It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  He wrote it in his notebook, and saying, “Goodbye,” was about to turn away when she said, “Won’t you come in, I’m sure they’re not all gone to bed——”

  “Well, it’s awfully late, thanks very much, and it will take some hours to walk back.”

  “I am sure we can fix you up with a bed for the night, if you’re tired——”

  He wanted to stay; he hesitated, while the thin thread of negation returned; and the foolish thought of the mouth-rejected strawberry. Of course people of her sort didn’t behave like that, in public anyway; usually they never ate outdoors, in public——

  “I think I ought to go back, thank you. Well, goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” the soft voice came through the dusk, and then he was walking back beside the river, a weary dog at his heels. The pubs in Appledore were closed, but not all the lights in the cottages were out. He knocked at one, and after direction to someone in Irsha Court, and a promise to pay five shillings, followed a bulky form to the sands below the quay.

  Midnight was striking as he clambered over the gunwale of a salmon boat and was rowed to the Shrarshook, long and dark in the half-ebb. There he waited for the water to lapse on the lighthouse side, imagining himself to be Willie waiting for boats which never came on the flowing tide that late September night of that fatal year, 1923. Supposing the tide didn’t go all the way out, but flowed back, unexpectedly, due to a distant earthquake; and history repeated itself?

  He thrust away the thought; it persisted. Was Willie beside him? At the idea he felt reassured, that his cousin’s spirit would help him. He waited calmly in the noises of lapsing water, and after half an hour or so began to pick his way among the pools glimmering in starlight to the loose shingle of the shore. He climbed a sandhill, and setting direction by the lighthouse over his shoulder, set off for the hill down which he had run from Lucy that afternoon.

  *

  The stars which had been at the zenith when he had gone down to the quay at midnight had moved into the western hemisphere when at length he got to the summit of the tangled track by which they had earlier crossed the ridgeway. He realised that he had come far out of his way. Too weary to move, he lay on his back upon the bare rock, while the stars appeared to swim about the sky. After a rest he sat up, forcing himself upon his feet despite the heavy feeling in arms and legs; and turning round, descended to the road. The spaniel was very tired; he lay and whined when Phillip moved on. He was carried the couple of miles home, head hanging over his master’s shoulder. They arrived at the cottage as cocks were crowing and the silhouette of the church tower was sharp in cold eastern light. He carried Rusty upstairs and put him on his bed, to the purrings of Moggy.

  Too tired to remove even his shoes, he lay down and slept.

  Chapter 10

  COUNTRY TALK

  The farmer, he wrote to Lucy, was agreeable about the camping site for her Guides. She replied saying she was looking forward to coming in the second half of August, and thanking him for arranging it and for giving her such a splendid day. She felt rather guilty for allowing him to return so late at night after their walk, and hoped that he was none the worse for it.

  Phillip was now writing regularly in the morning. He took Billy to the sands every fine afternoon, carrying him in the pack on his back like a papoose. Rusty came too, perched on the tank.

  “Mind you don’t go sparking, Mr. Maddison! I don’t want my boy killed, you know!” said Zillah.

  “That’s right,” added Mules. “Zillah, her loveth li’l Billy, proper li’l chap, dear li’l boy.” He giggled as though with some secret thought.

  Zillah was a tall girl about eighteen years of age, with long and lustrous auburn hair. She sang in the church choir, where her voice, which had a shrill harshness within the confines of the low-ceiling’d kitchen, sounded surprisingly clear and pure.

  Nowadays he had his supper with the family in the kitchen. He was usually on the defensive, assuming a fire-cracker personality to dissemble his real feelings. They were obviously curious about what Zillah once referred to as his young lady, challenging him on that occasion to deny that he had one.

  “I have several friends, men and women, and treat them all alike.”

  “I bet!” cried Zillah.

  He replied often nonsensically; good-natured scorn and repressive ridicule became the attitude of mother and daughter to most of the things he said. Mules acted as soother and peacemaker, with the frequent comment, “You’m a funny man, Mis’r Mass’on. What things you do zay, you’m a funny man, you be!” after Zillah’s excited treble had rung out with her usual half-laughing challenge of, “It’s a dirty lie, Mis’r Mass’on, what you be telling us! Tidden true, you know, is it? Us knows better than that old flim-flam you’m always telling!”

