The Secret of Nightingale Wood

by Lucy Strange

  Moth stood at the cartwheel window and gazed out towards the sea. She looked such a natural part of this attic room, this fairy-tale turret – a moth amongst ancient cobwebs.

  I turned around and looked at Mama. She was sitting on the bed, looking pale and confused.

  ‘I’ve been here before,’ she said. Her eyes were dark and huge. ‘I thought – I dreamt it was Robert’s room.’

  ‘Not Robert’s room, Mama,’ I said gently. ‘Alfred’s.’

  She looked around the room slowly, and noticed the model ships on the shelf.

  ‘Alfred . . .’ she echoed. ‘He likes ships, like Robert used to. Where is little Alfred?’

  Moth came to sit beside Mama. She pulled the photograph from a pocket beneath her blanket.

  ‘Oh,’ Mama said, touching the picture. ‘What a lovely little chap . . . Alfred . . .’

  Mama looked at Moth, then looked back at the photograph. I saw that she was studying the face of the young nurse and the child.

  ‘Your boy?’ she asked – her voice was barely audible.

  ‘My boy,’ Moth said, hoarsely. ‘He – died in the war.’

  Mama gazed sadly at the photograph, then turned it over. ‘He wrote this – on the back – 1907, me and Moth?’

  Moth shook her head, her eyes sparkling. ‘Freddie wrote it, yes, but . . . it doesn’t say Moth . . .’ She couldn’t continue.

  It doesn’t say Moth? I looked at the back of the photograph now and for the first time I understood the mistake I had made.

  Moth was not called Moth and she never had been. The photograph was torn at the corner, and two letters were missing. Years ago, little Alfred had written: 1907, me and Mother.

  Moth put the photograph safely back in her pocket. The two women looked into each other’s eyes and something silent was said between them, something I didn’t understand. Moth stretched her arms around Mama, enveloping her in a warm blanket. Mama folded in half, shaking.

  Moth spoke to her. Pity thickened her voice. ‘There is hope,’ she said. ‘There is so much hope. Just look at this one. She shines like a star . . .’

  Was she talking about me?

  ‘She always has.’ Mama tried to smile through her tears. ‘But I can’t – the doctors said I couldn’t look after them . . .’ And her face crumpled with grief. ‘Robert died and then they took my girls away from me too. They said I wasn’t fit to look after them – I never even held the baby . . .’

  Piglet. She has never even held Piglet. All this time, Mama had thought it was somehow her fault that the baby had been taken from her . . . I thought about the tears rolling down her face as I read Rumpelstiltskin.

  ‘No,’ Moth said. ‘She is yours. The doctors were wrong. The baby is yours and so is this one. They need their mother now. It’s not too late for you. It’s not too late . . .’ Moth was stroking Mama’s back in the same way that I stroked Piglet when she cried.

  ‘I don’t know how to get back,’ Mama gasped, and her voice was ragged with fear.

  ‘You can,’ Moth said through her tears. ‘You can. You will.’ And her words were carved in stone.

  Mrs Berry came to work as usual the next day. When I went into the kitchen she put her arms around me and said Mr Berry sent his very best wishes to both me and Mama. ‘Thank you,’ I muttered into her shoulder. ‘Please tell him thank you.’ I couldn’t say anything else so I just squeezed Mrs Berry’s floury hands and then helped her to knead some dough.

  ‘Archie said you had some help yesterday,’ Mrs Berry said quietly as we worked. ‘Said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw her walking along the Hawkham Road in the rain – just like a ghost lady, he said.’

  I didn’t say anything. So Mr Berry had known that she wasn’t really my aunt – he had recognized her as Mrs Young. I smiled at his kindness in playing along.

  ‘Where’s she been all these years?’ Mrs Berry asked. ‘The poor lost soul . . .’

  I looked through the kitchen door towards Nightingale Wood. What could I say? ‘Not lost, Mrs Berry,’ I said. ‘She just didn’t want to be found.’

