It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  The food was fetched from the town in a Trojan motor-car acquired for the Works’ business. It was a year-old model, but to Tim the salesman of the Shakesbury Motor Company had explained that it was a demonstration model, and as such a very fine motor-car indeed, and well worth the full price he was asking for it; in fact he had intended to buy it for himself, but he would as a favour let them have it. Tim had thanked him for this kind act, and Fiennes wrote out a cheque for the full amount of a new car.

  The signing of the cheque gave Fiennes an idea. As office manager, he would need a new motor-bicycle; so he ordered a model he had admired in The Motorcycle. It arrived one day and was much admired. Now, stove-enamelled black, and nickel-plated, it stood in the Works, far too good to be used on the road. It had a new kind of sleeve-valve engine, and electric lights. ‘Mister’ asked to be allowed to ride it, was given permission and a shove off; a wobble followed; a cry.

  “Too powerful for me, Fiennes old chap. To tell you the truth, I don’t feel I could manage it. I’m used to The Onion’s ways, don’t you know. It lost all compression on the way over, and there’s a noise I don’t very much like in the crankcase.”

  There followed a long conversation by telephone to Salisbury, after which ‘Mister’ mooned about unhappily before going back to stare at the motionless Onion.

  Phillip found Fiennes hard to talk to. When he asked him if any work had come in, Fiennes replied, “That’s my affair,” before locking the office door and going in to Shakesbury to have his hair cut. The telephone receiver was left off, so that no calls could be taken while he was away. The telephone was a bore, said Fiennes.

  Another bore, according to Fiennes, was the loose, tall, prematurely bald young man who had bought a small house above the river, with a few grazing meadows. He had paid them a visit, asking questions about what the Works were for, and trying to be friendly in a gauche manner. He was, declared Fiennes, an idiot. That became his nickname, and whenever ‘The Idiot’ turned up for a talk Fiennes turned his back on him, and walked away, unheeding his remarks. Even when ‘The Idiot’ wanted petrol, at the new pump, he wasn’t served. Anyway, said Fiennes, the damned tank was half full of water.

  Chapter 16

  FOOD AND THOUGHT

  Hetty wrote to Phillip saying that she hoped she would be allowed to meet Lucy before he was married. He replied that he had no idea when he would be married. For one thing, it was a question of money. Twenty-five pounds, he wrote, was due from Hollins when the new book was delivered to them; but it had taken rather longer than he had expected.

  In fact, the novel had been abandoned more than three months now, ever since the vain attempt in the past winter to write in Pa’s study.

  During the dark months, in his cottage, he had written several short stories about birds and animals, but these had not been accepted by magazine editors in London; nor had anything been printed in America since the flying start of four years previously. Anders Norse had written to tell him that his style appeared to have changed: a little too realistic, he said. Could not he rewrite them, or better still write new stories in his old, romantic manner?

  Phillip’s style had changed since reading some of cousin Willie’s books, including Barbusse’s Le Feu, and other literature with a revolutionary basis or theme. One of the writers who had influenced him was H. M. Tomlinson, whose long essay The Nobodies, written with irony and grief for the fate and circumstances of the common soldiers of the war, had affected him deeply; and thus Tomlinson’s radical views were woven into his life. Often to himself Phillip repeated a paragraph from Tomlinson’s essay on Kipling:

  Kipling has an uncanny gift of sight. It prompts no divination in him, but its curiosity misses nothing that is superficial. If he had watched the Crucifixion, and been its sole recorder, we should have had a perfect representation of the soldiers, the crowds, the weather, the smells, the colours, and the three uplifted figures; so lively a record, that it would be immortal for the fidelity and commonness of its recorded experience. But we should never have known more about the central figure than that he was a cool and courageous rebel.

  Phillip knew very little about Kipling, beyond an earlier admiration for Plain Tales from the Hills, and Actions and Reactions. Then on another occasion, looking at a poem containing an invocation to the Lord God of Hosts he had read no further, linking this phrase in his mind with the civilian outlook during the Great War, particularly that of self-righteous clergymen preaching from pulpits. Kipling was dismissed as a fireside-patriot until Lucy’s grandmother, during a visit there, had told him that Kipling’s poem Recessional had been written as a warning against false pride during the year of the Queen’s Jubilee of 1897.

