The Nightingale's Nest

by Sarah Harrison

  At six o’clock the minister, Mr Holland, came round. He was not the same one who had married Matthew and me, but a brisk, rather bitter man who had either obeyed the wrong calling or been disappointed in it since; it was hard to tell. Underpinning every remark he addressed to us was the implication that because we had been non-attenders, and therefore non-believers, all these years, we had no right to expect too much. He hadn’t known my father, and had only limited time available to get to know us. I heartily disliked him, the more so because both Dr Mayes and the undertaker McEvoy had been the soul of Christian kindness. I was worried that the unpleasantness which slunk just below the surface would upset my mother, but maybe it was fortunate that she was worn out, and also too taken up with mastering and concealing her own feelings to be much troubled by anyone else’s.

  He made some perfunctory notes on my father’s life and career, evincing not the slightest interest in what sort of man he’d been. My mother, even now, would never have strayed on to such personal ground so it was left to me to say what a hard-working, honourable and devoted husband and father he had been. Holland nodded, closing his eyes as much as to say yes, yes, yes, all the usual things.

  When it came to hymns, my mother chose ‘The Lord is my shepherd’, which Holland noted down with a slight smirk and an: ‘Oh yes, an old favourite.’ I decided it was time to make a point.

  ‘I’d like to have “Who would true valour see”,’ I told him. ‘My husband and I had it at our wedding. We were married at the chapel, you know, in nineteen eighteen.’

  ‘Before my time,’ said Holland.

  ‘Long before,’ I agreed. ‘It was a lovely service. Your predecessor made us so welcome.’

  He was a seasoned campaigner and I had no idea whether the shaft hit home, but I felt better for saying it.

  When he’d gone I made us some macaroni cheese, and persuaded my mother to return to bed. She looked terribly pale and drawn; she needed rest, and, I was sure, the privacy to weep. When she was tucked in, in a clean nightdress with a bow at the neck, I was suddenly overcome by tenderness for her and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. As I did so I felt her give a little gasp and her hand clutched at my shoulder fiercely, the fingers digging in, as if she were falling and I was the nearest available branch. I kept very still until she removed the hand, and then smoothed the bedclothes unnecessarily to allow her time to compose herself.

  ‘The doctor said he’d call again,’ I reminded her. ‘He’ll probably want to see you.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said, ‘I shan’t be asleep.’

  ‘Can I get you anything for now?’

  She shook her head. ‘Except, if you don’t mind –’ she wagged a finger in a brusque, run-along gesture towards the dressing table – ‘pass me that, would you?’

  ‘What?’ My hand hovered over the few items there.

  ‘The picture – that’s it.’

  I handed her their wedding photograph and at once, as a pretext for having requested it, she began polishing the glass with her sleeve.

  ‘I’ll do some housework tomorrow,’ I promised her. But she was polishing away, lips pursed, and didn’t hear me.

  It was only eight thirty and a fine, bright evening when Dr Mayes arrived, but I had fallen asleep in the chair. My tousled appearance gave me away, because he said:

  ‘I’m sorry – I disturbed you.’

  ‘I must have dropped off.’

  ‘You’ve had a terrible shock, and that’s physically and emotionally exhausting.’ As always, the kind words slipped beneath my defences and the tears welled up. He didn’t comment on this, but asked gently: ‘How’s your mother doing?’

  ‘As well as can be expected, I think. She doesn’t say much.’

  ‘I don’t imagine that’s her way.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘Oh, I’m fine.’

  ‘There are a lot of practicalities to attend to, aren’t there? But perhaps – people have said – they at least provide a kind of diversion. Something to occupy the mind.’

  I agreed. ‘It would be far worse to have nothing to do.’

  ‘Is she expecting me?’ he asked. ‘I’ll go up and see her if I may.’

  ‘She is,’ I said, ‘please do.’ But I still went up the stairs first so that I could announce him.

