The Nightingale's Nest

by Sarah Harrison

  ‘Alan . . . please. Don’t say that.’

  ‘I know you didn’t want to. You’re so beautiful. I couldn’t help myself.’

  ‘Please, no . . . it’s all right. I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  But there was, and we both knew it. When he’d gone back to his own bed the space between us became an unbridgeable black gulf. I don’t know which was worse, proximity without closeness, or this bleak retreat into isolation. He was utterly silent – I couldn’t even hear his breathing and had no idea whether he was lying there awake or had drifted into merciful sleep. The seeping tears became a flood and I cried and cried, without making a sound. When the tears eventually dried up there was no relief, just a bleak, desolate wakefulness. Remorse, disappointment, self-loathing bore me company and kept me awake. There were church bells nearby in the city, chiming the hours, and I heard all of them. Some time after four a.m. I must have fallen asleep.

  The next morning we enjoyed none of the happy, relaxed intimacy that I recalled with Matthew. How could we, when it had been so awful? We were careful and polite. Alan took me in his arms and told me he loved me, but he didn’t hold me too close. And I was glad that he didn’t. I couldn’t have borne to go through it again. It couldn’t even have been called failure; everyone’s fallible, and failure is forgivable. I could have accepted it, we both could, for hadn’t we said we wanted to be together for ever? Love, expectation and goodwill would have overcome such a small thing. But it seemed that, for me at least, those essential qualities were no longer present. I was possessed.

  Alan’s appointment with the Board was at ten o’clock. Though the postgraduate Diploma in Psychiatry would be taught, and the residency conducted, at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, the interviews were to be held among the splendours of the Royal Infirmary. It was a beautiful morning, the sky that thin, singing blue of early autumn, the air with a tang of heathery hills, the castle shining on its rock, the street sounds bright and resonant. Glittering gulls swooped over the distant docks at Leith. A lone hawk hovered high over the rooftops.

  ‘Look,’ said Alan, pointing as we left the hotel, isn’t that a beautiful sight? I’m going to call it a good omen.’

  We’d left our bags behind the desk at the hotel. After the interview Alan planned to take a look round the Infirmary’s School of Medicine. ‘You can come if you want,’ he said but I told him that I’d amuse myself. I had to be on my own, away from the place where all my sins were remembered.

  We walked together to the big, grey building where the Board was to take place. Another, younger, man was walking in, his coat over his arm, his hat held nervously in both hands. Alan pulled a rueful face.

  ‘There’s competition. I mustn’t forget that.’

  ‘You have experience,’ I reminded him. ‘Don’t forget that, either.’

  ‘And you,’ he said. ‘I have you, don’t I.’

  It wasn’t so much a question as a reminder to himself. I didn’t reply. We agreed to meet at two o’clock, six hours before the London sleeper was due to leave.

  ‘What shall we do with our afternoon?’ he asked. ‘Be sightseers, and go to the castle?’

  But I wanted to see the castle by myself, to be all on my own high above the city. Perhaps I imagined that it would give me a new perspective, and restore a sense of order and proportion.

  ‘What about taking a bus out of town, then?’ he suggested. ‘We could have a good long walk among the bonny banks and braes – or by the sea, on this lovely day?’

  He embraced me, carefully, and went in.

  I set out to walk to the castle. It was a long way, and fiercely steep, but I trudged up the narrow lanes and steep flights of steps, with my eyes on the ground, like one of those pilgrims who shuffle penitentially on their knees, mortifying the flesh as they approach the mountain-top shrine. I was already lightheaded from lack of food and sleep, but now I actually wanted to exhaust myself. If my body was worn out, I reasoned, perhaps my mind would tire too, and stop plaguing me. By the time I reached the entrance to the castle I was sweating, my back ached and my legs were quivering with the strain. But having paid my entrance fee I was determined not to stop until I’d reached the very top.

