When Blackbirds Sing

by Martin Boyd

  The next day he moved to the little hotel in Mayfair and then he went to see the other colonel, the relative in the War Office, an oldish man, recalled from retirement. He appeared very conscientious, and not much given to nepotism. He asked Dominic if he had any military experience, and when he answered no, suggested that he should join the Inns of Court O.T.C. for a period of training. He asked him a few questions about his father, and if he intended returning to Waterpark. He then said goodbye and hoped that he would like the army.

  Dominic felt that it would be an anticlimax having come all this way to join a leisurely training corps of lawyers, who in that year still lived in their own homes, and paraded on the lawns of Lincoln’s Inn. Instead he wrote to the colonel of the Byngham family’s regiment, which was stationed in Northumberland. His handwriting was immature, and he expressed himself in simple, almost friendly terms, saying that he had had many relatives in the regiment, but not mentioning that their name was Byngham, nor that one of them had commanded the regiment at Waterloo, nor even that they had been commissioned officers.

  The colonel of this regiment saw no reason to accept as one of his subalterns an unknown Australian who wrote to him in this strain; and Dominic had only an acknowledgement from the adjutant, saying that they were up to strength.

  On receipt of this note, Dominic wrote to Lord Dilton saying that he would very much like to join the territorial battalion. As soon as he was commissioned he went down and reported at the depot.

  It might have been thought that in the army Dominic would make appalling blunders and get into endless scrapes, but he took to the life immediately. He went through his training and was soon an efficient subaltern. He enjoyed the intricacies of drill, and when told to, could move the battalion about with perfect confidence. He had a new happiness. At last he was doing the same kind of thing as other young men, doing it in their company and doing it well. For the first time in his life he had that kind of companionship, and was no longer an outsider.

  Lord Dilton was delighted and talked of putting him on the establishment. He had asked Dominic to join the regiment partly from kindness, and partly because he liked to have officers of whom he knew. The other subalterns were either from local families, or were the sons of his friends.

  Impulsively Dominic wrote to Helena, saying that he wanted to stay in the army after the war, and he repeated the suggestion that they should all return to Waterpark. With the half-conscious dishonesty of people trying to get their own way, he said that it would be a much more enjoyable life for her.

  Helena had been quietly happy on the morning she received this letter. She had left the baby with the new fresh country girl she had found to help her in the house, and had ridden to the box two miles away, where the letters were left in a leather bag. There should be a letter from Dominic. Now, perhaps as a result of the discipline of military life, he wrote regularly once a week. It was a still winter day, the sunlight gentle and sparkling. The notes of the magpies and other sounds were music in the limpid air. She felt more hopeful than usual. Perhaps the war would be over before Dominic reached the front. Perhaps this time next year he would be back and they would be riding together for the post, but they would not care twopence whether there were any letters. She had been thinking out further improvements to the house and garden. She had begun on some of them, but what fun it would be when they were doing it again together. How wonderful their life would be. They were happy before, but they took it as a matter of course. When their happiness had been rescued from disaster, every minute would be wonderful. She could think of no better life than theirs, to live on their own land in this perfect climate, where nearly all the good food they ate was grown by themselves, where their human contacts were dictated by inclination and not social compulsion, and where all the time they were improving this beautiful natural setting as a home for their children. She loved all the life of the country, skimming the pans in the dairy, gathering the fruit for the year’s jam from the orchard, most of which they had planted themselves and which was just beginning to bear. It seemed to her that they had all the enduring pleasures that were intended for mankind, and the only deep satisfactions, creative contentment in the natural world.

  She arrived at the box, and taking a little key from her pocket, she opened the leather bag, finding as she had expected, Dominic’s letter. She sat on her horse and read it, and the sparkling air seemed to become flat, and the light on the grass to go dead. She rode miserably home. In every letter that she had written to him she had described some part of the life of the farm, telling him even the number of bunches of grapes on the verandah vine; that the new cow had calved and how much milk it was giving; what new plants she had put in the garden. Everything she wrote was intended to keep the place vivid in his mind. Everything she did was for him and to make it ready for his return. It was the only way she could express her love. She was like the medieval tumbler whose only means of worship was to do his tricks before the image of the Virgin. Her parents and also Dominic’s had offered her a home while he was away, where she could have lived without expense in idle comfort, but she would not give up this, the only way she had of serving him.

  Now, suddenly, it had all become nothing. This home which was a kind of symbol of their love, was to be abandoned, and they were to live in a place which they had done nothing to make, in a country which, though it was partly Dominic’s, was very little hers; or worse, in ever-changing lodgings among army wives.