  I needn’t have worried. My mother was sitting up against the pillows, neat, composed and dry-eyed. There was no sign of the wedding photograph.

  ‘The doctor’s here, Mum.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Streeter.’

  I left them, and paused on the landing, confronted by the closed door of my own bedroom. Sooner or later, tonight perhaps, I would have to sleep in there again, in the bed where my father had died. Such was my mother’s influence that the guest room never entered my mind. Briskly, I opened the door. Someone, I supposed it must have been one of McEvoy’s men, had stripped the bed, folded the bedclothes and placed the sheets and pillowcase on the chair.

  At first I thought: How dare they? But almost at once I was grateful to them. They knew what they were doing. It must have been obvious to them that this was not my father’s usual room, and that my mother wasn’t well. That one small act was an invaluable service, rendering the place impersonal – awaiting its next occupant rather than recalling the last. I picked up the sheets to take down with me, and left the door open as I went, to let my father’s last breaths drift out and be absorbed into the air of the house.

  Dr Mayes wasn’t long; he joined me downstairs almost as soon as I’d put the sheets in the cardboard laundry box in the kitchen (the use of a local laundry instead of Airs Budd for the ‘upstairs linen’ was one of my mother’s few indulgences).

  ‘I must congratulate you,’ he said. ‘Physically, she’s maintaining the improvement. In spite of everything.’

  ‘She did it all herself,’ I said dutifully, though I couldn’t help being flattered.

  ‘True, she’s a strong woman, but you enabled her to. She’s fortunate to have you.’ Oddly enough, it was he who blushed a little as he said this.

  After a couple of minutes during which he asked me politely about the funeral arrangements and so on, he announced it was time for him to go.

  ‘My supper will be waiting,’ he said. ‘And I must say it will be very welcome.’

  ‘Whereabouts do you live?’ I asked.

  ‘Not far. I lodge in Elm Road with the senior partner and his wife. I’m very comfortable. Mrs Cardew looks after us extremely well.’

  I absorbed this information as I saw him to the door. ‘Thank you, Doctor. Will we see you again?’

  ‘Bound to. Yes, I shall definitely look in in a day or two. Sooner if there’s any problem.’

  We said goodbye. This time I didn’t close the door at once, but watched him climb into his dilapidated little car, and waved as he chugged away.

  The days between then and the funeral were strange, a period in parenthesis. It appeared not so much that time stood still as that it behaved differently. The individual hours crawled by, filled with the sort of small domestic and filial tasks to which I was unaccustomed and against which, shamefully, I chafed. But each evening, when I looked back on it, the day seemed to have passed in a blur.

  In addition, as my mother’s physical condition improved her behaviour changed. She took refuge, as always, in domestic activity. All her returning energy was poured into arrangements for the funeral, and it became pretty clear that if we weren’t to be at each other’s throats I had better let her take over. She would certainly have tried to do most things herself, but I was worried that she might suffer a relapse, so I submitted to a barrage of orders and instructions – shopping, cooking, cleaning. Oh, the cleaning! I had forgotten how houseproud she was. I realised how used I had become to Amanda Jarvis’s modus operandi, and the independence it gave me. I frequently had to retreat to the kitchen, or even the backyard, and make a conscio
us effort to ungrit my teeth and breathe deeply. Tasks like registering the death, which took me out of the house for half a day, felt like time off for good behaviour. I counted the days till the funeral would be over, and the resumption of the status quo. On other occasions I would suddenly be overcome afresh by the fact of my father’s death. I remembered happy childhood times when I’d been his tomboy companion – the golf lessons, the jokes, the sense of an affectionate alliance which my mother couldn’t quite understand. The status quo could never truly be resumed. Everything from this point forward would be different.

  It was wonderful to receive a letter from Amanda Jarvis, with an additional paragraph in her husband’s handwriting. They had never known my father and they barely knew me yet they managed to strike exactly the right note, formal but friendly and understanding. They made a point of asking me to pass on their good wishes to my mother, but I did not at first show her the letter. Would she feel patronised, slighted even, by this articulate expression of sympathy from strangers?

