It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  He went forward, the friction plates emitting a smell of burning oil. At the bottom of the hill the driver said it was only fair to the old ’bus to take it this time with a rush. This required a further fifty yards of backward movement.

  Phillip was inwardly fuming. He could feel that Barley was rigid with pain.

  “Might we not have the hill-test another time?” he said distinctly.

  Once again Sheepnose Hill was too much for the engine. Georgie, repeating that he couldn’t understand what had happened, engaged low gear, and they reached the crest, and so down into the valley beyond.

  Coal smoke in layers hung above Queensbridge. At last they were at Porto Bello. Barley was helped out by the midwife and Boo. She walked with slow stiffness into the house.

  “Do you think I should go for Dr. MacNab?” Phillip asked Boo. Georgie at once replied for his wife.

  “These old girls will get on better alone, old bean. After all, MacNab isn’t so hot, you know. There was that case, told to me by the old pater, of Farmer Bill Cane of Sewer who had a pain and old MacNab gave him castor oil, while all the time the poor devil had a rupture! No, take my advice, leave it to the midwife every time! After all, she’s a woman.”

  Phillip went inside, determined to ask for Dr. MacNab. He found Barley being led on a conducted tour around the best room, while its treasures were pointed out—new french-polished draw-leaf table, rexine-covered armchairs and sofa, all looking as though no one ever sat in them.

  “You’ll send for Dr. MacNab, of course?” he said to the midwife.

  “I’ll send for the doctor should he be needed, y’ung mahn.”

  “I’m quite ready to wait, you know, in case you need a messenger!”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Are you on the telephone?” He knew that Porto Bello was unconnected. “If not, do use me as a messenger, in case you find the doctor is needed.”

  “You coom back in th’ mornin’, y’ung mahn, when you’ll be a father.”

  *

  A coke fire had been banked up in the sitting-room before they left, and here they sat cosily until Georgie began to expatiate on human birth.

  “I consider that the pangs of labour are greatly exaggerated. Don’t you agree with me, Boo?”

  “Well, it all depends on what one means by ‘exaggerated’, surely?”

  “My authority is the old pater, who has visited hundreds of women in the Stews of Queensbridge after confinement. Every old girl, he said, looked cheerful, and said she wouldn’t mind going through the same thing again.”

  “But cases vary, surely, Georgie? Don’t you think that women with wide hips find it easier, perhaps, than those with—well, not so wide hips?” Then realising what she had said, she added, “I’ll go and fill the kettle for some tea.”

  The moment she left the room Georgie went to the little book-shelf and took down some bound volumes of The Bible in Art which he used to cover his bottles of whit-ale.

  “We’ll just have a noggin before Boo comes back. Not a word, mind! She knows it’s bad for my rheumatism, but I’ve got plenty more on the way for my next medical board.”

  There followed, with more whit-ale, an acid argument starting with the miners’ threatened strike and ending with the need to abolish, or retain, capital punishment.

  “According to the old pater men about to be hanged are always cheerful. I know all ’bout it, ol’ bean! The old pater was once Chaplain in Strangeways Prison, Manchester. And I’ll tell another thing th’ old pater says, and that’s that out-of-works are lazy work-dodgers who could find work if it was really needed. To the pure all things are pure, you can’t get away from that, you know!”

  “Does that also mean that to the rotter all things are rotten, to the crook all things are crooked, to the liar all men are liars?”

  “There you go ’gain, ol’ be’—dodgin’ th’ ol’ issue, ol’ bean!”

  “Let’s all agree to differ, shall we?” said Boo, brightly.

  At 2 a.m., with a headache, he said goodnight, thanked hostess and host, and went to his cottage where he wrote a long letter to his parents, revealing all his hopes of a better world for a new generation. It ran to nearly 5,000 words; and suddenly exhausted, he crept up to bed without undressing, shortly before 5 a.m.

  But not to sleep. Black fear was in the room. Try as he might, he could not avoid it. Was it the whit-ale on top of toasted cheese provided by Boo? At 6.45 a.m. he got out of the blankets, and in cold, shrunken moonlight wheeled the Norton into the street and arrived at Porto Bello as the dawn was rising up the eastern sky.

