It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  Hetty said gaily, “Aren’t the wayside flowers lovely? Oh, I almost feel I might be back in Cross Aulton!”

  Phillip suggested that they play a game of naming flowers pointed out by each in turn.

  “Your go first, Anders!”

  “What is that one?” asked Anders, pointing to the feathery green plumes of a plant growing out of the rocky outcrop above the hedge of a bend in the road.

  No one knew.

  “Can you tell us, Phillip?”

  “Well, I can, but it isn’t fair, really. You see, Lucy told me one day as we passed on the Norton. It’s used for making a sauce with mackerel. Fennel.”

  “Of course, how silly of me to forget! Of course, it smells of aniseed. Oh, how well I remember it growing in the herb fields around Cross Aulton when I was a girl!”

  Pink campion; honeysuckle; sow-thistle; traveller’s joy climbing the stay-wire of a telegraph pole; ferns, royal, hart’s-tongue, unknown; then trees—beech, ash, holly, elm, white and black thorn, oak, furze, pine, sycamore. Round corners and over bridges, and in no time in the distance they saw the downs.

  The sun over Dorset was warm, the day was bright—almost too bright. Would there be rain later?

  “I can smell the south-west wind from the Atlantic,” said Phillip as they approached Shakesbury.

  “There’s forty minutes to go before we need get to the church, Phillip. So I am going to give you a glass of champagne, with some ham sandwiches. Will you mind, Mrs. Maddison, if I take Phillip into this hotel? Perhaps you would care to join us?”

  Phillip concealed his feeling that it was hardly the thing to be seen drinking together before the wedding of Mrs. Chychester of Tarrant’s grand-daughter; but it would be worse if they left Mother and Doris outside, sitting in the car, like trippers waiting for their men to come out. He had a relieving idea: Would they like some coffee in the hotel?

  “Mother, you know that coffee doesn’t agree with you,” said Doris.

  “Just for once, dear, it won’t matter.”

  They entered the Palm Court of the Chychester Arms, Phillip concealing the loose layers of paper stuffing inside his 9½-size hat.

  “Don’t worry about us, Phillip, we’ll look after ourselves,” said Hetty, going to the drawing-room.

  When seated in white cane armchairs, Anders ordered a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, 1917 vintage, with sandwiches. The waiter returned and said they had only Moët, or Heidsiek.

  “Which would you prefer, Phillip?”

  “Oh, Moët!” as though that was the only possible brand.

  Anders asked for a bottle in a bucket of ice. The waiter said there was no ice. When the bottle was brought Phillip swallowed a glass without enthusiasm, but the ham sandwiches induced optimism, whereupon the bottle was soon emptied.

  “It’s a poor heart that never rejoices, Anders!”

  “I agree. Where are you going for your honeymoon?”

  “On Exmoor.”

  “Any idea how you will get there?”

  “Tim, one of Lucy’s brothers, is going to take us in the Trojan.”

  “Then you’ll come back part of the way we’ve come?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why not use our car? They always charge for the return journey, so it would be no extra expense.”

  “Well, we’ve made the arrangements already, but thanks for the idea. I did hope to have a sidecar for the motor-bike, but it won’t come until next week. So we may walk back from Exmoor, to train for walking over the battlefields.”

  “I see.” Anders looked at his watch. “We’ll have to be moving!”

  At two-fifteen o’clock they approached the church where he was to be married. Fifteen minutes to go. He began to feel liquescent, and by the time they arrived outside the small church with its shingled tower holding a single bell, and saw the gathering of people there, his hat seemed to be monstrously black and hollow. Quickly he removed the paper bands—supposing one fell out in the church?

  “Remember to tell me never to put on my hat, Anders.”

  But the feeling of anxiety passed; and he felt happy to see so many friendly faces as he got out of the car.

  “I’m Lucy’s Uncle Francis, how do you do!”

  “How do you do. May I present you to my mother? Mother, this is Mr. Francis Copleston! My sister Doris! Mr. Norse——”

  Francis Copleston was quite different from Pa. He took Phillip aside. He beamed. “You haven’t forgotten the certificate from your village parson that the banns have been read, have you, Phillip?” He looked as though if Phillip had forgotten them, he would have roared with laughter.

