The Nightingale's Nest

by Sarah Harrison

  I could tell from the way she said all this that it was an acquired philosophy, one she’d rehearsed many times in her head. After my initial shock I instinctively knew how to proceed. Barbara above all people did not want sympathy. When I had needed comfort she’d provided it with her straightforward curiosity, her interest and attention.

  ‘Did he have a name?’ I asked.

  ‘Freddy. To me. I don’t know what he’s called now.’

  ‘Freddy’s nice. Dashing.’

  She gave her almost-smile. ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Who was the father?’

  ‘A man called Reg Parsons that I worked with at the factory. He was the foreman. I don’t know what possessed me . . .’ She shook her head in bafflement as she took out another cigarette. ‘He gave me the lighter, actually. He was stupid and ugly. But then so was I.’

  ‘Barbara—’

  ‘No, I was. Stupid to let him do what he did, and too plain to feel I could say no. Pretty girls have a lot of power. You must know that.’

  It was a compliment of sorts, but it wasn’t something I’d thought about.

  ‘He wasn’t wicked,’ she went on. ‘He didn’t force me to do anything. That’s what makes it even sadder.’

  ‘Does he know – about Freddy?’

  ‘No. I just left and got on with it.’

  I couldn’t begin to imagine it: the fear, and the loneliness. ‘What did your parents say?’

  ‘I didn’t tell them, either. We’d already fallen out, it would only have confirmed them in their opinion of me.’

  I was awed. ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I cast myself on the mercy of the Emmanuel Home for the dirty and disgusting.’

  The colourful language, so unlike her, offered a measure of her strength of feeling. I scarcely needed to ask my next question.

  ‘What was that like?’

  ‘Horrible. They looked after us but they made sure we knew that no one else would. We were untouchables. There was a war on, our boys were dying, and yet girls like us were doing this sort of thing.’

  I remembered Matthew, and our honeymoon in Pevensey. ‘But you’d done nothing wrong!’ I protested.

  ‘Oh yes I had,’ she said curtly. ‘Not just in their eyes, in mine, too. I deserved my punishment. I shan’t do that again.’

  I wanted to tell her how wrong she was, how much she would be denying herself, but this was not the moment.

  ‘Still,’ she said, ‘I got a reward as well as retribution. I got Freddy. And to the great annoyance of all concerned I had an easy birth. I’m surprised they didn’t push him back in and make me do it all over again.’

  This time, I could think of nothing to say. We both stared out into the dark, lamplit street. It had begun to rain. The one-legged Ypres veteran lurched past, his greyhound padding next to him.

  ‘So that,’ said Barbara, ‘is why I don’t like Christmas.’

  Chapter Four

  I went to work at Seven Crompton Terrace in my late twenties. I confess I’ve never been sure exactly how I got the position. I had considerable experience by then, and the assurance of good references, and I suppose I was quite nice-looking and smart, but my qualifications were no better than those of hundreds of other young women of my age in London at the time. Perhaps the Jarvises didn’t have many applicants, but that would have been surprising considering it was a peach of a job. Or perhaps – though they never afterwards struck me as in the least fussy – there were certain things they didn’t care for, such as curly hair, or big feet, or a particular verbal tic, and I just happened not to score black marks on the day.

  Since leaving college, I’d been in the typing pool at a tea-importers, then secretary to the classified ads manager of a north London newspaper. For the last two years I’d been working at Osborne’s, a small publisher of children’s books in Maiden Lane. I was secretary to the commissioning editor, Max Darblay, a florid man with a stomach ulcer. He was alternately lecherous and bullying – in fact it was possible to predict the degree of his nastiness on any given day from that of his hot-handedness the day before. I could deal with him, he was harmless enough. What astonished me was how he had achieved such a position of power at Osborne’s when he detested children and despised authors. The former he referred to as ‘little darlings’ in a tone that would have curdled milk, the latter as ‘whimsy-merchants’. Those who did not by any stretch of the imagination qualify as whimsy-merchants (some of our authors wrote fast and furious adventure stories) were dismissed as ‘clerks’ on the assumption, I could only suppose, that people who produced this stirring escapism did so because they themselves led such unconscionably dull lives. That would certainly have accounted for his embarrassment when one of the new ‘clerks’, D.L. McAlpine, came into the office prior to lunching with Roddy Osborne, the managing director, and turned out to be a giant of a man: a Cambridge rowing blue and much-decorated veteran of both South Africa and the Dardanelles, who wrote his tales of heroism, danger and endeavour in between exploratory trips to uncharted regions of the globe. I remember noticing that he had two fingers missing on his right hand. Once he’d got over his embarrassment, Max Darblay dismissed McAlpine as the exception that proved the rule.

