The Nightingale's Nest

by Sarah Harrison

  Alan was on duty, but he came round to see us for tea in the afternoon. We all knew as we exchanged presents that we were saying goodbye. My mother had bought him handkerchiefs, with a narrow tartan border – an unprecedented flight of imagination for her. I had found a nice illustrated book on the history of Edinburgh, but it was the inscription I had laboured over. It needed to be valedictory, affectionate, multum in parvo. In the course of an hour I’d scribbled it many times on rough paper, before finally settling on: To my dearest Alan, with my love, gratitude, and good wishes for the future, Pamela. London, Christmas 1929.

  The simple addition of the word ‘London’ had made all the difference. It confirmed our separation, and lent a sort of dignity to the message. When he’d unwrapped the book and exclaimed with delight, Alan read the inscription carefully, but I felt suddenly awkward, and busied myself folding paper so that I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes when he looked up.

  His present to me was an elegant purse and wallet combined, in chestnut leather. My mother, who could always spot quality, was impressed.

  ‘That’s very smart, Pammie.’ She turned to Alan. ‘I hope you haven’t given it empty, it’s bad luck you know.’

  He smiled. ‘I may be a Scotsman, but I’m the exception that proves the rule. There is a little something inside.’

  I undid the purse section, and found a threepenny bit, and a small twist of tissue paper. I knew what it must be, so I left it there, and took out the coin, holding it up between my finger and thumb.

  ‘There we are,’ I said. ‘Riches!’

  I replaced the coin, and palmed the twist of paper. A few minutes later I took the teapot out to the kitchen for more hot water, placed it on the stove next to the kettle, and undid the tiny package. The little ring shone bright as a star, undimmed by inconstancy and rejection. Through the prism of my tears it looked even more brilliant.

  I collected myself, put the ring in the pocket of my skirt, and filled the pot. When I re-entered the front room my mother was in full flow.

  ‘. . . be sure to eat properly,’ she was saying. ‘You can’t tend the sick on an empty stomach.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Streeter. There’s an excellent canteen up there, I saw it with my own eyes, and I’m not entirely useless in the kitchen.’

  ‘Then you’re the first man who wasn’t,’ said my mother. ‘Would you like to take some pudding away with you this evening? We hardly touched it.’

  ‘Have I ever been known to say no?’

  After tea Alan got out the cards and we played games for an hour. The fire glowed in the small hearth, the room was warm, my mother laughed and smiled and looked ten years younger. There was more comfort and security and goodwill in that room than would have been present at many other, grander, Christmas celebrations, and it was largely of Alan’s making. Once I felt my mother’s eyes on me and I knew what she was thinking – how could I have given up this man? But although I was sorry that I couldn’t crown the season with an engagement for her sake, I was content. Alan and I were at peace, with ourselves and each other.

  On the doorstep, we held hands – both hands, like children about to dance.

  ‘Well, Pamela.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for the beautiful ring.’

  ‘It’s always been yours. I thought you should have it anyway. Wear it sometimes, on whichever hand you want. Like a knight’s favour.’

  ‘I will.’ I took it from my pocket and slipped it on the third finger of my right hand. ‘There.’

  He rubbed the ring with his thumb. ‘How will you explain it?’

  ‘I’ll say it was a Christmas present from a dear friend.’

  ‘That’ll get them talking.’

  By ‘them’, I knew he meant the people I worked with and for, the people in my other life. But he had no idea, how could he, what they were like, or the strangeness of the landscape they and I inhabited. Perhaps if he had known – about Suzannah, and Ashe, and the Faustian pact I had entered into, he might not have given me his ring. But then the ring was meant to be my talisman, as well as his favour: something to protect me whatever I did.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said.

  ‘And you.’

  ‘I want to hear all your news. Everything that happens. Perhaps when you start up your sanctuary there will be some practical help I can give.’

  ‘That’s a long way off,’ I said.

