It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  “I wish in a way you were coming with Lucy and me. I think honeymoons are hell. In Italy they have a party going on night and day for the best part of a week.”

  “Yes, and they also have the Mafia. But I know how you feel. I felt exactly the same when I was married. Every wedding is a strain, you know. But the main problem is, Will you be able to reach Exmoor through this storm?”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Ages ago there was only one bolt holding the engine to the chassis. I told Tim about it, and he said he would see to it.”

  The London train came in.

  “Goodbye! Goodbye!” He felt desolate.

  Then goodbye to May and Topsy in the waiting room, after kissing them both, and a return to the Trojan through skits of water blown from the station roof, gushings from gutters green with sprouting grass, the seeds of which appeared to have come from the numerous sparrow-nests in the wooden louvres on the roof ridge.

  Now for the second phase of the plan. Fiennes was to return to the house and hand over the car to Tim who was to join them at the teashop, take Phillip’s mother and sister to the station to catch a later train; then on to Exmoor.

  So began a long wait, while the tea in the pot grew colder, and no Tim. What had happened? Had the single bolt holding the engine sheered off?

  “If he doesn’t come soon, I’ll hire a taxi to take you and Doris to the station, Mother, then Lucy and I can stay here and go to the pictures.” There was a bill on the wall, advertising the local programme. “Oh no! It’s The Phantom of the Opera—milksop stuff. That would be the last straw, as the cow said before jumping over the moon. No, don’t laugh, Mother.”

  Where was Tim? He should have been back an hour ago. Nondescript people drifted in, sat down, picked up worn Tatlers and Bystanders, dropped them again to be waited on, to eat muffins and toast and cakes, to sit about, to ask for the bill, to get up and go out again. Others came to sit at the same tables while the débris was cleared and fresh trays were brought.

  “This place closes soon, you know.”

  “He’ll be here, don’t worry, dear.”

  Tim arrived.

  “I say, I’m most frightfully sorry! This confounded rain has once more got into the tank of the petrol pump. We had to syphon out the last lot, too. I distinctly remember telling the builder that he was putting it in too far below ground level.”

  “Perhaps he piddled into it for luck,” said Phillip. “How about the three missing engine bolts? Have they been put in?”

  “Well, no, I’m afraid they haven’t, now you come to mention it. As a matter of fact, Ernest simply hasn’t had time to turn up two mild steel bolts. But he did remove the existing bolt and bored it to take a split pin, so I can absolutely guarantee that the bolt won’t fall out like the others!”

  Outside the street was prickled with rain as they got in under the hood. The engine started at the first pull of the lever; and so to the post office to send off the parcels. He could not speak until he had seen his mother and sister to the train.

  And when they were gone he grieved; and could say nothing to Lucy.

  Chapter 21

  SUMMER WEATHER

  So the long drive into the north-west gale began, up and down hills, round spurs and escarpments while the light of day was dulled by rain; and passing through Taunton, at last they were climbing up to a land of poor grazing seen through gate-gaps in the beechen hedges as they ground in low gear, feeling colder and wetter. The narrow, solid tyres slewed up and down rocky lanes, as stony as they were steep; the engine smelt of hot oil as it pulled slower and duller until, compression gone, it stopped.

  “Dash it all, this is a demonstration model,” muttered Tim.

  “It was worn out when you bought it for the price of a new one.”

  “There may be something in what you say, now I come to think of it.”

  On both sides of the lane there was visible, through celluloid curtains, a torment of threshing beech branches. New leaves, pale green and tender, stuck on the windscreen. Water bubbled in with cold jets of wind. Lucy sought to hold the hand inert beside hers as the hailstones began to strum on the roof and clatter on the bonnet with such force that it looked as though the windscreen might be shattered. The hand was withdrawn.

  “Do you think we should turn round and go back?” she asked.

  “You mean push it to the top first?”

  There was silence until Tim said, “It’s my considered opinion that the carbon on the cylinder heads was red-hot, causing pre-ignition.”

  “Is it very far, to the farm I mean?” asked Lucy, as the rain changed to sleet.

  “About ten miles. I must apologise for having chosen such a dud place to come to.”

