It Was the Nightingale

by Henry Williamson

  “Your nephew has a real streak of genius, in my opinion, Captain.”

  Hilary told his sister Viccy this welcome news. She remembered that as a boy Phillip had always been keen on birds and nature; indeed, she told him that she had given Phillip, when he was nine years old, a copy of Our Bird Friends, by Richard and Cherry Kearton.

  “Our father, you know, Hilary, was also very keen on all things to do with the country.”

  This remark set another course for Hilary’s imagination: the boy took after his grandfather, after all. However, while writing led to nowhere, the fact that the cobbler had stuck to his last for several years, and had some monetary success with it, did tend to show that he had it in him, if he liked, to put his shoulder to the wheel. ‘Valentine’, the nom de plume of the golfing acquaintance, said that writing, to be successful, needed concentration and the will to keep going; he had seemed a sensible sort of chap himself; and, after weighing the matter in his mind, as he put it, the 52-year-old Hilary, having heard from his brother John good reports of Phillip and his new wife-to-be, had decided to propose to him that he become the tenant of Skirr farm as a pupil under his land-steward for one year, with an annual allowance, to be paid to Lucy, of £250. After that, if all went satisfactorily, he would become an improver for another year. At the end of that time they could review the situation, with the prospect of Phillip becoming the tenant of the Skirr holding, under a trust to be set up. This trust would include the estate of 1,200 acres in a ring fence, of which, after his death, his nephew would be tenant-for-life, subject to certain annuities to his sisters Belle, Viccy and Dora during their life-time. After that, it would be the turn of Phillip’s son, or sons.

  *

  Sitting round the mahogany table covered by a white cloth and set with family plate from the brass-bound oak box—these silver objects seen only once before by Phillip, at the end of July 1914, when Willie had come to live in Wakenham to work in the City—he thought that Uncle Hilary was agreeable but rather too fat, while Aunt Dora looked far too thin. She ate nothing, but sipped lemon juice and water; she explained that she had been fasting for a fortnight, to cure herself of chronic dyspepsia.

  It was, for Phillip, an easy occasion. Neither of his sisters was present, both were still forbidden the house by Father; despite this, Mother looked fairly happy. Lucy, across the table, next to Uncle Hilary, was talking freely as he had never known her to talk before, although she had put her hand over the glass when he had gone round with the Burgundy (Australian variety, from Phillip, via the Victoria Wine Company in the High Street). Father was jovial, often laughing; while Aunt Dora was sympathetic and understanding.

  It was a simple meal—Richard had decided not to rely upon Hetty’s cooking in that wretched gas-oven—of ham, tongue, salad with French dressing prepared by Phillip from a recipe learned in a Soho restaurant where he had lunched with Anders Norse, and mashed potatoes; followed by compôte-de-fruit and three kinds of cheese with brown bread, butter, and Thin Captain biscuits. Phillip noticed that Uncle Hilary had not drunk his glass of Australian Burgundy, although he had owned a fruit farm in Australia; Father likewise had refused a second glass, pleading that his interior economy would not stand it; so he had put away most of the flagon bottle by himself. By God, he was enjoying life! As old Julian used to say, It’s a poor heart that never rejoices!

  “Leave a little for the toasts, old man,” said Richard, as his son prepared to help himself to the last glass.

  “Phillip will, I am sure,” said Hetty.

  “Sure thing, I guess,” replied Phillip, with an American accent.

  “Well,” announced Richard, from the head of the table. “I propose the health and long life of Lucy coupled with the names of Phillip, and of young William the heir!”

  “Oh, I wish the baby could have been here!” said Hetty. “Well, your health, Lucy! And yours, my dear son, and your little son’s, too!”

  “Thank you,” replied Phillip, remaining seated with Lucy as the others arose.

  “Now you must respond, old man,” declared Richard.

  Phillip got up. “Father and Mother, Uncle Hilary and Aunt Theodora, on behalf of Lucy, together with myself, I thank you for all your kindness and care shown us tonight. And, if I may say it, always in the past. Since I became a father myself, I know one thing—that a child is seldom, if ever, out of its parents’ thoughts.”

