It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  “I saw your mother today,” he said. “She hopes you will go and see her soon, and wants you to stay there.”

  *

  During the day, when he was alone with his mother, Phillip felt a light-hearted freedom about the house; they had the place to themselves. Doris still lived on the outskirts of London in what was once an Essex market town, but now rapidly becoming a London suburb; Elizabeth shared a flat with her friend Nina at Sydenham. Doris was still forbidden the house by Richard, for eloping with ‘Mr. Willoughby’; so was Elizabeth, for what he considered to be her ill manners toward himself as head of the family.

  Both girls were Hetty’s constant concern. Doris was not happy with her husband, although she had at last yielded to the marriage consummation, with the result that a baby was expected in August. Hetty had hoped its coming would draw Doris and Bob closer; she still hoped for such a state, despite her experience; her dream was of Billy and the new little one growing up together, and Phillip somehow content in the background with his writing.

  In addition to the actual worries about her children and grandchild, Hetty suffered anxiety on account of Elizabeth’s health. The doctor had, more than once, stressed the point that her only chance of growing out of her liability to fits was to start her own life away from home, and—this was most important, he said—never seeing her father.

  But how would Elizabeth be able to manage without her mother? There were Elizabeth’s chronic demands for money to pay her dress bills. The girl lived to be prettily dressed, and in the latest styles as they came into suburban shops a year or so after they had ceased to be fashionable in the best shops of the West End. When, in the course of time, a fashion got to the factory girls, Elizabeth became obsessed with the desire for an entirely new rig-out. At the moment it was Russian boots. Only that evening there had been a crisis.

  “Mother, I must have a pair! You must lend me the money! All the other girls at the office are wearing them! Oh you are unkind! You are horrible sometimes! You know very well that my salary isn’t enough to keep me properly!”

  “Very well, dear, but this is the very last time!”

  It was always the very last time: but it was better than an ‘attack’. Having got the money, Elizabeth hurried away before her awful Father returned. She was down in the High Street before the shops shut, to buy the kind of boots Margot Asquith, whose photographs were constantly in the papers, had been the first to wear, eighteen months before.

  Hetty was happy with Phillip. Sometimes they took the morning train to Reynard’s Common, and walked over the heath where, in Edwardian days, Hetty had taken the girls, to be joined by Richard and Phillip who had bicycled there. Phillip did not care to go by ’bus, for all around Cutler’s Pond was becoming a vast new suburb, pressing upon his spirit as streets and houses pressed upon once-green fields and little cattle-drinking ponds, each with its pair of moorhens and small roach which, in early boyhood, had made part of his life. Devon scenes had superseded those of north-west Kent, now a dark patch on the map; but places, once loved, that have disappeared are as friends who have died, he said, quoting a phrase out of cousin Willie’s books by Richard Jefferies.

  “‘Faces fade as flowers, and there is no consolation’. Honestly, all religion apart, is there any consolation? Beyond feeling that the dead are steadfast?”

  “We must live for others, dear. For our children, especially.” Phillip and his ‘little son’ were seldom out of her thoughts.

  “I do try to, Mother, only——”

  “I know you do, dear. You are a good boy, you always were, really——”

  They stopped by a dell in which grew silver birches.

  “We had a picnic here once, Mum, I remember. I put a piece of orange peel near a chiffchaff’s nest which Father discovered. We had lovely egg-sandwiches and mince pies, and ginger beer. The girls wore floppy hats with ribands round them, and I wore my white cricketing hat, because I’d had sun-stroke at Hayling Island the year before. D’you remember?”

  “Oh yes, Phillip! We all had many happy times together, with Father, didn’t we? If only they could come again!”

  “You know, Mum, I tend to think of those days as always edged by darkness, or fear, but I often wonder if I exaggerate them.”

  A nightingale began to sing among the green undergrowth. He stopped as though stricken.

  “I can’t think what to do! I can’t see any future, except for my work! I daren’t go back to Malandine, and yet—I can never leave it.”

