It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  *

  … le Labyrinthe was made in the town long before the soldiers were burrowing into the chalk of Artois and the rats and grubs and worms were burrowing into the soldiers to make the soil for the corn which will belong to the financial forces of the towns which will send another generation into the earth. Donkin praying, I would to God that the green-corn spirit of truth rise from the clods. Streets, houses, pavements, the pressure of city work, the pressure overlaying the green spirit of earth, will finally kill the truth if there is no clarity.

  *

  “Find some joy in life, man! Get out of your moodiness! Look on the bright side!”

  “I don’t think of people as clods,” he replied, dreading lest the editor think him scornful of his friendly intentions. “I honestly do try to write as I see and feel things. May I read you what I wrote in the train coming up today? It may explain things better.”

  “Just as you like.”

  “‘My words are part of me, both my spoken and my written words. A man sees with his two eyes, and he sees the world, the moving shapes, the people in the streets, the sun and the sky, everything—he sees the changing and ever-moving world as one immense hollow, filled with what his senses perceive, a hollow existing above and around and below the orbits of his two eyes. Every man perceives a world in the hollow fixed to his open eyes. And that world, his world, fades as his senses fade; and when they fade forever, where is his world?

  “‘Is one man’s world the same as another man’s world? How can it be? There are seven million people in London, there are seven million worlds. There are many unhappy people who are unhappy because they strive to enter the world of the beloved, to mingle in spirit in that other world, to change that world into their own world—that world into which others can never wholly enter. Even the mother is no more in her son’s world when once he has awakened to himself.’”

  When he had ceased reading, Mr. Dock stared at him across the desk with intentness and perplexity. After a pause, his expression cleared, and a light came into his eyes.

  “I see! You’ve gone all highbrow! That explains it! What a pity! I was prepared to back you against any other writer whose stuff I print—but you’ve gone highbrow, Maddison!”

  After another puzzled look at the young man before him, Mr. Dock went on, “Very well, here’s something else for you to consider, though I suggest it without much hope. You tell me you must have money before you can marry. Then write the kind of stories that people want to read!” The editor’s manner changed. “You can do it if you want to; but you don’t want to! Am I right? Of course I am right! My dear boy, I am quite upset about it—it is absolutely a case of leaving your talents buried! Do you know, and I say this in all seriousness, you could be another Kipling? That astonishes you, doesn’t it? But you won’t be, as you are going on! And shall I tell you why? It is because you have a kink! Now go away and think things over. Write good, clean, healthy stories about human life! People will always want to read about romance, despite all fads, fashions, cubism, and all this Vorticist nonsense. Now go to it!”

  After shaking his hand and thanking Mr. Dock, Phillip went along a corridor, passing a boy who had been waiting to go into the editor’s room with a cup of dark brown, half-cold tea, some of it slopped into the saucer. He remembered Martin Beausire: how welcome his face would be!

  *

  He wandered through Covent Garden market, among broken cabbage leaves and dropped flowers, thinking of a small oval face, of dark hair over shoulders in the early morning when Lucy had come across the lawn shyly to kiss him on the cheek or forehead as he lay in bed in the chalet. He longed for her clasp and warmth—waiting for him, far away from this glittering Strand.

  One day, one day, they would know! A kink, had he? So they had said, nearly all of them, from boyhood up: morbid!—perverse!—slack-twisted!—egotistical! One day—their children perhaps—would see with new eyes.

  The flow of unknown people, each with a world that would break like a bubble when its owner was earth again, was going—where? Abraded by the dark and deadly pressures of urban life to another Concentration Graveyard in a few years’ time? Aroused by internecine financial forces, as Willie had prophesied, to counter the spirit of revenge, of blood calling to blood? If only the dead could speak: but the dead did speak: and their spokesman was Christ. But did the meek inherit the earth? Other than the white chalk of the Concentration Graveyard?

  He thought to go into the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, where perhaps he would see Dick Sheppard; but Martin Beausire, who knew him, had said that he was ill with asthma … the effect of death and derision in his life? For love of God seems dying, Wilfred Owen had written—not ironically, for there was no irony on the battlefield; only iron and flesh. No, he could not bother Dick Sheppard, with nothing in his hands.

