It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  “I will, certainly! When Lucy and I are married we plan to spend the first part of our honeymoon on Exmoor, exploring the rivers. Then we thought of touring the battlefields, for my other book.”

  Honest John looked at Phillip for a moment with unguarded eyes, and thought that a part of the boy before him was dead beyond resurrection. “What I am looking forward to reading is that book on your tame otter,” his quiet, grave voice was saying.

  *

  Lying in bed in his hotel bedroom Phillip looked through Martin’s novel and found it all a tremendous joke. It appeared to follow Martin’s own ragged life, but everything had been changed. The hero, Fitzroy d’Egville, left London with Flora Bosanquet for Devon, feeling as though they were in the half-world of Outward Bound. They were met at the railway station by a tall, thin young man with a lantern jaw and lugubrious expression who manifested no enthusiasm on seeing them. Rollo Gangin had engaged a rattling, draughty open car; and when Fitzroy asked if it were the only car available, Rollo replied in an off-hand manner, “You’re lucky to get this one,” before relapsing into sullen silence. He was surly, casual and rude, sitting down at table with unwashed hands and unbrushed hair. He ate noisily with his mouth open, and belched loudly.

  At this point, remembering Martin’s own belchings, Philip shook with laughter. Then he read on. During walks above the sea Rollo asked innumerable townee questions, boring Fitzroy nearly to tears, and when Flora, in desperation, said, “Have we got to have him with us all the time?” Fitzroy replied, “I am protecting your good name by taking him with us.” Fitzroy had a separate lodging, in the village gravedigger’s cottage. Rollo took them to see his girl, Lydia, whom he snubbed in order to enjoy her suffering while he had an open affair with the village postman’s red-headed daughter, Bathsheba. The gravedigger spent his time listening, during meal-times, to their conversation, trying to find out if Rollo intended to marry Lydia, who worked in the Speering Folliot basket-factory. The food provided was horrible: brown Windsor soup (out of a packet) and cold pork and prunes were the only dishes provided. All attempts to get a fire lighted in the only sitting-room were foiled by the avaricious and bigoted landlady. Rollo was suspected of dope-taking habits; he wrote stories about deer, buzzards, herons, and ravens, which he insisted in reading to them at night in a monotonous voice, driving Fitzroy to near frenzy and Flora to desperation. Rollo allowed his cringing mangy spaniel to clean up his plate—after he had kicked it—while his cat, which might have belonged to one of the witches out of Macbeth, hissed and spat whenever Flora attempted to stroke it. It brought in live birds while Rollo gloated over their sufferings in the intervals of talking about the money earned by Dikran Michaelis, H. de Vere Stacpoole, Ethel M. Dell, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  During the morning walks, when Flora wished to be left alone, bare-headed and sylph-like, Rollo’s voice grated on her ear with questions about fashionable people whose names he knew only from The Tatler, old copies of which he stole regularly from dentists’ waiting rooms.

  The story moved away from Devon to Sussex and Phillip fell asleep.

  *

  Hetty took to Lucy at once, as he had known would happen; but he dreaded what his father would say about the marriage settlement. Nevertheless, he must ask him out of courtesy to Mr Copleston, who had said, “Some busybodies in the family have got on to me about it. I’ve got nothing to offer, but perhaps you will be good enough to let me have the name of your family solicitors.” Phillip spoke first to his mother, asking her if he could give the name of her solicitors, Leppitt & Co. She showed him a letter, which cheered him.

  “Good, they also have an address in Lincoln’s Inn! I’ll give that address to Pa, and explain that I want to make over my life policy to Lucy, and all my copyrights, which Anders Norse says will be valuable one day.”

  “I think you had better mention the matter to your father first, Phillip. He may feel hurt if he is left out of it.”

  “But you know how he behaves when he is ‘hurt’, as you say!”

  How would Father respond? Would he think he was trying to get him to support him? He wanted nothing from anyone, alive or dead, and if any money ever came to him, he would at once give it to a hospital, he went on to tell his mother.

