Nightingale Wood

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Darling – thank God you’re all right,’ he said, kneeling down beside her and putting his arms round her in the ragged old blanket. ‘Darling,’ he muttered, trying to pull her hands away from her face, ‘I’ve been feeling such a swine. Will you forgive me? I didn’t mean to hurt you – I didn’t, truly. Please, Viola. I’m sorry.’

  She resisted, holding her hands against her face in silence.

  ‘Darling. Viola. Will you marry me? I mean it. Please, Viola, do. I … I love you, as a matter of fact. (Must have all the time, I suppose.) Please, Viola, will you? I don’t want anyone but you. I do love you so much. Will you, Viola?’

  Then her hands came away, slowly and cautiously, from her sooty little face. She looked at him, then nodded, twice.

  CHAPTER THE LAST

  On a Saturday afternoon late that summer, the old church at Sible Pelden is decorated for a wedding. The ceremony is over, and the wedding guests are waiting for the bride and bridegroom to come out of the vestry.

  It is a beautiful day, with a blue sky, and brilliant sunlight tempered by a soft wind. The lanes round the church are full of glowing wild roses and the elms looking over its walls are laden with splendid masses of summer leaves. It is difficult to realize that Hugh Phillips has been killed in Waziristan.

  The church is full, and (which is very convenient) nearly all the people in the story are there.

  There are Mr and Mrs Wither, looking older and more shrunken than they did some months ago; the burning of The Eagles has been a great shock, and they still feel bewildered and forlorn in the furnished house which they have taken in Chesterbourne until their new home, a smaller and more convenient version of The Eagles, shall rise like a phoenix upon the site by the oak wood. Were it not for the fact that Fawcuss, Annie and Cook have followed them to 13, Croftmere Gardens, and are slowly building up a Wither atmosphere there, Mr and Mrs Wither would feel that their old life had been completely destroyed on the night of the fire. But already the furniture (though it is of course not so good as that at The Eagles) is acquiring a well-polished gleam, and Annie has found a dungeon for the Vim under the sink. Mrs Wither has mummified some leaves, ready for the autumn, and the three maids are hard at work on things for the Give What You Like stall. Of course, they find it a nuisance being a bus ride from church, but M’m always has cold supper on Sunday evenings so that they can ride out together to this very church where they now sit, and they are quite getting into the way of it. All three have been given leave to come to the wedding today; 13, Croftmere Gardens is locked up for the afternoon, and there will be high tea instead of an elaborate dinner.

  Fawcuss, Annie and Cook are soberly pleased about Mrs Theodore’s good fortune. She is a nice young lady, and they wish her every happiness. Since her engagement to Mr Spring, so rich and respected, the three naturally think of her as a young lady. A year ago they found it difficult to think of her as Mrs Theodore: money certainly does make a difference.

  Mrs Wither, looking round the packed church, has a vague feeling that her daughter-in-law has played some kind of a dirty trick. For months she went about so quiet and subdued and apparently contented with her lot: then suddenly burst out into an engagement with Victor Spring, a gorgeous trousseau, and all the pleasure and excitement of a smart wedding with half the county to see! White roses and violas all over the church, a smart, tired woman journalist from London taking the names of guests in the porch, press photographers, a honeymoon in Paris and a flat in town … Mrs Spring feels that all this is a kind of insult to poor Teddy’s memory. Why, Viola looks so young and so happy that she might never have been married before! Mrs Wither thinks that Viola must have been very underhand, very cunning, to have carried on this affair with young Spring under her mother-in-law’s nose without Mrs Wither guessing.

