It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  “Well, as I told you, when I gave you my confidence, ‘Mister’, Lucy and I rather thought we’d wait until my book was a success.”

  “That’s all very well, my dear fellow—but as one of her mother’s oldest friends, I—well—dash it all, it isn’t cricket! If her mother were alive she’d jolly well have been after you for your intentions long before this, don’t you know!”

  ‘Mister’ at the moment seemed to be more like his wife than himself, thought Phillip.

  “Well, I’ll talk to Lucy about your good intentions.”

  “Eh? What? Oh yes—Jolly decent of you, I’m sure, Phillip! I knew you had the right stuff in you, don’t you know.”

  Lunch was ready before he could speak to Lucy, who was working in the kitchen. It was a constricted meal; he found himself sitting on his hands, with hunched back, wondering what to say; stammering at times; laconically answering the veiled and lethargic questions of Mrs. à Court Smith.

  Afterwards Lucy and he went for a walk, and he told her what ‘Mister’ had said. Lucy seemed unable to decide, which added to his perplexity; with the result that he made up his mind abruptly to go at once and tell Pa.

  “If he refuses, I’ll have to leave here at once. I’ll come back and tell you.”

  She reassured him as he left, seen off by ‘Mister’ ruefully comparing the Norton with his own creeping Onion.

  Fiennes was cooking in the kitchen when Phillip arrived, a new cookery book open on the table.

  “Hullo, when’s Lu coming back? I’m bored with basting and garnishing. How long should a duck stay in an oven with a crack across the top and a hole in the back of the flue? The book says, ‘Stick a fork in and see——’”

  “The duck, or the oven?”

  “Both probably.”

  “Well, if you stick a fork in, you’ll see if the juice comes out red or not. I say, where’s Pa?”

  “He’s in the garden.”

  Phillip drew a deep breath. “I say, Fiennes, I’m going to ask him about Lucy.”

  “Good,” said Fiennes, scrutinising a jab in the bird. “It’s gravy coming out. If he asks you about the duck, say it’ll be ready in half an hour.”

  “Yes. Well, he’s in the garden, you say?”

  “Somewhere about.”

  Phillip went into the garden. Mr. Copleston was bedding out plants.

  “Ah, hullo, hullo! Coming back tonight?”

  “I hope so!”

  “Ah yes, I thought you wouldn’t want to stay long with that idiot ‘Mister’! Well, it won’t be too soon to have our cook back again, I can tell you. I don’t know what we should do without Lucy.”

  This was fearful. “What are those plants, sir?”

  “Hey? Oh these, they’re Chinese wallflowers. Yellow little beggars, but a change.”

  “I wonder if I might——”

  “Hey?” The grey-bearded face looked up into his. The mouth was open, the lips slightly blue. He was over seventy. Who would look after him when Lucy——? Phillip’s determination weakened. He could not hurt him: he knew what Pa had been through. How could he take away Lucy from this lonely old chap? And so poor, too. No: Pa needed Lucy.

  *

  She had told him that Pa had lived in a larger house with servants to look after them, a base from which he and his wife had gone together to Ireland, Scotland, London, and Italy. Pa, she said, had been twelve years older than Mama, he was always very devoted and considerate, they were sufficient to one another.

  What about you children? Phillip had asked. “Well, Nannie looked after us when we were small, and later there was a governess.”

  “Didn’t you miss your parents?”

  “No, I don’t think so. We were sufficient to one another, I suppose. Fiennes and Ernest being bigger, went about together, while Tim and I were friends. Then we went away to school, but there were always the holidays to look forward to.”

  How well he knew the old fellow’s feelings after his wife’s death, knowing that wherever he went, whatever he did, there would always be the same hollow feeling, the same aching weight. Sitting alone, hour after hour, day after day, without purpose. They seldom saw Pa, Lucy had said, after her mother’s death. He spoke rarely, he looked old and sad. Then one evening Tim had dared to invite Pa to their room for a game of Ludo, and to their surprise Pa had come. He came the next night and the next, and they all played games together.