  Nothing could better have suited my mood than what I found there, on the far north-eastern corner: the tiny, austere Norman chapel of St Margaret. I found out later it was the oldest building in the city, but I could have guessed that anyway. Even on this fine day the wind sighed around the ancient walls, but inside the stillness was palpable, like a smooth pebble, pressed and polished by centuries of prayer. I sat down opposite the stained-glass window. For the first time in twenty-four hours a kind of peace stole over me. An imperfect, threadbare, hard-won peace, but enough to calm me a little. I didn’t exactly pray for Alan, but I did think of him, as I had once thought of Barbara, as if my thoughts could help and protect him. I’d read, and heard it said, that the hallmark of true love was the desire for the other person’s happiness over and above one’s own, but I realised they were weasel words. I wanted nothing more than Alan’s happiness, but that was evidence not so much of love (though I still did love him) but of the need to salve my own conscience. I could no longer bear the responsibility for his happiness. My own feelings were trouble enough.

  Still, it was good to be free, and alone, and to be experiencing unselfish, untwisted thoughts. And if I was far from Alan, I was even further from John Ashe. I experienced a childish sense of liberation. No one knew where I was. No one could find me. I need never go back! But then my physical exhaustion took over. I sat there as limp as a rag doll, gazing at the narrow oblong of blue sky framed by the window-space. The possibility of recovery, though remote, was more likely than that of escape. Stranger things happened. I thought of my parents: their lives had been different from mine, but that did not make them less dramatic in their way. They had had to reach accommodations, to adapt their natures. It could be done.

  My eyelids had begun to droop when suddenly I heard a shuddering sound and felt a wind on my cheek. A bird had flown in through the door! Shocked into full consciousness I saw the creature – a sparrowhawk – sitting on the altar-stone. It was small but it had a ferocious presence: each foot boasted a fan of feathered hooks; its eyes were a brilliant yellow, fierce and cold as a snake’s; the beak a wicked little killing-tool. As I watched it spread its wings and beat them, twice. I flinched, terrified of being trapped in this small space with the bird, but equally terrified of moving and perhaps causing it to fly wildly at me. But it seemed a great deal more composed than I was. For less than a minute we sat gazing at each other, I in terror, the bird with a speculative hostility. Then, as quickly and cleanly as it had arrived, it launched itself off the altar and through the half-open door without so much as brushing the sides with its wing-tips. All that remained was a single feather and a small browny-white deposit next to the crucifix.

  My modicum of peace was shattered. Though every rational instinct told me that this could not have been the same hawk that had hovered overhead when we left the hotel, I was possessed by the idea that it might be, and that I had been followed. The chapel no longer felt tranquil and inviolate. The calm air seemed to shudder in the wake of the hawk’s flight, and my heart was beating even faster than it had been when I arrived at the top of the steps. I got unsteadily to my feet, picked up the feather and attempted to throw it out of the window, but instead of being carried away by the wind it was whipped straight back in, brushing my face as it did so, and floated to the floor.

  I left, or rather fled. Some more people were trudging up the steep hill, two men in dark overcoats, one in a scarf and hat, the other carrying a briefcase; they might have been academics. Goodness knows what they made of the dishevelled, white-faced, wild-eyed woman running and stumbling past as though her life depended on it.

  Outside the castle entrance a bus stood waiting at the stop. It was empty, and the driver and conductor were smoking outside. In response to my
query, the driver said:

  ‘Not going for another quarter of an hour I’m afraid, miss.’

  ‘I’ll wait, if I may.’

  ‘It’s up to you.’

  I boarded the bus and took a window seat about halfway along the cab. I was trembling, but at least I felt safe. The two men were standing guard. No bird was going to fly into a bus. But I still found myself glancing around for the speck in the sky, the silhouette on the rooftop, the sudden shadow . . . and listening for the flitter and dart of swift wings.

  For the first time I glanced at the little guidebook Alan had given me that morning. My eye was caught by a reference to the ‘Castrum Puellarum’, a sanctuary built on the castle rock by the Pictish Kings, where women and children could live in safety while their menfolk were at war. Nothing could have felt safer than St Margaret’s Chapel when I first arrived there; and nothing more threatening than the same place when I fled.

