dividing us and neither of us quite knew how to bridge the gap. And yet the possibility of friendship hovered over us like a benign spirit.

  ‘What will you do next?’ I asked eventually.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, frowning slightly. ‘I’ve got a lot of things to sort out. I don’t have any work but I’m not sure I could manage any at the moment. I may have to go back to Ashe’s, but I don’t want to.’

  ‘Then you mustn’t.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ She had all at once become much less like a child. She was so changeable, you never quite knew where you were with her. Not five minutes earlier I had wanted, like Georgina, to wrap, feed and protect her. Now she seemed the epitome of independence, a free spirit whom it would be impossible for anyone, least of all me, to mollycoddle.

  ‘Still,’ I said, ‘this is a good place to have a rest and take stock.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  After a moment she kneeled and sat back on her heels, looking down at the nest. Then she covered it again carefully and got to her feet. I did the same. The spell of secrecy and intimacy was broken. We were both damp, and I brushed fussily at the seat of my skirt.

 

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