  “I think I am right in saying, dear Phil, that Mr. Kipling foresaw what would happen if the growing euphoria of the age of industrial expansion brought with it a feeling of false pride and even of arrogance, which would in its turn bring ruin to all the hopes of those who had dedicated their lives to the service of the many peoples of the Empire.”

  “I see, Grannie.”

  “I think it was the idea of Money, as an end in itself, almost a be-all and end-all, as they say, which would bring a lowering of standards, leading to corruption and eventual ruin, that Mr. Kipling was worried about.”

  Mrs. Chychester went on to say that she had spent many years in India with the Regiment which her husband had commanded then, and saw for herself that the ideas of eventual self-rule were being encouraged before their time by opportunists, which, if they had their way, would lead to a general massacre between those of different religious beliefs.

  After this he decided to rewrite some of his short stories, taking out the critical slant which he had absorbed from reading Tomlinson and another essay on Kipling in Arnold Bennett’s Books and Persons. It was with relief that he recast them clear of his own personal complications. What did birds and animals know of the human tragic scene? For them life and death were elemental with air, water, light, heat, and food. Life was a borrowing from the elements, death a returning. And the spirit permeating the elements was that of form, of precision, of harmony. That was God! In this revision he rewrote story after story; but when he came to human beings, he found little or no exaltation. The mess they made of the elements, of God, and of themselves! Having typed the stories, he took them to Anders’ office one morning.

  *

  From the Adelphi he went to see cousin Arthur in the square, dingy brick building off High Holborn which was the Firm, with its several floors of machinery working and hundreds of men in aprons and women in dull cloth caps and aprons. It was a sight from which he escaped as soon as he could, taking Arthur out to lunch at the Cheshire Cheese, where a red-and-grey African parrot had been trained, in answer to the question What about the Kaiser? to reply with three terse words, two of which were the Kaiser.

  “I don’t think it’s funny,” said Arthur. “I don’t like vulgarity.”

  “Nor do I, Arthur. But that’s how most men regard sex, which isn’t love, only its base. By the way, I must insure my life—do you, by any chance, know what company gives the best terms for an endowment policy?”

  Arthur said he would find out and let him know.

  “Thanks, old chap. When are you coming down to spend another holiday with me? I’ll be leaving Devon some time this year. Strictly between ourselves, I’m going to live at my father’s old home, at Rookhurst.”

  “Yes, Aunt Hetty told me.”

  “What else has she told you?”

  “Only that you’re going to be married again. May I offer my congratulations?”

  “Many thanks. By the way, will you be my groomsman?”

  “What’s wrong with ‘best man’, Phillip?”

  “Oh, it’s the older term, I suppose.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Does what matter?”

  “Calling it ‘best man’?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then why mention it?”


  “You mentioned it, surely?”

  “Let’s agree to differ, shall we? By the way, if ever you decide to sell the Norton, will you give me first refusal? I mean, I can fix you up with a new model, through commission agents, suitable for a sidecar.”

  “A sidecar! No fear! When I start farming I won’t want anything except the Norton. Besides a hunter, and a pony and trap for Lucy and Billy.”

  He took Arthur to Cross Aulton on the motor-bike. It rained, the belt slipped. A new chain-driven model was the thing. As they lay in bed, side by side, listening to dance music on headphones, he said, “I can see that I’ll have to get a chain-driven bike, with a three-speed gear-box. Could you arrange to get me one on the Easy Payment System?”

  “I could arrange it for you any time, Phillip, and give you a good discount.”

  The next day Phillip agreed to let Arthur have the old Norton for twenty pounds. They shook hands on the bargain, and Phillip motored back to his cottage.