  “Later we took him exploring, and Pa loved it. After a week or two he thought nothing of walking twelve and fifteen miles a day with us. His whole life was altered.”

  “Yes,” Phillip had said. “I can understand.”

  Lucy had seen tears in his eyes, she had longed desperately to comfort him, but he had seemed to want to be alone, like Pa. To conceal her feelings, she had shown him a photograph of her mother.

  “You are exactly like her,” he said. “She has the same serene and sensitive face. Thank you for letting me see her.”

  Lucy sometimes thought that she would never be able to take Barley’s place in Phillip’s heart; but being deeply reticent about her feelings, she had said nothing; and Phillip had mistaken this for absence of feeling.

  Now, he thought, he was about to break up the happy life of a courteous old country gentleman and his children, living where no angry voice, no unhappy cry, was ever heard. He thought, too, of his old home, of his parents and sisters; and the strangled, inner feeling, which he had never felt when with Barley, repossessed him.

  *

  “I wonder where I can get some Chinese wallflowers for my garden, sir.”

  “Oh, they’re quite common nowadays, I fancy. Has Lucy come back?”

  “She’s still at ‘Mister’s’.”

  “H’m.”

  Pa and ‘Mister’ had once been great friends; but something had happened, Lucy had told Phillip, over some money, she believed.

  Pause.

  “Well, I think I’ll be going back now, sir.”

  “You leaving for Devon?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, you’ll be back some time, I expect?”

  “Oh yes, sir, if I may! Thank you!” He returned to the kitchen.

  “Did he ask you about this confounded bird?” asked Fiennes. “All the heat of this blasted stove goes out of that crack at the back! Listen to it roaring!”

  “Yes. No, I mean. Nothing about the duck. I say, Fiennes, what shall I do? I mean——”

  “Do? What do you mean, do?”

  “I mean, about Lucy. After all, she keeps the place going, doesn’t she?”

  “Oh, haven’t you asked him?”

  “No, I didn’t like to, really.”

  “Well, go to him and say, ‘I love your daughter, I want to marry her, and damn well mean to do it’.”

  “No, be serious, Fiennes!”

  “I am serious! That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go back and say what you mean! You’re an author, you ought to know what to say.”

  Phillip went back, made some remark about the Chinese wallflowers, returned to the kitchen, where the duck was now out on the table; but unable to face Fiennes, sought once more the old gentleman stooping with trowel over another box of plants.

  “Hullo, not gone yet?” was his encouraging remark.

  “I’ve come to say the duck will soon be ready, Fiennes says.”

  “Hey? Oh, the duck. Ha, I’ve been looking forward to that! I’ve got precious few teeth left, but what I have got will do! No time to bed-out another box of these,” he added half to himself.

  “I don’t think it will rain, at least I hope not!”

  “Hey?” he cried, standing upright and leaning back. “H’m, one doesn’t grow any younger. Get dashed stiff bending down! Oh well, I don’t care!” he said brightly, with a genial glance of his eyes.

  Phillip pretended to be deeply interested in the box of wallflowers: noting almost painfully that it was old, partly dry-rotten, red
potsherds over the draining holes, fibrous rootlets holding to gravel. Then he heard his voice saying, “I want to ask you something about Lucy, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sir, Lucy and I love each other, and would you please consider giving your consent to our engagement?”

  Fear came into the eyes looking up into his: the look passed instantly. Pa slowly straightened his back, then, moving his feet away from the wooden box, he turned to Phillip and held out his hand, smiling, and said in a voice appropriately hearty, “I congratulate you! I must say I thought something was in the wind! H’m.” He felt for his cigarette case and holder—a gunmetal case, Phillip noticed—took out an Empire-tobacco cigarette, fitted it carefully into a cherry-wood holder and lit it. Phillip thought fervently that he would buy him a gold cigarette case for a Christmas present. Pa puffed, and then said, “Well, I suppose I’ve got to do the heavy parent, and ask you about your means?”

  Fortified by his humorous attitude, Phillip replied, “At the moment I have only my pen, but as regards my financial status, my agent tells me that in a year or two I shall have several thousands a year.”