  “Well, it is possible that the original of ‘walking on water’ was the equivalent of our ‘walking on air’, to express spiritual happiness——”

  Mrs. Mules, arms across wide bosom, would rock a little in her chair at the top of the table and chant with a subdued excitement akin to Zillah’s, “Tidden true, you know! I won’t have what you’m telling! The high-up people knaw what they be doing, don’t you know that? They’m eddicated, you see, that is it!”

  “Also, the Jacobean translation of the New Testament at times takes poetic tales to be literal, not spiritual, truths.”

  “My wife be right, zur,” Mules affirmed gently. “My wife hath been in service with high-up people, my wife hath. She was cook to Mr. Wigfull the lawyer in to Queensbridge, do ’ee know that?” His voice was now very quiet and respectful. “Mr. Wigfull, the lawyer. ’A knoweth everything about everybody, Mr. Wigfull did, a local praicher ’a were, next to the parson in the church. ’Tes true as I be sitting yurr. It be!”

  “Yes!” burst out Mrs. Mules, memory reanimating her to produce words in a series of little gasps.

  “You see, Miss’us had a parrot too once—and Polly knew more than you would think Polly would have the sense to knaw! I tell ’ee, this be true—not made up flim-flam like you’m telling! Mrs. Wigfull—her came into my kitchen one day, and she sot down on a chair—and un-beknown to Miss’us one of the maids had stood down a dish of butter on it—and as Miss’us stood up agen with a cry, Polly Parrot calleth out, ‘Missis’s arse! Missis’s arse!’, for Polly knew, you see, what had happened! And that’s as true as I’m sittin’ yurr! ‘Missis’s arse. Missis’ arse!’ Polly called out!”

  “That’s right,” murmured Mules, standing behind his wife’s chair. “That be true, zur. My wife’s quite honest. My wife wouldn’t tell a lie to save her zoul, noomye! And my wife hath known high-up people. High like. High.”

  “Well, it depends on what you mean by ‘high’, Muley dear.”

  He continued, slightly parodying Mrs. Mules’ way of speaking, “I came across Mr. Wigfull in Queensbridge, and he was certainly ‘high’! Wigfull! Wigfull of what? As you know, a wig is made of wool, a lawyer’s wig anyway. So what can it be full of? Fleas?”

  “What be you chatterin’ about now?” cried Mrs. Mules. “My dear zoul, what be ’ee about? Tes high-up people, don’t you zee, what us be talkin’ about now! That be the name—Wigfull, you see—Mr. Wigfull, the lawyer to Queensbridge!”

  “I meant ‘high’ in the sense of having been dead for some time, like a pheasant before it goeth into the oven.”

  “That’s right,” Mules hastened to explain, “that’s what’m be. Highups. What us calls yurrabout highups. Highup like.”

  “How did they get to be high up? By crawling? And high up what, Muley dear?”

  “Aw, you’m pretending you don’t knaw what a highup person be!” cried Mrs. Mules. “Do you zee any green in my eye?”

  “Ah, now I know what you mean! They climb as high as they can, like those village chaps on the green cliffs after gulls’ eggs!”

  “Aw, tidden no sense what you’m telling’! First it be wigs, then it be fessans, now it be gulls’ eggs!”

  Patien
tly Mules tried to explain. “High-ups, that’s right. High-up Tories they be. Conservatives like.”

  “They all vote Tory!” cried Zillah. “Now do you understand, Mis’r Mass’n?”

  “That’s right!” murmured Mules. “Tories they be. Tories. Unionists, like.”

  “Stories? Do all high-ups write stories? Wigs full of stories—or fleas?”

  “You’m talkin’ like a proper mazed man!” cried Mrs. Mules. “And mind ’ee don’t upset the babby, rinning about like you be on that noisy ole motor-bike of yours!”

  “Yes, you look out you don’t hurt the baby, Mis’r Mass’n! Or you’ll hear from me! They say in the village you’m riskin’ the little dear’s life, sparking about so fast as you du!”

  “Zillah be right, you know,” said Mules, soothingly.

  “Who says that?”