  “Of course, Phillip, I know exactly how you feel.” After walking on together she said, “Has Billy’s other grandmother, Mrs. Lushington, any ideas about him, that you know of?”

  “Not exactly. I only began to think about it when I was on my way home, one night in the Ancre Valley. When I saw her in the Pyrenees, she did say something about coming to Devon to see Barley’s grave. She said she would write and let me know in plenty of time. I haven’t heard yet.”

  “Has she seen the baby, Phillip?”

  “No, not yet.”

  Hetty could not contain her fears. “You won’t let Billy go away from you, will you, Phillip? I do think it might be a solution to let Doris take him, for a while, anyway. Looking after two is not much more trouble than looking after one, you know. Why not come over with me to Romford one afternoon, and have a talk with her? Doris is very fond of you, you know!”

  He went over with his mother the next day. The Willoughbys’ house had an uncared-for look about it. The wallpaper was dark, the paint-work old, both gardens neglected. There was a small glass-house through which one reached the back garden. The shelves of this were empty save for two pots, each containing a plant withered from lack of watering. Patches in the lawn were worn bare.

  Doris looked as dingy as the garden. Her hair had lost its lustre, her face was pale, she was getting fat, but that was the baby, he thought. She apologised for the state of the house, saying they hadn’t had time to get it in proper order yet. The bathroom had a decayed copper geyser in it, green in places from corrosion by fumes, and under the tap the old enamel paint of the bath was blue where cuprous water had dripped. After Barley’s scrupulously neat cottage, it was a horror to Phillip. No, the baby must not be allowed to come to such a place. He wanted to talk to Bob when he returned from work, so Hetty went home alone, happy with the thought that her son might be able to influence Bob away from the man who was, she thought, leading him astray.

  Phillip met this friend with Bob over pints of beer at a pub. He was the honorary secretary of the local Christian Spiritualist Church: an earnest, sensitive man. Poor Mother, what prejudices she had: but of course Uncle Hugh’s fate was at the root of her fears in the direction of ‘drink’.

  “May I ask a very frank question, Bob?”

  “By all means.”

  “Do you honestly believe that Percy was trying to speak to you, as a medium, when we had that séance in the cottage last August?”

  “I am sure of it.”

  “How did it affect your relationship with Doris?”

  “She prayed with our pastor, who told her it was Percy’s wish that she had a child.”

  “I see.”

  “B-but,” stammered Bob, fingers to mouth. “Afterwards she told me it was a t-t-trick.”

  “A conspiracy, in other words?”

  “Y-yes.”

  Bob spoke in a quiet voice with a near-tremulant undertone. While the three were talking about psychic phenomena, with references to the books of Conan Doyle and Oliver Lodge, a thin woman dressed in the uniform of the Salvation Army entered the bar, carrying copies of The War Cry. She spoke to Bob as though she knew him, and said his father was outside and wanted him to go to the service.

  The public-house stood at a corner of two streets. Phillip heard cornet music, accompanied by occasional thumps of a big drum.

  “I think I’d better go. Would you mind, Phillip, if I leave you for a bit?”

  “No, of course not.”

&n
bsp; “You see, my father runs the S-Salvation Army b-b-branch h-here.” Again the wry mouth covered by fin-like hand.

  “May I come, too? The Salvation Army does splendid work.”

  There was the usual shrill singing of women, the confident bass of men’s voices, rattle of tambourines, near-strident brass music, prayers sent up under arc-lights. A convert looking like an old prize-fighter spoke of how he had found salvation. Phillip thought of Masefield’s Everlasting Mercy. Another hymn, with the familiar words, Throw the life-line, there’s one more sinner to be saved, and then he was confronted by a short, stout man who said he was pleased to meet him, adding that he had read his book about Donkin.

  “I hope it wasn’t a waste of time, sir.”

  “Not altogether. But what the lad lacked is a positive attitude to life, lack of guts in other words. Write a better one next time!”