  His voice was very soft as he said: ‘We’re setting out on our adventures, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He lifted my hands and clasped them together in both of his, holding them against his heart. ‘I’m going now. If you look in the wallet, there’s a note from me. It doesn’t need a reply.’

  He gave my hands a quick kiss, and was gone. There was no sign of the car; he must have come on foot. I watched for a moment as he walked away, but he didn’t look back. Slowly, I closed the door and rested my head against it for a second, bracing myself for the kitchen, and my mother and her questions, spoken and unspoken.

  But when I turned round she was standing behind me in the narrow hall.

  ‘Mum . . . I didn’t know you were there.’

  ‘He’s gone then, has he?’

  ‘Yes. He’ll have calls to make. People don’t stop being ill because it’s Christmas.’

  ‘He’s a good doctor.’

  ‘I know that, Mum,’ I said wearily. ‘Shall we wash up?’

  ‘I’ve done that, there was next to nothing anyway. Come and sit by the fire.’

  I did as I was told. I had no energy for anything else. I sank down in the chair that had been my father’s, where Alan had been sitting a few minutes ago; it still bore his imprint and his warmth. My mother crouched down and carefully placed a few more coals on the fire with the pewter tongs. Then she swept the hearth unnecessarily before sitting in the chair opposite. We both gazed at the fire with its hypnotic, pulsing red heart and the shoots of new flame that rose from the fresh coal. That was what a fire was for, I thought – not just for heat, but a focus for unspoken feelings. It dispelled the slight awkwardness between us. We didn’t need to look at one another while we could look at the fire and see in its living glow the reflection of our own dreams and our regrets.

  We sat for some minutes without speaking. My heart was too full to say anything and my mother didn’t make me. The tension eased and dissipated. We were together, but wrapped in our separate and different silences.

  When my mother first began to sing, it was to herself, and very softly, almost under her breath. But gradually, as her pleasure and her confidence grew, she sang out. Her voice was sweet, clear, resonant as a bell, as unlike her ordinary voice as it was possible to be. The song she sang was ‘My love is like a red, red rose’; a Scottish love song that was also a lament. Where from? How? I sat spellbound, hardly daring to move in case the spell was broken.

  ‘ “And I will love you still, my love, till all the seas gang dry . . .”’

  When she’d finished I didn’t say anything right away, but let the easeful silence grow around us again. For only the second time in my life I prayed – for Alan, for my mother; for myself. And for Suzannah, whose baby must surely be born by now. I thought of all those cribs in churches and schools and church halls at this time of the year, with people clustering round them, polishing that harsh and brutal story with seasonal sentimentality. Whereas out there a sick, terrified girl had given birth to a baby she did not want, and given it away to a man she did not love.

  ‘I was taught that song at school,’ said my mother. ‘And I never forgot it.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I said. ‘And you sang it beautifully.’

  She fidgeted self-consciously, pulling at her skirt and patting her hair. ‘I don’t know what possessed me, I’m sure.’

  ‘It’s Christmas. People do sing at Christmas. Some of them do in church. You sing by your own fire.’

  ‘Best place for it,’ she declared.

  In bed, I read Alan’s note.
It was very short, and simple. He told me, again, how much he loved and admired me, and that I could always rely on him. But there was no escaping the fact that, like my inscription in the book, it was a message of farewell. The next day Mrs Coleman invited us round for cold cuts. My mother, of course, demurred, but I said we would definitely go, at least for a while, as I had to return in the afternoon.

  ‘It’ll do us both good,’ I said firmly. ‘We’ve been pretty solitary till now.’

  ‘That’s how I like it. Your father and I always had a quiet Christmas.’

  I persisted. ‘But now it’s you and me, Mum. And I’d like to go, and I can’t very well go without you.’

