Nightingale Wood

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Mum,’ he said, walking into the sitting-room where she sat sluttishly over a cup of tea and the newspaper with her arms on the table, and going straight to the point, ‘I don’t want you to have old Falger round here. Understand? Never again.’

  Mrs Caker looked up in angry surprise, her blue eyes without their glint of laughter.

  ‘Deary me! And who’re you, givin’ orders ter maye about who I’ll have in the place, I’d like to know! You mind your business, and I’ll mind mine, see?’

  ‘It’s my business, all right. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is, having a beggar round the place, and I won’t stand for it. The next time he comes up here I’ll kick him out.’

  ‘You’d better try,’ she jeered, putting her arms behind her head so that her jumper was pulled tightly over her full bosom. ‘He’s a proper match fer you, any day, though he is old enough fer yer grandad.’

  ‘Well, you mind what I say, that’s all. I mean it. It’s a disgrace.’

  ‘Proper worked up, aren’t ’ee?’ she said, looking at him curiously. ‘What’s Falger been a-sayin’ ter you? I haven’t seen him up here terdaye, come ter that. And if I do, where’s the harm? It’s company fer maye; it’s lonely up here, day in day out, no one ter talk to or have a bit of fun with.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ he said, going red, ‘not by a long chalk.’ He was half-way out of the door, looking down at her with mingled embarrassment and disgust.

  Mrs Caker burst into a loud laugh.

  ‘Ah, wait till yer grown up! You don’t know half yet, little boy. Then yer won’t be so down on the old ’uns.’

  ‘You shut your gab,’ he muttered, the Essex drawl strong in his low angry voice. ‘And mind what I say. If he shows up here he’ll get my boot up his backside, and you can tell him I said so.’

  He strode into the wood, dragging off his cap to let the wind cool his forehead. His mother called angrily, staring after him with a red hand shading the sunlight from her eyes:

  ‘I’ll do as I please. You go to hell!’

  When Viola was very happy, which had not happened many times since her father died, she always thought about her childhood and the delightful times he and she had had together, in the three little rooms above the shop. It was as though her present happiness, so rare and so quickly gone, sent her mind back to the years when she had been happy all the time, even when she was asleep.

  She was very happy the next morning as the train carried her, past woods covered in freshest green and hedges white with may, to London. She sat in a corner warm with sunlight, a copy of Home Notes open unread upon her knee, and watched the green meadows flying past while the business men in the carriage talked about the news in the papers – awful, as usual – their golf, their gardens, and the detective stories they were reading.

  She was in a waking dream, staring out of the window without seeing the buttercup-fields floating by, or a sudden silver swirl of moon-daisies on the bank near a tunnel. She was remembering, for no apparent reason, the tattered old volume of Shakespeare’s plays with no cover that Dad used to read to her when she was a little girl. She liked to get hold of the book after he had hurried downstairs again into the shop, and sit in front of the fire looking at the pictures in the book, while Catty cleared away the teathings, with her mouth full of a last radish or a knob of crusty bread.

  The book was illustrated with paintings by famous artists of the best-known scenes from the plays. There was a slender Hamlet with fair hair floating on his shoulders, dressed all in black and wearing wrinkly stockings that fascinated the little Viola (whose own socks were so firmly hauled up by Catty). He stood under a cedar-tree with a skull in his hands, while in the dim background whispered a group of his friends, looking sadly at him. There was a gipsy Cleopatra too, with bare chest and a crown made of feathers, holding the little snake to her heart while a black man, waving a mighty fan of palm-leaves, stood behind her couch. And lastly there was the picture which Viola felt was her own special picture, because (so her father said) this was the girl she was named after.

  Underneath the picture (she could remember the words, all these years afterwards, and said them over to herself as she sat in the railway-carriage staring out unseeingly at the flying fields) there was some poetry. It said:

  … She never told her love,

  But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud

  Feed on her damask cheek.

  Viola had never been quite sure what this meant, and later on, when she was at school, the girls always made a joke about it and said damaged instead of damask, which, of course, made it funny, and you laughed.