  It was a quiet day, still and overcast, as if nature were recovering from the storm. Mama slept a great deal, but it seemed to be a different sort of sleep now that she was no longer drugged – peaceful, healing. I sat on the bed and read to her as she slept. I read The Nightingale because it was her favourite story, and because it reminded me of Moth.

  Nanny Jane slept for much of the day too. She was almost as exhausted as Mama, I think. Although our situation at Hope House appeared to be just as it was a week or so ago, before Piglet and Mama were both taken away, I knew that was not actually the case. Something important had changed. It was as if we had all been broken, and then put back together in a slightly different way. A better way, I thought – stronger than we had been before.

  Piglet was unusually grumpy that afternoon. She had started to shake her head to say ‘No’ – frowning and grunting crossly, ‘Mm!’ at the same time – a trick she had learnt at the Hardys, perhaps. She must have done this a hundred times between lunch and tea time. She shook her head at her bottle of milk, at the sweet mush of carrots and roast chicken Mrs Berry made for her – at everything she was offered. When I tried singing nursery rhymes to her she shook her head so angrily that the effect was almost comical: ‘Humpty Dumpty’ made her particularly cross.

  In just a few days she would be one year old. I wondered if her birthday would pass like mine, forgotten. I hadn’t mentioned it and no one else had either. I decided I wouldn’t let that happen to Piglet and, just before her bath time, I took her back into the kitchen to see Mrs Berry and plan a birthday tea party for the following week. Mrs Berry was delighted and sat down straight away to make a shopping list.

  We were well past midsummer now. The sky would have been deep blue at this hour a month ago; now it was pale and silvery. The kitchen door and windows were open wide and a blackbird was singing his heart out in the apple tree near the roses. Mrs Berry would be off home soon. While she tidied the kitchen and finished the shopping list for Piglet’s tea party, I stood by the back door, bouncing Piglet gently in my arms. She nuzzled into my neck, squirming unhappily. She must be very tired, I thought. I kept talking to her in a low voice, patting her back. I told her about the birds in the garden – a blackbird, a robin, and a round little wren who darted amongst the leaves like a field mouse with wings.

  Piglet became heavier in my arms now, snuffling sleepily. She dribbled on my shoulder. I kept patting her. ‘Listen Piglet,’ I whispered. ‘What can you hear? Mrs Berry splashing at the sink, the church bells chiming, the blackbird’s evening song, a motor car on the road from the village . . .’

  I took Piglet up to the nursery and put her straight down in her cot. It didn’t seem like a good idea to wake her for a bath. She grunted, rolled on to her side and fell instantly and deeply asleep.

  Nanny Jane was still resting in her bedroom and Mrs Berry had gone home for the day. The house was quiet. I went into Mama’s room and I sat down on the end of her bed. The windows were open. The air was soft and heavy with the silence of the evening. She was smiling in her sleep.

  I was suddenly aware of a noise outside the front of the house. The churning of a motor car engine, the slowing crunch of tyres on gravel. That sound had come to mean one thing to me: Doctor Hardy.

  He is back. I thought. He is back to take Mama to Helldon again, to lock me up too; to put us both in straitjackets . . . I was hot and cold at once. My palms were moist and I could feel my heart beating in my throat, in every fingertip. Doctor Hardy was a ghoul at the desk behind me, calmly completing the paperwork to have me locked away . . . A car door opened and closed. Footsteps came towards the house. I looked at the white curtains fluttering at the window but was too afraid to part them and look outside. I didn’t think I could even stand up – it felt as if my legs were drained of blood.

  I heard a key turning in the lock of the front door. A key? My heart understood the
sound before I did and it leapt in my chest. I gasped and flew to the window, both hands pressed to the glass as I looked down, open-mouthed, into the driveway. It wasn’t Doctor Hardy’s motor car standing in front of the house; it was a different car altogether – Oh! It was a car I had not seen for a long time.

  Father had never been one for affectionate embraces but on this occasion I’m afraid I gave him very little choice. I flew down the stairs and flung myself into him, sobbing with relief to feel his arms around me. He smelt of summer air and engines and pipe smoke and faraway places. I pressed my face to his chest and breathed him in with each sob. He just held me and kissed the top of my head. ‘I’m home now, Hen. I’m home now,’ he said.