  “I put it in my tail-pocket as soon as it arrived from London.” He fumbled. “Thank goodness, it’s still here.”

  “May I take it? A mere formality, of course—ha! ha! ha!”

  “Hullo, Tim! This is Anders——”

  “Mother, this is Tim—Ernest—Fiennes.”

  “Hullo, May! So glad you could come. Topsy! I say, you both look jolly nice!”

  May saw him looking for her whisker-curls. “I’ve pushed them up for the occasion, dearest Phillip.”

  Both girls were dressed in coats and skirts, May in blue serge and Topsy in black, which suited her tall, slim figure and grey eyes. Her fair hair was coiled thickly under a small straw hat with a plain grey riband.

  “You both look topping! Have you met the Boys?”

  “Oh yes,” said Tim, adding, “I’ll go and tell Pa that you’ve arrived.”

  Phillip said in a low voice to Topsy, “Is Herbert here?”

  “No. He went fishing for mackerel in the sea.”

  “In a boat? Was the sea rough?”

  “A bit. Why?”

  “‘Herbert Hukin started Fishin’

  Herbert Fishin’ ended Pukin’. I’m tight!”

  Tim laughed gently. “Well, well, well! The happy day!”

  “You’re taking us in the Trodge, aren’t you? Is it in good order?”

  “I absolutely guarantee to get you there, my dear brother-in-law-soon-to-be!”

  “I say, Tim, before you go. Is it usual for everyone to wait outside the church for the groom? I mean—is it a Dorset custom?”

  “Dashed if I know, now you come to mention it. There are a few people inside already. I say, may I show you to your seat?”

  The Master of otter-hounds, copper-horn hidden in pocket, approached up the path through the tomb-stones. Phillip saw with some surprise that this retired Eton house-master was wearing a bowler hat with a frock-coat, a green tie with stick-up collar, and brown shoes. And he had worried lest Father wear his antiquated top hat and frock-coat! How right Mother was. It is what a man is himself, Phillip, that matters.

  “I really must congratulate you on the literary style of those advertisements appearing in the Shakesbury Gazette, for the new Works and the Dogstar batteries! Absolute genius, I consider!”

  “Thank you, Master!”

  “You haven’t found your tame otter, I suppose?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “We’re looking out for him and will let you know, if we spoor him, where he is lying.”

  The Master went into the church.

  The open Delage arrived with Uncle John and Uncle Hilary. Both wore dark tail-less coats, and bowler hats with curly brims. Lucy’s Uncle Francis was shaking them by the hand. He felt that he belonged to these people—he was one of them. Anders said they’d better wait until the car bringing the bride was in sight. Tim came back. He was hatless, wearing a ready-made grey lounge suit.

  “We’ll go in now,” said Anders.

  Harmonium playing; a hardly recognisable ‘Mister’ in a surplice, thin hair brushed flat, pedalling away amidst an escape of wind from the bellows—a mouse had gnawn a way in, the hole had been stuffed with paper. ‘Mister’ was playing The Voice that Breathed O’er Eden, or parts of it, for some notes were mute and others wavery with harmonics consequent on irregularity of nodes and antinodes in the pipes.
Phillip had a wild impulse to laugh, and got rid of it by holding himself limp. Then suddenly he felt entirely detached, completely at ease now it was happening.

  The Voice began to breathe, or rather wheeze anew. It ended abruptly. Phillip heard a susurration as villagers’ heads turned. The bride had arrived. He decided that it would be gracious to stand half-facing the altar in order to receive his bride. Then doubts came: was it the parson’s place to do this, as the vicar of Christ?

  His face assumed an impersonal smile of welcome for pale, unsmiling Lucy who had not seen him, for her eyes were downheld; Lucy in white with veil of family Honiton lace, orange blossom in dark hair, Lucy holding the arm of a very serious Pa with grey beard and moustaches combed, wearing stiff white collar and short black vicuna coat. What was Pa thinking behind those hollow eyes downheld: of Margaret lying under the rough grasses outside the northern wall, her grave marked only by a bush of flowering currant? He saw the old man plain, felt love for him.