  But she had liked the picture better than the poetry: and she could remember that, too, so clearly. There was a beautiful young man with a long drooping moustache and a hat with a plume in it, sitting in a chair with a high carved back, and a big dog resting its head lovingly, as though in sympathy, on his knee and gazing up into his face. He looked very sad. Standing in front of him, with her arm raised as though she were saying the piece of poetry under the picture, was the girl, Viola, that our Viola’s father had called her after. She was tall, and dressed prettily as a page in long stockings, full breeches that came far above her knees, a tight-fitting jacket with big buttons, and a jaunty little cap. But what Viola had liked best of all was her hair, cut short like a boy’s and curling prettily all over her head. Viola never tired of looking at those boyish-girlish, gallant curls. They had spelled all romance for her, all adventure, and escape from her own soft floppy mane of hair that would never keep tidy.

  Fancy my remembering all that, she thought, impatiently pushing up a soft unmanageable curl. It must be fifteen years ago. And the train slowly drew into Liverpool Street.

  Because she did remember it, the whole pattern of her life was changed that day.

  Victor Spring, driving home in the evening from Bracing Bay where he had been inspecting the site for the new housing scheme, saw a very pretty girl getting on to the Sible Pelden bus. That was not unusual; there are thousands of very pretty girls in England and some of them lived in Chesterbourne. But this girl was different … that word, that danger-signal Victor had often guffawed over when he heard it used by an infatuated acquaintance. But this girl, she really was different. She was taller than most girls and she wore no hat, she was swinging it in one hand while in the other she carried a load of parcels. She was pale, with a pretty pink mouth, and seemed rather sleepy and bewildered as though the traffic in Chesterbourne High Street were too much for her.

  He did not notice much what she had on: black, he thought; anyway, she was very well dressed. But what was really striking about her, what made him turn round to stare after the Sible Pelden bus while he slowed the car a little, was her hair. It was ash-pale and cut very short in big soft curls all over her head. The curls rolled and tugged in the breeze, and the very pretty girl tossed them as though she liked the feeling.

  That’s a swell bit of goods, thought Victor, accelerating. Ve-e-ery nice, I call that. Now I wonder, would that be local produce?

  It would.

  CHAPTER XI

  There was a tradition about the Infirmary Ball. It was always a roaring success, not only in raising money for the Infirmary (which was perpetually at its last gasp and flopping hysterically on everybody for succour) but in the number of guests, the decorations, band and refreshments. The Ball was under the personal supervision of Lord and Lady Dovewood. Lord Dovewood’s great-grandmother had started the original Infirmary in a disused shed in 1846, helped by a band of devoted ladies brave as buffaloes, who did not care what people said about them; and hence his family was Patron to the present Infirmary. It was Lord Dovewood who saw to the refreshments, and very good they were, for they included dishes made from old family recipes, while Lady Dovewood saw to the decorations which had to be better every year. The young Dovewoods acted as unofficial Masters of the Ceremonies, and saw that the parents did not pick on too leprous a band.

  Envious so
uls had been heard to mutter that there was a sight too much Dovewood about the Infirmary Ball, but there were not many of these. Most people, being warmly natural snobs, enjoyed the feeling (which the Dovewoods managed so well to convey) that, even though they had paid for their tickets, they were the guests of a Lord. They enjoyed mingling with the gentry and noticing what they wore and how they behaved; and as the common herd usually made itself up into parties and arrived like that, few people at the Ball went partnerless or felt out of things.

  This year they had proposed to have Ray and His Five Demons for the band, but two days before the Ball an awful event occurred. Ray and His Five Demons betrayed the Infirmary and the Dovewoods by coolly accepting an engagement to play at a much higher fee for a private dance in Stanton. This was felt to be all the baser because Ray was actually one Stanley Burbett, a Chesterbourne boy who had made good, and he knew well how important the Infirmary Ball was to the district and the tradition that it was always a blazing and cloudless success. Many harsh remarks were made about Ray and His Five Demons, and discontented local boys were told that Getting On and making money did not always mean an improvement in the character.

  ‘Oh, Mr Spring,’ said Lady Dovewood, on the telephone, ‘I do hope I’m not interrupting you …’

  ‘Not at all, Lady Dovewood. Anything I can do for you … only too happy.’