  He found the new redbrick house silent and shut. He did not like to knock or ring the bell. He knew her room; it was in the front facing west. The window was open at the top. The concrete sill was not far from the ground. Finding a broken ladder lying against an old wooden wheelbarrow, part of its base decayed, and grey with hoar frost, he set it against the wall and tested the split-larch sides by pushing them against the bricks before starting to climb up. The oak rungs were loose at the top, where the wood at the holes had decayed. He put his weight on the rungs slowly, one foot at a time, bracing himself against the rung breaking. Then, standing on the top rung, while clinging with one hand to the concrete sill, he drew himself upright and with his other hand reached for the top of the sash window, his body curved, for he was holding to the sill while expecting the rung to give way. Fixed thus, with his fingertips he gripped the cross-bar between the panes, and dragged at the window, to bring down the level of the upper bar. It was stiff, and he could not move it. He must go down again, and find something on which to jack the ladder.

  “Are you there, Barley?” he said cautiously. When there was no reply, he asked again, louder; while imagining by the continued silence that she was asleep.

  He lowered his weight, spreading it between wrists and feet gradually, while a feeling grew that perhaps she was not able to speak. Perhaps she was—— Oh, no, it was his imagination again; they would have sent for him if things had gone wrong.

  The idea of disaster grew. It became urgent that he get into the house; and with it as great a dread of knocking at the door, of rousing the old woman, perhaps in dressing-gown over nightdress—for, of course, nothing out of the ordinary had happened, the very quietness of the house showed that all was well, that it was over, and they were now asleep.

  Yet fear grew as he half-wheeled, half-carried round the barrow, and set it parallel to the base of the wall, finding that it wobbled a little, so that he went back for some bricks. He found them suddenly heavy, so that he could carry only three together, making three journeys to fetch nine, and very cold they were as he knelt to arrange them to take the weight of the base of the ladder under the decayed bottom boards of the barrow. At last, with bits of broken pink asbestos tiling wedging the space between brick and wood, it was made steady, and up he went again, to hold as before with his left hand and draw down the upper frame of the window with the other. Thus it was safe to pull himself up on the sill and, lowering the frame, to step over into the room.

  The first thing he saw was the linoleum floor covered by a dishevelled litter of newspaper sheets; then he saw Barley half sitting up in bed, a pillow behind her, holding a baby in her arms. Her head was leaning to one side. Was she asleep? He crept over the newspapers and spoke to her, to be transfixed with fear when he saw that her lips were grey, her face almost the colour of putty, and that her eyes, which were half closed, did not appear to see him.

  “Barley, are you all right?”

  Was she asleep? He touched her cheek, but his fingers were cold, he could not tell if her cheek was cold, too. He spoke to her, his mouth close to her ear, “Barley! Are you all right?”

  Her eyes opened, she saw him, she looked as though she was trying to smile, but had no strength to open her lips. He was now much afraid, for her eyes had closed again, and the head was leaning on the neck as though all her strength had gone.

  He settled the
pillow with trembling hands, to make sure that she did not fall sideways out of bed, while noticing that the baby had a red, puckered face and dark hair straggling over the red of its skull.

  What in Christ’s name had happened? Where was the nurse? Surely it could not be usual? Roused now to direct action through set-aside fear, he went out of the room and knocked on the door adjoining, then on the third door beside the other.

  “Will you come at once, please? Will you come, please?”

  He waited in silence. Knocked on the near door again. “Will you come at once! I am Mr. Maddison.”

  Creak of old chain-link mattress, a long wait it seemed, and the door was slightly opened to reveal the Queen Victoria face of the midwife’s mother.

  “I think my wife is very ill.”

  “How did you get in, y’ung mahn?”

  “Please come at once! I think we ought to get Dr. MacNab!”

  “The doctor’s got his own work to do, y’ung mahn.” She looked at him reprovingly, then she said, “Well, you’ve got a fine son.”

  “Has my wife been nursing it all night?”

  “Not unless mother’d ’ad a mind to. Baby was crying, and my girl was tired, so I put her to bed. There’s nowt t’ matter wi’ mother or child, y’ung mahn.”

  “But there is! My wife is unconscious, and very cold!”

  He should have got Dr. MacNab himself, the night before. Now it was too late he thought, while the wounds of his mind broke again.