  When I took the job at Osborne’s I’d been under the illusion that publishing was a glamorous business. Elsewhere it may well have been, but our branch of it (McAlpine apart) was not. My day consisted of long periods of routine correspondence, filing, tea-making and diary-adjustment, enlivened by Darblay’s rather pathetic advances and subsequent fits of pique. Still, it was a reasonably prestigious job that paid enough for me to leave home and rent a small top-floor bedsit off the Tottenham Court Road, and my time there resulted in one real and lasting benefit: a realistic, even a mildly sceptical, appreciation of human nature.

  Darblay’s importunings and uncertain temper taught me the value of holding steady and maintaining one’s self-possession. I won’t say that he didn’t reduce me to tears on a couple of early occasions, but I only allowed the tears to fall in the cloakroom, or in the bus on the way home. In the office, I was a model of unflappable efficiency. My aloofness infuriated him, but he must have been grateful that I made no recriminations or complaints, that my own behaviour was as unvaryingly calm and reliable as my work, no matter what he threw at me. He never uttered a thank-you, nor an apology, but on both the Christmases that I was there I received a generous bonus, which was far more useful.

  Those authors that I met I liked, in the main, but what intrigued me was the gulf between the writer and what he or she wrote – the gulf occupied by that wonderful thing which I lacked, the creative imagination. McAlpine was certainly an exception, being every bit as fearsomely intrepid as his heroes, but those whom Darblay dismissed as ‘whimsy-merchants’ were, I had to admit, a surprising lot. The author of a series of enchanting fairy books was a big woman in brogues and a tie; the stories about Piers and Posy, orphaned twins at large in a mysterious other-world on a quest for their missing brother, were written by an elderly solicitor from Eastbourne; the chronicles of a magic bicycle were the work of a war widow with four children; Armand the Alligator was the creation of two gentlemen friends from Leeds, and so on. We may not have been the biggest or most renowned publisher of children’s books, but I was nonetheless vouchsafed this glimmer of insight into literary inspiration: like lightning, you never knew where, or in what form, it would strike.

  Also, who knows? Perhaps the fact that I had experience in a broadly ‘artistic’ milieu was a contributory factor, along with my unexceptionable ordinariness, in my being offered the job with the Jarvises.

  The advertisement in The Times was brief and a little coy. Amanuensis required, shorthand and typing, general duties. Successful candidate will be able, amiable, adaptable. There followed a Post Office box number.

  Within a week of sending off my application I received a letter from a Mr Christopher Jarvis, the Sumpter Gallery, Bowne Street, Wi, inviting me for an interview not
at the gallery but at a private address in Highgate. My heart sank. I wondered if this meant that Jarvis was looking for someone to help more in the domestic arena; the words general duties and adaptable took on a new significance. If that were so, I was not the woman he was after; my domestic capabilities were strictly limited to what was required by my simple, single life. But I could hear Matthew’s voice in my ear saying: ‘Best foot forward, Mrs Griffe,’ and after all, I reasoned, I could always say no.

  It was a beautiful day in early May when I presented myself at Seven Crompton Terrace for the interview. There was pink and white blossom on the trees in the road, and more in the gardens beyond. It made a delightful change after my poky flat and dark office in town and my heart lifted in spite of my nervousness.