  “Ha! Well, that’s more than I shall ever have!” and with that Mr. Copleston went on with his work.

  Phillip hurried away, appalled by his rashness in thus forecasting his future ‘financial status’. Would Pa think ‘his agent’ meant ‘land agent’? Well, he might very well inherit Rookhurst one day—Uncle Hilary had bought about a thousand acres—so it was not altogether untrue.

  Jubilantly he told Fiennes what Pa had said, and Fiennes replied, “Do you or don’t you want to stay to lunch?”

  “Thanks all the same, but I’ve had lunch.”

  It was already nearly four o’clock, so he hurried back to Ruddle Stones.

  He found Lucy in the à Court Smiths’ scullery washing up cups and plates, for both cook and maid had gone to a wedding—not their own, for the respective fathers of their infants were already married. Mrs. à Court Smith wasn’t at all conventional about such things, Lucy told Phillip.

  “Good for her.”

  “Oh yes, she’s very kind, really, only she’s rather extravagant, and can’t manage very well. She always orders the best food, so they are usually rather hard up,” said Lucy. “Even Pee Gees make no difference.”

  Taking the drying-up cloth from her, he screwed it up and kicked it on to the scullery table, then kissed her.

  “I knew Pa wouldn’t mind. He likes you, he says you’re a good worker!”

  “So you’ve guessed?”

  “Well, your face was like a small, happy boy’s when you came in just now!”

  Her own face had the rich hue of a peach on a sunlit wall, her warm responding sweetness made him say, for the first time, “I love you, Lu. You are a turtle dove, the gentlest, kindest, and most innocent of birds. But I am a phoenix.”

  Shyly she whispered that they would be like Pa and Mamma, always happy because they were together. “We won’t bother about silly people, will we, when we are married?”

  In the warmth of believing that when he was married it would be like Barley come again he clasped her small head, stroking it, his lips upon her hair, feeling as when first he had felt the warmth of his son’s fragile head on his cheek.

  “Oh, my God! I quite forgot to tell Pa about my first marriage!”

  “He knows already.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “No. I think it was either Aunt Connie or Aunt Jo, who wrote to him.”

  Chapter 13

  ANNIVERSARY

  The next day he and Lucy went to Devon, she to stay with Aunt Connie and her Ogilvie cousins at Wildernesse, he to his cottage to try to work.

  It was near the equinox; much rain fell on the Wednesday, opening day of Barnstaple Fair; again on Thursday; but on the Friday, when the highest tide of the year moved into the estuary, the rain had cleared. They had been invited to spend the night with Uncle Biff and Aunt Jo—Commander and Mrs. Gilbert—at Bideford, and thought to spend the day on the Burrows, and cross over the estuary in the afternoon.

  The sky was wholly overcast when he called at Wildernesse on the Friday morning.

  “Do be careful, won’t you, dears?” said Mary, as Phillip and Lucy set out. “There will be a fairly big fresh coming down both rivers, but at noon the tide will be out, and you should be able to get a boat then from Appledore without any difficulty.”

  She and Phillip looked at one another: it was the second anniversary of Willie’s death.

  As they walked hand in hand through the passes of the sandhills rain began to fall steadily. They were wet through long before they reached the Valley of Winds, and the rain was coming down so heavily that he decided it would be hopeless to expect anyone across a mile of rock and water to see a signal; so they turned north and looked for the cattle shippon in the grazing marsh below the sea-wall, said once to be a chapel, in which to shelter.

  The sky at midday was darker than at twilight. Their shoes squelched, their clothes heavy with water. At last they were under cover in the shippon; now for a fire. He went across the marsh to collect driftwood below the sea-wall. The wood was sodden and heavy; he cut off chips with his knife and kindled them by feeding the yellow sodium flames and fanning the sullen embers for half an hour or so, until the fire gave out warmth. He removed coat, shirt, and shoes, and stood by the flames to dry his trousers.

  The kettle boiled, they drank hot tea, sitting round the fire.

  “You must dry your clothes, too. Why not take off your jacket and skirt?”