  I decided that I was complicating things unnecessarily. A kind message was a kind message, after all. And the truth was I felt a sort of proprietary pride in the Jarvises’ savoir faire and ease of manner, I wanted her to see that the people I worked for, though labouring under the disadvantages of being well-off and ‘artistic’, had instincts at least as sound as the next man’s.

  I watched her face a little anxiously as she read. It gave nothing away, but as she handed the letter back to me, she said gruffly: ‘That was nice of them. Will you tell them I shall be writing when all this is out of the way.’

  I was pleased, for all our sakes, that I had shown it to her.

  I sent postcards to the tiny handful of my parents’ relatives still extant – my mother’s unmarried sister in Eastbourne, an uncle and aunt in Bristol, and a distant male cousin whose reputation suggested that the address we had for him would be years out of date – and to the Speedwell factory. Midweek when Mrs Coleman called again I invited her in, and brokered a rather one-sided exchange between her and my mother.

  This made me realise how long it had been since I spoke to Barbara, and that evening I walked up the road and telephoned her. Her reliable, laconic affection was a tonic.

  ‘God, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It must be ghastly. How are you?’

  ‘Soldiering on.’

  ‘How long will you be down there for?’

  ‘Until the weekend. I’d like to get back to work on Monday, provided my mother’s all right.’

  ‘You must miss it.’

  ‘I do.’

  There was a brief pause during which I could picture Barbara puffing on her cigarette. She ended the pause by saying: ‘She will be all right, you know.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘She’s got to be on her own some time.’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘She may even welcome it.’

  It was so like her to turn things round, and make me look at them differently. I experienced only the most fleeting sense of injury before realising that she was very probably right.

  The funeral was less upsetting than I’d anticipated. Twenty-five people came, including my mother’s sister Auntie Nell, Dr Mayes, Barbara, and dear Mrs Budd, and the presence of so many provided the dignity and feeling which I’d worried the occasion would lack. In the event Holland’s impersonal delivery did not matter at all. Most of those present took a pretty dim view of the clergy and had no expectations in that direction. He was simply a functionary, doing a day’s work. We were the ones who mattered. On the short walk to the cemetery for the burial the sun was warm on our backs.

  McEvoy and his men could not be faulted, and my mother was splendid – handsome, grim-faced and dry-eyed throughout. Mrs Coleman and her crack team had been in that morning, so a magnificent tea was laid out in the dining room, and I had done more polishing in six hours than in the rest of my life to date.

  My parents’ house had never seen so many people. There were more present than at our quick wartime wedding. All the effort had been worthwhile. I had never fully appreciated the value of ‘a good send-off’, and the paying of ‘last respects’. Now, I did. Respect was what this occasion accorded my father. Affection, too, of course, but mostly respect a recognition of his unwavering honesty and industry, and the downright decency that had dictated the course of his steady, well-spent life. Men I didn’t know told me what a splendid chap ‘Gerry’ had been, and women referred to him as ‘a perfect gentleman’. I was no great believer in an afterlife, but I did hope that he was here, with us, and able to hear the affection and esteem in which he was held, and that wherever he was he would feel no remorse about that last awful night. The unprecedented panic on the eve of his death was the measure of my father’s character: it had been terrible because I had never, ever, seen him anything other than calm, solid, and dependable. My mother was strong, but she had a temperament, not to mention a temper. Almost to the end, my father had been for her what Matthew would have been for me: a rock.

  I made sure my mother sat down as much as possible, and allowed other people to come to her. I was only too happy to be kept busy, making tea and handing food. When things were well underway I went out to the kitchen to charge the teapot, and Dr Mayes followed me.

  ‘Mrs Griffe – excuse me—’

  ‘Oh, Doctor – hello.’

  ‘I just wanted to say goodbye. I can’t stay, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Have you had something to eat?’