  Crompton Terrace was more modest than the road by which I approached it, Hardwick Row. Number Seven, though three storeys high, wasn’t grand, but it was pretty, and there was a quirky charm about the front garden with its knobbly red-brick path and crab-apple tree. A glamorous little red roadster (a Riley, I found out) was parked at the kerb outside. I approached the door and stood in the open-sided porch. Tendrils of early honeysuckle waved from the wooden uprights, and cobwebs clung in the far corners. On the tiles to the right of the front door was a large riding boot, its leather cross-hatched with age, in which stood an umbrella, a walking stick and a butterfly net. None of them looked as if they got much use; I suspected that they were there for show.

  The dolphin door knocker was polished to a high shine. Assuming I was expected, and not wanting to sound peremptory, I knocked quite lightly. In less than a minute, the door was opened by a tall, elegant, middle-aged man in shirtsleeves. The moment he saw me he put a finger to his lips and pointed with his other hand to something above my head. Obediently, I looked up. Beneath the eaves of the porch was the rough brown cup of a swallow’s nest, the head of the occupant just visible above the lip.

  I smiled appreciatively. The man smiled back and beckoned me in. When he’d closed the door he said:

  ‘Mrs Griffe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you do. Christopher Jarvis. I’m sorry to shush you like that, but we feel rather honoured by our residents and don’t want to disturb them.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘May I take your coat?’

  ‘Oh . . . thank you.’

  We were in a hall, with a flight of stairs, that narrowed into a corridor towards the back of the house. A second door, half-glazed, seemed to give on to the back garden. Mr Jarvis hung up my coat.

  ‘Come through.’

  He led the way into a room on the right of the hall. It was set out like a small library, with books lining every wall and a leather-topped table in the bay window, covered with more books, papers and catalogues. On another smaller table just inside the door stood a telephone and a typewriter. There was a fireplace opposite the window, and someone had placed a shock of bluebells in a pottery jug on the hearth, which still held the rubble of yesterday evening’s fire. On the floor was a Turkish carpet in rich reds and blues that matched the curtains, and the lamps, too, had an oriental look, coloured enamelwork on great bulbs of brass.

  ‘This would be you,’ said Jarvis, pointing to the smaller table. He nodded at the larger one. ‘That’s me, when I’m here.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. I wasn’t at all sure what it would be like working in the same room as my employer, and may have sounded rather doubtful. To appear keener, I added: ‘What a lovely room.’

  ‘It is pretty, isn’t it?’ he agreed, rubbing his hands together. He was extremely handsome, with a smooth olive skin, auburn hair, and a little moustache. His pale blue shirt was soft and loose. He may have been a gallery owner but he looked more like an artist himself.

  ‘My wife and I love this house,’ he went on. ‘The street is so secluded, somehow, and although the rooms aren’t large everything’s perfectly proportioned. It’s a good example of the very best in English domestic architecture.’ He smiled again. ‘I’ll show you around afterwards.’

  His easy charm was disconcerting. He had a way of making everything sound as though I had already got the job. I warned myself not to get complacent, and to prepare myself for polite rejection.

  ‘Do sit down,’ he said. There were two strappy leather chairs – I later learned they were called ‘safari chairs’ – on either side of the hearth, and a chesterfield with some rather battered tapestry cushions. I took one of the chairs and he sat on the end of the chesterfield furthest from me, his arm along the back, his legs crossed, still smiling.

  ‘Oh –’ I said, remembering something. ‘I brought my references.’

  I took them out of my bag and handed them over. He didn’t so much as glance at them, let alone open the envelopes, but put them on the side table next to him, on top of an uneven pile of magazines.

  ‘Thank you. I’m sure they’re impeccable. Now!’ he went on, in a tone that was almost gossipy. ‘Tell me why you’re here.’

  This complete reversal of roles might have thrown me, but I’d had a useful training in unpredictability from Max Darblay.

  ‘Your advertisement was unusual,’ I told him, ‘and I believe I have the necessary qualifications.’

  ‘Ah, but to do what?’ he asked teasingly.