  Madge sits between her parents, sturdy and upright in a light coat and skirt that make her look twice her size. She is thinking about Polo, who is waiting for her out in the churchyard, tied to the railings of somebody’s tomb under the eye of Mrs Fisher up the Green Lion. Polo does not need the eye of Mrs Fisher, for he is now so well trained that even Colonel Phillips can find no fault in him, and, as we know, Madge holds Colonel Phillips’s opinion very high indeed. But Mrs Fisher has offered to ‘see no one don’t run off with him’, and Madge, flattered by Mrs Fisher’s obvious admiration for Polo, accepts. Lately, Madge and Colonel Phillips have been talking seriously about going into partnership. The Colonel thinks that Madge’s enthusiasm, common sense and capacity for hard work would be very useful in his kennels, and Madge can think of no career that would give her more satisfaction. A nice, sensible woman, Madge Wither, thinks Colonel Phillips. No nonsense about her. And Madge thinks, I shall see quite a lot of the kid, I expect. Hugh’s kid. Funny that sounds. I suppose they’ll make a soldier of him, too. Best life for a boy. When he’s a lot older and can manage a dog, I might give him Polo, only Polo’ll be pretty ancient by then, of course.

  The young widow and the baby, Ned, will be home next week. The spare room is all ready; and the nursery has been repapered and Hugh’s toys hunted out (though they will not be needed for years, the Phillipses tell each other), and some new ones bought. And Mrs Colonel Phillips is trying to remember her few sentences of Urdu, for the ayah will feel so strange just at first, poor thing. And Mrs Colonel Phillips, glancing at a new white tablet in the ancient wall above their pew, sighs and goes off into a reverie.

  Mr Wither, on Madge’s other side, is enjoying the wedding, the fine weather, and the knowledge that yet another person whom he knows well has managed to get near a lot of money. Even Mr Wither cannot hope that he will ever be able to manage Victor Spring’s money, because Victor manages it so well himself, but there is satisfaction for Mr Wither in the thought that Victor does do it so well. It is a beautiful sight, Victor’s money. It grows: it runs healthily round the country like a sound bloodstream: it never suffers from the palpitations and nerve storms that affect Mr Wither’s money. Mr Wither is planning to get many sound tips from Viola, when she comes to see Mrs Wither, about where to invest, and when. Victor is sure to tell her that sort of thing, thinks Mr Wither complacently. The fellow is head over heels, anyone can see that. And Saxon, too; Saxon listened with real appreciation when Mr Wither gave him that little talk about investing. He must remember to ask Tina, after this business is all over, whether Saxon had yet taken his advice.

  Tina, sitting near the door in case she feels faint and wearing a discreet but becoming dress, is not really very interested in the wedding. She is pleased, of course, that old Vi has got young Spring after all, but she rather wishes she were spending this lovely day in the garden of their new house in Maida Vale, exquisitely embroidering a robe for the baby (like all people who have never had a baby, Tina does not really believe that babies are ever sick). She finds this return to the scene of her own romance curiously unreal and, frankly, just a little dull. The present, to Tina, is much more interesting just now than the past. Sible Pelden might seem more interesting if Saxon were here, and they could smile at each other as they passed lanes that had amusing youthful memories, but Saxon is much too busy nowadays to go to weddings.

  One’s own house, one’s husband and peacefully developing baby are, after all, the most interesting objects in the world, thinks Tina. The supervision of two well-trained (and paid) maids, the catering, the shall-you-be-in-to-dinnering – how absorbing and interesting is the routine, when it comes late in life! I must be the most contented woman in England, thinks Tina. She uses the word deliberately. She feels that ‘content’ perhaps expresses her state of mind better than ‘happiness’, She has grown calm so suddenly. Is this pleasant preoccupation with the business of everyday living, this pleasure in Saxon’s company, this tender but composed interest in the baby … happiness? Is it natural to be so tranquil, at thirty-six?

  Whether it be natural or no, it is the state she finds herself in, and she is too lazy nowadays to fight against it. She says to herself som
etimes, ‘After all, I’m nearly forty.’ Her youth, her romance, was crammed into a few feverish months, and violent delights have violent ends. She and Saxon are very fortunate to have salvaged their affectionate friendship from their odd, secretive love affair. But I do wish, thinks Tina, that he hadn’t got to wear glasses.

  Yes, the cool grey eyes are not very strong, and he has made them weaker by over-reading, and over-working in the factory at Slough. The greater part of his capital has been sunk into this factory that he and another small capitalist have bought. It will make cheap beauty products for the chain of beauty parlours that Saxon and his partner propose to establish all over Great Britain, under the name ‘Glamour, Limited.’ His hard working-class common-sense and his ambition are driving him steadily along the conventional path taken by successful men. Once Tina hoped that he might do something unusual with his talents; but as the years go on, she becomes used to seeing him do nothing but make more and more money, which he spends prudently, without much delight. He is a handsome, sober, rather humourless man, whose good looks have fortunately been passed on to their only daughter, Zoë.