  He crossed Trafalgar Square, meaning to call at his publisher’s office in Pall Mall. Outside the door he hesitated. Would he be welcome, with five books, all failures? He went up the stairs, and was taken into the inner office, where the manager, a young man, courteously arose from a desk to greet him. While he was talking to him an older man wearing a morning coat, high stiff collar with cravat, and spats over his boots came in and was introduced as Sir Godber Hollins. Phillip remembered him from J. D. Woodford’s party in Inverness Terrace on the night before he went down to Devon, nearly five years ago now. After a cursory greeting Sir Godber pressed a bell, and a woman secretary hurried in.

  “Bring the Sales Book, will you?”

  Sir Godber laid the ledger on the marble shelf above the fire and flipped the pages; studied a page for a few moments, then turning to his manager asked if they had got the American rights. No? Then why not?

  “They were reserved by Mr. Maddison’s agent, Sir Godber.”

  The publisher turned away and began to pace the room, his hands under his coat-tails. Abruptly he turned to Phillip.

  “Can you come back another day? I am due at the House shortly, and want to speak to my manager on urgent business.”

  Phillip left at once, followed out of the room by the manager, who, fumbling in his pocket, produced a crumpled packet of Gold Flake cigarettes and shook out a cigarette, saying, “Have a gasper? Don’t take any notice of the old boy, there’s a division in the House tonight, and he’s the Party Whip, you know.”

  “I quite understand. Sorry about my poor sales. I’m writing a book now which I think will sell.”

  “Good for you. You had some good reviews, they ought to get you some journalism. Up for long? Call in again when you’re passing, won’t you?”

  Phillip ran down the stairs, and saw outside a yellow Rolls-Royce drawing up. Once it had belonged to the famous sportsman and coal-owner, Lord Lonsdale. Out got a slim dark man whom he recognised as the famous Armenian writer of romantic stories, Dikran Michaelis. After hesitation he went to Michaelis.

  “May I say how much I like The London Idyll, and all your short stories? I’m a writer, too—of sorts.”

  “You look as though you’ve seen Christ crucified,” replied the small dark man. “Come and have a drink in the long bar at the pub round the corner.” They drove to the Carlton. “Tell me about yourself. Whisky? What are you writing now?”

  “I’m writing a novel about a man called Donkin who saw Christ crucified.”

  “You were a soldier in the Guards?”

  “I served in the First Brigade beside the Grenadiers and the Coldstream at First Ypres.”

  When they had finished their drinks Dikran Michaelis said, “I’m going to Victoria Station to meet the boat-train. Can I give you a lift, if you’re going that way?”

  “Thank you, I wanted to go to that station, as it happens.”

  “To meet someone?”

  “I’ve already met her. She used to go back to her school in Paris from there.”

  The other asked no more questions.

  “You must have hundreds of friends,” said Phillip.

  “I have
none. People despise me, they think of me as the Armenian Cad who dodged the war, fakes all his characters, remains ‘every other inch a gentleman’, and whose books are ‘not so much brilliant as brilliantine’.”

  “I know how you feel, for I feel exactly the same. We forget the nine and ninety, and think only of the one lost sheep.”

  “You are at least English, or shall I say British? I am a damned outsider! Oh yes, I am!”

  “So am I! All artists in England feel they’re outsiders, whatever class they come from. I’m a suburbanite, camouflaged as half a countryman.”

  They drew up in the crescent outside the station.

  “Thanks for the lift. Don’t believe that your stuff isn’t good, for it is,” Phillip said. “It has feeling, and sensibility. Please keep on writing!”

  He raised his hat, and saying goodnight, walked away into the station, and hid himself at the suburban end, intending to wait there until all the arrivals at the boat-train platform had left.