  A week later the arrival of a letter from Anders Norse caused such excitement that he set off for London without waiting for breakfast. At Exeter he stopped only to send a telegram to Arthur at his office. Will collect new Norton today paying cash. Then on to Dorchester, Ringwood, and Farnham, where he stopped for a pint of ale and to read Anders’ letter once again.

  Adelphi Terrace

  London

  My dear Phillip

  John MacCourage wants to publish all your books. He has offered $500 immediate payment for an option, this sum to be taken into account as an advance against royalties when the agreement is signed. He cables that he will be in London at the beginning of next month and will want to meet you.

  Will you let me know meanwhile if you will accept his offer, which I consider a fair one.

  Ever Yours,

  Anders Norse.

  For the last time he rode LW 82, touching nearly seventy across the Hog’s Back, and left it with Arthur in Surrey; then on to town by train, keen with the vision of a resplendent new model at the agents. There it stood, electric lamps, three-speed gear-box, chain-driven, in the window of the Great Portland Street agents. Anders Norse had advanced him £100; Phillip paid in £5 notes, and telephoned his cousin that he was leaving London immediately.

  The new bus was so different in weight and balance from the old one that he was nervous of driving into the kerb, or a taxi; while to have to change gear from second to top seemed a fearful ordeal. Would he strip the gears, or worse, shoot forward and knock someone over? His first ride on the old Connaught two-stroke in 1915 had been diagonally across a road and into a lamp-post.

  He sent a telegram to Lucy, and started off with determination to go slowly in London traffic. He drove sedately, threading in and out of solid-tyred omnibuses, horse drays and electric trams, gradually gaining confidence. The engine was not run in, and for a thousand miles or more he must go at a steady thirty to thirty-five miles an hour.

  The afternoon was fine, soon he was at Staines, and on the Great West Road to Andover. The goal of Lucy was fixed in his head, so he did not stop for food. At twilight he ran free-wheel, with engine silent down the lane to her house, stopped by the iron gate, set the machine on its stand, took off goggles, and walked round to the kitchen. He felt no emotion now that the long ride of more than three hundred miles was ended.

  Lucy had been waiting for some hours to greet him. After reading the telegram she had put off going on her bicycle to Ruddle Stones for dinner. Knowing how keen he was on a new bike, the first thing she said when she saw him was, “Hurray! Where is it?”

  “Outside the gate.”

  “Do show it to me. Oh, it’s got foot-rests! How perfectly and absolutely lovely! We can go miles and miles without my getting tired!”

  “Did you get very tired before?”

  “Only sometimes.”

  “What a selfish fool I was, not to realise it.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t much,” she said. “Won’t you come in?”

  “I think I ought to be getting back to my cottage.”

  “Must you?”

  “Well, my work is far behind. Also, I’ve got to return to London soon, to meet an American publisher. Where are the Boys?”

  “Gone to Shakesbury to see Charlie Chaplin.” She added, “I was just off to Ruddle Stones for supper, when I got your telegram.”

  “I’m sorry I deprived you of a good meal. I’ll take you there.”

  She wondered if his remote manner was due to thoughts about his work. “Will you? How lovely! Just a moment, I’ll get a cushion.”

  While he waited there, void with fatigue, Pa came out in his slippers and after the least greeting gave him a small parcel wrapped in brown paper, saying, “This is a bestial book. I have had to keep it hidden from my children,” and without further words he went back into the house.

  Lucy returned. In silence they arrived at ‘Mister’s’. By the glass door he stopped. “I’ll say goodbye now.”

  “Won’t you come in?”

  “Sorry, but I can’t face Mrs. Smith.”

  “Oh, she’s quite harmless.”

  They went in.

  ‘Mister’ was sitting in a chair within, bent of back, twiddling his thumbs, varying this symptom of an empty life by sometimes tapping his nails on a Chinese lacquer table beside his chair. On the table was The Radio Times and a pair of headphones, for he tried to relieve marital boredom by listening to singing, gramophone records, and talks from 2LO.

  By a lamp, sewing in another chair, was Mrs. à Court Smith, a squat figure with blackberry eyes beneath feathery eyebrows that emphasised a heavy face under a pile of grey hair.

