It Was the Nightingale (24 page)

On one wall was a portrait of Lucy’s grandfather, a tall, dark young man with large brown eyes, in the uniform of the Royal Navy.

“Pa was one of a large family,” said Lucy, coming beside him. “I don’t know all of them. Pa and Mamma were so happy they kept to themselves, and didn’t bother about relations.” Like we shall be, she thought happily to herself, as they wandered down to the river.

“I wish I had known your mother, Lucy.”

He learned that she had spent her last years in the chalet on the lawn, ill with consumption. Lucy had been at school near Oxford, when Sister Agnes had told her the news of her mother’s death. She had returned home at once, deciding not to go back to school, but to stay at home to look after them. She and Tim used to go for walks together, while playing a game of imagining fine meals they were eating. That was in 1917, when German submarines were sinking many British ships. Most of Pa’s money was in
Russian bonds, said Lucy, and when the revolution came they lost it. Ernest and Fiennes were away then. Ernest had been round the world twice, and had been torpedoed three times; but he never spoke about it.

“What was the favourite meal you and Tim used to eat in imagination, you poor starved creature?” he said, putting his arm round her and laying his cheek against hers.

“Usually sausages and mashed potatoes,” she replied, laughing. He determined to go into the town immediately after tea and get several pounds of sausages for supper.

They came to the oak tree where usually they sat on the afternoon walks. It grew out of a steep slope above the river. They agreed to bring a kettle there, and hide it, to make tea every afternoon. There was an old nest of a heron in the top of the oak above them. He made plans to climb there in the following spring; he had never found a heron’s nest, he said.

“Perhaps we can tame a young heron, and train it to catch eels!”

The oak tree became a friend to be visited every afternoon by the river. Phillip borrowed from the workshop an iron bar, and spent many hours digging a cave under the roots of the tree, playing a game of make-believe, two castaways hiding from the world.

The cave was never finished; and after a fortnight he went back to North Devon, to find that only one letter had arrived during his absence, and that Billy was as well as ever.

*

He forestalled any complaints or questions from Mrs. Mules and Zillah about his absence by saying at once that he would pay for the two weeks he had been away. But layers of thought about this absence, day upon day, had raised a monument in Mrs. Mules’ mind.

“My dear zoul, us nivver knowed when you’d be in mind to return or not, do ’ee zee? Us’v kep’ the room for ’ee when us might ’v let’n to someone else, you knaw! So us ban’t overchargin’ ’ee, mind!”

“Of course you aren’t. That’s why I offered to pay for the time I’ve been away.”

Mrs. Mules began to explain again that she was not overcharging.

“I think five shillings a week is most moderate, Mrs. Mules. Anything happened in the village while I’ve been away? What about my paying for food as well? After all, you must have kept the fire in the bodley ready to cook a duck, or a cockerel, or a hedgehog.”

“’Tes all very well vor make a joke of you not comin’ back as you zaid you would, but don’t ’ee zee——”

Remembering the character of Mr. Padge in
The
Diary
of
A
Nobody
who stuck to the only armchair in the Pooter household, preferring comfort to the Pooter supper, Phillip said, “That’s right!” to all Mrs. Mules said. Martin Beausire had declared that talk with Mrs. Mules was like trying to talk to a perpetual gramophone record, while Mules’ style of talk was like the same gramophone record sticking in the same place for three revolutions until it passed on to further inanities.

While Mules kept repeating, over his wife’s shoulder, during her pauses for breath, “That’s right! My wife be quite honest!” Phillip opened his letter. It was from his sister Doris, asking him if he had made up his mind yet about her adopting Billy; her baby had been born, a son; she was still in the nursing home, but had heard of a good nurse; would he agree to share the wages if she engaged the nurse before anyone else engaged her. Would he please let her know immediately?

He sent her a telegram with congratulations, ending
letter
follows
; then dropping his work, wheeled out the Norton and made for Down Close.

“Shall we get married fairly soon, Lucy?”

“Yes! Then I can look after Billy!”

“I’m down to my last ten pounds in the bank!”

“Oh well,” she replied, “I don’t expect we’ve got even that much!”

They agreed to keep the secret for the time being. Lucy said that two of her mother’s old friends would like to meet him, and would he care to spend the week-end at Ruddle Stones, their home. “You’ve already met ‘Mister’, haven’t you? Mrs. Smith asked me to take you to see her.”

