It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  May was eighteen years of age. Recently she had announced that her name in future would be spelt Mae, after her adored heroine of the silver screen, another petite brunette like herself, Mae Murray, who had started her career as that glamour object, a Ziegfeld Folly girl on Broadway.

  May, or Mae, her face slightly rouged and a dark whisker-curl pressed on the upper part of each cheek by the discreet application of some of Arthur’s Shynecreem, held out a languid hand to her cousin.

  To Phillip she was almost a stranger; he had not paid more than half a dozen visits to Uncle Joe Turney’s house in his life, and until recently Mae had been at boarding school.

  “Hullo, Ma-ee. Is that how you pronounce it?”

  “Hullo, Phil-lip. No, it’s the same pronunciation.”

  “I was looking forward to meeting your fiancé again.”

  She gave him a glance; she was not sure that he was not being sarcastic; hitherto he had been reserved towards her.

  “So you may be coming to live with us? Aunt Hetty said you might.”

  “Doesn’t Herbert approve of dancing?” asked Arthur.

  Mae gave her brother an aloof smile. Turning to Phillip she said, “Jonesy is out tonight, so we’re having supper in the kitchen, if you don’t mind.”

  “I like kitchens.” Then seeing a motion-picture paper beside her, he said, “Still keen to go on the films? You’ve done some amateur acting, haven’t you?”

  She looked at him half defensively, before saying quietly, “Herbert says he won’t let me.”

  “Herbert thinks that all actresses and actors are immoral,” explained Arthur. “Excuse me, I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  He returned with a bottle of sherry and glasses. They drank. Arthur refilled Phillip’s glass before hiding the bottle behind the coal-scuttle.

  Left alone with Mae, Phillip said, “Will you mind if I ask a rather personal question?” as he drained his glass.

  “That was quick!” said Mae.

  “Do you really love this chap Herbert?”

  She had beautiful grey eyes and long lashes. He felt warm towards her, and saw that she had warmed to him.

  “Well, Phillip, I’ll try and answer your question. Here is an example. Herbert thinks that a sunset is just ordinary, and tells me that I’m morbid for wanting to look at one and remain quiet, when I am with him. Do you think I am morbid, Phillip?” Her face was a little sad as she smiled.

  “Of course you’re not morbid! A sunset is beautiful. The purpose of life is to create beauty. A sunset can be a glory when one sees it with a kindred spirit, but sad when one sees it alone. One can be alone with another, unless he or she thinks the same as one does.”

  Mae was looking at him with a kind and gentle gaze. He saw a tear rolling down her cheek, and dabbed it with his handkerchief.

  “Cousin dear! First love is nearly always experimental! And when there is doubt——No! There is no doubt in Nature. A wren with a wren, an owl with an owl, a hawk with a hawk, a nightingale with——”

  She looked pensive.

  “Your intuition is the truth, Mae. Never smother it, as I have done, again and again! Trust it! Don’t stifle it, out of loyalty to an idea.”

  She sighed. “Herbert needs me. Also, he’s fearfully jealous. I’ll tell you why he isn’t coming tonight. It’s because you’re here.”

  “Then I’d better go. Is he on the telephone?”

  It was her turn to be embarrassed. “I must look at the joint in the oven,” she said, leaving the room.

  “No need to go,” said Arthur. “I don’t think Herbert’s a genuine religious man. He sneers at poetry, asking what use it is to anyone.”

  “Poor Mae. She’s the steadfast type, like your father and my mother. Life can be pretty awful for such people when they haven’t much brain to give their feelings balance.”

  Arthur felt put off by this remark. “I—I don’t think you ought to say such things, Phillip.”

  “But it’s true. They were born like that.”

  “It’s not a very nice thing to say.”

  “Can’t you think with your head?”

  Arthur considered this. “Yes, I know what you mean. But I don’t like cynicism. Not that you”—he hastened to explain—“are exactly cynical. Anyway, I haven’t lost my ideals yet.” He looked reflective. “I’ve got a girl, you know; in fact I’m very nearly engaged to her. There’s one thing about her that worries me, to tell the truth. Like some more sherry? I have to hide it, because Herbert doesn’t like to see any kind of intoxicant.”