  Faces of City workers passed in stream, most of them set dully in the fatigue of bodies which were tired because they were not used naturally. These were the weary City workers pressing home to their suburbs. He looked at the face of every girl that passed, seeking a look of Barley. Most of the faces were pale, the lips pale. Then a girl went by with a calm, self-possessed walk, beautifully dressed, poising herself apart from the City-worker-rush. He followed her to the Arrival Board before which she stood, coolly inspecting it, while he remained a few yards away; apparently finding what she sought, she turned casually and gave him a glance, at which he felt himself to be integrating once more, though he was still feeling hollow. She sauntered away, and he moved to the board, wondering if she were waiting for the next Dover train. An idea for a romantic story began to arise in his mind. He imagined the beginning: bright bustle of station, beautiful girl waiting for handsome, strong, bronzed, clean Englishman to arrive, dressed in immaculate Savile Row evening clothes, ‘faultless Lincoln Bennett’ silk hat, ebony stick with gold top, and ‘monocle’. Just come from the Great Open Spaces (via Paris) after Big Game Shooting to cure a broken heart.

  The hero arrived, with stiff upper lip and unfathomable blue eyes. The beautiful girl smiled. What then? Ah, they were being watched by a thin, somewhat morbid artist from the Café Royal; member of impoverished British aristocracy. His threadbare clothes were well brushed by ancient retainer living in Shepherd’s Market. Dikran Michaelis had done it already.

  Why were so many of the literary critics derisive about his work? His reputation had fallen among beeves: the sharp Armenian goat herded among dull British beeves.

  When he looked round, the girl was gone. So was the story. So much for the idea of writing romantically about men and women for Mr. Dock. And now for some food, lord he was hungry, and then back for some serious work. He must not break his habit of writing in the evening. But the face of Mr. Dock persisted; he writhed away from its stupidity; cursed it, washed it away with two large whisky-sodas, when satire replaced desperation.

  After eggs and bacon at the buffet, hope came back to him as he sat in the train and thought of the estuary and the sandhills which he would revisit in spirit later that night. His tin of hand-made Gold Flake cigarettes; a cup of char out of the kettle; sitting by the fire until the small hours of the morning. He wondered with secret excitement what would happen that night. The book was writing itself, no need to strive to imagine into the future: he had only to trust the inspiration which always came from outside himself.

  *

  “Hullo, you’re home early!” said Hetty, gay with relief. “There’s a letter for you, my son.”

  He took it with him to the ‘Gartenfeste’, his old name for the room next door when he had left the army in what seemed now to be another world.

  Lucy’s letters were tender but simple. This letter was a reply to one enclosing, from The Daily Crusader, a series of articles on Arnold Bennett written by his wife: an appeal, it was said in Fleet Street, by the wife to get her husband back. A.B. had gone off. The articles were of much interest to Phillip, who had seen himself in them. They disclosed that Bennett was meticulous and easily upset, easily disbalanced by the writer of the articles. Phillip had sent them on to Lucy, asking her to read them carefully, “because I am exactly the same sort of creature”.

  Lucy’s reply chilled him.

  Bother old Arnold Bennett! What has he got to do with you and me? We will be different, won’t we, dear?

  Phillip paced the bare boards, in doubt and disquiet. He talked to his idea of Lucy. “I asked you to read the articles as a barrister reads a brief! Or as a sailor studies the chart of a rocky coast! And all you say is, ‘We will be different, won’t we, dear?’ for all the world as though you are my mother over again! I tell you that only if both of us can see things plainly, both cause and effect, can we be happy!” O God, was it to be Father and Mother all over again? Poor Lucy: ought he to break it off? Was he changing his nature, becoming like Father? Ought he to go on with the engagement? It would mean a return of the darkness for him; but what mattered was Lucy. Poor innocent Lucy, without a mother, yet so cheerful, kind, and willing to help anyone in trouble. But pity was a snare; a poor substitute for compassion.

  Yes, Lucy was right; it was up to him so to discipline himself that he kept his sensibility inside a routine, or code. Now to work. The novel must be finished by Christmas! Then he would be returning to the friendliest people he had ever known, outside Irene and Barley; a home of warmth and kindliness. Had Wildernesse House seemed to Willie as Down Close seemed to him now?