  She did come, with much tutting and sighing. And of course when we got there the hospitality was so simple and delightful that she unbuttoned and enjoyed herself though I knew she’d never admit it. The Colemans had a little granddaughter, Jessie, aged two and a half, and I could see my mother was smitten. She would have made a wonderful grandmother – reliable, strict, but adoring and indulgent. Jessie seemed to sense this and spent a lot of the time climbing on to her knee and pressing sweets into her mouth. The sweets were red, so that by the end of the afternoon my mother’s mouth looked as if she had applied garish lipstick while rolling drunk. Mrs Coleman gave Jessie a napkin and told her to wipe it off. It was a delicious reversal of roles that made us all laugh, and my mother – who had no idea what she looked like – took it in good part.

  ‘Now Phyllis, are you going to the panto at the Masonic?’ asked Mrs Coleman.

  My mother shook her head. ‘I’m not keen on panto.’

  ‘But this is different, isn’t it, Wilf? Mr Ormrod from the hardware shop plays the dame, it’s the funniest thing you ever saw, such a great big chap in frilly bloomers and a poke bonnet!’

  Mr Coleman agreed. ‘He’s a right Herbert in the shop, but put him up there in a silly frock and he knocks their socks off.’

  Everyone joined in the general eulogising of Ormrod’s Widow Twanky, and the upshot was that by the time we got out of the door my mother’s name had been added to the party for the following Saturday. She grumbled furiously, but I took absolutely no notice.

  At six o’clock I packed my night case and came down the stairs to say goodbye. She was waiting in the hall with my coat over her arm as she used to do with my father. It was a mark of respect which I didn’t underestimate.

  ‘ ’Bye, Mum,’ I said, taking my coat. ‘Thank you for a lovely Christmas, and for my present.’

  ‘Thank you for yours,’ she said, it’s in the top drawer with the lemon verbena.’

  ‘Enjoy the pantomime. Remember little Jessie’s taken a shine to you. Don’t disappoint her.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘And next time I come, you must sing again.’

  ‘Good heavens, I shall do no such thing.’ She pulled a wry, self-deprecating face. ‘There’s the neighbours to think of.’

  I placed a kiss on her cheek and, greatly daring, accompanied it with a quick hug. It took her by surprise, and when I stepped back her cheeks were a startled pink.

  ‘Dear me.’ She made a brisk brushing movement with her hands. ‘On your way.’

  Arms folded, she watched me from the doorway, as I had watched Alan. But a little way down the street I did turn and wave, and she raised her arm in salute.

  My past life had let me go, like the old, plain friend that it was, trustingly and without questions. It had presented me with freedom, without conditions. What I did with that freedom in my new life was up to me.

  Chapter Twenty

  After Christmas, Amanda Jarvis returned first from New York, full of the excitement of Manhattan and the pleasures of shipboard life. Her husband stayed on until well after New Year, ostensibly to visit galleries and see new work, but I was pretty sure the real reason had more to do with Bob Sullivan, a view confirmed by his morose and overhung appearance when he did get back.

  Dorothy was unsympathetic. ‘Till the next time. Won’t be long, you wait and see. I don’t know why she puts up with it.’

  ‘Perhaps she loves him,’ I suggested.

  ‘Then she’s even sillier than I thought, and that’s saying something.’ She caught my look and added. ‘No, she’s all right. There’s not a mean bone in her body . . . I just don’t understand it, that’s all.’

  I didn’t either. But whatever the oddities of their marriage, the Jarvises still struck me as happier than many more orthodox couples. Perhaps, I thought, the capacity to allow the other person to be themselves, not to demand change as of right, was a greatly undervalued quality. It was one Alan possessed, although in our case it had permitted a different sort of freedom.

  No sooner had the Jarvises returned than the Ashes went away. I received a note saying that the office in Soho Square would be closed, and I was suspended, on full pay, until the end of February, when John Ashe would be back in touch. There was no indication of where they’d gone, or why, and when I mentioned it to Christopher Jarvis he knew no more than me.

  ‘I must say it’s very unlike Ashe to take a holiday, particularly an extended one. When he does go away there’s usually some business reason or other. Felicia takes off to Biarritz and Paris from time to time, with friends. He prefers London, and his various interests here.’ He gave me the charming, confiding smile I’d seen rather less frequently of late. ‘He likes to watch the money coming in.’