“‘Mister’? Oh yes, quite a nice old chap.”

‘Mister’ had arrived to see the Boys, during Phillip’s first visit, on an ancient two-stroke motor-bicycle which he called The Onion. The Onion was always breaking down, he complained.

The wheezy engine, puffing out oily smoke, somehow seemed to fit the tall, thin, huddled figure that perched upon it. ‘Mister’ himself was wheezy, being asthmatical; he was plaintive, appealingly human.

Lucy told Phillip that he had never done any work, and since the war his income was so reduced that his home could only be maintained by the taking-in of what he and his wife called Pee Gees.

Mrs. à Court Smith was a squat, dark woman with remotely inquisitive eyes. Hardly had they arrived for the week-end when ‘Mister’, asking Phillip to look round the garden with him, began to ask questions in a roundabout way.

At last he said, “My wife and I are very fond of Lucy, you know. Between ourselves, we have wondered if there is anything between you two.”

At first Phillip remained unresponsive, but ‘Mister’ appeared to be so friendly that at last he told him, in confidence, that he and Lucy were engaged, mentioning that they were keeping it strictly to themselves for the time being.

“We hope to be married before very long, ‘Mister’!”

“Oh. What about Pa?”

“Pa?”

“Haven’t you asked for his permission?”

“Well, you see, I want to write a book on an otter that I have long planned; and when that’s a success—as I feel it will be—then I shall go to Pa and tell him.”

Very soon after hearing this, ‘Mister’ left him. To Phillip’s surprise he saw, as he wandered in the garden, the old fellow talking to his wife through the open french windows. They glanced in his direction as he sat alone on the lawn. He knew what that meant, and was prepared when ‘Mister’ rejoined him, and said, “Now you know, old fellow, I think it only right to tell you that my wife and I feel a great responsibility towards Lucy who comes of a very good family! We both consider that you ought to ask her father’s permission before things go any further!”

“Well, as I told you, when I gave you my confidence, ‘Mister’, Lucy and I rather thought we’d wait until my book was a success.”

“That’s all very well, my dear fellow—but as one of her mother’s oldest friends, I—well—dash it all, it isn’t cricket! If her mother were alive she’d jolly well have been after you for your intentions long before this, don’t you know!”

‘Mister’ at the moment seemed to be more like his wife than himself, thought Phillip.

“Well, I’ll talk to Lucy about your good intentions.”

“Eh? What? Oh yes—Jolly decent of you, I’m sure, Phillip! I knew you had the right stuff in you, don’t you know.”

Lunch was ready before he could speak to Lucy, who was working in the kitchen. It was a constricted meal; he found himself sitting on his hands, with hunched back, wondering what to say; stammering at times; laconically answering the veiled and lethargic questions of Mrs. à Court Smith.

Afterwards Lucy and he went for a walk, and he told her what ‘Mister’ had said. Lucy seemed unable to decide, which added to his perplexity; with the result that he made up his mind abruptly to go at once and tell Pa.

“If he refuses, I’ll have to leave here at once. I’ll come back and tell you.”

She reassured him as he left, seen off by ‘Mister’ ruefully comparing the Norton with his own creeping Onion.

Fiennes was cooking in the kitchen when Phillip arrived, a new cookery book open on the table.

“Hullo, when’s Lu coming back? I’m bored with basting and garnishing. How long should a duck stay in an oven with a crack across the top and a hole in the back of the flue? The book says, ‘Stick a fork in and see——’”

“The duck, or the oven?”

“Both probably.”

“Well, if you stick a fork in, you’ll see if the juice comes out red or not. I say, where’s Pa?”

“He’s in the garden.”

Phillip drew a deep breath. “I say, Fiennes, I’m going to ask him about Lucy.”

“Good,” said Fiennes, scrutinising a jab in the bird. “It’s gravy coming out. If he asks you about the duck, say it’ll be ready in half an hour.”

“Yes. Well, he’s in the garden, you say?”

“Somewhere about.”

Phillip went into the garden. Mr. Copleston was bedding out plants.

“Ah, hullo, hullo! Coming back tonight?”

“I hope so!”