  Zoë is to be the chief pleasure and joy in Tina’s life, as the years pass. She is an only child, for Tina had such a Bad Time with her that a lot of expensive doctors forbade her to have any more. And she does not really want any more. Zoë, who inherits her father’s looks and her mother’s honesty and courage, shall be all that a girl with a rich yet sensible mother can be; and oddly enough, Zoë is.

  Saxon and Tina are happy. She is still, to the end of their lives, his best friend. But as they grow older, and Saxon is more and more successful as a money-spinner, they think and talk less and less about their shady courtship. Was that really us? they think, exchanging a guilty glance when something reminds them of the lanes round Sible Pelden, the nights at Rackwater.

  Saxon will always work unnecessarily hard, and Tina will never quite realize why. He himself does not know that he overworks because he dimly feels that his success was earned, not by his own hands and brain and determination, but by the fascination his beauty exerted upon a love-starved woman and a lonely old man. The finer part of his vanity, that was willing to work to justify itself, has never had a chance to do so, and so he feels vaguely that he has been cheated. The Fatbottoms have been shown, indeed, but they only talk about some people having all the luck and do not admire him at all; and for years, until the past grows dim, he will wonder every time he and Tina go out to dinner whether people think that he was Mr Spurrey’s boy friend.

  He and Tina and Zoë will lead a rather quiet, domestically satisfying and socially dull life. Sometimes Tina will smile faintly to remember that she once feared Saxon would go high hat. Saxon … that nice respectable boy whom she now knows to be about as much like a young wolf and a spring god as the Bank of England! We live; and we learn.

  Mrs Caker is also sitting by the door, because she arrived late and the front pews were full. She and Tina have exchanged shy but friendly smiles. It is Mrs Caker’s conviction that, because she now lives in a small block of flats in Chesterbourne with a series of flighty and impudent girls to ‘do’ for her, she is respectable. But no one else thinks so. She has made friends with one or two publicans’ widows and dubious grass widows of her own age and class; and how they do enjoy themselves! They are known to most of the commercial travellers in Essex and also to most of the saloon bars. They rush round the country in taxis or in cars belonging to the travellers, they have all-night parties about which the neighbours complain, and they never stop slapping at one another and screaming with laughter. They will be one of the talks of Chesterbourne for many years yet, which of course pleases them very much.

  As time goes on, Mrs Caker realizes that she has been quietly ‘dropped’ by her son and daughter-in-law, but as the money continues to come regularly, with a handsome cheque at Christmas and photographs of Zoë, she does not really mind. It is understood that she never goes to the house in Maida Vale, and they never motor down to Avion Mansions (known to the travellers, with bellows, as ’Ave One Mansions).

  ‘Ye see, mie boy, he’s very well off,’ Mrs Caker explains to the travellers and publicans’ wives, her pretty, fading blue eyes laughing over the top of a glass. ‘Fact is, he’s a bit too posh fer maye, and so’s she. Oh, they’re all right, I suppose,’ shaking her head with an indescribable face that conveys just how all wrong they are, ‘but they’re not my sort. Stuck-up. Well, not exactly stuck-up, but stiff. You know. A la-ish. Oh, we get on very well as we are.’

  The acquaintanceship between Mrs Caker and the Withers has also been allowed quietly to fade. When they leave the church this morning, they will say ‘good morning’ to her pleasantly enough, and Tina will exchange a few friendly words with her, but it is felt, on all sides, that this is quite enough.

  Very respectable and comfortable feels Mrs Caker, sitting by the door in a gaudy dress and, despite the heat, the coat. She idly wonders for an instant what Dick Falger would say if he could see her now and hear about her good luck; but it is only for a second. Dick Falger! Hope he died in a ditch long ago! and Mrs Caker’s thoughts drift away to other matters.

