The Songbird

by Marcia Willett

  The storm has cleared away to the east and the sky is rinsed a shining luminous blue. In the courtyard William is holding Ollie, showing him the daffodils and the cars in the barn, whilst Aunt Kat talks to Francis, who is seated on the bench, and Charlotte comes out of her cottage with a tray of mugs.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ she calls to Tim. ‘There you are. Hang on, I’ll get another mug.’

  So here they are: his family. Aunt Kat turning to beckon him into the group, Francis smiling at him, William putting Ollie into his arms and saying, ‘There now. Here’s your uncle Tim.’

  He holds the warm bundle of baby, hiding the weak tears that are never very far away these days, looking down into the small face that breaks unexpectedly into a gummy smile. He smiles back, touched by Ollie’s trustful reaction, and sits next to Francis on the bench. Wooster comes to lean against his knees as if he knows that Tim needs comfort.

  ‘Mattie was in good form,’ says Francis. ‘What do you think of her applying for this job at the BBC in Bristol?’

  ‘She’s well qualified for it,’ answers Tim – and then falls silent. Any further remarks seem fraught with implications: of how good it would be to have her closer; of his own future.

  He wants to say: ‘I love her but it’s all completely pointless.’

  He glances sideways at Francis and is taken aback by the compassionate expression on his face: compassion – not pity – as if he is suffering with Tim and wishing he could alleviate the suffering.

  Charlotte appears, gives Tim a mug of tea, and takes Ollie from him.

  ‘Andy’s Skyping later,’ she says. ‘What did you want to tell him, William?’

  William strolls over, Aunt Kat joins in, and Tim sips his tea, watching them as the sun sinks and it grows colder, and all the while he can hear the thrush singing in the ash tree below the cottage.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN TOTNES, IN the Thrive Café, Kat sits drinking a macchiato, listening to Miles Davis playing ‘My Funny Valentine’. It is impossible for her to listen to music, any music, without dance sequences forming in her head; she sees dancers moving, making shapes. The café, with its two big windows – one opening into the courtyard garden, the other looking on to Fore Street – the wooden tables, the richly coloured kelims that hang down in front of the cupboard shelves, all are part of the pattern in her head. The jazz, someone busy behind the counter, this man coming in, glancing at Kat and smiling . . .

  Kat blinks, the dancers fade, and she smiles back at him. He’s rather nice: grey-blond floppy hair, wide curling mouth, a good strong frame. He wears jeans and a loose, navy-blue, high-neck jersey. Immediately she imagines him dancing to the music. She can’t prevent herself, it’s as natural as breathing to her. He sways and turns and moves, and she can’t help her smile widening with pleasure.

  He’s ordering coffee, unaware of the role into which he has been cast, dropping his jacket and his rucksack on to a chair at the next table, pulling a newspaper from the bag’s pocket. Kat sizes him up: friendly but cautious, unlikely to make the first conversational move lest there should be any misunderstanding.

  ‘They put the jazz on especially for me,’ she says. ‘I was first in this morning. Hope you like Miles Davis.’

  He responds at once. ‘I certainly do. I used to play the drums in a jazz group when I was a teenager.’

  ‘Gosh,’ she says, delighted with his positive response. ‘What fun. You didn’t keep it up?’

  He shakes his head, putting his wallet back in his pocket, sitting down at the table.

  ‘We weren’t very good. I don’t think Acker Bilk felt threatened.’

  She’s amused at his rueful honesty but before she can speak again a woman comes quickly in. She looks eager, hopeful, and spying the man cries, ‘Oh, there you are, Jeremy. I wondered if I’d missed you.’

  Kat watches, interested. Not a wife or a girlfriend, she guesses, but someone who might like to be. This woman, with her carefully dyed silvery-blond hair and smart clothes, is bright with expectation. She stares at Kat with instinctive hostility, and approaches the man’s table with a proprietorial air.

  ‘How are you settling in?’ she asks, leaning towards him, at once intimate yet diffident.