  Back in the city centre, I found a cafe and ordered cocoa and a buttered scone. Both were hot and delicious and I wolfed them down, filling the void. When I looked at my watch it was twelve thirty. Even allowing for delay, Alan’s interview would be over, and he would now be looking round the medical school, while the Board – did what? Reached their decision? Discussed the morning’s interviewees? Conducted still more interviews? Maybe his future was already decided.

  I sat in the café for as long as possible, until it became clear my table was needed. Then I left and wandered about, killing time. The prospect of the rest of the day, and the journey home on the sleeper, seemed empty and depressing. I went into any number of second-hand shops, immersing myself in other people’s possessions, other people’s stories. I kept telling myself that I was surrounded by people who were in all probability going through far worse than me. All that I suffered from was indecision. I did not know what I wanted, and while I hesitated I had the sensation of doing harm, something I wasn’t used to. I was a lost soul.

  I had arranged to meet Alan outside the main entrance of the Royal Infirmary. I arrived first, and stood on the pavement with the slight sense of exposure and awkwardness that one has when waiting for someone, as if anyone else knew or cared what I was doing. I could see why Alan wanted to study here; the buildings around me were almost as splendid as the castle, even the Infirmary looked baronial, its pavilions sprouting magnificent turrets and towers. A down-at-heel drunk reeled around nearby, his noisy and unpredictable behaviour creating a little no man’s land around him. He wasn’t trying to be offensive, and didn’t know that he was – he simply couldn’t help it. I had some sympathy for him, but stayed well out of the way.

  Because Alan came along the road, instead of from the building, his arrival took me by surprise. I was looking the other way, and my nerves were so stretched that I probably looked quite scared when he put his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Pamela? It’s OK, it’s only me. I went to check the bus timetable, and there’s one we can get that takes us down to the coast beyond the docks. We could have a walk in the sea air and be back this evening for the train.’

  ‘What about our bags?’

  ‘I took them over to the station and put them in a locker.’ His thoughtfulness overwhelmed me. ‘You’ve thought of everything.’

  ‘It was no trouble.’ He looked at me searchingly, tenderly. ‘In fact it was a pleasure.’

  ‘Alan!’ I remembered, suddenly, where he’d been. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Pretty well – hard to tell, of course, but I think I put up a good show.’

  ‘I’m so glad. Shall we go then?’ I began walking down the steps. He fell in beside me.

  ‘We don’t have to, you know. Our time is our own.’

  ‘No – no, I’d like to go,’ I said, too sharply even to my own ears. Much better to have an objective, something to do and see, than to confront the challenging intimacy of ‘our own’ time.

  At the foot of the steps the drunk suddenly lurched towards us. Alan didn’t, like everyone else – as I did – move out of the way, but put out his hand and caught the man by the upper arm, to stop him falling.

  ‘Whoah ... Easy does it.’

  For a second I could smell the man’s sour odour, and see his eyes, uncomprehending and desperate but bright and wild, too, looking out from his scabbed and overgrown face like the eyes of a trapped animal.

  ‘Spare a penny, sir?’

  ‘Here.’ Alan took some coins from his pocket and held them out in his open palm. To my astonishment, the man gazed at them, and having made a considered decision, took two – not the largest – and put them in his pocket, leaving the rest.

  ‘Price of breakfast. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  As we walked away, I said: ‘He could have taken all that money!’

  ‘I suppose it was a risk, but one I was prepared to take. If you treat people like animals they behave like animals. If you treat them like human beings they behave accordingly. He’s done his time in the trenches. I decided to treat him like a gentleman.’

  ‘It’s more than most people would have done.’

  ‘But not because they’re heartless, because they’re intimidated. I understand that.’

  ‘How did you know he was ex-service?’

  ‘He’s shell-shocked.’

  ‘But drunk, too, surely.’

  ‘With some justification, poor chap.’

  This gave me food for thought; in particular, that the last time I’d seen someone displaying such spontaneous and unaffected gentleness to society’s lowest of the low, it had been John Ashe. And yet two more different men than Ashe and Alan I could scarcely imagine.

  We rode on the bus for an hour, to Leith and then east along the coast, and got off at the end of along, austere, seaside promenade, having established that we could catch a bus back to the station at the same place in two hours’ time.