  “I’m going to get the doctor at once. Please get some hot-water bottles for your patient immediately! I’ll be back as soon as I can!

  Dr. MacNab was shaving. Phillip waited until he was dressed, then followed the doctor’s car to Porto Bello. He waited below until Dr. MacNab came down to say that it might be as well to get Barley into the Cottage Hospital. He would go home and telephone. “You go and sit with her, Phillip, and keep her cheerful, until nurse brings up a hot-water bottle.”

  “Is she very ill, doctor?”

  “Not as fit as she might be, but she’ll pull through.”

  “When was the baby born, doctor?”

  “Mrs. Crump says about one o’clock this morning. Then she put her daughter to bed, apparently, and went to bed herself.”

  Phillip restrained himself from making any comment on this appalling statement. He felt the terrible rush of time wasting the life of Barley. “Doctor, do forgive me, but she looks so pale! Has she had a haemorrhage?”

  “There’s been a little bleeding, but she’s a strong girl. No need to worry your head, old chap. Go home and have a good breakfast. You must keep up your pecker, you know!”

  Phillip went towards Malandine; half-way there he turned back for Queensbridge. There he learned that Dr. MacNab had already telephoned for the ambulance. The ambulance had gone out on a job, and would be sent as soon as it returned. He waited. Ten minutes later it arrived with a scarlet-fever case. It was fumigated. At last he was riding beside the driver. When he got there he was told by the midwife that doctor’s orders were that no one was to disturb ‘mother’. He went into the bedroom. Barley was lying as though asleep, on her back. He felt that it was his own fault: he had known these people were dud, he had denied his intuition.

  The ambulance team was waiting.

  “‘Mother’ must wait here until Dr. MacNab comes,” said the midwife. Without a word he went down and called the men up. He waited in the street while they carried the stretcher down. Sitting inside with the nurse he asked if they would give her a blood transfusion.

  “The surgeon on duty will do all that is required, I am sure.” At the Cottage Hospital he repeated the question to Dr. MacNab. “Well, Phillip, they have the apparatus here, but it is a question of a suitable donor at short notice. But Matron will know. Don’t worry, old chap, they’ll do everything they can——”

  Deathly thoughts possessed him. He saw himself falling down the cliffs of Valhalla; this time it would be no dream, as in the Pyrenees. He prayed for her to live.

  “I realise it’s pretty bad, doctor. Can’t my blood be used for a transfusion?”

  “It’s a question of matching groups, old chap. Otherwise clumping will occur.”

  “They will be quick, won’t they? I’ve seen men after battle——”

  “You can be sure they will, Phillip, but these things can’t be rushed, you know. There are four blood-groups, and some do not cross-match.”

  “Forgive my being so persistent, but will you tell them that mine may be the right group? Barley and I think and feel alike, and such traits are in the blood, I think.”

  “I’ll tell the surgeon. Now sit down, and try not to worry. Things are going to be all right.”

  The surgeon came in with a nurse holding what looked like a watch-glass with blood on it. She put in on the table and with a clean glass in her hand stood by the surgeon as he pricked Phillip’s ear lobe. He heard the drops upon the glass. Cotton wool was dabbed on his ear. The glass was then put beside the other glass on the table. The surgeon and the nurse left the room.

  “It takes about twenty minutes for the serum to separate from the corpuscles,” said Dr. MacNab.

  “You mean Barley’s?”

  “Yes. Then we can see if your red corpuscles will mix with her serum without clumping.” He looked out of the window. “It’s going to be a fine day, after the frost.”

  Seagulls were sitting on the chimney pots seen through the window. A jackdaw joined them, and looked through the window. Did the nurses usually put food on the sill? The birds seemed to be expecting something.

  A sister came in with two cups of coffee. It was too hot to drink. “I’ll bring you some milk, sir,” she said to Dr. MacNab.

  “Am I keeping you from your round, doctor?”

  “Not at all, old chap. I don’t start till ten o’clock, anyway.” It was eleven minutes past nine. Just before the quarter-hour the surgeon came into the room. He took a bottle from a shelf and with a glass pipette lifted some of it and Phillip saw the drops of clear liquid released upon the watch-glass holding his blood. He stirred it, and added it to the blood in the other glass. He waited a minute, and then looked at the result through a magnifying glass.