  The man, who has stood up at her approach, answers with a pleasant but slightly non-committal response and Kat knows, she just knows, that he is very slightly irritated by this woman’s arrival. She wants to laugh and she feels the old familiar speeding of the heart, the tremor of excitement running through her veins. She never could resist a flirtation.

  He is glancing at her, and she makes a little face so as to indicate her understanding, and he half grins in embarrassed acknowledgement of her quick grasp of the situation. He goes to the counter to order coffee for the newcomer, who removes her coat, fusses with a bracelet, smooths her hair. She is plump, confident; someone who organizes things, heads committees, gets things done. When he rejoins her, she sits a little straighter, arranging her face in an expression that is both encouraging and approving.

  ‘Have you thought any more about my little party?’ she asks. ‘I can introduce you to some new people.’

  Kat watches and listens unashamedly, still aware of the current of his interest. Presently another woman appears, to be greeted enthusiastically by the first. He is flanked now by their admiration and concern. Yet she knows that, despite her lack of make-up, her storm-cloud hair falling untidily from its pins, her leggings and knee-high leather boots, he is much more interested in her than in these smart, pretty ladies.

  She sighs with a real contentment, stands up, conscious that he is watching her, and with another smile at him she walks out.

  Jerry Fermor watches her go. He wishes Sandra had not arrived just at that moment, that he might have become better acquainted with the tall, striking woman who seemed to know exactly how he felt about Sandra and her friend. It was as if they had connected at a deeper level, by-passing the usual formalities; as if they knew each other very well and were sharing a private joke. He is amused, flattered, and rather disappointed that the encounter is over. He has to concentrate on what Sandra is saying about her party, about the clubs he might like to join and a visit to the cinema at Dartington. They met at a talk in the library given by the writer and historian Bob Mann, and she and her friend – whose name he has forgotten – are very welcoming to the stranger within the gates, yet he slightly prefers the tall, striking woman’s less conventional approach.

  He’s had no special relationships in the four years since Veronica died and, anyway, his two daughters are not very encouraging when other women are around. It didn’t occur to them, busy with their careers and their children, that he might be lonely in the roomy old Victorian villa at the edge of the city when he retired from his position as head of the Drama Department at a Plymouth college; that he might no longer be content simply with their visits from upcountry, which get fewer each year as their own lives become busy with work and babies. So they were shocked when he told them he was selling up and buying a modern flat in Totnes. It was almost an act of rebellion; of allowing that dramatic sense within him an opportunity to fulfil itself. Vee always kept him grounded – she was the sensible one – and he was very grateful for her continual cool head and wise counsel, but he was determined to do this: to take the chance to express his personality. It happened so quickly: an offer on the house and the availability of the modern, sleek, bright flat with its views along the river.

  ‘I need a change,’ he told his daughters. ‘The house is far too big for me now and I was never much into the gardening. That was your mum’s province. I love Totnes: I love the vibe and the café society and the live music in the pubs. I’ve got great views of the river, I can walk everywhere, even to the station.’

  When they protested that they wouldn’t be able to stay with him he pointed out that he still had a spare bedroom and, anyway, keeping on a big house for the sake of a few weekends a year was unrealistic now that he was retired and alone.r />
  ‘You can rent a holiday cottage nearby,’ he said. ‘I can afford to help you with the expense.’

  And so here he is: sitting in the Thrive Café with two new friends, planning to go to a party and a film – but still regretting missing the opportunity of getting to know the tall, attractive foreign-looking woman who smiled at him as if she were amused at his predicament; as if he were in some kind of danger. He smiles to himself at the ludicrous idea – but he can’t quite put her out of his mind.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AT BROCKSCOMBE, IN his sitting-room on the first floor, Francis sits in his high wing-backed chair looking out across the garden and the woods to the valleys and the hills beyond. As a child this was his favourite room, his parents’ bedroom, and later when he inherited the house he’d made it his study. Liz complained, of course – she wanted it for her own bedroom – but he stayed firm. After all, one spent so little time in a bedroom. It was to Brockscombe and to this room he returned to renew his energy and soothe his spirit.