“Ah yes, I thought you wouldn’t want to stay long with that idiot ‘Mister’! Well, it won’t be too soon to have our cook back again, I can tell you. I don’t know what we should do without Lucy.”

This was fearful. “What are those plants, sir?”

“Hey? Oh these, they’re Chinese wallflowers. Yellow little beggars, but a change.”

“I wonder if I might——”

“Hey?” The grey-bearded face looked up into his. The mouth was open, the lips slightly blue. He was over seventy. Who would look after him when Lucy——? Phillip’s determination weakened. He could not hurt him: he knew what Pa had been through. How could he take away Lucy from this lonely old chap? And so poor, too. No: Pa needed Lucy.

*

She had told him that Pa had lived in a larger house with servants to look after them, a base from which he and his wife had gone together to Ireland, Scotland, London, and Italy. Pa, she said, had been twelve years older than Mama, he was always very devoted and considerate, they were sufficient to one another.

What about you children? Phillip had asked. “Well, Nannie looked after us when we were small, and later there was a governess.”

“Didn’t you miss your parents?”

“No, I don’t think so. We were sufficient to one another, I suppose. Fiennes and Ernest being bigger, went about together, while Tim and I were friends. Then we went away to school, but there were always the holidays to look forward to.”

How well he knew the old fellow’s feelings after his wife’s death, knowing that wherever he went, whatever he did, there would always be the same hollow feeling, the same aching weight. Sitting alone, hour after hour, day after day, without purpose. They seldom saw Pa, Lucy had said, after her mother’s death. He spoke rarely, he looked old and sad. Then one evening Tim had dared to invite Pa to their room for a game of Ludo, and to their surprise Pa had come. He came the next night and the next, and they all played games together.

“Later we took him exploring, and Pa loved it. After a week or two he thought nothing of walking twelve and fifteen miles a day with us. His whole life was altered.”

“Yes,” Phillip had said. “I can understand.”

Lucy had seen tears in his eyes, she had longed desperately to comfort him, but he had seemed to want to be alone, like Pa. To conceal her feelings, she had shown him a photograph of her mother.

“You are exactly like her,” he said. “She has the same serene and sensitive face. Thank you for letting me see her.”

Lucy sometimes thought that she would never be able to take Barley’s place in Phillip’s heart; but being deeply reticent about her feelings, she had said nothing; and Phillip had mistaken this for absence of feeling.

Now, he thought, he was about to break up the happy life of a courteous old country gentleman and his children, living where no angry voice, no unhappy cry, was ever heard. He thought, too, of his old home, of his parents and sisters; and the strangled, inner feeling, which he had never felt when with Barley, repossessed him.

*

“I wonder where I can get some Chinese wallflowers for my garden, sir.”

“Oh, they’re quite common nowadays, I fancy. Has Lucy come back?”

“She’s still at ‘Mister’s’.”

“H’m.”

Pa and ‘Mister’ had once been great friends; but something had happened, Lucy had told Phillip, over some money, she believed.

Pause.

“Well, I think I’ll be going back now, sir.”

“You leaving for Devon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you’ll be back some time, I expect?”

“Oh yes, sir, if I may! Thank you!” He returned to the kitchen.

“Did he ask you about this confounded bird?” asked Fiennes. “All the heat of this blasted stove goes out of that crack at the back! Listen to it roaring!”

“Yes. No, I mean. Nothing about the duck. I say, Fiennes, what shall I do? I mean——”

“Do? What do you mean,
do
?”

“I mean, about Lucy. After all, she keeps the place going, doesn’t she?”

“Oh, haven’t you asked him?”

“No, I didn’t like to, really.”

“Well, go to him and say, ‘I love your daughter, I want to marry her, and damn well mean to do it’.”

“No, be serious, Fiennes!”

“I am serious! That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then go back and say what you mean! You’re an author, you ought to know what to say.”

Phillip went back, made some remark about the Chinese wallflowers, returned to the kitchen, where the duck was now out on the table; but unable to face Fiennes, sought once more the old gentleman stooping with trowel over another box of plants.

“Hullo, not gone yet?” was his encouraging remark.

“I’ve come to say the duck will soon be ready, Fiennes says.”

“Hey? Oh, the duck. Ha, I’ve been looking forward to that! I’ve got precious few teeth left, but what I have got will do! No time to bed-out another box of these,” he added half to himself.