  “But you couldn’t help the weather, could you?”

  “If it’s any consolation, I can guarantee that this weather won’t last for long,” said Tim, over his shoulder. “After all, it is very nearly summer.”

  “A pity the wind isn’t the other way, then we might get there without the engine.”

  “I promise you that it will get us there, Phil, the engine I mean. I am only waiting to let the pistons shrink in the cylinders.”

  The windscreen was now clogged by snow. Minutes passed.

  “I’ll just turn the engine a few times before I switch on. That should allow a film of oil to lie between the rings and the cylinder walls, which ought to restore compression. I assure you both that unless the ignition has failed owing to wet, the result will soon be felt.”

  Tim pulled over the engine half a dozen times to fill the crank case with gas.

  “Here goes! Cross your fingers!”

  He pulled the lever. The engine fired. They crawled on up the rocky lane, splashing through rivulets gushing down from beyond the thousand-foot contour. The engine began to smell again and to lose power when they met the full force of the wind across the Brendon hills.

  “Change gear, you fool!”

  “All right, all right! I was just about to, when your words startled me,” said Tim, as the engine stalled.

  “It looks as though the bolt holding down the engine has sheared. I ought to have seen to the damned thing myself!”

  “If that mild steel bolt has sheared, I’ll not only eat my hat, but my boots as well!” replied Tim. “Do you realise, my dear sir, that that bolt has a tensile strength equal to two tons direct pressure? I absolutely guarantee that it will not shear!”

  Tim got out and wiped the two plugs with his handkerchief. The engine picked up afterwards. Rain sloshed away most of the sleet on the windscreen.

  At last they were bumping and sliding crabwise down a long hill.

  “It’s half-way up the next hill, Tim.”

  “Oh, good! I’m awfully sorry to have taken so long, I do assure you.”

  Out of the mist appeared a plantation of fir trees.

  “This is the place, Tim!”

  They got out and stamped their feet. Tim pulled their bags from the back of the car and set them side by side on the grass.

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to find your way back, Tim? Here’s two pounds for emergencies. Have a good dinner on the way.”

  “Are you sure you can spare it?”

  “Au revoir, Tim dear,” said Lucy. “Thank you for bringing us safely here.”

  “Yes, jolly kind of you,” said Phillip. “Don’t heed my damnable back-seat driver’s remarks!”

  When Tim had gone he carried the three cases into the plantation, and then leaned against a larch tree. Lucy stood beside another tree, waiting patiently for him to make a move. He knew it, and was irritated by her patience. A narrow track exposing yellow clay lead down the coombe to Tidball’s Farm.

  “The weather will clear up soon. Don’t worry any more, dear,” she said at last.

  “I didn’t know that there was any yellow clay on Exmoor.” He stuck his heel into it. “It rained like this at Third Ypres. My God, I don’t know how we stuck it out! And for what? Waste of life
, waste of treasure, waste of hope!”

  She was wearied out herself, she remained silent. They were both half-starved. Neither realised it. He became more querulous.

  “Look at this ghastly bag I bought!” He kicked the pigskin suitcase. “Why did I allow that shopkeeper to sell it to me?”

  He half hoped she would come to him, but knew that she was affected by his self-strangling mood. O, he must abandon the otter book, and begin his war-book! Yellow shell-craters on the Frezenberg ridge, the mournful rising and falling of strombos horns as gas stole across the watery wastes: the tremendous glitter and flame of the guns, making an immense volcano of the night; ‘Spectre’ West wounded, the hot and sweating rush to get his message to West Cappelle … ‘Spectre’s’ book should have been written by now.

  He looked at pale, silent Lucy. Be good to my dear Margaret’s Lucy, dear Phil. The living, too, were ghosts. He picked up the bags and saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be beastly just now,” started off down the slippery foot-track to the farmhouse, followed by Lucy.

  *

  If Mrs. à Court Smith had had ideas to help Lucy in her new relationship, so had Phillip. Everything must be plain and natural, without shame, as Barley had been on her wedding night. Barley had stood before him naked, making no attempt to cover herself.