  “Well, Donkin had a rather bad time as a child, didn’t he, Mr. Willoughby? He was struggling to find himself.”

  “Yes, but the way was open to him, if only he would take it, my friend!”

  “But the whole point of the story is that he is struggling to find the way, surely?”

  “Revelation of the way to salvation lies ready-made for all man, that’s my point!”

  “But surely you don’t despise those who have not yet had the good fortune, like yourself, to find it ready-made?”

  “You’re a doubting Thomas, my lad! And life’s too short for splitting hairs! The way to salvation lies open! Strike up, boys!”

  To the boom-boom-boom of the big base drum, brass of trombone, cornet and tuba, the procession marched out of step down the street to the next pitch, while Bob, stuttering more than usual, asked Phillip not to take any notice of what his father had said.

  “H-he’s a f-f-fun-fun-damentalist, y-y-you s-s-see.”

  *

  “Goodbye, dear cousins! I have loved my stay here. Goodbye, Mae, I wish I wasn’t going!” She held her cheek for a kiss. “Goodbye, Topsy darling!” He hugged her and kissed her neck repeatedly. “You are going to be very, very happy,” he whispered. “Don’t forget to ask me to your wedding!”

  He had already said goodbye to his Uncle and Aunt. “Au revoir, Arthur! I’ll look forward to your visit. You will give me a few days’ notice when you come, won’t you? We’ll have wonderful walks, all over the moors. I want to follow the rivers, we might even come across my tame otter! It lost two toes in that gin I told you about, and otters are great wanderers. We’ll be able to recognise him by his spoor!”

  The idea of finding Lutra grew in his mind as he went along the familiar road to Exeter until he began to feel that if he could find the otter he would be able to start a new life: Lutra must be found, and then, with his son for companion, all would be well.

  Chapter 7

  WATER WANDERER

  White clouds were massing in a long and narrow column in the cold high air between warmer hills when he saw the spired church on the high ground above the Channel. Leaving Wakenham at dawn, he had stopped only twice on the way, once for a hurried meal and again for a gallon of petrol and a quart of oil. To reach Valerian Cottage had been his only aim during the long hours on the road, pushing the engine as fast as he dared over bumpy surfaces and around narrow corners of the London-Exeter road. Now, turning off before Claybrough, he descended to the valley of Malandine.

  He unlocked the door of his cottage and stood on the lime-ash floor, unwashed and unbrushed as he had left it. An old newspaper lay on the table with an empty cup. His nailed brogues lay uncleaned by the hearth where he had left them. Why had he come?

  He took three steps towards the table and sat down, unable to move further. The snowdrops Barley had put in a jar on the shelf were withered and colourless. Dust lay on the table, on the new bee-hive which had stood in the corner for three years, the saddle covering it; dust on the book-shelf, on the arm-chair. The small, closed window let in light grudgingly, revealing a tortoise-shell butterfly lying brittle in death on the wooden ledge.

  After a while he got up and moved about the room. The larder door stood open. He remembered his haste in packing his bag, the desperate need to be in London before lighting-up time with no lamp. It hadn’t occurred to him, then, to buy a lamp. He must pull himself together: let air into the place. He went into the small larder to open the window. The two shelves within were bare, except for a jam-jar in which a few grains of rice had lain. His eye perceived something on the bottom of the jar.

  Looking closer, he saw the corpse of a mouse, flat and light as an old leaf. The mouse had apparently jumped into the jar, nibbled a few grains, and, after seeking a way out of a waterless prison in vain, had died there.

  He sat in his chair, eyes closed, with the knowledge that if he sat there all night, and all the next day, and for the rest of his life, it would make no difference to any living person. And then he remembered: he should have called at the Cottage Hospital in Queensbridge.

  He went upstairs, to see where a cot could be put in the main bedroom. While he sat in shadow, on the familiar blankets of his bed, he heard a whine below. It was Rusty. After an interval he heard a mournful howl.