  ‘… but I wonder if you know of a really good, reliable band? I expect you’ve heard about those disgusting Five Demons letting us down …’

  ‘Yes, of course. Too bad … bad show …’

  ‘… and there’s so little time. It must be reliable but snappy. The children want what they call a Swing band … Do you know anything about Swing, Mr Spring?’ ended Lady Dovewood plaintively, who liked to pretend that she lagged behind fashion.

  Yes, Victor knew all about Swing, and he thought that Joe Knoedler’s Boys would fill the bill nicely if they were not booked. Would Lady Dovewood like him to fix things with Joe Knoedler’s agent? He would be in the West End that morning; and Lady Dovewood was not to bother about Knoedler being expensive. He (Victor) would be delighted to see to that.

  Lady Dovewood was more than grateful to Mr Spring, and it was most generous of him.

  ‘Blast,’ said Victor, hanging up. Now he would have to go to the Infernal Ball, out of which he and Phyl had decided to wriggle. He got more bored with it every year, seeing the same faces above the same dresses, eating the same ham stuck with the same cloves from the Dovewood herb-garden, shivering in the same draughts that had moaned through the Assembly Rooms for a hundred years. The whole thing was most dreary.

  But if he secured Joe Knoedler’s Boys, he supposed that he would have to turn up to see that they were doing their stuff properly, and not tight or ravishing the ladies or anything; and be thanked by Lady Dovewood. He had planned to stay up in town on the evening of the Ball with Phyl’s people, telephoning his decision to his mother at the last minute, but now he would have, he supposed, to go. It was a bore, a ruddy bore. He opened the Daily Telegraph and forgot it.

  Though it would be more interesting, and easier, to say that the countryside was in a fever of excitement as the night of the Ball approached, it would not be true. The movies, the dog-racing track built by the Spring Developments Association outside Bracing Bay, the wireless and the fortnightly dances at the Chesterbourne Public Baths had robbed the Ball of much of its pre-War glamour. Now it was possible to be a bit gay all the year round, instead of only once a year about 14th June, and the Chesterbourne district preferred to do the former.

  Nevertheless, the Ball remained firmly fixed in the affections of these country-living people who had heard their grandparents speak of it; and as the night drew near, hairdressers in Chesterbourne were busy, a good many bottles of coloured nail varnish were sold at Woolworth’s, and Thompson and Burgess sold a large number of their fine-gauge silk stockings.

  There were four prices for the tickets; three-and-six, five shillings, seven-and-sixpence and half a guinea. No one got a whiff of extra food or decoration for the extra money which went direct to the Cause, the gasping, only-just-kept-alive Infirmary; but it was a point of honour to give as much for tickets as possible. Every year Lady Dovewood proudly gave a statement to the Chesterbourne Echo that ‘only so-and-so many of the cheapest tickets were sold this year’ and there was a tradition that the number grew less every year. If it did not, Lady Dovewood made it, for her politics were Machiavellian.

  The gentry, of course, bought the most expensive tickets. Sometimes they doubled the price. Mr Wither always did, and Mrs Spring, who had a habit of dashing off impulsive cheques to hospitals and lying-in homes, trebled it.

  The weather was very hot during the two days before the Ball, with a huge moon showering her light over the massive heads of trees in opulent summer leaf. All night the countryside did not seem to go to sleep, for the roads were busy with the tiny jewelled beetles of cars racing their owners down to the sea for a moonlit bathe, and all along the shore for miles, bungalows and beach-huts were full of golden light and laughing voices, and damp towels dragging vigorously across wet bodies. Don’t often get this kind of thing; may as well make the most of it. Unbelievably beautiful, the long silver waves rolled in, over the dark rocks of Cornwall, the white rocks of Sussex, the flat firm sands of Northumberland and the rounded baylets of Wales. Even the bathers, running screaming and splashing into the milk-warm water, felt the beauty of the sea rolling under that green magian-light.

  ‘Good to be alive, eh?’ they said to each other, with characteristic English unreserve. ‘Glad to be alive on a night like this, eh?’ – in a world toppling with monster guns and violent death.