  But the Hermit has not died in a ditch. He has tramped to the village in Bedfordshire where Beatty was last living, and finds her living there still, in a tiny, dirty, overcrowded cottage where nesting swallows are slowly but surely pulling the thatch to pieces. Beatty is living on the charity of some good ladies in the village and her old age pension, and is not very pleased to see the Hermit. Neither are the good ladies, nor the Vicar, nor the retired naval man who acts as squire.

  None of this upsets the Hermit. He settles into the cottage with the protesting Beatty; and there, a nuisance to the community and perfectly happy, he enters upon the sunset of his years, even mellowing sufficiently to be described by the Vicar as an Old Character. Bear with Cubs, which he never persuades anyone to buy, stays on the crowded mantelpiece until the day of his death.

  Really, everything looks very well and went off most satisfactorily, thinks Lady Dovewood, sitting near the front of the church next to a small snuffy old woman in a black silk coat. She seems a noticeably nice gairl, not out of the top drawer, of course, but one is used to that nowadays, and after all, the Springs aren’t, either. So nice of her, I thought, writing about that old creature … (the old creature is sitting beside Lady Dovewood), I really must try to get Aubrey pinned down about the Over Sixty Club, we do need it, England must have millions of women like that poor old creature, nice respectable bodies with not a halfpenny in the world and too old to work … I never did like that Barlow gairl. I know a bad-tempered woman when I see one. I don’t wonder young Spring shied at the fence.

  Phyllis is not in church. She has been invited, but is playing in a tournament at Bournemouth and cannot get away, she writes. She and Victor made up their quarrel weeks ago, Phyllis being the first to make advances. She has apologized and so has he; Heyrick has found the ring among the delphiniums and zinnias and Victor has passed it on to her as a peace-offering, suggesting that she shall sell it and buy herself a snappy pair of ear-rings with the plunder. And she does, but although they seem to be once more on their old casual friendly footing, Victor never again feels quite comfortable with Phyllis. Whenever he is with her he wonders if he is boring her, and gradually their friendship cools until it reaches the Oh-yes-I-knew-her-quite-well-at-one-time stage. Phyllis never visits Grassmere again after the row; she and Mrs Spring talk pleasantly over the telephone, but somehow Phyllis always is too busy to come down. She does this to avoid Viola. She feels really bitter about Viola. Something must have been going on all the time Phyllis and Victor were engaged; the whole business was too quick. Sly little beast, thinks Phyllis. Unsporting. Common.

  She feels bitter with Victor, too, because he has had the chance of marrying her and let it slip without one word. If she hurt his vanity, he hurt her pride almost as deeply, and it is not until nearly two years later, when she gets engaged to an
ambitious and intelligent M.P., that her self-confidence is quite restored. Her married life is busy, expensive, highly social, over-occupied and completely commonplace. The M.P. shares her views on child-bearing and so she can keep her admired figure unimpaired. Of course, life would be more fun if they had more money, and poor Anthea is a very large mote in the ointment, having taken at forty to lovers, drugs and necromancy, and even Phyllis’s vitality begins to flag a little, as the full years press past, under the pace at which she lives. If she were not steadily sustained by her belief in the importance of her activities, she would sometimes get depressed. Sometimes when she and the M.P. are going home from a party at five in the morning she observes to the M.P. that life is very different from what you thought it was going to be when you were a kid. But the M.P. is too tired to ask her what she thought it was going to be, and even if he did, it is possible that she could not remember.

  Miss Cattyman can remember. Right from the time she was a tot Miss Cattyman always expected that something exciting was going to happen, and something always has. There was that time Mr Buttrick fell dead right across the Corsets and Liberty Bodices, and the time Mrs Woods had to be taken away from the shop in Mr Casement’s carriage, straight to the hospital to be operated on for appendicitis just like King Edward (that was 1907, Vi, you wouldn’t remember that, of course) and your dear father standing at the shop door on that Saturday afternoon when the first Walls ice-cream man in Chesterbourne came down the High Street and your dear father Stopping him and Buying One for all us girls, well, girls I say, women really, and poor Miss Miller and that dreadful madman, and having the electric light put in and how it always went out in the early days …