  He patted his stomach. ‘More than my fair share I suspect.’

  ‘Thank you so much for coming today,’ I said. ‘It meant a lot to my mother, and to me.’

  ‘I wanted to come.’

  The two of us stood there, facing each other uncertainly, neither of us willing to end the exchange. I knew what I wanted to say but, modern woman though I affected to be, I hadn’t the courage.

  Thank heavens Dr Mayes was brave enough to end the awkward silence.

  ‘You’re planning to leave soon, aren’t you? To get back to work?’

  ‘At the weekend. All being well here.’

  ‘I’d be sorry to think I might not see you again,’ he said. ‘I wonder whether you’d like to meet some time – either down here if you’re visiting your mother, or I could come to you.’

  ‘I’d like that very much.’ I smiled for what felt like the first time in ages and saw my own happiness and relief reflected on his face.

  ‘Do you have a telephone?’ he asked.

  ‘There is one in the house where I live. Here.’ I took the shopping-list pad and pencil out of the drawer by the stove and wrote down the number. ‘Just ask for me.’

  ‘I will.’ He took the piece of paper, studied it, and put it in his breast pocket. ‘I definitely will. And by the way, my name’s Alan.’

  ‘Pamela.’

  ‘I know – I mean, I heard.’

  We laughed, a little embarrassed but extremely pleased with ourselves.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘you have guests to look after, and I must get going.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goodbye then. Or au revoir.’

  ‘Au revoir.’

  He nodded at the kettle, which was steaming steadily. ‘No need to see me out.’

  I continued to smile as I made more tea, and sliced another of the cakes which I had been keeping in reserve. My heart was lighter and my spirits higher than they had been for days. I was still smiling when I returned to the front room, because I knew how tickled my father would have been to think that on this day of all days his widowed daughter had got herself a new beau, and a professional man at that.

  By early evening when the guests had gone my mother was worn out. I was grateful to the relatives for having tactfully turned down her offer of a bed for the night. For now, what she needed was what she would have too much of in the weeks and years to come – peace and quiet and an early night. I tried not to dwell on the thought that with the funeral over she faced the bleak, in
escapable fact of her husband’s absence, and her own loneliness.

  I let her help clear away the tea things, though she was weaving with tiredness, and then insisted she go up to bed.

  At the foot of the stairs she paused, leaning with one hand on the newel post, and said: ‘Thank you, Pammie. He’d have been pleased with that.’

  ‘I think so.’

  She put one foot on the first stair. ‘Back to normal tomorrow.’

  Her stoicism squeezed my heart. ‘There’s no rush, Mum.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She took another step. ‘Oh yes . . .’ And another. ‘You’ve got your life and I’ve got mine.’

  When I’d washed up I had a couple of the leftover sandwiches and, greatly daring, a small glass of sherry from the decanter in the dining-room cupboard. It was thick, dark and sweet, and had the effect of making me first euphoric and then delightfully sleepy. When I went in to say goodnight to my mother she was sitting up in bed rereading the various letters she’d received. The wedding photograph stood on the bedside table.

  I bent to kiss her cheek. ‘Goodnight, Mum.’

  ‘You can take that sherry with you if you want,’ she said. ‘It’s no use to me.’

  There were no flies on her. I told myself I was a grown woman and had no need to apologise for drinking a thimbleful of sherry in my parents’ house at the end of a long day.

  ‘Nor me,’ I said firmly. ‘And you should keep it anyway, it’ll come in useful for guests.’

  There was the merest sceptical pursing of her mouth, which I was glad to see. I was about to go, when she said: ‘The doctor’s a nice young fellow.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘Do you like him as much as he likes you?’

  She was in the mood for plain speaking, so I obliged her. ‘Yes, I do.’

  There was a microscopic pause. ‘No harm in that,’ she said.

  I went to bed in the little room with this endorsement ringing in my ears, and fell instantly, deeply asleep.

  Chapter Ten