Nightingale Wood

by Stella Gibbons

  Tina sat beside Saxon in silence. She was having her desire. On either side the blossoming trees went by, and the road ran ahead, and she breathed the air of late spring, while she saw, without looking, his hands on the wheel and his profile against the green woods. She felt so peaceful and content that she did not want to begin the driving lesson; she wanted to move like this for ever, as though he and she were two lovers in a gondola. I’m glad I’ve known him for such a long time; it’s not like being with a stranger; after all, it’s only little Saxon who I used to see swinging on gates and forgetting to shut them on purpose; and I’ve lived here for so long, too … that’s why everything’s so peaceful. I’m sure love is calm, not violent and frightening. Like a dove there sailed into her mind:

  And with the morn those Angel faces smile,

  That I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

  Doctor Irene would have a lot to say about that, I’m sure.

  People are so clever.

  Saxon slowed the car, braked, and turned respectfully to her. The lane was very quiet, as the nasty noise of the engine died away.

  ‘Would you like me to explain how it works, Madam?’

  ‘Please.’ Tina leaned back comfortably and turned upon him an alert, intelligent expression, but he was not looking at her. If there was the dimmest feeling at the back of his mind that Miss Tina did not seriously want to learn how the Austin worked, he repressed that feeling and set himself to show her; for he might be mistaken, and that would be a nice letting-go, that would, getting fresh with Miss Tina. The Push with no reference, that’s what that would mean.

  All the same, he was flattered that she wanted him to teach her. The Old Boy could have done it just as well, really … only no one in their right mind ’ud want to learn anything off – from – him.

  So he began to explain very clearly how the Austin worked, beginning with the bit about the gears, for he took it for granted that his pupil only wanted to know how to make the thing move, not how it was that it moved at all. When he said, ‘How it works,’ he meant ‘How you work it.’ He decided that she could be told about the engine later on.

  ‘There’s a lot to remember, isn’t there?’ said Tina, presently, but more for something to say than because she meant it.

  ‘There is at first, Madam, but you’ll find it comes suddenly. They say learning the piano’s just the same, and the typewriter.’

  In fact, she found little difficulty in concentrating on what he was saying and remembering it, so that when he mentioned third gear she knew, without stopping to think, what he meant. Her brain as a young woman had been quick and intelligent and a good memory had helped it. She was not a fuzzy person like Viola; had she been, she might have married, for the distressing truth is that the fuzzies usually do; men like them. She had kept her brain exercised by reading heavyish books, which might not always be truly wise but at least were not those meringues of the intellect, those mental brandies-and-sodas – novels.

  And she tried hard now to concentrate upon what he said, because she was frightened by the mood of dreamy contentment that had fallen over her like the rays of the sun, shining high, so high that it was lost in its own light above the summer landscape of Essex. She could feel magic in the quiet spring day, like a sorcerer’s far-off voice, and lines of poetry floated over her mind as if they were strands of spider-web.

  ‘Now,’ she suddenly interrupted him, ‘I want to go through what you’ve told me and see how much I remember before I actually take the wheel.’

  ‘Very good, Madam.’ He took his own hands off the wheel and turned attentively towards her. His look, so serious that she knew it only just controlled amusement, yet suddenly human again and different from the look he gave to a gear-box, gave her a shock. The ground seemed to go noiselessly from under her feet.

  ‘There are four gears and a reverse gear,’ she began, speaking more quickly than she had meant to. ‘You start in neutral, let out the clutch by pressing down your left foot …’ She continued the boring recital to an end, then looked at him questioningly, smiling.

  ‘That’s right,’ smiling too, ‘you’re getting along fine – Madam. Now see if you can remember which gear is which.’

  She remembered without a fault, and while she was running through her lesson the second time, the bell in Sible Pelden church struck half-past twelve, reminding her that The Eagles was still there, with lunch simmering inside it, and that there would just be time to drive home and get her nose powdered before she sat down to that meal. No one ever missed a meal at The Eagles unless they had warned everyone, days ahead, that they were going to. If you missed a meal, you were ill or some accident had leapt upon you; you never forewent one on purpose.