  I had never been sure how much the Jarvises knew about Ashe’s ‘interests’, and I was always discreet, for personal as well as professional reasons: any information of which I was the exclusive holder was valuable, both morally and materially.

  So it was not through my agency that one piece of information had leaked out. Since returning from New York Jarvis had been disinclined to work and this morning he was apparently in the mood to talk. He swung his feet on to the desk, and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Suzannah’s recovered, apparently.’

  ‘Has she?’ I shuffled papers into a neat pile. ‘That’s good news. I was sorry to hear from Mrs Jarvis that she’s not been well.’

  ‘No idea what it was, but Georgina said she wasn’t at Rintoul’s place any more and had gone away for a while.’

  ‘To the sunshine, perhaps.’

  ‘Who knows? She’s a perverse creature. Looks like the least puff of wind would blow her over, but paints those big, impressive canvases, and lives out of a suitcase, never stays anywhere more than a couple of months. Enough to wear down the strongest constitution.’

  ‘Perhaps she likes to feel free.’

  ‘But it isn’t freedom,’ protested Jarvis. ‘Not from where I’m standing, anyway.’

  ‘We all have our own ideas about that,’ I said primly.

  ‘Indeed.’ He chuckled. ‘And what’s yours, Pamela?’

  ‘Financial independence.’

  The answer had come out a little too quickly, but he laughed again, out loud. ‘Ask a silly question!’

  ‘I didn’t mean to sound rude,’ I said, but as a matter of fact I was pleased to have cheered him up, albeit unintentionally.

  ‘You didn’t,’ he said. ‘You were your usual practical, straightforward, likeable self, but it poses a dilemma for me.’ He paused. I said nothing, but he must have taken my silence as a prompt, for he went on: ‘I was thinking of giving you a rise in pay, but now I see that as well as rewarding your splendid service I may very well be hastening your departure.’

  He cocked an eyebrow. It was clear that some sort of response was required. I weighed my words carefully.

  ‘What I said was true,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m very happy here, and there’s a long way to go before I realise my ambition.’

  ‘Thank heavens for that!’

  His morale was so much improved that I decided to press my advantage.

  ‘Mr Jarvis . . .’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘Excuse me, but just now – you mentioned a rise?’

  ‘I did. And it’s yours, starting
this week.’ He gazed at me almost fondly. ‘Amanda and I know when we’re well off. Suzannah, and even, God help us, Dorothy, weaken from time to time, but you – never!’

  I had no alternative but to take this as a compliment. Besides, I was delighted about the money. The little acorns in my savings account might not be great oaks for a while yet, but they were growing steadily, and notwithstanding what I’d said to Christopher Jarvis, I intended to move out of my present room into a bigger flat of my own in the spring. Soon after that, I very much hoped to be able to take in and support at least one lodger by the end of the year.

  Full financial independence might be a long way off, but before too long I would have the power to provide safety for someone else and that, to me, was of inestimable value.

  Georgina had got engaged in the new year, and had pretty well lost interest in everything and everyone but herself, her fiancé, and their wedding plans. It was a source of fascination to me. I suppose her youth, and youth’s natural self-centredness, ensured that she managed so easily to divorce herself from the painful complications of life. And love – yes, it must have been true love, because her intended, Giles Parker, was neither rich nor handsome nor even especially charming, but simply the nicest, most downright, most unaffected man imaginable. I wasn’t that much older than her, and had been in love once – perhaps twice, but I could not recall ever having been so wrapped up in myself as a result. Quite often over the ensuing months, between engagement and wedding, I found myself thinking of Georgina and Giles, and touching the ring Alan had given me – twin touchstones of normality, stability and hope.

  Dorothy noticed the ring first.

  ‘That’s pretty, Mrs G,’ she said, taking my hand and examining it. ‘Give us a proper look.’