  “Aw, don’t ’e say nought, Zillah, don’t ’ee say a word, for goodness’ sake.”

  “It be Miss Seek, the churchwarden, if you want to know, ‘Mis’r Masson’!”

  “Ah, the lady who proposed to have cousin Willie prosecuted for blasphemy!”

  “Don’t you say ’twas Zillah what zaid zo, will you, zur? Tidden no business of ours. I don’t know reely, ’tes only what I’ve heard, you see. Heard-like, while I was paring th’ grass i’ th’ churchyard. ’Tes only what I heard. Zo plaize don’t zay I said zo, wull ’ee?”

  “They said your cousin was a Communist,” declared Zillah.

  “Aw, ’tidden no odds what some people zay!” cried Mrs. Mules. “They’m always talking about this and that, don’t ’ee zee? Talk goes away light.”

  “That’s right!” Mules said, gently. “Mother, her be quite right, you knaw! Mother be honest, you knaw, without a word of a lie. Her was cook to Mr. Wigfull, a proper gen’l’man. Wigfull. Wigfull, like.”

  “Don’t you go about saying nought about Miss Seek, mind!” cried Zillah.

  “I don’t even know her. Anyway, what is a Communist?”

  “A Red!” said Zillah.

  “Muley has a red head, so have you—are you Communists?”

  “Us ban’t what your cousin Willie was! He was a proper Bolshy!”

  “Don’t you go ’bout zaying Feyther be a Communist, now!” said Mrs. Mules.

  “By ‘red’ I meant a joke, Mrs. Mules. Not ‘red’ in politics, but red in hair and bicycle! William the Conqueror had red hair, the finest colour in the world.”

  “A joke be half a lie!” challenged the bright-eyed Zillah. “Ban’t it Mis’r Mass’n?”

  “I wish I knew,” he replied, taking up The Manchester Guardian Weekly.

  “’Tes all this yurr studying of books, you’m always studying of books, studying, reading of books like! You be a funny man, he-he, ‘red hair’, that’s right, ‘red hair’. Poor old Muley, you say I be, poor old red-haired Muley, poor old gravedigger I be.”

  “I love you, dear Muley, Your hair is so warm, And if I don’t rag you, You’ll do me no harm.”

  “Don’t you cheek Feyther!” challenged Zillah. “Or I’ll scatt ’ee, I will.”

  “Then I’ll scatt ’ee, Zillah!”

  “Go on, try it!”

  It was innocent fun, they were kind and gentle people; he ragged about and played the fool to avoid his inner difference, and despair that he was betraying Barley. Zillah had a serious side, he realised, when she called at his cottage for his washing one evening after choir-practice.

  “Would you like me to clear up this mess?” she asked, in a quiet voice.

  He looked up and saw she was puffing nervously at a cigarette.

  “Yes, it’s a proper muddle, isn’t it?”

  “When that young lady comes down with her Girl Guides, what will she think of Mother and me, to let you keep your place like this?”

  “Oh, I’ll clear it up before then, Zillah. Anyway, I don’t expect she’ll come here. She’ll be fully occupied with her Guides. Just a moment, I’ll get my light cotton breeches. Do you think your mother would wash them for me?”

  “Yes, that will be all right. You won’t be late for supper, will you? Mother doesn’t like having to put it back in the oven.”

  “I’ll be over at eight sharp.” He looked up, and saw her looking at him seriously. “I won’t be late,” he said, “I promise.”

  “Mother worries when the food is spoiled, you see.”

  *

  He missed Lucy, and the idea to see her grew until he could think of nothing else. Without telling anyone he set off early the next afternoon. The weather was fine, the motor-bike ran fast along the curving road to Exeter and beyond, rushing up the hill outside Honiton to the high ground of Dorset with the sun behind the rider. Over the downs and past the heaths with their pine trees and soaring kestrels, through forest land with views of the sea until he turned inland for Shakesbury.

  After some searching and enquiry he discovered the house down a turning off the road. As he slowed by the gate, he saw a long and narrow cycle-car standing close against the bank. It had a body like the fuselage of a two-seater aircraft. Dismounting, he touched the fins of the air-cooled engine. They were cold. He peered through the hedge. Which gate should he enter by? There were two: the first consisted of double doors, over which he peered, seeing an empty yard; the other, of iron and painted white, led to the front door a score of yards down the lane.