  ‘You’re home,’ I sobbed. ‘I knew you’d come. Doctor Hardy will have to eat his hat!’

  He held me away from him and looked at me with a confused smile. ‘He’ll have to what?’ Then he hugged me again. ‘It was your telegram, Hen,’ he said. ‘The telegram you sent yesterday morning.’

  I thought of the words I had chosen. I had only had enough money for four of them. It was agonizing – how could I possibly explain everything that was happening in just four words? In the end, the words I chose were these:

  We need you here.

  ‘It’s not like Helldon at all, Hen,’ Father said. ‘It’s a very special sort of hospital.’

  We were eating supper in the kitchen together. Father had opened a can of pea and ham soup and warmed it up in a pan on the stove. I had cut some thick slices of Mrs Berry’s homemade bread and spread them with butter. We ate by the yellow light of the oil lamp instead of the bright gaslights of the dining room. Although we were in our own kitchen, it felt as if we were on an adventure, camping out together in a strange new wilderness.

  ‘A special sort of hospital?’ I wondered if he could hear the dismay in my voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Father said. ‘Your mother will be well looked after properly, I promise.’

  I thought about the night after I brought Mama home. While I had lain next to Mama, holding both her hands in mine, Father had suffered a sleepless, stormy night. He had spent the whole of that day travelling back from Italy to France and had crossed the English Channel overnight in a storm, the sea bucking and churning beneath a thunderous sky: the same thunder that we had heard in the distance, that had awoken little Piglet. Father had caught the first train to London, had collected his car and driven straight back to Hope House.

  He looked tired, but not in the same way that he had before he left us all those weeks before. There was something new in his eyes – something a little brighter. I thought, perhaps, that it might be hope.

  Father’s spoon scraped the last of the soup from his bowl. He stood up and took our crockery over to the sink. With his back to the lamp, his face was hidden in shadow.

  ‘I met a doctor in the Alps – Wolfgang Berger – an Austrian gentleman who was staying at my hotel. A kind man, and a wise one too. We talked in the evenings. I told him about . . . everything that has happened. Herr Berger is a sort of nerve doctor, Hen. He has been working at a hospital in Switzerland. When I met him, he was just about to leave Italy, to start work at a new clinic in London. I told him about Doctor Hardy and Doctor Chilvers and Helldon. He had some interesting things to say . . .’

  I got up from the table, found a tea towel, and started drying the plates, bowls and cutlery Father was washing. I stacked them on the table. It was almost dark outside. I was aware that, the darker it became, the more quietly we were talking. I knew that, in the morning, this strange, lamp-lit conversation would feel like a dream.

  ‘When I got your telegram, I told my employer I had to return home urgently. Doctor Berger and I travelled to Paris together to catch the boat train. I’m going to take Mama to his hospital in London, Hen.’

  I must have looked upset. Another hospital. Another doctor.Why can’t Mama just stay at home?

  ‘It’s a good place, Henry,’ he said firmly. ‘A different sort of place. Not all doctors are like Hardy or Chilvers. They will look after her, I promise. They will be very gentle. They will talk to her and give her the right sort of medicine and help her to get better.’

  I interrupted him. ‘They aren’t going to give her a tropical disease?’

  He stopped washing up and looked straight at me. ‘No, Henry,’ he said.

  ‘Or put her in freezing water, or do an operation on her?’

  ‘No. No, they won’t.’ He pressed his lips together, swallowed hard and ran a dish mop around the inside of the pan he had used to warm the soup.

  ‘But Doctor Hardy said . . .’

  Father shook his head. It was identical to Piglet’s stubborn little gesture; it was an unequivocal ‘no’. ‘I have spoken to Doctor Hardy,’ he said, ‘and his colleague at the asylum. I have made my feelings about their treatments very clear.’

  And something that had sat heavily in my heart all that summer – a knot, a rock, a jagged chunk of ice – started to melt away. I knew then that Doctor Hardy and his orders would not be returning to Hope House.

