It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  “Coffee will be here in a moment, now tell me all about Tim! I hear that he is engaged to a gel in the shop where they buy their cigarettes?”

  “Yes, I think he is, Mrs. Chychester.”

  “Do you think it will come to anything?”

  “I really don’t know!”

  “Rather a pity, don’t you think, that Adrian shuts himself up so? How can the boys meet anyone of their own kind, with a recluse for a father? Now tell me what this gel is like!” she said winningly.

  “Oh, she’s quite a nice sort of gel, quiet and rather shy. Tim seems to be quietly happy with her—but then I’ve only seen them together on one occasion.”

  “But a shop gel——!”

  “Well—I suppose that Tim, as a working engineer, will sooner or later need a wife, to fit in with that sort of—er, work, don’t you know.” He felt like ‘Mister’ for a moment, and tried to shake off the imposture.

  “What about Ernest and Fiennes?”

  “Oh, Ernest is a very clever draughtsman, as well as a sound engineer. Fiennes, on the other hand, is in charge of the office of the—of the Dogstar Works——”

  “Dogstar Works? What an odd name? Where did they get that from?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, it was my suggestion, Mrs. Chychester—a trade mark for the flash-lamp batteries they’re going to make when they get everything going.”

  “How clever of you to think of a name like that! Now tell me, what is a dog-star?”

  “It’s a heavenly body, in the constellation of Orion, a big flashing winter star, technically known as Sirius.”

  “How jolly! I shall buy one when it comes out. Ah, here are the gels with the coffee! It’s only ‘Bivouac’, I’m afraid. Do you mind?”

  *

  Was ever a walk in the twilight so beautiful with the darkening hues of the sea along the promenade shattered by a great storm of the previous winter, when it had been feared that the entire length of water-front houses would be swept away by the waves? All was peaceful now, like his life among these pleasant people. Lamplight on table, a game of rummy, cocoa and bread-and-butter before going to bed; and on the morrow a journey to North Devon to see the rector of Speering Folliot about reading the banns. The only cloud on the horizon was cousin Arthur; would he reply to the letter almost begging him to see that the misunderstanding had arisen over the old Norton because Arthur had conceived an unmentioned, one-sided, and therefore fancied arrangement which did not exist other than in his own mind? It was doubtful. Ah well, he was like his father, a little man after all.

  Who else might he ask to be groomsman? All his other cousins had been killed in the war.

  The next day Phillip prepared to set off alone, to leave Lucy to be fitted for the wedding dress with her cousins—delightful creatures, he thought as he kissed them on the cheek before pushing off and turning to wave his hand; then up the hills to the north-east, through narrow village streets and winding lanes to Exeter and the road to the north, and so to Speering Folliot, and the inevitable buzzing questions of the Mules’.

  *

  Some days later he returned to take Lucy home. Then they went to see Billy; and while she was helping Zillah to give him his bath, he beckoned Mrs. Mules into the closed post-office room and confided to her the news of his forthcoming marriage.

  “You are one of my good friends, Mrs. Mules, with John and Zillah, so you shall be the first in the village to be told.”

  Mrs. Mules threw up her hands. “My dear zoul, us knowed what was comin’ along months agone! Yew can’t tell us nought about that! And what about they banns? And you nivver go to church! Supposin’ pass’n won’t allow they banns? What wull ’ee dew then, hey?”

  “Do you think he’ll refuse?”

  “Tidden nought to do wi’ me, better go and tell’n now, and ask him to read’m out for ’ee. And you’d better be in church when ’a readeth they banns just in case there be objections!”

  “Mrs Mules, how can anyone possibly object?”

  “Well you never knaw what might happen, now that they’m all talking about Mr. Beausire’s buke!”

  “I thought no one read books in Speering Folliot!”