  “You won’t tell Father that, will you, Phillip?”

  “Hardly! I’ve learned just a little bit of tact, you know.”

  He was much relieved when Father got on well with Lucy; and happy that Father showed the same charm of manner as when Barley had come to stay. All the same, he could not help wishing that Father would not put his tin of Samson Salts, which he usually took with his tea—‘Enough to cover a sixpence’—on the table beside his cup and saucer.

  Observing his son’s glance, Richard said playfully, “I suppose you’re not old enough, old chap, to appreciate the ‘little daily dose’?”

  “By the way, Father, it must be splendid exercise flying kites. Are you going to fly yours this coming summer, as you did before the war? I miss the kites above the Hill!”

  “I must tell you, Lucy,” said Richard, playfully, “that Phillip has inherited his grandfather’s sensitive liver——”

  “Oh, Father, really!”

  “—with his grandfather’s love of nature. Now when the time comes that the cares of family life impinge on that seat of sensibility, always remember——!” And he held up the little tin of Samson Salts.

  Then seeing the expression on his son’s face that he was being criticised by that, at times, superior young fellow, he went on, “Well, we can’t all afford to go fox-hunting three days a week in winter, and follow the otter-hounds in summer, to keep ourselves fit, you know, old chap!”

  “I do quite a lot of sedentary work, too, you know, Father. Anyway, my foxhunting days are over.”

  “Of course they are,” remarked Hetty, encouragingly.

  “Henceforward you’ll have to dig in your garden, old chap! Does your father like gardening?” Richard said, turning to Lucy.

  “Oh, yes! He spends nearly all his time with his rockery and green-house. Pa would be lost without his potting-shed, and plants to bed out!”

  Phillip returned to the deviating subject of kites. “Father, do you think that if one flew a six-foot double-box kite over the sea, from the shore, one could catch fish by a line let down from a pulley?”

  “But I thought you already caught fish by means of a tame cormorant, with a ring round its neck to prevent it from swallowing fish, as you described in your story, old chap!”

  He turned again to Lucy. “Of course, if that was a fiction, you might train Phillip to dive from a boat, with a ring round his neck!”

  When his mother and Lucy had cleared away the tea-things, Phillip breathed deeply before plunging in about the marriage settlement.

  “Of course,” he began hurriedly, “I realize it is merely a formality, as Mr. Copleston told me that he had nothing to put in, so I feel, with respect to him, that I ought to ask you, as I said, merely as a matter of form——”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was wondering, Father, if anything is due to me in the natural order of things, in which case I suppose it should be settled on our children. There is the family plate, I suppose, and for all I know something in your grandfather’s will, part of that hundred and forty thousand pounds he left on trust——”

  “So you’ve been representing yourself down in Devon as a man of means, have you?”

  “No, Father! It is a purely formal request, by Mr. Copleston, who said, as I mentioned just now, that he, anyway, had nothing to offer——”

  “Now look here, my boy! I am a poor man, and have always been a poor man! There was a family trust made by my great-grandfather, but that has long ago been determined, anyway it only applied to the Aunts. I would have you know that the greater proportion of that hundred and forty thousand pounds came to my own father, who squandered it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Father. Thank you for telling m
e.”

  “As for my own will, everything I possess is left to your mother! ‘Marriage settlement’, indeed! What have you been pretending to this girl’s family, pray?”

  “As I said, Father, it is merely a formal question.”

  “It looks to me to be very much like a case of misrepresentation—if not of fraud! What have you been telling Mr. Copleston about your means, I should like to know?”

  “Well, I did mention that in a few years’ time I shall have several thousands a year, Father.”

  “What? You had the effrontery to tell Mr. Copleston that?”

  “Please give me a hearing, Father! My literary agent told me that in a few years’ time my books would be earning several thousands a year——”

  “Oh-ho, so that’s it, is it? Here are you, a young fellow proposing to get married again and take on the responsibilities of another family when you have no steady job—and now you talk of a marriage settlement to shore up your pretensions! How much money have you saved up, may I ask?”