  On a sofa in another part of the room sat a man and a woman, obviously not at ease, and looking what they indeed were, two new paying guests who had come to enjoy a holiday in the country.

  “By Jove, hullo, hullo!” cried ‘Mister’, half pulling himself out of the chair on to his long bent legs. The effort seemed too much, he compromised by slewing himself round. “If it isn’t Lucy! Well, well, well, and how are both you good people tonight? Come on in, and make yourselves at home!”

  After shaking hands with Mrs. à Court Smith, Phillip was asked if he knew the paying guests. The couple rose hesitantly and awkwardly, saying that they were very well thank you in reply to an enquiry as to how did they do. Mrs. à Court Smith gave Phillip a significant glance, but he pretended not to see it, and she resumed her sewing, to enquire of Lucy, “How are Pa and the Boys?” at the same moment that Phillip said to ‘Mister’, “How’s the Onion?”

  “Oh, the beastly thing’s gone wrong again,” complained ‘Mister’. “Magneto this time, I think. I wanted Ernest to come over and look at it, and sent him a telegram, but he was too busy this afternoon, I gather. So I’m stuck here, you see, old fellow.” He drummed his fingernails on the Chinese table. “Well, what’s your latest news?”

  “We’re all motor-bike fiends here,” said Phillip to the paying guests.

  “Go on!”

  “I see you’ve got a new Norton,” said ‘Mister’. “Wish I had!”

  “It’s such a beauty,” said Lucy happily.

  “Lucy”, said Mrs. à Court Smith, equably, “tell me, are you going to announce your engagement in The Morning Post?”

  Lucy looked at Phillip.

  “Well,” he said, “we weren’t going to, for the present.”

  “I think you ought to, you know, old chap,” said ‘Mister’. “It’s the thing, don’t you know.”

  Phillip felt utterly exhausted. He made no reply until ‘Mister’ repeated his advice, then he said distinctly, “I’m not awfully keen on advertising.”

  “It’s no joking matter, I assure you, my dear fellow.”

  “But why The Morning Post?”

  Mrs. à Court Smith laid down her work as she prepared to say, also distinctly, “Well, you see, after all, Lucy comes of a rather good family.”

  A silence followed. The paying guests began a conversation in low voice
s, to show that they knew it was not the thing to eavesdrop.

  ‘Mister’ rattled finger-nails on the table. “I used to ride a penny-farthing bike, you know,” he said to Phillip. “I must say it was more reliable than the beastly Onion.”

  “We thought a quiet wedding, just a few friends,” said Lucy.

  “By Jove, the time signal ought to be soon,” exclaimed ‘Mister’, fastening the headphones over his large ears. He sat expectantly, lying back in the chair on the base of his spine while gazing at the ceiling, finger-tips placed together, long knees in apogee.

  “I’ve just been reading Martin Beausire’s latest,” said Mrs. à Court Smith to Phillip, with an unexpected change of tone to the affable. “You know him, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think of his book.”

  “I’m really no critic.”

  “I much prefer his early schoolboy books to his novels. His characters are always rushin’ about so. Perfectly charmin’, his first book about schoolboys, I thought. You met him once, didn’t you, Lucy?”

  “Yes, when I was ‘Guiding’.”

  “I see he uses the names of real places—Barnstaple and Speering Folliot—isn’t that your village, Phillip? His hero, or should it be villain, is a writer, too. I thought it rather a coincidence that he made his character live in the same village as yourself.” She pulled her ball of wool nearer, and went on, “Of course, I know nothin’ about writin’, but to me his novel appeared to be somethin’ of a hotch-potch.”

  “Just a moment!” exclaimed ‘Mister’. He whipped out a watch. Pips sounded in the headphones. “Two seconds late tonight, not so bad!” He listened, then removed the headphones. “Same old news, I heard it at six o’clock. More beastly rain.”

  “What are you writin’ now?” enquired Mrs. à Court Smith.

  “Nothing at the moment.”

  “Lucy tells me it is about an otter. That ought to go well round here.”