  “Good,” he said to Dr. MacNab. “No appearance of clumping.” He turned to Phillip. “Take off your coat, and roll up the sleeve of your left arm.”

  The nurse dabbed iodine on the skin of the elbow joint, then lit a glass spirit lamp. The surgeon took a wide bore needle and waved it in and out of the pale flame. Then he fixed a short piece of red rubber tubing to the other end. The nurse took a white enamel jug and rinsed it with what seemed to be a solution of Lysol disinfectant.

  They seemed to be taking a long time about it. At last the surgeon said, “Sit down in the chair, and hold yourself as loose as you can.”

  The nurse held his left wrist. Doctor MacNab held his right hand. “You’ll be all right, old chap.”

  “I’ve seen this done in a Casualty Clearing Station,” he said, as brightly as he could, while hearing his own voice croak.

  “You’ve got a fine son,” said Dr. MacNab, gently.

  The seagulls now appeared to be watching. He closed his eyes. A sharp pain, a greater pain as the needle was pushed into the incision. He heard his blood running into the enamel jug. He felt pale, he floated through regions of hope and despair. A tourniquet was put round his upper arm. He was led away to a couch, and covered by a blanket. He watched the surgeon pouring from the glass bottle a colourless liquid into the enamel jug, and stirring the mixture with a glass rod.

  “Everything is going to be all right,” said Dr. MacNab, soothingly.

  The surgeon and the nurse left the room. Another nurse came in, and sat by his bed. Then Dr. MacNab went away.

  *

  In the private ward Barley was lying, with earthenware hot-water bottles covered with red flannel against her feet and her ribs, and a flat rubber bottle wrapped in a towel on her stomach. In her state of collapse, following t
he haemorrhage which had filled the uterus while in the midwife’s bedroom and broken out when she was lifted upon the stretcher, it was impossible to get into the vein at the elbow joint through the skin, so the vein was cut down with a scalpel and exposed. A canula was inserted into the vein, with a yard of rubber tubing attached to the canula. At the other end of the tubing was a glass funnel, with a sterile gauze laid in it to strain the blood as it was poured in from a height. The mixture of Phillip’s blood in a solution of sodium citrate passed slowly through the gauze, it moved down slower and slower until it ceased to enter the vein through the canula. The pulse had stopped.

  *

  The matron was speaking to Phillip, sitting up on the couch.

  “Your wife is asking for you. Now you must be calm, and give her all your assurance, Mr. Maddison. You must be prepared to see a change in her, but above all, she needs your help. So be calm, and trust in God.”

  He followed her to the private ward, and saw figures by the bed, red rubber pipes and glass-ware, an oxygen cylinder with more pipes and a mask—detached from the head lying back on the pillow, the bloodless lips, the pale sunburn on the hands lying on the counterpane, the eye-lids curiously shrunken, the pale brow, the wan face composed as though beyond resignation, come to a quietude of its own and far away from the Barley he had known in sunlight. He knelt by the bed, biting on his teeth to keep back his thoughts as he took the hand with Spica’s ring upon one finger and held it against his unshaven cheek, feeling it to be cold; and leaning over the bed, he stroked the brow, and laid his cheek against her face, and heard the whisper of “I’m—so—sorry——”

  He held both her hands, pressing them with his own while willing life into her, his own life to be emptied into her while trying to force all his life into thought to give her strength.

  Someone lifted him up from his knees beside the bed, a man in darkness who had come to the end of the world.

  *

  The baby, a boy of seven-and-a-half pounds, was left in the Cottage Hospital, and Phillip went back to Malandine to pass the day somehow—walking about, picking up dog and cat and otter in turn, appealing to them as though they were human, climbing to the bedroom to find it exactly as it was before, descending again to see everywhere relics with power to wound anew with their love and tenderness—her small sand-shoes, one with the broken lace; the brown felt hat, with the elastic still sewn to keep it from blowing off, the school hat she had worn at Victoria Station when she had flown to his side from the boat-train; I am all your friends; and now she had gone away for ever. No, no! She was in the room, she was with him in his tears, she was bright in the darkness, she was love, telling him he must not grieve, she was watching over him, and his son, their son, who was, did he remember, to be called Willie for she had felt sure the baby would be a boy.