  He stopped, to be sure that his voice was steady.

  “I think, with cousin Willie—for whom I always had the greatest respect—that the future of the world lies in the coming generation. I wish that all children could be brought back to Nature, to absorb, in the impressionable years, the beauty of the countryside. I think that farming is the ideal life for a man. Father, in the old days of our Sunday walks into Kent—or Kent that was—used to tell us children about his old home, and the downland country in which his father’s family was brought up. So in a way this has always been ‘the real country’ to me.”

  Hilary was surprised: this was a new Phillip to him.

  “My fear is that I may not be worthy of such a position, which, of course, should have been cousin Willie’s. Now I propose to drink the health of my parents, with that of Uncle Hilary and Uncle John, Aunt Belle, Aunt Dora, and also Aunt Victoria. Lucy joins me in this. By the way, it is just as well that you cannot drink your own healths, by custom, because the bottle is empty!” He raised his glass, held it towards Lucy, emptied it and sat down.

  “Well spoken, Boy!” said Dora.

  When the women had gone into the other room Richard said, “Well, I must see how my plants are getting on,” and opening the french windows, gave Hilary an opportunity to talk to Phillip alone.

  Hilary waited for Phillip to broach the subject. He had written a letter to his nephew, but had had no reply. The wine had given Phillip a certain confidence, so that the usual feeling of being partly suppressed when in the company of Uncle Hilary was, for the moment, gone.

  “It’s jolly good of you, Uncle, to give me this chance. I hope you will forgive me for not replying at once——By the way, I wonder why in some of Shakespeare’s plays they used the word ‘Nuncle’? Was it a sort of joke?”

  “What makes you ask the question?”

  “Well, I read Shakespeare quite a lot, and all that, you know. Yes, ‘nuncle’ is a sort of happy greeting, usually by the Fool.”

  “Oh. Well, you won’t be able to give a lot of time to reading when you’re farming, you know, Phillip. It’s about the hardest and most demanding work there is. The daily paper for half an hour or so before bed, just to get the news, is about all the average farmer can expend on reading. By the way, what newspaper do you usually take?”

  “The Daily Crusader.”

  “Well, at least it’s better than The Herald, but even so, its news is not reliable.”

  “Little so-called news is, I suppose, really—except perhaps in The Times.”

  “Why do you take the Crusader, anyway? It’s a rag.”

  “I know the Literary Editor, Brex. He gave me a guinea and a half a week for a couple of months, for a small weekly piece about the country. That kept me going when first I went down to Devon.”

  “But as a newspaper it’s not reliable, Phillip. I happened to see a copy one morning, and it gave as the main item of news for the day what the Trident gave only a small space to. And that was on an inside page.”

  “But only on occasions of really big news do newspapers happen to have the same ‘splash’, Uncle. Such as the outbreak of war, or the death of a king or someone equally prominent.”

  “Well, I don’t want to argue, Phillip. I was merely giving reasons why The Daily Trident is a more reliable medium for news than the sensation-mongering Crusader.”

  “What was the Crusader ‘splash’, can you remember?”

  “I remember very well. C. B. Cochran was proposing to mix coloured players with white players on the stage, and there was naturally some opposition. So he gave a su
pper party for his coloured players, and invited various actors and actresses—‘Bea’ Lillie and Tallulah Bankhead, I remember, were among them. The Crusader made a fuss about the two parties sitting at different tables.”

  “But the country edition of the Crusader also had only a ‘stick’, uncle. I remember it. The London edition is printed in the small hours of the morning, the country editions much earlier.”

  “Well, it’s not my idea of how a newspaper should be conducted.” Hilary’s tone until then had been persuasive; now he looked at his watch.

  “Before I go, I would like to make certain that you really do want to spend your life as a farmer!”

  “Yes, Uncle, I think I would.”

  “To make a proper go of it, you’ll have to chuck this writing, you know! At least for a few years.”

  “Couldn’t I write at night?”

  “If you do, you’ll fall between two stools. It’s fatal to try and do two jobs at once, of different natures. I know what I’m talking about. I had to give up either the sea or my Australian farming interests, and so sold my land there.”