  “I am about to take out an endowment policy for £1,000, and now I think of it, I might as well take out another for the same sum.”

  Richard stared at his son before crying out, “Have you taken leave of your senses? How can you afford to keep up the premiums, without a regular income? Now may I ask for a reply to my question! How much money have you managed to save during the past four years?”

  “Well, Father, to be truthful, nothing. But when I arrived in London three days ago——”

  “Nothing saved up? What in heaven’s name is this foolishness in getting married again then? Or is it worse than that——” Richard broke off, trying to control rising agitation; but immediately gave way to the fixed idea about his son.

  “Ah, I recognise the same old pattern of your character! I can see what you have been doing! Now let me tell you this——”

  Phillip tried vainly to quieten him down, for surely the raised voice would be audible in the front room where Lucy and his mother were sitting together. “Please, Father, will you listen?”

  “No, I will not listen! You will listen to me! I am telling you that it is a case of my own father over again! He had extravagant tastes similar to your own! Salmon beats in Scotland, a partner in shoots he could not afford, fox-hunting—just like you, my boy——” Richard turned away in his distress. “Good God, it’s unbelievable! Here you are, without money and in with a fox-hunting set, wasting the best years of your life, and now you propose to get married on the flimsiest and most precarious basis of future expectations from writing books.”

  Phillip felt an acid burning at the bottom of his throat. Unhappily he compared this reception of his confidences with Pa’s off hand remark that it saved a lot of bother having nothing for the settlement.

  “Father, please will you listen?”

  “By all means! But I must ask you to stick to facts. And there’s another thing I have to ask you about.” He went to a table and picked up the copy of Martin Beausire’s novel. “What do you know about this?”

  “Martin Beausire is a friend of mine.”

  “Oh is he! Well, it’s none of my business, you are, after all, of age, but I would call your attention to the fact that the so-called poet, or writer, in this novel lives at Speering Folliot like yourself, and makes his living by writing stories about birds and animals for the magazines. To some people it might very easily occur that the character is based on you!”

  “It isn’t based on me, Father. I told him about Julian Warbeck, who has red hair, and Beausire’s concocted a character from that, I imagine. Anyway, it’s all a joke, written in the train, to and from Fleet Street. I read it, and thought bits of it very funny.”

  “Oh, that’s what modern literature is, is it, ‘all a joke’. Well, all I can say is I don’t pretend to understand modern literature!”

  He went into the garden, where cats dug up his straight lines of lettuce and carrot seeds; no sooner had he got rid of slugs by traps of the peel of half-oranges when beetles or flies came along. Sparrows tore his lettuces, mice exhumed and ate his peas; now they were talking of building in the Backfield behind the garden fence. He would retire before long, and dreamed of a cottage in the country, perhaps in his native Wiltshire—but Hetty’s having re-bought the house next door, to be with those two daughters of hers, had put a stop to that.

  “Father, the day before yesterday I received over one hundred pounds for four days’ writing! At the same time I signed a contract with an American publisher for my next three books. I receive at once fifty pounds advance against royalties of the first book. On the day of publication I get a further fifty. That is for the U.S.A. For the English market I also receive advances, though not so high, for the same books from my English publisher——”

  “Then what was all that about having no money in the bank?”

  “I haven’t put it in the bank yet, for it hasn’t arrived. You see, my money comes in lump sums. Then there are the short stories. It takes me one day to write a short story, working very hard and close, of course; about three days to rewrite it, and shift it about to get the proper dramatic flow. For such a story I get about twenty guineas in an English magazine, and something over a hundred pounds in an American magazine. That isn’t very much, as things go. Top writers of short stories, such as Irving Cobb, get as much as five hundred pounds a story over in America. And I have two or three dozen stories in my head, ready to be written.”