  Back then Brockscombe was full of life: Liz organizing dinner parties and garden parties, the two boys, barely eleven months between them, growing up and filling the place with their friends. Sometimes he thinks he can still hear them as he sits in his chair, dreaming: Liz calling up to him as she goes out into the garden; the boys shouting on the stairs. As he watches from the two tall sash windows facing south and east he sees them playing on the lawn, racing on their bicycles round the carriage drive, running into the woods with the dogs at their heels. Always arguing, always fighting, they were in constant rivalry.

  ‘They don’t see enough of you,’ Liz would say. ‘They need a strong male influence.’

  He did his best: told them off, clipped their ears, stopped their pocket money, but they were tough little fellows. Secretly he admired the spirit that drove them onwards: chips off the old block. They looked like Liz. Small, wiry, ginger-haired, they buzzed like gnats around him; shrill, argumentative, exhausting. It was a relief when they went off to school. Even Liz admitted that she enjoyed the peace and quiet, though she missed them, of course. Still, there were exeats, half-terms, holidays. Their friends came to stay; they grew up. Roger went to Cambridge and joined the Foreign Office, Sebastian took a short-term army commission and afterwards went into banking. Now, Roger is in Moscow and Sebastian is in Boston – and Liz is dead.

  Francis leans forward in his chair. He can see Rob working at the edge of the trees, clearing out dead wood. Someone is helping him, a tall figure stooping to pick up the rotten branches, loading them into a wheelbarrow. It is Maxie. Francis fetches a deep sigh. His illegitimate son looks nothing like him, though he is tall and rangy: he is like his mother.

  Maxie is his first-born and he likes to have him near after all the years of separation, though very few people – not even Maxie himself – know that he is Francis’ son. When he was a young MP, back in the fifties, it would have been the end of his career if it were known that he had a mistress. Yet how could he have resisted Nell? And how cruel of fate that he should fall in love with her only weeks after marrying the eminently suitable, practical Liz.

  As he sits quietly the distant scene fades and he remembers how he first met Nell at his friends’ house in Exeter. She’d recently been employed as nanny to look after their new baby and she appeared in the drawing-room that afternoon just as they were finishing tea. Sixty years on, Francis smiles involuntarily at the memory of his first sight of Nell: her pink cheeks, bright eyes, brown-gold hair. She looked so neat and sweet in her Norland uniform; so delectable and desirable. He was nearly twenty-seven. She was nineteen.

  His hosts invited her to join them. Nell was more than just their nanny: their families were old friends. Her father, an army officer, had been killed in the war, her mother managing on a widow’s pension in a small flat near the cathedral. Nell was slightly shy but very amusing about the baby, and, when she looked at him, Francis felt all sorts of odd sensations that he’d never experienced with Liz.

  It began with a few casual meetings at the house in Princesshay, always chaperoned by the friends and sometimes even the baby. Then he ‘happened’ to run into her on her day off, in one of her favourite cafés that she’d mentioned. They had lunch together. It happened several times: they had lunch or tea, and fell deeper and more dangerously in love. One glorious summer afternoon he took her for a little run in the car and they finished up in the flat he kept in the constituency where he stayed for a few days each week. Even now his cold, frail limbs recall the warmth of her flesh and the joy of holding her. It became an addiction he simply couldn’t fight. He needed her.

  Liz rarely came to the flat. She was too busy modernizing Brockscombe, getting to know the families who would help Francis’ political career. When he returned home to her his happiness overflowed into his life with her and she was always amused by the enthusiasm with which he took her in his arms, never aware of the guilt and the shame that lay beneath it. He went to confession, tried to end the relationship, but he was too weak: too much in love with Nell.

  When Nell told him she was pregnant he was shocked, frightened, but a small part of him rejoiced. His child and Nell’s: the prospect filled him with joy. Yet the reality was bleak indeed. His political career was going from strength to strength – and what if Liz should find out? His gut curdled with fear and he seized Nell’s hands, not knowing what to say to her, his brain darting about seeking acceptable solutions. Nell saw his fear and said at once that they wouldn’t be a burden to him, she and the baby; they would manage somehow. Her mother knew, she told him, and was prepared to help her.