  “So the man who pinched whisky from the back of the officers’ mess cart doesn’t approve of others drinking!”

  “That was in the war, he’s a different man now. Anyway, don’t let’s talk about Herbert.”

  Phillip drank his third glass of sherry.

  “Men don’t change their natures, Arthur. Their habits yes, but not their natures. May I have another glass? I’ll buy you another bottle tomorrow.”

  Someone was walking up the garden path to the front door. “Here’s Father,” said Arthur. “He’s been down your way this week.” Back went the bottle behind the coal-scuttle.

  Joseph Turney came into the room, wearing his black hat and dark overcoat. Holding out a hand he said, “Welcome back to Maybury Lodge, Phillip!”

  “Thank you, Uncle Joe. Have you had a good week?”

  “Oh, not so bad, my boy. Queensbridge is looking its best now. I suppose you’ll be thinking of going back soon?”

  Joseph Turney, with his large, drooping grey moustaches, grey eyes and mild expression of general kindness, looked smaller than ever to his nephew. His eyes twinkled, and Phillip knew that one of his little-boy jokes was coming.

  “You’re welcome to stay with us as long as you like, you know, as I told your dear mother. The only condition is that you wash your feet once a month, and change your shirt every six months, ha ha!”

  “Ha ha. I would like to stay very much, Uncle, thank you. Of course I’ll pay my whack.”

  “Just as you please, my boy. Make yourself at home.”

  As soon as he had left the room Arthur said, “I’d like to ask your advice about Gladys, Phillip.”

  “I’ll respect your confidence. What’s worrying you?”

  “She says when we marry she doesn’t want any children.”

  “Why doesn’t she want any?”

  “I don’t know really.”

  “Then why not ask her?”

  “I have, but she won’t give any reason.”

  “Is she a frigid woman, like Doris?”

  “I don’t know really,” replied Arthur, not liking the question.

  “Then why not try her? Doesn’t she want to sleep with you?”

  Arthur said hurriedly, “She’s not that sort of girl, you see. Gladys doesn’t care for kissing—she’s a serious girl, nothing frivolous about her.”

  “Then what is your liking for her based upon?”

  “As you know, I run the local branch of the Poetry Association. I met her there, as a matter of fact. She was sitting by herself, and looked rather lonely. I spoke to her afterwards, and found that she liked Rupert Brooke. So do I, so we made friends. Then one day I gave her Wilfred Owen’s poems.”

  “What did she think of them?”

  “She said they were morbid.”

  “Which inferred that you were a bit morbid for liking them?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I rather fancy she did.”

  “I’ve heard that word morbid all my life, Arthur! Nowadays I run from people who use that word! Morbid be damned! Are you morbid for seeing the truth, which is compassion, of Owen’s verse? Is Mae also morbid, for wanting to be at peace with herself, watching a sunset? You can see the mix-up with Herbert, but are you sure you’re not in the same boat yourself? Bob Willoughby and Doris haven’t anything in common, so their marriage is a mutual dull ache. To hell with being morbid! It’s a word used by fools to maintain their own stupidity. You want to loo
k at causes in human behaviour, not effects only. It’s morbid if you like not to want to have a child; but what is the source of that morbidity? Perhaps she heard a woman screaming in childbirth!”

  “I—I must ask her——”

  “In your case, it’s morbid for a man not to want to put the girl he loves, whom he wants to share his life, in the family way. Perhaps she requires an operation?”

  Arthur didn’t like this turn of the talk. “By the way, Phillip, Aunt Hetty said that Doris had offered to adopt your son.”

  “Oh, I can’t think about it! My brain is a pulp.”

  “Before we leave the subject, I think I ought to tell you that I have asked Gladys if she would agree to adopt a child.”

  So that was it! Nobody was going to adopt Billy while he was alive!

  “What did she reply?”

  “She was against it, I fear. She said that the baby might come of bad stock and turn out to be a criminal, so she couldn’t risk it. So I thought of asking her, if it is all the same to you, and Doris doesn’t want to adopt your son, if she would consider Billy. After all, your son is my cousin, I suppose.”

  *

  After a good dinner of roast mutton, with baked potatoes and braised onions, Phillip felt glad to be with his cousins in the sitting-room, the gramophone going and Arthur looking over records. Topsy and Mae wore their glad rags, as the term still prevailed in the suburbs, having arrived there some years after the boy-and-girl dances in Mayfair during the war.