  Tina had given up trying to be sensible about Saxon. She was in love with him; she faced the fact and did not want it to be otherwise. For the first time in what seemed to her a very long and half-starved life she was feeling an emotion, strong as wine, satisfying as the warmth of sunrays. She did not know it, but her love was like that of earliest youth, asking nothing in return but a smile, a gentle word, and the presence of the beloved. So long as she could have her hour’s lesson every day and exchange demure little jokes with Saxon, she was completely happy, and she did not feel miserable because he did not love her. She seldom thought about his side of the affair, because she was so absorbed in romantically loving his beauty, his youth, the sound of his voice and the colour of his eyes. She wanted life to go on like this for always, in the dreamy hot weeks of early summer, seeing Saxon every day.

  In the evening she would lean from her window for long spells of time, staring across the darkening wood in the valley, whence sometimes came that song! like the very voice of Love. If he ever walked the earth thousands of years ago, given form by the passionate dreams of lovers in the Ancient World, that was how his voice had sounded. He was hidden, and winged, and he sang.

  Saxon was still much flattered by Miss Tina’s interest in him, but by now he was also a little disturbed. She never said anything outright, of course, or did anything, but she looked at him in a way that he found most embarrassing, though he quite liked it. What could a chap do? What could he do? There wasn’t any harm in it, only he did wonder what the Old Boy would say if he knew. The Sack.

  Well, he’d been planning to leave, anyway, at the end of the summer. Only The Sack would mean no reference; and besides, he was not so sure that he wanted to leave now, not since this business with Miss Tina. It might be worth his while to stay on. He still did not clearly see why it might be worth his while, for his imagination was timid, and at present he saw no other way of securing that fairy money of which he day-dreamed than by working very hard for it, but he no longer felt restless and discontented at The Eagles.

  There were Miss Tina’s feelings, too. He supposed (this was when the dismay crept into his mind) that she would be cut up if he left. And he would quite miss her. She was a nice little thing, even if she was a bit older than he was. Gentle, quiet, sweet little thing, with
her big brown eyes and pretty smile. He began to look forward to the daily lesson. He also began to flirt with Miss Tina. Demurely, in perfect taste, he flirted just a very little. Forgotten art! pushed into the lumber-room since the psychologists told us how dreadfully dangerous it is to repress our passions, and how much healthier it is to book a double-bed at the Three Feathers and get it over. How they despise the prolonged handclasp, the lingering glance, the double meaning, and the compliment, all the old, old moves in the Prettiest Art! Poor psychologists, how solemn they are, how well they mean, and what a lot they miss.

  So Saxon and Tina drifted; Tina completely happy and Saxon a little dismayed, wondering what was going to happen, and wondering too, with his cautious self-improving streak, just how he could best use the situation to his advantage.

  Two of the chief female protagonists in this story had fusses made about their evening-frocks on the morning of the Ball.

  At Grassmere, Mrs Spring came grumbling into Hetty’s bedroom, where her niece was on her knees in front of a bookshelf, and asked her rather sharply what she was going to wear that night.

  ‘I hadn’t thought. My purple, I suppose,’ said Hetty vaguely. ‘It’s got hock on it, but Davies can get that out, I suppose, can’t she?’

  ‘Hock?’ snapped Mrs Spring. ‘When was that? How clumsy you are, Hetty … a new frock, only worn once.’

  ‘It wasn’t me. It was Phyl. She knocked me.’

  ‘Nonsense. Phyl is never awkward.’

  ‘Oh yes she is, when she wants to be.’

  ‘Do you mean she did it on purpose?’

  Hetty nodded.

  Instead of looking incredulous and angry, Mrs Spring stared thoughtfully at the floor. There it was again, that disagreeable side of Phyl’s nature which would make her a trying daughter-in-law and possibly a bad wife. Mrs Spring thought Hetty a trying girl, too, but she was not a liar. If Hetty said that Phyl had purposely knocked against her to make her spill wine on a new dress, then Phyl had. Mrs Spring trusted her niece, though she disapproved of her.