  He decided to try the double doors. Pushing one open the first thing he saw was a canoe lying in a shed among empty flower pots. Beyond outbuildings were the walls and roof of the house. He waited. Shouldn’t he have written to say he was coming? What would they think of him, barging in like this? Then feeling that he was about to invite his own dissolution, he went down the lane, opened the iron gate, walked up to the little glass-covered porch before the inner door, and pulled the bell-handle. A fat black spider ran agitatedly out of the wire-hole, but no bell-tinkle followed.

  Having watched the spider well away to safety, he tapped discreetly on the glass door. No one came. He tapped again. There being no reply, he opened the outer door and stepped into the glass porch. Spiders’ webs nearly covering the panes were thick with blue and green fly-shells. Several walking sticks, some bored by the death-watch beetle, stood in an upright drain-pipe in one corner, with an umbrella whose faded cover was green with age. He rapped sharply on the inner door, which was open. A noise behind caused him to turn. He saw the bespectacled face of a young man disappearing behind the open door of a potting-shed down the garden path. He waited, then knocked on the door again; and looking round, saw the same face disappearing in exactly the same place. He determined to knock once more, and if nobody came this time he would go away.

  While he waited he heard a noise as of stealthy footfalls and whispering coming down the dim passage in front of him.

  “Anyone in?”

  There was no reply. He was about to leave when he heard footfalls coming down the stairs. The next moment the face of Lucy showed genuine surprise, followed by warmth and pleasure. She came forward with blushing cheeks and said in her soft voice, “Hullo.”

  “How do you do,” he said.

  “Won’t you come in? My brothers are about somewhere.”

  “I think one must be in the potting shed.”

  “Oh, that’s Tim. He’s fixing up a model electric-light plant for Pa to watch a spider at night by.”

  Smiling now, she led him through a room, which at a glance seemed to be full of animal-skulls and portraits of men and women of a bygone age, and into another room.

  “Won’t you sit down. I’ll tell Pa you’re here. He’s gardening.”

  “Oh, please don’t! I can’t stop very long, really!” He sat down on the sofa, the covering of which was worn. It was broken in one corner.

  “I think you’d be more comfortable in this corner—it’s rather dumpy at that end,” she said.

  “I was looking at the cycle-car outside.”

  “Oh yes, that’s the Tamp!” She laughed softly. “You have to be
very careful at corners, else it turns over!”

  He noticed many small paper-covered boys’ adventure stories lying on the table and the floor. There were several Wild West magazines, and issues of The Model Engineer.

  “Pa and the boys are keen on engineering,” she said.

  “What does the model electric-light plant run on?”

  “Oh, steam I think.”

  “Won’t the spider be disturbed by it all?”

  “Oh, it’s only an idea of Tim’s! He made the generator himself, you see, and Ernest made the steam-engine, so they’re keen to see it working.”

  How lovely she was, sitting opposite him, with her grey eyes and vivid colouring, her friendliness and naturalness.

  At that moment the figure of an old man moved past the open window, a shapeless tweed hat on the back of his grey head. There was no collar on his shirt. His ancient tweed jacket hung loose from thin shoulders. When he came into the room, Phillip saw that he wore a very old pair of navvy’s corduroy trousers, worn thin above the left knee as though he had spent much time sitting with crossed legs, while his tweed jacket was frayed above the pockets, indicating that he spent more time standing about with his hands on his hips.

  “Hullo, hullo,” he said, with uplifted chin and direct glance of kind grey eyes. “I’ve been gardening. Nothing but confounded weeds in our garden. As fast as one patch is cleared, the beastly things grow up again. You fond of gardening?”

  “My seeds never come up, sir.”

  These words produced laughter, in which Phillip joined. Then, feeling it was a propitious moment to leave, he looked at the watch on his wrist, and pretended to surprise. “Heavens, it’s six o’clock! Well, I must be going. Goodbye, sir.”

  “Goodbye to ye.”

  “Must you go?” said Lucy, outside the iron gate. He hesitated, and pretended interest in the cycle-car. “Is it yours?”