  “Then why didn’t you say that at the beginning, instead of that misleading remark about nothing in the bank?”

  “You asked me for facts, and I told you the correct answer about my bank balance, Father.”

  “I don’t think it’s at all fair of you to convey a wrong impression, anyway! You see, in the past I have had cause to feel not very sure of you, Phillip—oh well, we won’t talk any more about that.”

  “I’m sorry I told inessential details first, and so upset you, Father. I’ve been a bit nervous, to tell the truth. I wrote my news stories like that when I first worked in Monks’ House, until a sub-editor told me to put the gist of the story on top, to give the reader the point of it at once, then to tell how it happened.”

  “Well, I am relieved to hear it. I hope it will continue to be so. You are very lucky, you know, to have all these chances. And, if I may say so, to have found such a very ladylike young woman as Lucy. Now mind that you look after her!”

  Why did most old people say that sort of thing, he wondered, especially those who had made a muck of their own marriages? And get quite sentimental over small children? He would treat Billy quite differently from the way most fathers used to treat their sons.

  As though receiving this thought, Richard added, “You wait, old chap, until you have the responsibilities of a family! Oh, by the way, I almost forgot to tell you: I had a visit from your Uncle Hilary this morning, and he asked me how long you were up for. He wants to see you particularly, I gather. He asked me to tell you to ring him up at his club, and leave a message when you would be free to dine with him one evening. You know his club, I fancy, the Voyagers?”

  “Yes, Father, I had lunch with him there once, soon after I had left school.” Phillip had not forgotten the occasion, or how he had run away afterwards. “I didn’t bring my dinner jacket with me.”

  “Well, perhaps it would be simpler to ask Hilary down here. He tells me that Aunt Dora is staying in London just now—would you like me to ask them down to supper one evening?”

  Richard was now feeling buoyant; it had been his youthful dream to farm land; now his son would succeed where he had failed. He thought of a flint cottage, with a large garden, his pension arriving regularly every half-quarter, and a life of peace, under the hills of his boyhood.

  *

  Sir Hilary Maddison, K.B.E., C.M.G., Captain (retd.) R.N.R., who had bought most of the land at Rookhurst which had belonged to his grandfather and father, had also been imagining a not unsuccessful conclusion to his life in that he wou
ld be able to put back, if not the clock, at least a generation of his family upon the land he had seen, as a boy, come to nothing. Once he had hoped to have a son of his own, but his marriage had failed. His worry since the war had been, Who is to succeed me after my death? Of the heirs male bearing the name there was only Phillip.

  Whenever he thought of that young man, he was chilled by doubt. There was something in his nephew which he couldn’t stomach, as he put it to himself. As a boy he had been cowardly and deceitful; as a youth he had shown himself to be evasive, and at times had done very stupid things. What the cause of this behaviour was—apart from pure cussedness—Hilary had no idea. No one had been more surprised than he to read in The Times’ list of Decorations and Awards, one day in the summer of 1918, his nephew’s name. Then, after the Armistice, Phillip had reverted to his old form of playing the ass, getting himself involved in a case of arson while the worse for liquor, and to find himself cooling his heels in prison.

  How far was this instability congenital, how much due to a young fellow kicking over the traces? How much did he owe to his Turney blood—look at that fellow Hugh Turney, a bounder if ever there had been one, incapable of any real work, a profligate dilletante. Phillip was in some ways like him: he had stuck his job for only three months in Fleet Street—after writing amateurish articles on the light-car—and then had chucked journalism to write novels—rotten novels, according to his sister Viccy—while living in a labourer’s cottage in South Devon and growing a beard—wasting his life, in other words.

  No: to put Master Phillip into farming would be chucking money down the drain.

  And then, one day after golf, at Bournemouth—where his sister Victoria Lemon kept house for him—‘Valentine’, an author of romantic novels, told him that his nephew was writing ‘brilliant’ short stories in American magazines. Hilary was impressed to hear that for such stories anything up to two or three hundred pounds was usually paid.