  ‘There won’t be time for any more today,’ she said, giving a little sigh and leaning back. ‘Will you drive home now, please; and I’ll watch carefully and try to follow what you’re doing.’

  Saxon sent the car slowly along the narrow lane, where the young hedge-growth was still a distinct and delicate labyrinth of differing greens, and the small white or purple flowers glowed vividly against thin Maytide leaves, because there was as yet no dust to dim them. Like any lonely lane, this one seemed the end of the world, with the sunny, misty blue sky at its end and bird song scattered all over it, and if there were spirits, here they might be. Ah! the sorcerer’s far-off voice! We can come here tomorrow, thought Tina, not taking in what Saxon was doing with the car. This is all I want; just this lane, and the sunlight and the noise of the engine, and Saxon beside me and neither of us saying a word.

  I darsent ask him for pocket-money, thought Viola, going down into the wood, but that’s what I’d really like. Five shillings a week, like Teddy gave me, then I could save up for anything I really wanted. Dad used to give me some too, I could say. Mr Wither, my father hadn’t much, but he gave his girl what he could. How much? Seven and sixpence, Mr Wither. That isn’t very much; I will give you seventeen and sixpence. Oh, what a beast I am, thinking that seven and sixpence wasn’t much! It was all Dad could do, anyway, towards the end, and I had my salary. Twenty-five shillings … and where it goes I don’t know. Well, Catty, I had to have some stockings and there was five shillings I lent Shirley and that blouse …

  It’s three months since I had a new frock.

  ‘There y’are, ducks,’ called the Hermit, who was sitting among the fern beside his smouldering fire, carving something with a bright-bladed knife. Opposite him, on a tree-stump with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, sat Hetty; a book had slid off her lap and lay face downwards among the fern stalks. She looked up at the Hermit’s shout, and waved.

  Viola, wondering who she was, waved back and went on towards the fire, for she was not afraid of the Hermit’s roving eye when someone else was there.

  Hetty was pleased to see her, because she looked neither rich nor smart; indeed, with her shabby tweed coat, untidy heavy fair curls and sleepy expression, she suggested that she was not only poor, but stupid in a way that might, because Hetty was not used to it, prove interesting.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ said Hetty, louder than usual because Viola looked such a half-wit. Viola shook her head, smiling, though she had now recognized her as Victor Spring’s cousin without a hat, and felt very embarrassed and shy.

  ‘You’re Mrs Wither, aren’t you?’ pursued Miss Franklin. (So I am, thought Viola, surprised: doesn’t it sound awful!) ‘Don’t you remember? We gave you a lift the other day in that thunderstorm. I hope that neither of you caught cold?’

  ‘Oh no, thanks ever so; it was awfully kind of you.’ Viola hopped across the half-drowned plank that bridged the stream, and came slowly up to Hetty, smiling.

  ‘And were you very late for tea? I seem to remember that Miss Wither said something about being late for tea.’

  ‘Oh yes, we were rather, but it wasn’t so bad as it might have been – at least’ – remembering what dinner on that evening had been like – ‘there wasn’t a row
about that.’

  ‘Come a bit nearer, ducks,’ invited the Hermit, putting wood on the fire. ‘Take yer shoes orf and warm yer feet.’

  ‘Our feet are not cold, thank you,’ said Hetty, half-turning her head to look at him.

  ‘I won’t mind if yer ’ave got ’oles in yer stockings,’ persisted the Hermit. ‘Come on – come up closer and let’s be cosy, eh? Wot say?’

  He did not seem to expect an answer, but bent again over his carving.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ muttered Viola.

  ‘Making a walking-stick. He hopes (vainly, I fear) to sell it to your father-in-law.’

  Viola stared. ‘To Mr Wither?’

  ‘That’s ’im. Old Shak-per-Swaw in person,’ said the Hermit, looking up.

  ‘What’s that on the end of it?’ Viola craned her long neck and tried to see.

  ‘Bear with Cubs,’ said the Hermit, holding up the stick with a shapeless lump at one end. ‘Just ’ollering between the bear’s legs. Cor! it don’t ’alf take some doing, too. Four legs and a ’ole between each: one ’ole between each of the three cubs, another ’ole between the group of cubs an’ their dam, and little ’oles between all the legs of the three cubs. There’s a lot of work in this ’ere, ducks. Not to mention their ears. Eight ears, all ’ollow. I reckon this’ll take me every bit of May – ’alfway through June, I reckon.’