  After a moment Father said, ‘It was very brave of you, Hen, to go to Helldon all by yourself and bring Mama home. To get Piglet back too. And I’m – I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here when you needed me most. I should never have gone away when I did.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I murmured, looking at the floor. I had never heard Father say he had been wrong about anything.

  He held my chin in his soapy hand for a moment and looked at me. His eyes shone strangely. Then he picked up his dish mop again.

  When we had finished tidying up, Father opened the kitchen door and sat outside on the step. I sat down next to him. He took his pipe from his pocket, stuffed it with fragrant tobacco, and lit a match. The pipe glowed warmly – a circle of orange light. Pipe smoke curled up into the evening air, smelling of cherries and leather and spiced wine. We sat quietly together. I gazed up at the sky, watching the first stars emerge from the deepening darkness. I was reminded of that first night at Hope House, when I had looked out of the kitchen door and the garden had been an underwater world.

  ‘I tried to write to you,’ I said. ‘But I couldn’t find the right words. I ended up writing a story about a moth and a nightingale, and an Impossible Mountain . . .’ I looked at the ground, waiting for Father to tell me that I was too old for fairy tales.

  He paused. ‘I should like to read that,’ he said. ‘I should like to read that very much, Hen.’

  I felt something warm and happy blossoming in my chest.

  Then he said, ‘Mama said something about a nightingale – when I was talking to her before supper. Someone who has been looking after her, perhaps? Someone who helped you yesterday? I’m sure she called her a nightingale . . .’

  I nodded.

  ‘I couldn’t work out if she meant a real person or – something else. Your Mama was smiling, Hen,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen her smile like that since before—’ His voice cracked. I froze. Would he be able to say it?

  ‘Since before your brother died,’ he said finally, and drew on his pipe.

  We were sitting so close to each other. I wanted to lean over and kiss his tired cheek, but I didn’t.

  ‘Do you know who she was talking about?’ he asked. ‘The nightingale?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I do.’

  He nodded and waited for me to explain. When I didn’t say anything more, he just looked at me and smiled. I smiled back. I think it was the loveliest moment we’d ever shared.

  He didn’t need me to tell him about Mama and the nightingale. It was enough that I understood.

  I slept and slept that night. I slept like a hibernating creature curled up in its safe, dark den. When I awoke, the sun was already high in the sky and I could hear the low buzz of male voices in conversation downstairs.

  I found a clean pinafore, dressed quickly and padded down the stairs, barefoot. The hall was empty. Nanny Jane was in the dining room with Piglet. She w
aved to me as I passed the door. She looked better than she had in weeks, her hair was brushed neatly back into her usual tight blonde bun, her cheeks were scrubbed pink and white.

  ‘Shall I ask Mrs Berry to make some fresh porridge, Henry?’ she called after me.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I called back. ‘In a minute . . .’

  I walked back along the corridor and through the hallway, my feet making no sound. The voices buzzed once more. I followed them to the doorway of Father’s study and peered inside.

  ‘Please forgive the mess,’ Father was saying from behind his desk. ‘I haven’t really had a chance to finish unpacking yet.’

  Then the long-legged figure of Mr Pickersgill came into view. He lowered himself down into the armchair by the fireplace. ‘Not at all!’ he said, twinkling happily as he looked around at the piles of books all over the floor. ‘Indeed, it’s the system I favour myself.’

  I slipped quietly into the room, bidding Father good morning, shaking Mr Pickersgill’s hand politely and taking a seat next to the window.

  The two men talked about Europe and Italy and the project Father had been working on – the Simplon Tunnel through the Alps. They talked about the Treaty of Versailles and the unrest in Germany – protests, violence, uprisings. Peace was not, apparently, simply the absence of war – it was more complicated than that. At last, with resigned shakes of the head, the pace of the conversation slowed.

  ‘It’s nice to see you again, Mr Pickersgill. We didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye properly last time,’ I said, thinking of our strange conversation in the archives of Solomon and Pickersgill, and my sudden exit.