  “Now that we’re married we needn’t shut any doors.” Lucy, who was about to shut the bathroom door, looked startled. Her face became serious, plain, without light. He had made a mistake. Why was he behaving like that? To escape from the swaddling stale air of the room, with its heavy bed and elephantine bag of a mattress containing a loose conglomeration of feathers—like one of those horrors carried on carts by refugees passing through Albert on the twenty-sixth of March, 1918—he opened the casement window and resisted an impulse to jump out. He faced blackness and the glint of falling rain.

  “I expect you will be hungry. Supper will be ready now, I think.” They went downstairs. No fire in the grate. How well he understood Martin Beausire’s feelings, on his honeymoon with Fiona, after the long cold train journey! Cold pork and prunes for supper? Not so: a small hard end-section of what appeared to be leg of ram, a tureen of watery cabbage in which a caterpillar lay embalmed, another of watery potatoes boiled to burst skins, a loaf of bread, a jug of water, and thou.

  “Ah tea—tea!” said Lucy, as Mrs. Tidball came in with a teapot of strong brown tea.

  “I hope you’ll enjoy your supper. Are you brother and sister? You look like it, I must say,” she said, hoping for a good talk about the wickedness of the rising generation.

  “I hope the weather isn’t going to last like this, Mrs. Tidball. I came here with my cousin in the summer, but I expect you have many visitors.”

  “One or two, now and then,” she replied, looking at them mournfully.

  When she went out of the room Lucy tried to carve the knuckle of ram. It resisted the knife.

  “I’m terribly sorry about this,” said Phillip. “I asked for lamb, but my writing isn’t too good. Perhaps Mrs. Tidball thought I signed my name Abraham, and got the idea of sacrificing a ram. Oh, what a dreadful joke!”

  “I think it’s rather funny, Pip! Let me give you some vegetables, with some of this gravy. I’m afraid I can’t cut this meat.”

  He examined the gravy. “It’s Beefo! Dear old Mulesian Beefo! Out of a cube. Still, this is a dry billet! We’ve at least got a roof over us! Why didn’t I bring a bottle of whisky? Ever drunk whisky? It makes you feel so frisky.”

  Mrs. Tidball came in with paper, sticks, and a pail of coal.

  “Are you enjoying your supper, Mr, Maddison?”

  “Oh, yes, rather! You haven’t got any cyder, I suppose?”

  “Father never held with strong liquor, Mr. Maddison! There’s none of that in this house!” She pointed to an enlargement of a photograph of a bearded man, in cloth coat and low tight collar, on the wall. “Father was chapel through and through.”

  Filled with Beefo and vegetables, cheese and bread and saffron cake, they went up to the bedroom. He sat on the bed while she opened her new Revelation suitcase, present of groom to bride. He saw a childlike smile upon her face as she lifted out, so carefully, her new clothes.

  “Do you know, I’ve always wanted a ‘Revelation’! How did you know? It’s a lovely present!”

  She began to lift out folded clothes. She put her only pair of black silk stockings on the bed. Then a black book, which she hid under a pile of folded linen. At first he thought it was a Bible, but the manifold gilt scroll and lettering on the spine revealed it to be something else.

  “What’s the book?”

  “Oh, only something Mrs. Smith gave me to read. I haven’t had time to look at it yet.”

  She replaced it at the bottom of the suitcase, and taking out a plain gown put it over her head.

  “What’s that, a new sort of tent?”

  “I believe it’s called a cover.”

  Under the cover she began to remove her clothes; and having done this, pulled a nightdress over her head and wriggled out of the cover. “I’ve never used one like it before,” she said. “So it’s a bit awkward.”

  “I must apologise for not having brought mine!”

  “Oh, I expect you’ll manage!” she laughed.

  “Why didn’t I bring a bottle of whisky? It really does annul the dark and the rain.”

  He saw spots of confetti on the carpet, and went down on hands and knees to pick up all he could see, to hide them in a matchbox. Then pointing at the small single bed in the corner of the room, “I wonder if the old woman put it in here because she thinks we are brother and sister! She said so when we arrived, if you remember.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Smith said the same thing when she first saw us together.”