  Now Lucy had seen him, her eyes were grave; he inclined his head and turned to face the altar: conscious of what Pa must be feeling: dead Margaret’s daughter beside him with eyes downcast, her voice so quiet in her responses to the Catechism of the visiting priest, a Copleston uncle from the Chapter of Winchester, a tall, soldierly man with a quiet voice. Was Lucy nervous? He felt himself to be completely detached, everything to be happening outside himself as he answered clearly, “I do.”

  Now Anders was offering him the ring. Then the Wykehamist parson was giving advice in his quiet voice. Phillip heard nothing as he stood there with the beautiful spirits of the dead, coming, it seemed in fancy, from the very stone fabric of the church, with their far-beyond-serene quietude. He was kneeling down to pray. What words could be used to God? The barrack square made the soldier resolute against his nature. So with prayer. Let me be a better man, less nervy, help me to be calm and steady on all occasions: help me to be kind to the living, as to the dead.

  So soon the vestry! Beyond the oak door the harmonium was playing; around him the Sidmouth bridesmaids laughing gaily, Mother smilingly signing the book.

  O God, was it the wine, or was he psychic? He shivered, his eyes brimmed, he felt that Barley was just above him, in the air, calm, detached, seeing all, serene, the soul, the very germ of Barley. Did she know that Lucy came to him because of the baby, as a falcon flying to the aid of a tiercel with eyesses, whose mate had been shot? Mother was looking at him gently, and he knew she knew.

  He was walking beside Lucy down the aisle, her hand lightly on his arm, slowly—wondering how to keep in step with the notes of organ stuttering, amidst harmonic squeaks, Grieg’s Wedding March.

  There was a swallow flying wildly, swiftly about the church from its nest under the porch: surely an omen! Phil-lip! Phil-lip!

  Outside a double line of small girls in blue tunics and blue hats, Lucy’s Guides smiling away.

  “Good luck, miss!”

  “Bant ’er lovely!” Showers of confetti nearly in their faces; then they were in a motor and going down the lane, passing thatched cottages and the communal rusty water-tank on wooden posts—smiling village faces, hands waving for Miss Lucy. So to the main road and quickly, it seemed, the new red-brick Works came into sight, and beyond the white iron gate newly painted in the wall where grew hundreds of small lizard-like ferns—maidenhair spleenwort—for one of which, exactly similar, Pa had recently paid five shillings, post free from a Rock Garden nurseryman in Southampton. Passing to and from church, Pa had never noticed the same ferns on his own wall, from where, possibly, the nurseryman’s agent had originally dug his collection.

  How ordinary now seemed the perennial lace of spiders’ webs on glass, the old faded brolly, the worm-eaten sticks in drainpipe stand—how ordinary, and small, the dining-room freshly distempered, with coarse rough brush marks showing, the unpolished, deal-parquet flooring—as he stood beside Lucy to receive congratulations from two score or so of guests.

  Then to move among people talking and pretending to eat bloater-paste sandwiches, sipping lemonade made with powder, or claret cup, while some were eyeing the strangers as though casually.

  “Let me get you a drink, Phillip. You need it.”

  He drank whisky and water given him by Anders, who saw to it that his glass was kept filled.

  *

  Anders Norse thought that whisky was a food, by which he helped to overcome what he saw to be a mood of exhaustion in the man he thought of as a genius. He had seen tears come into Phillip’s eyes again and again during the service; he knew that Phillip’s sister was subject to fits, which was the reason why Mrs. Maddison had not brought her to the wedding; that there was some constriction in the family which, he considered, had helped to produce the genius in Phillip. During the service he was prepared to act, should Phillip collapse, by first thrusting a handkerchief between his teeth, lest the tongue be bitten in a paroxysm, followed by hand pummelling of the body as a counter to the seizure.

  Anders Norse believed that evil spirits did exist, that they strove to possess certain rare spirits, and that, in the initial stage of possession, they must be expelled by vigorous action.

  The whisky appeared to have the effect he hoped for: so that when the photographer moved to them to ask if he might be allowed to take photographs in the garden, Phillip, his face alert and smiling, led his bride by the hand on to the lawn. There, standing on the horse-skin lugged out from the floor of the chalet where it had lain ever since Phillip had brought it over from his cottage, several exposures were made of smiling bride beside happy groom whose hands were thrust deep into his trouser pockets with an air of relaxation and a wide grin upon his face.