  Topsy, Arthur’s younger sister, was sixteen years of age and still at school. She was tall and graceful, taking after her mother, and wanted to be a dress designer. She wore clothes, when not at school, which she made for herself with the help of Miss Jones the housekeeper.

  During the dancing the front door bell rang. Topsy peeped round the door when Mae went to open it. She looked back and said while screwing up her nose, “It’s Herbert! I bet he said he wasn’t coming, just to be different!”

  Herbert Hukin, dressed in his Sunday best, with tall linen collar in place of his usual (economy) washable celluloid affair, came into the room. After shaking hands all round he turned to Phillip and said, “So you’ve returned from France. What was it like?”

  “Warm in places, with a little rain.”

  Herbert stared critically at Topsy’s dress. It fitted close to her figure, and she wore it with a languid manner, in imitation of an imagined mannequin. Phillip liked Topsy; she had fine even white teeth, like her mother’s. At the age of twelve Topsy had asked the dentist to take out her bicuspid teeth, saying she wanted her mouth to look decent when she smiled. Now at sixteen they did look decent; and she often smiled. When Arthur smiled it looked like a grin, for his mouth had retained the crowded front teeth nature had given him to replace those whose roots had dissolved with childhood.

  “Rather near the bone, isn’t it, that dress?” said Herbert, looking Topsy over.

  “What bone?” enquired Topsy, with a smile.

  “You know very well what I mean.”

  “Herbert’s private bone, perhaps?” suggested Phillip.

  “What d’you mean?” demanded Herbert.

  “Well, people talk about having a bone of contention, don’t they?”

  Phillip wondered how he could make a character like Herbert, in a book, sympathetic. He must have a good side: where or what was it? Was it in admiration of his father that he wore that tallish stiff starched collar and trousers baggy at the knees? How far could unawareness of the feelings of others be related to a strict chapel upbringing? How far was stupidity lack of experience?

  Herbert, according to Arthur, had, out of curiosity, bought a copy of his ‘Pauline’ novel the year before. Herbert had paid five shillings for it, having got 33⅓ per cent off retail price by buying it through the trade, being in his father’s printing business. Herbert, having looked through it for what he called ‘hot’ scenes, had pronounced the book to be decidedly immoral.

  Herbert’s face was large and square, and his body, as Phillip had observed when the three of them had gone swimming together at the public baths, was entirely white, with flabby muscles; a body altogether too fleshy for a man of thirty. Phillip had not actually disliked Herbert until Herbert had told a story about his cleverness in removing several bottles of whisky from the officers’ mess-cart when he had been marching directly behind it in column of route somewhere in Salonica during the war. Herbert had stayed in the ranks, he explained, because he ‘had refused a commission’; who had offered Herbert one he had not said. And in telling his story of appropriating the property of those who had been commissioned, Herbert had expected his listeners to share in the self-approval of his cunning. Poor Mae, thought Phillip: no wonder the young girl was already hiding her real self under camouflage as Mae.

  “Come on, let’s have a fox-trot,” said Herbert, trying to pull his fiancée off the sofa by one arm. “Put on Yes, We Have No Bananas. I like that song.”

  “Don’t pull, you’re hurting my arm!” cried Mae.

  “Well, come on when you’re asked!”

  A slow dance of sorts then proceeded round the mahogany table, Herbert pushing Mae before him.

  “Aren’t you dancing?” he asked Phillip, who was lounging on the sofa.

  “Are you?”

  The record of Yes, We Have No Bananas ran down with a groan.

  “Wind it up, Topsy, let’s have it again,” said Herbert.

  “Wind it up yourself,” replied Topsy. She gave Phillip a wide smile of white and splendid teeth and threw herself on the sofa beside him and wound her arms round his neck. He kissed her soft lips; Topsy was a darling.

  May looked at him with Mae’s sorrowful grey eyes. Phillip wondered how Herbert kissed her: probably he gave her an insensitive he-man kiss, intense and false as in the films, bending her head back until her neck hurt, while telling himself it was the stuff to give them.