  ‘It is an ambitious subject,’ said Hetty musingly, in a lowered tone, gazing with misty blue eyes at the Hermit sitting cross-legged in the fern. ‘He only began it this morning. I suggested a less complicated subject, an apple, for instance, or an orange, but he said no, he had promised to carve old Shak-per-swaw a smarter walking-stick than the one he usually carries, and he is going to keep his word. What is your father-in-law’s daily walking-stick like?’

  ‘Oh, it’s got a sort of Indian’s head on it or something, I think,’ said Viola vaguely, but laughing because Hetty was laughing and it was so nice to be with somebody young, even if you were scared stiff of them because they were His cousin and talked like a book.

  ‘What a funny thing to want to do. Carve, I mean,’ she said. ‘I mean, carving a walking-stick – it’s jolly difficult.’

  ‘Oh, he actually sells his carvings sometimes to motorists, so it is not so funny as it appears. He stands at the cross-roads on Sundays with a tray from Woolworth’s round his neck and the carvings on it, and the motorists, lured by his unusual appearance, pause, and are betrayed by what is false within – namely, their own taste.’

  ‘But they aren’t very good, are they?’ in a whisper.

  ‘They are more bad than the eye inexperienced in bad carvings would conceive it possible for carvings to be,’ drawled Hetty, ‘but I imagine that the motorists are amazed that an object can be made by the hands alone, because all the objects which they encounter in their daily lives are made by a machine or emerge from a tin. They are so amazed that they assume that an object made by the hand alone is necessarily worth having, and so they buy it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Viola. After a pause, ‘But how did he learn carving?’

  ‘He says that he used to be a model at Carlotti’s.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ demanded Viola simply, who was never afraid of showing ignorance and did not know how rare this fearlessness is.

  ‘It’s a famous art school in London,’ explained Hetty, looking at her kindly and speaking less artificially because she saw that she was bewildering Viola and making her uneasy. ‘I think your sister-in-law used to go to an art school, did she not? My aunt says so. I expect she knows Carlotti’s – you ask her when you get home.’

  ‘That’s right,’ nodded the Hermit. ‘Carlotti’s in the King’s Road, Chelsea. Sat to all the big men, too, I did. Mr Whistler, Mr Alma Tadema, Mr Holman Hunt. All the big men. Beautiful, I used to be, a fair treat. Am still, come to that. Now don’t think I mean no ’arm by this, ducks, ’cos I don’t. I ain’t that sort, and I know young ladies when I see ’em, though, mind you, nowadays it ain’t so easy to tell a young lady from a you-know-what as it was when I was a lad. All the same, I don’t mean nothin’ you wouldn’t like yer mas to know about, see? That’s straight, that is. It’s Art, and that makes all the difference. When it ain’t Art it’s dirt, but if it’s Art it’s all right, see? Well, wot I was going to say was if you was to happen to be down ’ere some morning when I’m ’aving me dip, you could see me. Beautiful – muscles, proportions, everythink. Even me feet – and that’s most unusual, that is. I remember Mr Le Strange, the Great Le Strange, they used to call ’im, sayin’ to me, “Ah, Falger,” ’e says, “there’s ten pairs o’ good shoulders about for one pair o’ good feet.” Very fond of drorin’ my feet, Mr Le Strange was. I remember one picture of ’is, “Morning” it was called, me in a sort of a tunic, runnin’ up a ’ill after a goat. Very pretty, it was. Large pitcher. It’s in the Westwater Art Gallery.’

  ‘And he picked up carving from watching the students, or so he says,’ murmured Hetty.

  ‘That’s right,’ affirmed the Hermit whose hearing seemed to be better than that of people who live in houses. He held up Bear with Cubs, and surveyed it, not critically but with a look of quiet approval, then muttering, ‘Cor, ’Ot. ’Ow about a drop of Rosie,’ he put the carving carefully down on a piece of newspaper and crawled into his lean-to.

  ‘Are you going to the Infirmary Ball?’ next inquired Hetty, glancing at her wrist-watch.