  “Git out! Us’v all read’n, of course us have!” Mrs. Mules was beginning to be short of breath. “Whativver be you about, allowin’ such a man to come yurrabouts and tell all they lies about us yurr in the parish! And with that young woman he pretended to be his wife! Mules be proper upset, I can tell ’ee, how Mr. Beausire has put him in th’ buke! Tidden true, you know. Tidden true about they cold prunes, neither! ’Twas only because us nivver knowed when ’a was comin’! And you’m made out to be a proper ole moucher, I can tell’ee, a proper rough man you’m made out to be! And you can tell Mr. Beausire from me that if ’a cometh yurr again, I’ll tell he what I think about’m to’s face, I wull!”

  “Tes all lies in the book!” cried Zillah, coming into the room. “Come now, Mis’r Mass’n, tell the truth and shame the devil!”

  “Oh, he doesn’t get much chance, with all his work in Fleet Street, to write any other kind of book.”

  “I don’t think it’s very nice for you either, Miss Copleston! I suppose you’ve seen the book, haven’t you?”

  “Well, parts of it,” replied Lucy. “I don’t think Mr. Beausire meant it to be taken seriously.”

  “Us will miss Billy, you know, when you’m gone away!”

  “Oh, but Phillip is keeping on the cottage. Mayn’t we still come and see you? Billy is so fond of you all, I am sure.”

  “Aiy,” murmured the grave-digger, coming in on rubber-tipped heels, removed from an old pair of the parson’s shoes saved from the heap of rubbish for burning in the crypt furnace. “Aiy, that be so. Dear li’l babby. Dear li’l babby he be. A proper boy he be, as proper a li’l boy as ever trod ground,” as Billy tried to stand upright, but sat down again immediately.

  *

  Calling at the Rectory, Phillip learned to his dismay that a copy of his birth certificate was required before the rector could publish the banns of marriage on three consecutive Sundays. Also he would require assurance that Phillip had been baptised, and thereby show qualification for membership of the Church of England.

  After taking Lucy home Phillip went on to London to get the copy, and be fitted for morning coat, vest, and trousers. On the way up he wondered if he could ask Anders Norse to be his groomsman? Or should he write to give him a chance to refuse without embarrassment? Would Anders want to come all the way to Dorset? The sky was clear and the wind from the west as he fled along smoothly at fifty miles an hour, the engine almost inaudible, so sweet was its power now that it was run-in.

  After the fitting he called at his agent’s office, to be told by an alert new secretary that Anders was seeing a publisher in York Buildings, in the lower Adelphi. Thither Phillip went, and while waiting in the dingy little office, with its window view of a smoke-bricked wall rising to the unseen sky, he heard in an upper room a voice protesting loudly, and footfalls passing to and fro on a boarded floor. Could that be Anders? No, said the very young girl clerk in the next room, that was the Office of The New Horizon, and it sounded like Mr. Wallington Christie arguing with one of his contributors, whom she called ‘Kot’.

  “They’re always arguing about something or other!”

  “Wallington Christie? I’ve always hoped to meet him, ever since reading his essays in the old days—particularly those on Charles Sorley, and Wilfred Owen! Do you think he would see me?”

  “You can but try!”

  Phillip had sent to The New Horizon an essay on Wild Birds in London: it had been returned with a note saying that the editor would like to use it, but unfortunately he had not the space. He wrote a letter back to say that there was plenty of space if only the pages were not filled by analyses of God instead of poetry. He thought of sending to Christie a copy of Willie’s The German Concentration Graveyard at Le Labyrinthe in Artois, but dread of having it returned had stilled the impulse.
Then he had wondered if he should send it to Austin Harrison for The English Review. Had not John Masefield filled an entire number with The Everlasting Mercy in 1911?

  But the letter was not posted. He put it with the essay by Willie back in the drawer with other relicts of his dead cousin which Uncle John had handed over to him.

  *

  In the pages of The New Horizon at that time were appearing essays by H. M. Tomlinson, far and away more quickening than anything else in its pages: shimmering descriptions of sun and wind upon the wave-beaten shore of the Two Rivers estuary, Crow Spit, the Santon Burrows, the port of Appledore, the summer mirage along the sands to Down End. There were essays by D. H. Lawrence, too, but they had not the clarity of Tomlinson, though under the strain and the bars of brass that bound him, there was genius in Lawrence. Christie had been good, too, before his wife had died.