  “But Rider Haggard wrote and farmed——”

  “Yes, and incidentally lost a lot of capital in the process! Now look here, Phillip! During the first years you’ll have to put your back into it! You’ll have to break yourself in to muck-carting and spreading, to hoeing roots, to cutting and carting hay, to corn-carrying—ploughing—cultivating—making a rick—everything! You can’t expect to know how much a man can do and how he should do it unless you’ve first learned to do it yourself.”

  “I understand that, of course.”

  “Good. Well, now you know my terms. I am prepared to pay into your bank twenty-one pounds a month for the first year. You will live rent free, and have your own milk and butter. If you keep a pig you’ll have your own bacon and hams. You’ll shoot as my guest, and also fish by invitation. But you’ll have to put your back into it, and make it your life. When the year is up, we can decide on the next step. Now what I want from you is the answer to one question—Are you prepared to accept my offer, and all it entails?”

  “Yes, Uncle. And thank you very much.”

  “You’ve discussed it with Lucy, of course?”

  “Yes. She likes the idea.”

  “I am glad, Phillip. I wish you success—which can come only through your own efforts, remember!” They shook hands. “Skirr farmhouse will be ready for you at midsummer. That will give you time to settle in before the corn harvest.”

  “Will it matter if we come at Michaelmas, Uncle?”

  “Any particular reason for the delay? The sooner you get your teeth into it the better, you know. Also, you’ll be starting during the easiest part of the year, between haysel and harvest. Well, why do you demur? Better to speak out now, you know, than later on!”

  “Lucy and I thought we would like one summer by the sea, in Devon.”

  “Very well; but if you should want to change your mind, let me know.” He gave Phillip a frank look. “You want to feed up, you’re much too thin, you know. How’s your general health?”

  “Oh, I’m quite fit now, thanks.”

  “By the way, I’ve got the option on another five hundred acres from Tofield, the fellow who bought the land from your grandfather. His only son’s a bit of a waster, I hear. When you go to Rookhurst, keep clear of him—after the initial courtesy calls, of course. When do you intend to return to Devon?”

  “In two days’ time, Uncle.”

  “I might run down and see you.”

  “Do. You know my address—Speering Folliot?”

  “Yes. Now I must give thanks to your mother——”

  When Hilary had left, it was Dora’s turn with her nephew. After repeating more or less what her brother had told Phillip, she said, “What do you really want to do with your life, Boy?”

  She looked with sympathy at one, to her, hardly more than a child, who still bore the traces of having been the unhappiest small boy she had ever known. Could one ever outgrow the effects of such a marked childhood? Would the strains of farming—and with markets fallen as they had—be too much for him? He was still exhausted from the war, she thought. Too much had been asked of his generation; the survivors still bore the mental weight of what it had gone through. He looked frail; and the way he had drunk the wine, nearly a whole bottle, so quickly, had grieved her. Would he have done that if the love of his life had not died? Lucy was a dear girl, tender and kind; but had she the strength which that other had possessed in her own right? Was she imaginative enough to cope with un poète manqué, as Phillip appeared to be? How would Phillip get on with Hilary? The two were worlds apart. A dear brother, yes, simple and straightforward, but congenitally unable to understand ideas outside his own scope, and so tending to dismiss what he did not understand as having no reality. Whereas the true world was the world of the Imagination, as Keats declared.

  “If you have a nervous tummy still, Boy, you should try fasting for a couple of weeks. I have found fasting to be of great value in the past; now, with my Babies constantly to look after, I can seldom undertake that way of purification. Do you remember my Babies? The blind one is now partly paralysed, while her sister has delusions, and thinks sometimes that I am trying to poison both her and her sister.”

  “How old are they, Aunt Dora?”

  “One is turned seventy-eight, and her sister is a year younger, Boy. You must bring Lucy to Lynmouth to see them, when you are settled in your new life. I am afraid I shall not be able to put you up. Now tell me, what are you writing at the moment?”

  “Nothing, Aunt Dora.”