  “What’s Paris like?” asked Mae, leaning against the edge of the table. “I want to go to Paris,” she sighed.

  “What for?” asked Herbert.

  “Oh, I just do, that’s all!”

  “What’s wrong with London?”

  “Oh—London!” exclaimed Mae, as though rehearsing on a stage. “It’s a place devoted to Business—and inhabited by people with cramped souls—all hurrying to get more business, and then hurrying to get away from business—with no thoughts of poetry, or beauty, or anything but—money.”

  “Ever thought where you’d be if it wasn’t for Business?” demanded Herbert. “Ever thought of that?” He looked at Phillip and repeated, “What’s wrong with London?”

  “There are dirty, dreary bits of paper everywhere,” said Phillip, imitating Mae’s dreamy tone. “There are hard pavements. Orange and banana skins lie all over the place. Whereas Paris is a place of light and gaiety—art and beauty flourish there——”

  “I expect it’s no better than London, as regards the streets, if the truth be known!”

  “Except that there are naked women on the stage,” said Phillip.

  “Oo, I’d like to be one!” cried Topsy.

  Arthur grinned with full display of canines.

  “You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Herbert asked Phillip.

  “Oh no, I haven’t a sense of humour.”

  “I can well believe that!”

  “Darling cousin of mine,” said Topsy. “Can you drink cocoa, or would you prefer tea? Or both? Just say the word, it’s Liberty Hall. Come closer, darling cousin Phil, and tell me about Paris. Did you see any lovely clothes?”

  Herbert led Mae out of the room.

  “I say, I hope I haven’t driven him away!” said Phillip, with mock concern.

  “Not more than usual,” grinned Arthur.

  “They’ve gone down to the summerhouse in the garden,” said Topsy.

  “That must be where my father used to visit my mother secretly, over thirty years ago! Topsy, don’t you ever marry until you find a young man who i
s fun to be with, in ordinary circumstances!”

  He held her in his arms, imagining that she was Barley: and then thinking that she had her own sweetness and warmth and gentleness. She was Topsy, she had replaced for the moment the image of Barley. He felt that he loved Topsy, without desire, without longing; content to be with her, to share the moment with her, without demands, but to be with her.

  “I wonder what Herbert would think if he saw you two now,” said Arthur.

  “Anything but the truth.”

  “They’re going to be married next year, he’s just insured his life for a thousand pounds. His father has promised him a directorship after two years. I’ve just given him an intro to the Cremation Society——”

  Phillip laughed so much that Topsy said he was shaking her to a jelly.

  “Seriously, Phillip, it’s the thing of the future. You become a shareholder as well as a beneficiary by paying an annual subscription. I am an agent for the Society, which is a non-profit-making concern. It’s only a guinea a year. What’s the joke?”

  “Arthur, you awful thing!” cried Topsy. “Fancy talking like that to Phil, at this time!”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, darling,” said Phillip, stroking her hair. “It’s Business. Everything is Business. I met Ronald Harsnop at the Parnassus Club; he dresses his heroes in Thatch’s hats, Bonedry’s raincoats, and Bashem’s boots, in exchange for those goods in real life. Perhaps he’ll get on the free list if he mentions Arthur’s Crematorium in his next book.”

  Arthur thought this funny, and laughed loudly. “Seriously, Phillip, I can get you anything you want at a discount of five, ten, or even twelve-and-a-half per cent, through a customer of the firm who is a commission agent. If ever you want a new motor-bike, let me know. You don’t want to sell your Norton, I suppose? I wouldn’t mind making you an offer, if you did.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t sell my beautiful ’bus, Arthur!”

  “You have such soft lips, darling,” whispered Topsy, just before her mother came into the room.

  *

  Mrs. Joseph Turney was a homoeopathic invalid. She lived out of jars and packets, the contents of which were eaten with vegetables. She was a beautiful woman with a serene face, who sat in her own room most of the day and seldom came out for meals. Miss Jones, an elderly lady housekeeper-cook looked after the needs of the household, and since both Mae and Topsy helped her, because they liked her, it was altogether a happy home to be in. Before living there Phillip had thought of his Uncle Joe as a bit of a nitwit; now he realised that there was more to a man than brains. Uncle Joe was kind. He was narrow, but not intolerant.