  She tried to explain this in a letter. When she had written it she thought it sounded complaining, and she had resolved, after that first short note, that she would always write cheerfully. But she was writing into a void. Dominic, though he now wrote regularly, conveyed to her nothing of his life. She heard indirectly of things he never mentioned. There were rumours from Melbourne of his behaviour on the ship. These things made her loyally angry. People seemed determined to speak ill of Dominic, however great the nonsense they talked. Aunt Baba wrote that he had behaved disgracefully, spending the voyage exclusively in the company of a fast woman twice his age, with whom he flirted outrageously; but Dominic had not mentioned any woman. He liked talking to older women because they understood him better. She was sure that this was the origin of the scandal, though she could not help feeling jealous of this unknown woman, of whom he had told her nothing. He had been at Dilton, and he had joined his regiment. He must have met Sylvia, but he did not say so. He only told her details of his army life, or put forward this horrible plan for their future. She felt like a mother whose son has gone to his first school. She knows that he is a sensitive child, brave but nervous, and she longs to know if it is as bad as he feared. She only receives a letter: “Dear Mum, Our second eleven beat Weldon’s. Hawkins is the captain. I am learning geography. Your loving son . . .”

  Her only comfort was that Dominic had ended his letter: “All my love.”

  She wrote to Steven about the plan to return to Waterpark. He replied telling her not to worry, that nothing on earth would drag him back to English winters. Anyhow, they could not afford to live there. They could barely do so before. With the heavy taxation to pay for the war it would be impossible. She tore up her complaining letter and wrote again to Dominic saying that his father had told her that it was financially impossible. This saved her having to give her own reasons.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  One day in the ante-room Dominic noticed that the colonel was looking at him speculatively, as if trying to decide something. Then he crossed over to him and said: “Sylvia and her husband are down for a few days. Would you like to come back with me to dine tonight?”

  Dominic said that he would very much like to come. He had not realized until that moment how much he wanted to see Sylvia. He thought it was largely curiosity, but he felt rather excited during the afternoon.

  They arrived just before dinner and found the family in the big drawing-room, which was opened up for the occasion. Apart from the women servants the house was still run m
ore or less as in peace-time, and Lord Dilton’s complaint of acute discomfort was only due to the alleged tepidity of the bath water, and his reluctance to give the keys of the cellar to a woman.

  When they came in Sylvia turned sharply to look at Dominic. After his first visit her mother, seeing eye to eye with Cousin Emma, had written to her that he had become rather colonial and scrubby. She expected this evening to feel a mixture of friendly condescension and relief at what she had escaped. But a few months of army life had made a great difference to Dominic’s appearance. It had brought out certain traits and attitudes which were latent in his blood. Lord Dilton generally changed when he was at home, but tonight he and Dominic were both in uniform. Dominic did not look at all scrubby. Women are said to like men in uniform, and it did give him a particular kind of aplomb, that sombre Spanish appearance, which when he was in ordinary clothes and holding himself more carelessly, might pass for mere sulkiness. He had not the farouche romantic bloom of five years earlier, but as a man he was immensely improved. When Sylvia saw him she gave a little start of surprise, and perhaps faintly of mortification.

  She herself was no longer the pretty petulant girl to whom he had been engaged. She had become a woman of the world, extremely soignée. She was one of those whose good taste and artistry function most successfully when concentrated on their own persons. Tonight, even in this splendid room with its great mirrors and gilded ceiling, she looked the living centre of golden light, in her dress of stiff flowered yellow silk. She still had the “rose-petal skin” so much talked of in her schooldays, but her golden hair looked less frizzy than then, and held richer and softer lights, while her features had now achieved an absolute classical perfection. When they shook hands they stared at each other, amazed at what they had missed.

  “You haven’t changed,” she said. “Mother said you’d changed.” She meant, not in the way that Lady Dilton had said.

  She introduced her husband, Maurice Wesley-Maude. He was very much an army type, with a round red face, narrow blue eyes, clipped speech and a clipped moustache. He was a major in a regiment of hussars, where, Lady Dilton confided later and almost deprecatingly to Dominic, the officers were mostly the sons of rich manufacturers, though Maurice’s father was a canon of Exeter. Again it seemed that the army’s raison d’être was to assess social status.

  After three unsuccessful London seasons Sylvia had accepted Maurice as the best available catch. Each year she had lowered the target of her ambition, after the Dominic fiasco set much too high, and she was beginning to fear that if she waited much longer she might find no one. She and Maurice had tastes in common. They both thought it of the first importance to have the best material conditions of life, and they liked to be in the swim and among the “right” people. He was pleased to marry the daughter of a rich peer, she to be supported in her own estimation of herself. He was six years older than she. Dominic was her own age.

  Lord Dilton asked Maurice if his bath water was hot, which provoked Lady Dilton. For a few minutes Sylvia and Dominic were left to talk to each other.

  “You’ve improved,” she said bluntly, looking him in the eyes.

  Their old familiarity was already waking between them. In his own family Dominic was supposed to be dumb, stammering and full of violent irrational feeling, but away from their witty critical eyes he could often show a ready response, especially with women.

  “So have you,” he replied.

  Sylvia was taken aback, but not displeased. His answer at once created the tension that she liked to feel with any good-looking man. But she thought that he was rather cool.

  “You don’t look as scrubby as I expected,” she said.

  “Then you did expect to see me.”

  “As you’re in Father’s regiment, it wouldn’t be unnatural.”

  “But you wondered what I’d look like.”

  “I didn’t lose any sleep over it.”

  “Why did you think I’d look scruffy?”