  Then bride, groom, parents, groomsman and bridesmaids were grouped on the skin, against the background of hollow rectangular hut. Once more bride and groom were taken, this time amidst a dumpling of Brownies ranging against the open chalet.

  Anders came to him about twenty minutes later and said, “Are there to be any toasts proposed, do you know?”

  “I don’t suppose it has occurred to the Boys. Anyway, Anders, you know what they say in the Gats’ Home next door to the Battersea Dogs’ Home?”

  “What do they say?”

  “‘Don’t for heaven’s sake mention it’. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He went to the lavatory in the Workshop. On the way there by the half-open gate, hovered Tim’s girl, Pansy. She had a small brown-papered package in her gloved hands.

  “Why didn’t you come to the reception before?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t invited. But I did come to the church.”

  “I know how you feel. I’ve just escaped, in case I have to make a speech. Be a kind girl and come in with me, and talk to Lucy, give her a kiss, I’m sure it will buck her up.”

  “By Jove,” exclaimed Tim, “I was wondering where you’d got to, Pansy. I’m awfully glad to see you! I was afraid you weren’t coming.”

  *

  Half an hour later Phillip was sitting, coat and vest and collar removed, on Tim’s bed beside Anders, while rain from the south-west beat on the window.

  “I must send the hat back, also the coat and trousers. I must find cardboard boxes for both. There are some in the Workshop, up on the beams.”

  “Never mind that now. I’ll shove them in the car. You can send them off tomorrow. Get changed now,” Anders ordered.

  But Phillip had set his mind on getting rid of them; the hat for exchange, the coat and vest to be lined with silk, as befitted the price charged. He went through the rain to the Workshop for box, paper and string, and returned to make a rough parcel of the clothes; the hat-box was old and dusty—labelled White, Piccadilly—but it would do. He must ask Tim to put them in the car. That job done, he put on his new Donegal tweed suit and went downstairs with Anders to rejoin Lucy looking a little unreal in new coat and skirt of similar Donegal tweed. Then a word with Tim about the parcels; and goodbye—goodbye—goodbye!

  The Master of Hounds was hold
ing his copper horn. The hired car was waiting, white ribbons had been strung upon it—awful! No matter, goodbye all round, jump in out of the rain. The Master was blowing the Gone Away, an old boot of Tim’s hobbling on the string behind the rear number plate; it was OVER. The day was a blank grey. He had no feeling beyond subdued exasperation because he had forgotten to go round and talk to all the guests in turn. He wished he had talked with Lucy’s Uncle Francis, a most delightful fellow, unexpectedly alert and bright, free and easy, not at all like a younger brother of Pa. Oh damn, he had missed all the fun; seen nothing; talked sensibly to no one; merely strutted on the blasted horse-skin. Why hadn’t he remembered to remain calm and urbane. It had all passed in a haze of unreality, like nearly everything in his life to do with people.

  *

  Phillip had arranged for the hired motor to stop half a mile away by a certain field-gate. The plan was for them to get out there with Lucy, pay off the driver, hide behind the hedge, and await the arrival of Fiennes with the Trudge. Fiennes was to leave after the last guest had gone, and then come to take them back to Down Close to pick up Anders, his mother, sister, and cousins.

  “Bad staff work on my part, Lucy. Mother and the girls could very easily have gone with the driver to the teashop in Shakesbury, and waited for us there. I’m completely inefficient,”

  “Oh, it will turn out all right, don’t you worry.”

  Wearing identical mackintoshes, they waited behind the hedge, listening to the motors going past. After a long interval of silence, except for the drip and patter of rain from the tree overhead, Fiennes arrived.

  “They’ve all gone, thank God!” he announced; and then reversing the Trudge with grinding friction plates giving out a cloud of smoke, he took them back to the house. There five women fitted themselves into the back in two layers, after which Phillip hauled himself in to sit on Anders’s knees beside the driver.

  “Go carefully,” said Ernest. “The mudguards are scraping on the wheels.”

  The rectangular steel box, hood up and celluloid side-curtains rattling in a gale of wind and rain, the springs laid, narrow solid tyres humming against the mudguards and slipping on the wet macadam surface of the road, arrived at the station. There Phillip said goodbye to Anders, after insisting that he accept the price of his return ticket to London.