  Now he, the necromancer, must raise from the rose-ash the ghost of the rose: Willie to be transmuted to Donkin: Donkin risen from the grave to live in the eternity of sea and air and sunlight, to be found by others as truth, perhaps for the rest of their lives. Mr. Teddy Dock, bless you for your good intentions! Now I beg to be excused; my way lies, not with docks and thistles, but with the goodly grain and the sun-hazed sleeper.

  The sleep-flower hangs in the wheat its head

  Heavy with dreams, as that with bread

  The goodly grain and the sun-hazed sleeper

  The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper …

  It was cold in the garden room, the frost had come, bringing yellow London fog and the dull reports of detonators upon suburban railway lines. He sat there, writing fast, until the red sun of dawn hazed the ice-flowers on the eastern windows.

  Chapter 15

  THE WORKS

  It was already dark when he arrived at Shakesbury station, but as he gave up his ticket to the porter at the barrier he saw Lucy’s face in the lamplight, framed in the grey felt hat, smiling towards him. Tim stood by her, a mild benevolence on his face.

  “I’m frightfully glad to see you,” he said earnestly. “What fun we’ll have, now you’ve come!”

  Lucy was smiling gently, “He’s come, too,” she said, looking to beside the taxi-driver’s seat where sat Rusty, beating a tail-stump. He felt he had come to his ultimate happiness when he found Moggy curled up on a cushion in the chalet, beside his bed.

  “She’s such a good little cat. I hope you don’t mind that we went over to fetch her. Tim and I went in the Tamp. We saw Billy. He’s a darling!”

  After tea Lucy and Phillip retired to the scullery to be alone with an accumulation of cups, plates, and cooking pots. He washed up as usual, then taking the cloth from her kissed her on both cheeks. Her warm sweetness made him say, “Well, if it’s to be ‘bother old Arnold Bennett’, then I must train myself to be a normal, healthy person. The trouble is I’ve tried to reform before, and never seem to have succeeded. It’s my kink, I suppose, as the editor of Pa’s favourite magazine told me.”

  “Oh, Pa reads anything and everything, then forgets it all immediately,” replied Lucy. “Anyway, I like you as you are, so don’t let my silly remark bother you any more, will you?”

  He had brought a present for each of his new relations-to-be; a pair of leath
er motoring gloves for Ernest, a scarf for Fiennes, a pair of woollen stockings for Tim, an anthology of W. H. Hudson’s writings for Lucy; and for Pa a book, The Impatience of a Parson, by the Rev. R. L. Sheppard, priest of St. Martin-in-the-Fields who was beginning to be known and loved for his broadcast services.

  While he and Lucy were getting supper he said to her, “Dick Sheppard is a clear man, who lives in the spirit of Jesus.”

  He had bought the book for Mr. Copleston, knowing that he was a devout Churchman, vicar’s warden of the little Norman church in the hamlet. Lucy had told him how Pa had repaired and restored some of the old woodwork; they always decorated the font and pulpit for Easter, Harvest Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.

  As a foretaste of Pa’s delight at receiving the book, at supper Phillip said casually, “What do you think of Dick Sheppard, sir? I went to the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields while I was in London, hoping to meet him, but he isn’t well, he suffers from asthma, brought on by frustration.”

  “Hey? Oh, Dick Sheppard! I’ve no use for the fellow.”

  This was a shock. Later, sitting in Pa’s chair (the only comfortable one in the room) while Pa was having a bath, he glanced idly at the copy of The Church Times, which ‘Mister’ had brought over. ‘Mister’s’ wife, Lucy had told him, took the paper for its advertisements for paying guests. In the current number was a literary criticism disparaging the very book he had bought for Pa’s present.

  He would send the book to Mother; she would appreciate it. But what could he give Pa? The shops were now shut. A copy of Housman’s Last Poems, which he had bought for himself? No, not that, Pa would prefer a detective story. Ah, cigarettes! He had a tin-box of a hundred hand-made Gold Flakes: but had smoked two in the train. Could he put two ordinary Gold Flakes among them? Borrow them from Tim, and trust that Pa would not detect them with the others?