  *

  Phillip felt that he would not be able to pay the high prices of his war-time tailor, Mr. Kerr of Cundit Street, so he went to a tailor in the City to be measured for his ‘glad rags’, thinking that they would be about half the price of a West-end tailor. It was not done, of course, to ask about prices of one’s tailor. He was measured, and arranged to come up later on for a fitting. There was no time to go to a hatter’s, as he was to meet Lucy for lunch and then take her to a matinée in the Strand. The next day they were returning to Dorset, staying for the night with some of her relations in Hampshire, Aunt and Uncle Kimmy, said Lucy.

  Chapter 18

  PHOENIX

  They arrived after a seventy-mile journey at what turned out to be a country house. Lucy’s aunt, after greeting them, enquired in a voice holding incredulity as she looked at the motor-bicycle, “But is this all you have come on?” as though inferring surprise that such a vehicle could have any existence.

  A maid showed Phillip to his bedroom. “Her ladyship will be in the garden, sir.”

  When he was alone with Lucy he said, “You didn’t tell me that your aunt was Lady Kilmeston. I called her Mrs.! Is your uncle a knight, like Hilary?”

  Lucy flushed with shame. “I’m awfully sorry, dear, but I forgot to tell you. He’s Lord Kilmeston. We’ve always called her Aunt Kimmy, she’s Pa’s youngest sister.”

  “Are we supposed to dress for dinner?”

  “Oh no, they don’t bother!”

  In the garden he met Uncle Kimmy wearing a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers. At dinner it was black trousers and velvet smoking jacket, while the women wore evening frocks and long white kid gloves to the elbow. Phillip thought this glove-business rather strange. It was a simple meal, the men ate asparagus with the fingers, while the ladies, still wearing gloves—Lucy had been lent a pair—ate with forks. This was followed by grilled trout with mayonnaise, and new potatoes and peas—an odd mixture, he thought. There were no fish knives, they ate with a fork, with a piece of bread used as a pusher.

  Bridge for threepence a hundred followed in the drawing-room.

  In the morning he was wondering whether he, as guest, was expected to help Lucy and himself to breakfast from the dishes on the sideboard, for the others stood there, when a sudden entry of servants in rapid step passed them, to form up along one side of the table and kneel do
wn. He had read of this happening in books, and so knew what was coming. The family knelt down on the opposite side, while his Lordship read prayers, followed by a text for the day from the Bible. On rising the servants curtsied or bowed, the women, picking up their long skirts to leave immediately, while the two footmen removed covers of silver dishes above spirit-stoves on the sideboard, revealing eggs scrambled and poached, grilled kidneys, tomatoes, fried mushrooms and bacon.

  It was, like dinner the previous night, a reserved meal. One of Lucy’s cousins was a tall girl with intellectual face who had been at Girton, where she had read the Russian language. He spoke to her about Dostoevski and Tourgenieff but made no headway. It was a relief to be on the open road once more, making for the Dorset hills along the south coast to Dorchester, and so to Lyme Regis and the coast road through Seaton to Sidmouth, where they were to stay the night with other cousins who were to be the bridesmaids, whose mother—“Aunt Dolly married Mother’s younger brother, Matty”—was to help in the choosing and fitting of the bridal gown made locally by her “little woman”.

  These cousins were as open and jolly as the others had been reserved; delightful creatures, he thought, one eighteen and the other still at school. They were fairly poor, Lucy had told him.; after a supper of kippers and cocoa, when he helped to clear the plates into the kitchen, he saw Mrs. Matthew Chychester picking pieces of half-eaten kipper and putting them on a saucer—not for a cat, as he supposed, but to help make bloater paste.

  “Where’s your Uncle Matty?” he asked Lucy; regretting that he had shown curiosity when she replied, “Oh, he went away long ago, after being sent to prison. He was so nice, too!”

  “I shouldn’t have asked!”

  “Why not? You’re almost one of the family now!”

  The girls prepared coffee after the washing up, and Lucy’s Aunt Dolly said to Phillip, in a tone of voice suggesting the intimacy of an established friendship, “Shall we smoke a cigarette in the sitting-room, and you can tell me what Lucy’s brothers are up to!” with the air of one who was only too ready to enjoy a real gossip.