  She did so, hanging coat and skirt among the rafters, moving boylike with bare feet and legs, in home-made bodice and dark knickers, her hair hanging to her waist.

  The fire was smoky, for the high tide of early morning had borne away most of the old jetsam, and the only fuel was sea-logged wood. The inside of the shippon became brown with smoke; outside rain fell darkly.

  “We may have to stop here all night. I’ll go and get all the fuel I can, Lu. The tide will now be up fairly high under the sea-wall, with lots of flotsam brought down by the river.”

  He came back dragging two tree-branches, one old and easily broken. Sections were put on the fire, while the harder branch burned across its middle. Then back to the sea-wall. The estuary was flooded with wide rocking brown water, the full spate pushed against the tide.

  He waited to see if the strong muddy waters would flood over the top. The wind, inert with falling rain, fortunately was still. If the south-west started to blow, the inrolling waves would pile higher the spates coming down from Dartmoor and Exmoor, the marsh would be flooded, and they would have to run for their lives to the sandhills. How ironic if that happened on the anniversary of Willie’s death.

  He kept watch on the wall, walking up and down to keep warm.

  The sea came to within a foot of the top of the wall; the rain continued to fall straight and heavy. He hastened away to report; then ran back to the wall. A vast dun lake, topped by foam amidst black limbs of trees and an occasional drowned sheep, bore water-logged pleasure boats (torn from their moorings above Barnstaple bridge) moving seawards. They were safe!

  They ate the last of their food, followed by a long and happy silence as they stared into the embers of their fire, before leaving the shippon. It was already dark when they reached Crow Shingle Spit; his shouts, and flares of burning newspaper, brought no flash of lantern or answering hail. What to do? Ah, the lighthouse keeper! They trudged down the shingle and asked the keeper if he would telephone for a ferry boat. The keeper said he would try; but warned that there was a big tide going down, and the wind was rising. Did they still want a boat?

  “I think we ought to cross, thank you.”

  Half an hour later they saw in the near-darkness a salmon boat coming aslant the tide swirling down very fast with the pressure of the combined spates of the Two Rivers. The single lug-sail was reefed to its highest cords. One of the crew of two said they had had a difficu
lt time to cross.

  “The tide be holding the Pool buoy flat, Gor’darn, th’ water be ripping auver it! Us dursen’t go back between Crow and Shrars-hook, ’tis a proper hurly-burly there!”

  The roaring of the waters almost leaping seaward was growing louder every moment. Phillip began to feel apprehensive. Should he take Lucy back to the Ogilvies? Not a star was to be seen, the lights on the quay of Appledore were blurred. Every moment the sea-ward race of the tide was increasing.

  “How fast is the tide?”

  “I reckon ten knot, mebbe more. Gor’darn, us can’t remain yurr much longer!”

  “We’ll cross.”

  He helped Lucy over the gunwale and sat on a thwart beside her, their feet in bilge-water. One man pushed off and clambered aboard.

  The wind was rising with the lessening of rain, blowing strongly from the sea. The boat surged forward against the tide, driving its bows almost under. He saw, with a stab of fear, that they were moving slowly backwards. From behind could be heard the growling of the Hurly-burlies, rocks over which, in white undulations, the ebb was leaping.

  “Do ’ee mind coming aft a bit,” asked the man at the tiller. “’Twill drave under else.”

  He saw that water was lipping over the bows. The mast creaked with the weight of wind in the sail. He shifted to the back of the boat, remarking, “An extra lot of water coming down tonight, I fancy.”

  “Aiy,” said the other man, also in a matter-of-fact voice. “Us thought one time us wouldn’t get across. Us tried to make Point o’ Crow, but the tide be rinning too strong tonight.”

  Lucy and Phillip sat quietly on the back thwart, holding hands. The boat appeared to be surging ahead; yet when he looked to the left the shore seemed to be sliding forward. The lighthouse was also moving forwards.

  “Gor’darn, us won’t make it!” said the man at the tiller, suddenly. “Us’ll be down to the ’urly-burlies in a minute! Take a pull at the sweeps, Jimmy.”