  “Rusty! Come on up, Rusty!”

  There was the noise of prolonged squeezing through the cathole, followed by the tippity-tap of clawed paws on the bare wooden stairs. At the top, silence.

  “Rusty,” he said softly, and another wavering hollow cry answered.

  “Come on, Rusty!” and with a bubbling sound the dog came sideways into the room, flacking his tongue, his eyes shining. He raised himself laboriously, first on one foot then on another, a third and then a fourth, on the bed beside Phillip. There he filled his lungs with air, breathed out happily, and sat up, looking at his master, the tail-stump knocking Phillip’s knee. A voice below.

  “Beg pardon, zur, but mis’es zays would ’ee care vor a cup of tay?”

  “Dear Walter Crang!”

  After tea of toast and eggs in the kitchen with familiar and friendly faces, he felt new life and hope coming upon him. He would clean the cottage on the morrow, and then go to see the baby. Now he must go down to the sands and dedicate himself anew to the elements he had nearly forgotten. So with spaniel straddling the cross-bar above the petrol tank he pushed off for the sea.

  The sands were empty. A pair of kestrels called wistfully in the thorn-brake growing down the Valkyrie Rock. After a bathe he stayed there while the tide came in and the flung spray was lilac-coloured in the rays of the sinking sun; he stayed too long, for as the sea darkened a feeling of his own helplessness before Nature, to which he had once trusted, overcame him. What was the life or hope of a man, lacking that human warmth called love, set against the eternity of sea and sky—the cold mindless power of the sea always in motion—surge upon surge of grey rollers breaking and pounding, swirling and receding for ever and for ever? Was any personal life, hope, or memory of more account than the crystal-life within one swirled grain of the immeasurable sands?

  “Yes!” he said, loudly. Why had he said that? Or had something said it for him?

  For the moment he believed that it was an answer; from his subconscious mind, perhaps, or from some spiritual force, perhaps Willie’s.

  He thought he would test himself by climbing up the Valkyrie Rock. It was not exactly dangerous, but there was one place by an outcrop of hard quartz where a slip would mean a crash to the rocks below. It was not difficult, if climbed straightly, but if he hesitated at the dangerous turn and looked down in fear, strength would ooze out and enfeeble him. Very well, he would test the Yes part of himself. He told himself as he went up that he must not pause to look down at the critical point but go straight on up.

  The spaniel behind him whined, he was afraid; but Phillip kept to his determination, refusing the hot thoughts of fear that one part of him wanted to yield to; and in a short time was pulling himself by tufts of grasses over the edge of the cliff. He went on with an almost gay feeling to the lane where, among umbel
liferous plants, the Norton was almost entirely hidden. Dog between knees and elbows, he sped up the lane, dust rising behind the open nickel exhaust pipe.

  By candlelight he swept out the bedroom, and under the rising moon took out the blankets and shook them, turned the mattress, and worked until midnight, while dog and cat accompanied him up and down stairs and from one room to another. Then, all set to rights, he washed in a pail of cold water and went upstairs, followed by the animals, who settled themselves at the foot of the bed.

  Continuing his resolution, or that which had decided for him, he prayed to retain an equal mind, to be calm; and knew that he must live a life of regular habit.

  *

  In the morning he went to see the baby. It was lying in a cot under a verandah, kicking both legs together, and when he looked down at it the gentle cooing noises ceased and the small face became as though serious, looking up at him without recognition until the mouth loosened and the head waggled slightly. Was that a smile? A feeling between helplessness and tenderness overcame him; he was afraid when the nurse said he might pick up baby if he were very careful. She showed him how to support its head along his arm.

  “Take him, Mr. Maddison,” she said, putting the baby in his arms. “I’ll leave you for a while. Look, he is smiling at you!”

  He held it with great care, and felt the warmth of the fair hair against his cheek; and without knowing what he did put his lips to the skull and not so much kissed it as sent his tender feelings to the innocent head through the touch of his mouth.