  Staring at her as they stood together in the shadowy peaceful flat, Francis was silent with amazement. He thought of the small quiet woman he’d met once or twice and could hardly believe it.

  ‘She doesn’t know it’s you,’ Nell added quickly. ‘I wouldn’t tell her, though she knows that the father is a married man. We’ve talked about it, once we got over the shock, and we both want to keep the baby. She’s being amazing. I think it’s because she still misses Daddy so much. It’s giving her something to live for. There’s nothing you can do, Francis. If this gets out, you’re finished.’

  He pulled her into his arms and held her tightly. He wanted everything. ‘But it’s my baby, too.’

  ‘I know but, my darling, we have to face the facts. We’re moving to live with a cousin of Mummy’s near Tavistock. We shall say I’m a widow and we shall manage somehow.’

  ‘I want to help though,’ he cried stubbornly. ‘I love you. Perhaps I should speak to Liz.’

  Even as he said it he knew that he wouldn’t have the courage.

  Nell was shaking her head, still holding on to him. ‘Let’s just wait for a while. Nothing should happen in a rush.’

  ‘But I shall still see you and the baby? I can help financially. Please, Nell.’

  ‘Of course you shall see the baby,’ she said gently. ‘But we must be careful. Please, Francis, you must trust me.’

  And he had trusted her. She called the baby Maxim. They managed to go forward, meeting when he could manage it. He saw his boy grow from a baby into a toddler and then, when Maxie was two and a half, there was the offer of a post as a junior minister – and Liz announced that she was pregnant.

  Francis leans back in his chair and groans as he remembers the feeling of being pulled in so many directions at once; of rushing between London, his constituency and Brockscombe. He barely saw Nell or Maxie for months on end and then, two years later, he had a letter from her telling him that she was getting married.

  ‘You’d like Bill,’ she wrote. ‘He’s first lieutenant on a frigate running out of Devonport so it’s back to the military life for me. He loves Maxie and it will be good to be properly settled. I’ll stay in touch, of course . . .’

  He knew that he wouldn’t like Bill – that he hated Bill – but what could he do? And, to his shame, part of him was filled with relief. He arranged a trust for Maxie and wrote Nel
l a letter of congratulation. His letter, like hers, might have been from some very dear old friend but there were one or two little code words and phrases, previously agreed on, from which each might take comfort. Then Bill was posted to Singapore, the family were to go with him, and he and Nell agreed that communication should cease. It was more than forty years before he saw Nell and Maxie again.

  He can see Maxie now, pushing the wheelbarrow, laughing with Rob, who walks beside him, an arm across his shoulders. Francis catches a glimpse of another figure: hidden from their sight, Tim is walking in the woods. He waved to him once but the boy didn’t respond. He stood quite still, staring up at the windows almost in alarm, as if he were seeing a ghost, and then hurried away deeper into the trees.

  Francis stands up carefully, balances himself, still staring out of the window. Since his last stroke he confines himself mainly to the top floor of the house. Here he has his bedroom, bathroom, even a tiny kitchen – and this study, his sanctuary. He moves slowly to his desk and leans forward, resting on his fists, staring down at his papers. He is writing his memoirs, transferring years of notes to the computer. It is agonizingly slow but he is making progress. Francis switches on the computer, lowers himself on to his chair, opens the document and smiles wryly to himself as he reads the heading: ‘Chapter One. The Macmillan Years: “You never had it so good.”’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WILLIAM WALKS ALONG South Street, heading for the car park, raising his hand in farewell to fellow members of his singing group who are also on their way home. It has been one of those magical evenings when the group finds a mutual understanding of the music, a common feeling for what the music demands from the singers, and the resultant harmonies resonate and project in a way that usually seems beyond their reach.

  It’s an exhilarating sensation; addictive. One of the tenors was exultant: ‘Wow! We really nailed it!’ Another buffeted William lightly on the shoulder: ‘How about that?’ And ‘Quite good,’ agreed the music director, ‘but we’ll do it again and, this time, tenors, watch your entry on the twenty-fifth bar. You were late!’