  “D’you know, I said that Barley and I were the same kind to Dr. MacNab when I asked him to draw my blood for a transfusion for her? I still think that there might have been a chance to save her, if he hadn’t taken so long over the test. I knew the moment I saw her, sitting up in bed with the baby, her face pale and drained, that she was dying. There was only one chance to save her—my blood—but he wouldn’t listen.”

  Her face, less pale now, regarded him with concealed compassion. She sat on the bed beside him, and took his hand.

  “He had his reputation to consider, I realized that, of course. So he insisted on a routine taking of her blood, what was left of it, to separate the serum. By the time he had mixed that on a watch-glass with my drop, fifteen minutes were lost. During that time she died.”

  She wanted to comfort him, but his manner discouraged her. He went on, as though casually, “Oh, it was entirely my fault! I knew he was careless, and forgetful; but I did nothing about it! I have the mind to see these things quickly, but I don’t act on my intuitions! My only hope is to be a writer, quite apart from ordinary life.”

  “Oh, it’s easy to say afterwards what should have happened!” she replied, with sudden animation. “Why, if Pa had known that Mrs. Orchard had galloping consumption, Mother might not have gone to see her, but I expect Mother knew all the time! And if she hadn’t caught it there, she might have caught it somewhere else. So don’t worry your poor head any longer, dear. You’re shivering, let’s get warm, shall we?”

  He felt easier with her when she spoke like that, and undressing, got into bed, but lay apart from her. After awhile she put out a hand to stroke his head. It felt hot.

  “Don’t worry, dear. I know how you are feeling. It’s been rather a tiresome time, hasn’t it?”

  He moved to put his head against her bosom, lying awhile in her arms, but without the imagined delight of the warmth of soft flesh. He could not yield to her, so he gave in to mental lust of a sort and without any preliminary fondling set about achieving his self-will. She was not ready for him. At her words begging him to stop he leapt out of bed and returned to the open window, while she lay still, wishing that she had had time to read the book Mrs. Smith had given her.r />
  Through the darkness he heard her voice saying, “Don’t worry, dear.”

  Later, after the hypocrisy—as he thought—of acting the little boy, he accepted her tenderness, and things were easier. They fell asleep back to back, one reassuring the other sometimes by touch of hand or foot. When he awoke the storm had passed, the sun was shining in the window.

  Seeing that he was awake, Lucy gave him a little kiss on the forehead.

  After breakfast they must explore the stream which ran down the valley. Carrying ash-sticks cut from the hedge, they followed its course, looking on the scours of mud and sand for the footprints of otters, particularly for the three-toed seal of Lutra. The stream, or runner as the moor-folk spoke of it, was in places overgrown with crooked oaks and other trees; there were gaps in the shadow where the sun revealed every stone and frond of moss growing on the rocky bed. Here was the home of the water colley, the sturdy black-and-white bird which waded underwater, searching for caddis grubs and freshwater shrimps.

  The stream ran fast and shallow, the water was clear, amber from the peat of the moor. It was a tributary of the Exe; salmon in the late autumn had swum up the smallest runnels of water to shed their eggs. Now the fry were everywhere upon the gravel in glass-clear places. The parent fish, while spawning, had been stabbed with a dung fork and heaved out on the banks by the eldest son of the farm, to be fed to pigs.

  *

  Lucy as a child had sought for birds’ nests, and kept a diary; so had Phillip. That was the basis of their coming-together, and so it seemed natural that they should spend several hours every day looking for nests. They both loved wild places; for that reason they had come to one of the wildest places in the West for their honeymoon. The next day they went farther down the valley, Lucy wearing the pair of breeches he had suggested she have made for the honeymoon, with stockings, shin-high boots, and woollen polo jersey. He wore similar boots, the pair of cotton drill breeches which had been boiled by Mrs. Mules (new buckskin strappings to replace the shrivelled ones) and woollen polo jersey. Thus equipped, they found over a score of nests of the water colley in five miles of river. The nests were all built of moss, with a hole in the side, and were lined with oak-leaves. All had young, ready to fly. Some indeed flopped out of the nest and, after splashing in, swam downstream underwater.