  Now, as Phillip hesitated outside the office door, the old feeling of diffidence possessed him. Christie might think him pretentious, Christie who was the friend of the great—of Proust, Hardy, Bridges, Bennett, Shaw, Lawrence, and other famous writers. What visible authority had he to claim for Willie entry into the circle of the elect? In twenty years’ time, perhaps, when coffin and frame had slept away in the chalk of Rookhurst——

  But there was a deeper reason for Phillip’s hesitation to declare himself: deeper than his former desire to see The German Concentration Graveyard printed in The New Horizon. The reason was inherent in one of the old essays reprinted in Christie’s Insights of Literature, called The Phoenix. He had read Christie’s essay in The New Horizon in the public library in Wakenham, soon after the war, and immediately had thought to himself, I shall write the book which Christie foretells: I am that phoenix, and through me my generation shall arise into life again. After that tremendous self-assumption he had not dared to think more about it, much less confide it to anyone, even to Aunt Dora.

  *

  Tremulously he went up the stairs to declare himself; he knocked on the door, was told to come in. Christie sat at a table, reading galley proofs. He was a slight, dark man with large brown eyes filled with a look of perpetual search and hope. He saw a tall young man hesitating at the half-open door. “Come in,” he said.

  “I—I—I’ll come back another time. Forgive me. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” said Christie, in a soft, friendly voice.

  On the ground floor Anders Norse was talking to a tall young man with a face of fascinating eagerness. “Do you know Roy Inverary?” said Anders. “You should know one another. Inverary—Maddison.”

  The two looked at each other, feeling a warmth of friendship passing between them. “We must foregather,” said Phillip. “I have read your great poetry.”

  “Thank you,” replied Inverary, with a South African intonation. “I don’t know your work, but I shall! We’ll meet again! Just now I have an appointment to throw a man out of a window in Soho.” He disappeared.

  “Walk with me to my office,” said Anders. “Then we’ll have lunch together, if you’re not going elsewhere.”

  “Thank you, Anders. I want to ask you—perhaps I should have written a letter and not have confronted you with it—don’t be afraid to say no—but will you be my best man at the wedding next month?”

  Anders replied at once that he would love to, provided he would be able to get away, as he thought he might, the wedding being in the last week of May.

  “I’ll come anyway! Have you thought about that book on your wanderings in search of the otter, which MacCourage asked you to write?”

  “Yes, I’m always thinking about it.”

  “When will you do it, Phillip?”

  “I plan to start after I’m married, Anders.”

  “Good for you! I have a feeling that that book will bring you fame and fortune!”

  They had lunch together, and afterwards Phillip went to see his mother. She told him that both she and the two girls were looking forward to coming down for the wedding.

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you want your sisters to come, Phillip?”

  “Well, as it’s going to be a very small wedding, it’s hardly worth Doris and Elizabeth coming so far.”

  “Oh, but I’m sure they will want to be at their only brother’s wedding, dear.”

  “Yes, of course. By the way, will Father be coming? We’re not sending out any formal invitations. It’s to be a specially quiet, small wedding.”

  “Father would expect to be asked, even if he couldn’t come, you know.”

  “Do you think he might come?”

  “I don’t expect he will. But you won’t forget to ask your uncles John and Hilary, and Aunt Dora, will you? They will be hurt if they are not invited, I think.”

  “Yes, of course, Mother. I’ll ask Father, too, when he returns from the City.” He felt weak, and went for a walk on the Hill, but soon returned. It was now an alien place.

  “Lucy asked me to say she hoped you would come to our wedding, Father.”

  Having prepared himself for the ordeal, he was disappointed by the reply, as well as relieved.

  “Weddings are not in my line, old man. There’s a board meeting on your happy day, and as the Registrar I’m afraid I shall have to be in attendance.”

  “I see. I suppose you’re in the Mezzanine Room now?”

  “Yes, it’s still the same poky little place you once knew. By the way, is Master Arthur to be the groomsman?” enquired Richard, lightly.