  ‘I don’t know. Tina (my sister-in-law, the one I was with that day, you know) she did say something about it, but I don’t know if they’ll take me too.’

  Hetty resisted the temptation to say ‘Never mind, Cinderella,’ and went on:

  ‘It will be next week – yes, a week today. How the year flies!’ and a sullen look came over her face as she imagined those flying years, wasting her impatient youth in their flight.

  ‘Will – are you going?’ blurted Viola, timidly, longing to ask if He, Mr Spring, your cousin was going, and thinking that this was the best way of finding out.

  ‘Unfortunately, yes, I am.’

  ‘Why, don’t you like dancing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How funny! I adore it; I’m simply crazy about it,’ and indeed she looked it, with her eyes open very wide and a caterpillar swinging in the fine fuzz of her hair. ‘Oh, I do hope they take me! Will you go alone?’

  ‘No, I shall go with my aunt and a party,’ said Hetty dejectedly.

  She was clever and sensitive; her imagination held the wood and its subtlest shades of beauty, as well as the psychological shades in the characters of three human beings in the wood, as though in a fine-meshed net. Yet she did not guess that Viola wanted to know if Victor would be at the ball. Truth, the simple fish, did not even slip through the subtle net; he just never went near it.

  ‘A big party, will it be?’ pursued Viola faintly.

  ‘No. Quite small, yet large enough to be tedious. My aunt, my cousin Victor, a Miss Barlow who will be staying with us for the event, a young man of ample fortune and no conversation, and myself.’

  ‘Lovely,’ murmured Viola; then added, starting out of her thoughts, ‘I’m awfully sorry you don’t want to go though.’ She added kindly, ‘Buck up; I don’t expect it’ll be so bad when you get there; things often aren’t. Often when I’ve been simply dreading going to a place, I’ve quite enjoyed it when I got there.’

  She no longer felt shy of Victor Spring’s cousin, because Hetty was friendly and kind. Also, they had exchanged grins over the Hermit’s remark about holey stockings, and this made Viola feel friendly towards Hetty, as we always do towards a stranger with whom we have shared a joke. As for Hetty, she was wondering if she should ask Viola what it was like to live at The Eagles, but she decided not to, because it was plain that although Viola was a girl with much natural charm, she was also a girl with much natural silliness, who would think The Eagles a boring place and be quite unconscious of the subtle, Chekhovian currents that moved sluggishly through its dark si
lent rooms. I expect she would love the kind of existence we lead at home, which is about as subtle as a pie-dish and far less useful, thought Hetty. Not that I ought to grumble. I have money of my own, a luxurious home in excruciating taste, and all the clothes I want. All that is lacking is liberty, an aim to work for, and the conviction that my life is worth living. I am a most fortunate young woman.

  ‘Was it a nice party you had the other night?’ asked Viola wistfully.

  ‘It was not so bad as our parties usually are,’ began Hetty, then she glanced at Viola’s face and her imagination took a quite remarkable leap, right over into the gaiety-starved mind of the other girl. She realized how entrancing the idea of that party was to Viola and how much she would have loved to be there. She went on, in a different tone:

  ‘Yes, it was rather nice, really, because it was such a beautiful evening and my cousin had all the boats – the punt, and the outboard and the little sailing-boat (she’s called Marlene) out on the river and we had supper down there.’ She went on slowly, choosing her words and watching the audience, ‘The sky was gold, and then it was violet, and there was a smell of syringa—’

  ‘And did you have cocktails?’ interrupted Viola.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hetty, laughing.

  ‘And what to eat?’

  ‘Salmon mayonnaise and chicken and soup and ices,’ answered she, inventing. What had they had to eat? All their food, eaten in circumstances unheightened by the imagination, was excellent, and all of it tasted the same to her. Food only became interesting when it was symbolic, or when it was eaten to the music of witty talk, or by brave men in danger, by true poets who were starving.

  ‘Lovely,’ sighed Viola.

  ‘You must come to one of our parties one day,’ said Hetty impulsively.

  ‘Me?’ Viola went bright pink. ‘Oh, I say, how marvellous! But I haven’t – you don’t – I mean, wouldn’t your aunt mind?’