  I had the cutting in my bag, and took it out. ‘To be an “amanuensis”,’ I read, ‘with additional “general duties”.’

  ‘What about “able, amiable and adaptable”?’

  ‘I haven’t had any complaints,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘Well done! All right, that was unfair of me. Let me explain . . .’

  It turned out that what he wanted was, as he put it, ‘a paragon that may very well not exist’ – a general factotum combining the qualities of ‘accountant, diplomat, and favourite aunt’. Basic secretarial skills were a prerequisite but by no means the most important part of the job.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘we’re both pretty helpless. We need help!’

  He struck me as anything but helpless. Lazy, perhaps; disinclined to do anything that didn’t appeal to him. I suspected him of being indulged as delightful and attractive people often are.

  ‘Would I be working for more than one person, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. My wife and me. Though perhaps as we are one flesh that doesn’t count.’

  ‘That depends,’ I said, ‘on what sort of work she wanted me to do.’

  He seemed to think this was hilariously funny, throwing his head back and roaring with laughter. ‘A very good point!’

  I waited patiently. When he’d stopped laughing, he said: ‘She wants keeping in order, like me. Amanda’s hospitable to a fault – we have a very full life with lots of visitors and house guests and so on and she needs a major domo – a coordinator. A clear head and steady hands. Which,’ he added, ‘from my first impression, you have.’

  ‘Thank you. I hope so.’

  He chuckled a bit more and then seemed suddenly to realise that he should be conducting things in a rather more businesslike way. He asked me earnestly about my typing and shorthand speed, and then cut across my answer with:

  ‘No, dammit, just tell me everything about yourself.’

  I told him a lot, but nothing about myself. I told him about the jobs I’d done, including the current one and why I wished to leave (being sure to cite his advertisement as the main reason); I told him about my education, and where I was brought up, and where I lived now. I explained that I was a widow. I fancied that I’d given him a great many facts while revealing nothing personal. But he was no fool; I can see now that he must have intuited a great deal from my appearance, the way I spoke, everything about me. He sat with his hands linked behind his head, listening with rapt attention. When I’d finished, he brought his hands down to his knees with a slap, and said:

  ‘Excellent! Tell me, would you like a look round?’

  I’d decided early on, when he’d first mentioned it, what my answer would be to this
invitation.

  ‘That’s kind of you, but I won’t, thank you. I have to be back at my desk by lunchtime.’

  ‘Of course, I forgot, you’re a working woman.’ He got to his feet, and I did the same.

  In the hall, the generally informal tenor of the interview emboldened me to ask: ‘Have you had many applicants for the job?’

  ‘Dozens!’ he said. ‘Dozens and dozens. It’s been positively humbling.’

  I wondered, if this was so, what the un-humbled Christopher Jarvis must be like. I half hoped to meet Amanda before I left, but there seemed to be no one else about. At that moment I thought I did glimpse someone, a slight figure, appear at the end of the corridor, and then almost as quickly disappear, but the house was so quiet I thought I must have imagined it.

  ‘I’ll be in touch soon,’ he said. As he opened the front door, he held up his finger to remind me about the swallows, and I nodded to show the message had been received. And so we parted in silence, the door closing with scarcely a click behind me. It was only on the way back to Maiden Lane that I realised we had not exchanged one word about money.

  One week later I received a letter saying that the job was mine if I wanted it, at a salary of £250 per annum – considerably more than I was earning at Osborne’s – and that the Jarvises would like me to begin as soon as possible, subject to the terms of my present employment.

  I still saw Barbara, every so often. She was never one to take the initiative in these matters; with hindsight I realised how privileged I had been when she suggested that first cup of tea. She must have seen something sympathetic in me despite our inauspicious start. Anyway, our mutual exchange of confidences had sealed a lasting friendship which thence (it was tacitly understood) it was my duty to foster. Were it not for me, heaven knows whether we should ever have seen each other after we left the Eileen Nair. On the other hand something told me that had she really needed me, or known that I needed her, she would have been in touch. We had established a closeness which didn’t require proximity. We understood one another.