  “No, Father.”

  “Ah, I did wonder, after hearing something about an accident when Arthur was riding your old motor-bicycle.”

  “I heard that he went round a corner too fast, and banged into a wall, Father. One reason he gave me was that the magneto was dud!”

  “H’m,” said Richard. Feeling that he had an ally, Phillip went on, “Do try and come to our wedding. I can fix you up with the sexton.”

  “Did you hear that, Hetty? Phillip wants to get rid of us even quicker than I thought!”

  Laughing at his own joke, Richard went away to tidy up his garden tools, which were already standing, meticulously clean and aligned, in a row in his tool-shed.

  “Now about a little matter, dear,” said Hetty. “We want to give you something useful for your cottage, so the girls and I have decided to give you an armchair, specially made to keep your back from the draughts. It should arrive any day at your cottage now. I do hope you will like it.”

  “Thank you, Mother,” he said, while suppressing a feeling of disquiet. Why did she have things specially made for him, without telling him first? If the chair was anything like the shirts she had had made for him some years back, cut to the pattern of one that had shrunk until he could hardly wear it, or the curtains that he did not want to hang beside his windows—oh dear, Mother was so anxious to please, so well-meaning: but did she really put other people’s feelings before her own? She felt intensely for others—but only with her own personal feelings. The truth was that she had never registered. Her shells were fired with the best of good intentions into the air—to fall wide of the target.

  If only he could stop criticising her——

  It was seven o’clock. No wind, high clouds, the glass in the hall set fair: he must go back with the copy of his birth certificate, or he would miss the banns being read in time. He must begin the otter story. He must be with Lucy. Lucy was detached, she did not cling, or smother, or reveal quivering concern. He was safe with Lucy. Feeling suddenly free at the thought, he kissed his mother, and the constriction gone, went into the garden to be with Father, to talk to him, seeing him as he saw himself.

  “You’ve made a fine garden, Father!”

  Richard showing him round his beds, each made of soil carefully sifted and raked level; then the squared compost heap he was making. He told Phillip how good was hop manure, and how he suspected that chemical manures harmed the soil by injuring the benevolent bacilli in the humus. Had Phillip a good garden with his cottage?

  “
But I have forgotten that you will soon be at Rookhurst, where the loamy soil has an entirely different character from your red sandstone.”

  He spoke of the country of his boyhood—the walks on the downs, with their early summer scent of wild thyme—his father’s tame partridges, which settled round his boots in the library—boots recognised as protectors, since the covey had never known their real parents.

  “There’s a story for you, old chap! You ask Uncle John to tell you about them. And give him my kind regards, won’t you?”

  Phillip felt he had progressed: he had got away from his personal feelings and so had been able to enter the feelings of his father. “Are you sure you can’t come to the wedding?”

  “I’m afraid not, old chap. But I’ll be thinking about you on the day.”

  An hour later, after an omelette, Phillip left for Dorset, through Streatham and Mitcham; and once over Thames, thrusting up goggles, he settled himself for the long ride into the sunset with the moon soon to arise behind him, like the yellow Chinese lantern Father once bought at Staines for a bicycle lamp on his way from a West Country holiday to Cross Aulton, to see Mother secretly in the garden of Maybury Lodge.

  As he sped along he thought in pictures of the origins of his father’s malaise with his mother’s family, the Turneys. He tried to fit together the pictures in his mind, from stray words and remarks of his parents, uncles, and aunts, heard in boyhood. Soon, soon he must begin the great novel of his life—fearful thought, like having to live on the dark side of the moon.

  Wallington Christie in The New Horizon—what did he want? What did he mean by ‘a wisdom that came not of years of experience?’ Was that mere rhetoric? ‘Some strange presentiment, it may have been, of the bitter years in store, in memory an ineffaceable, irrevocable beauty, a visible seal on the forehead of a generation.’ Was Christie a sort of medium, too—but without power to express the feeling in words? Miss Romer Wilson’s strange book, If All These Young Men had a glimpse of the ‘presentiment’.