  “Well, you’ve been in Australia for five years.”

  “Did you count them?”

  “You’re impossible,” she said crossly, but she laughed.

  Her parents stopped talking about the boiler and the conversation became general, pleasant, but a little dull. It was difficult to imagine Maurice taking part in any other kind of talk. When Lady Dilton and Sylvia left the room it became duller than ever. Lord Dilton seemed to find difficulty in calling his son-in-law by his Christian name, and slipped back into saying: “Having some port, Wesley-Maude?” Everything Maurice said and did was absolutely correct. He did not appear self-conscious but he inhibited any natural ease. He was, as Lady Dilton said, “a gentleman” and this was his religion. He would not dream of holding any view-point which was not correct, and so, though naturally honest, his character was at the mercy of the increasingly powerful forces that controlled opinion.

  When they came into the drawing-room Maurice went correctly to pay attention to Lady Dilton. Lord Dilton talked for a few minutes to Sylvia and Dominic, then said: “I haven’t had a chance to look at The Times,” and left them together. Sylvia sat down on a gilt and yellow sofa on the far side of the fireplace, with a shaded lamp behind her.

  Dominic was not used to much alcohol. At home he drank practically none, and in the mess very little, as he thought that he should not spend money that Helena might need. At dinner he had drunk a modest amount of claret and two glasses of port, and this was enough to stimulate his senses, and give him a glowing satisfaction with his surroundings.

  “How do you like being home again?” asked Sylvia. She used the word “home” as when they had last met he had been their neighbour. Most Australians still called England “home”, and Dominic would not have noticed the word if it had been used by anyone else, but coming from Sylvia it gave him a particular feeling which she had not intended.

  He said that it was wonderful to be back, and that he hoped that the whole family would return to Waterpark after the war. She gave an involuntary exclamation of pleasure. Something passed between them. Dominic said, without knowing why: “I’m married too, you know.”

  “Yes. D’you like being married?”

  “Of course. Don’t you?”

  “Naturally.”

  They laughed and suddenly stopped talking. Their old intimacy was reviving too quickly, in a way they had not foreseen, and now it had something added to it, an adult knowledge. They had never talked in this way before. They were both conscious that they might have been sitting here as man and wife. Dominic, like most people, hated losing anything that he had once had, but in him this feeling was very strongly developed. His childhood was spent in an atmosphere of loss, his family’s losing money and leaving their house. Twice they had left Waterpark in an atmosphere of defeat. He had been a misfit at school and had failed in his army examination. Only on his farm in New South Wales did he escape this sense of loss. There they were gaining and building up. But at the moment it seemed very far away, a life so remote in every detail that it was more like something in his imagination than a reality. The present actuality always had most power for him, and his present actuality was extremely potent, even the purely material aspect of this magnificent room which could almost contain his whole farmhouse, but most of all, Sylvia, its living golden focus.

  He was aware that if he had wanted it, she could have been his wife. He did not say to himself “if he had not been foolish”, as he knew that his life with Helena was the best thing that could have happened for him. But he had lost his life with Sylvia and in a vague kind of way he wanted to make up for it, to retrieve some of the loss, in fact to have his cake and eat it. Flushed as he was with good wine he did not think this entirely impossible, though he had no conscious intentions. Part of his feelings was a simple pleasure at being friendly again with the Tunstalls, and the knowledge that at least one blot on his copybook was erased.

  But mere friendship with Dominic would have bored Sylvia. Their fundamental views and intere
sts were different. This had shown little during their engagement, and when it had, the gulf was bridged by physical attraction and their mutual interest in horses. She did not want men friends as cosy reminders of the schoolroom, and Dominic looked as if he could be far more than this. She too regarded him as something she had lost. If he had been as scrubby and colonial as her mother had said, she could have borne it, and one meeting to satisfy her curiosity would have been enough. But he was not scrubby or scruffy or whatever the word was. His dark eyes were lively with pleasure and admiration as he looked at her. The eyes of her husband, now talking to her mother about the connection between his family and the Wellesleys, never changed except to become red when he made love. She remembered how she used to feel when Dominic kissed her. One afternoon when they came in here after tennis—why, it was on this very sofa! Suddenly, in spite of herself, she gave an exclamation which sounded like annoyance, but was something deeper.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I’d forgotten something.”

  Sylvia, as regards outward appearance, was as correct as her husband. She realized that this would not do—at any rate not here, and not yet. She began to talk with deliberate conventionality, repeating what various generals had said to her about the duration of the war. She asked about his parents, but did not mention Helena. Although normally there was no one of whom Dominic was more anxious to speak, he had no wish to do so with Sylvia.

  Lord Dilton put down his paper and the conversation became general. When the parlourmaid brought in the whisky tray he said: “One for the road,” and soon after that they left. When Dominic shook hands with Sylvia it was almost as if there was some hostility between them.

  As they drove back to the depot, Lord Dilton, comfortable with drink, said: “I’m sorry you’re not still at Waterpark.” He meant that he was sorry that Dominic had not married Sylvia. He thought Maurice a dull dog.