  The beach where we walked had no pretensions. The proximity of the docks had ensured that this was no longer a place where many visitors came; we had the gritty, dun-coloured sands almost to ourselves. But the afternoon sun made the Firth of Forth shine like pewter, and the long sigh of the shallow waves played in counterpoint to the steady crunch of our footsteps.

  ‘I do love Scotland,’ said Alan, ‘and not just because it feels like home. It’s uncluttered. Invigorating. If they’ll have me I can imagine doing good work up here.’

  ‘You must come,’ I said. ‘It’s clearly the place for you.’

  ‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I walked all the way up to the castle,’ I replied, as if that was what he’d meant.

  He let it go. ‘So the last thing you want is to be taken on another route march!’

  ‘No – it’s good to be by the sea.’

  ‘Let’s sit down when we get to the windbreak.’

  In some ways I’d have preferred to keep walking, but it was true that I was tired. When we reached the windbreak Alan put his coat down and we sat with our backs to the knobbly wood and our faces to the sun. In the sparkling haze of the middle distance the jagged structures of the docks appeared like the spires of a mysterious citadel. A cormorant flapped across the surface of the water and came to rest on the breakwater opposite, holding its wings out to dry like some strange heraldic creature.

  ‘Did you eat anything on your travels?’ Alan asked.

  ‘I had cocoa and a scone.’

  ‘I saw a café up there. Shall I see if they do fish and chips?’ I nodded. ‘Can you be bothered?’

  ‘I’d positively like to. While you were scaling the heights in the sunshine, I was sitting in a gloomy room being grilled by senior consultants. The more I move about the better.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He got to his feet and I watched him walk up the beach, with that splay-legged gait people adopt when trying to gain a footing on shifting sand. When he reached the steps he turned and waved. I waved back, and he disappeared over the parapet.

  I
smoothed my hand over the lining of the coat on which I was sitting. On the side he’d vacated there was something quite bulky in the side pocket. Idly – I wasn’t even all that curious – I turned that corner of the coat over, slipped my hand into the pocket and took out the object.

  It was a small, black box. I opened it, and inside was a plain silver ring with a single diamond. I didn’t touch the ring, let alone take it out. I just stared at it for a moment, and then replaced it in the coat pocket and rearranged the coat itself to exactly how it had been when Alan first got up. I had not had an engagement ring first time around – with Matthew there had been neither the time nor the money – and I had never thought about one since, until now.

  Alan returned with a portion of fish and chips in newspaper and we shared it, afterwards washing our greasy fingers in the edge of the sea. When we got back, he picked his coat up and shook it. As he dusted the sand off I saw his hand hesitate for less than a second over the left-hand pocket, checking that the ring was there.

  Walking back, he said to me: ‘I’m so glad you came, Pam – it made such a difference knowing you were around, thinking of me.’

  I couldn’t answer, but squeezed his hand.

  By the time the bus arrived the temperature had dropped sharply, and the warmth inside was welcome. What with that, the drone and rattle of the engine and my self-inflicted exhaustion, I soon fell asleep. In the brief period between my eyelids closing and unconsciousness I felt Alan’s arm go round me and gently ease my drooping head on to his shoulder.

  He understood me, even if he did not, could not, understand my reasons for behaving as I did. It was a measure of how much he loved me that he never showed me the ring. He must have embarked on the trip to Scotland with the intention of giving it to me and making our engagement official, but he had read the signs and, without the tiniest trace of recrimination or self-pity, had kept it to himself.

  Our journey home on the sleeper sealed the unspoken pact we had made. Now, when everything must be ‘shared’ and ‘talked through’, it would be unthinkable for a couple who considered themselves close to have endured forty-eight hours in each other’s company without discussing matters vital to both of them. But that was what we did. And we were close – perhaps closer for not speaking. Before going to sleep we lay together in the bottom couchette, Alan in his pyjamas and me in my cotton nightdress, wrapped in each other’s arms. Wordlessly we communicated our deep feelings of forgiveness and understanding and tolerance and affection, and after a while Alan clambered up to his own bunk and we slept like children.