Nightingale Wood

by Stella Gibbons

‘Did you have a nice holiday?’

  ‘Extra good, thank you, Mrs Theodore.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Vi, be an angel and get my gloves, will you? I must have left them on the office table when I went in to pay the bill,’ interrupted Tina, and Viola hurried off to get the gloves, which were afterwards found in the car.

  In less than an hour they were home.

  Mr and Mrs Wither and Madge had returned the evening before, with health and spirits improved by the Lakeland air, and as Tina and Viola were still in the first flush of interest at being again surrounded by their own possessions, lunch was at first almost a cheerful meal, and even when Viola told everybody about poor Adrian Lacey’s death the interesting gloom cast by the recital lasted only for a few moments. Mrs Wither said that she seemed to remember having met Elenor one Prize Day at Tina’s old school, wasn’t she tall and dark with horn-rimmed glasses, and Tina said yes, and Mrs Wither said poor thing, how sad for her, have they any children, and Tina said no, and just as Mrs Wither was saying that perhaps it was a mercy, Mr Wither interrupted her to ask if she had remembered to order the coal, and the Laceys dropped out of the conversation.

  Through the clear glass of the french windows that Annie had polished yesterday against the family’s return, Viola stared at the dismal garden. Coal … yellow leaves lying on the wet grass … withered dahlias. Winter was coming. The faint glow of excitement that she had felt at returning to The Eagles faded as lunch went on, in the dark heavily furnished dining-room with familiar uninteresting faces round the table. Everyone had some story to tell about their holiday, and told it, but heaven knows that such stories are never interesting – unless, of course, one is telling them oneself – and Viola, after saying ‘I say, good lord,’ once or twice, did not listen.

  By tea-time, when she had unpacked and arranged her clothes, and fussed over Polo a bit, and learned from Fawcuss that ‘the house was still shut up over at Springs except for the head gardener (Mr Rawlings, that is), he says the family’s going to stay in Town over Christmas,’ she seemed to have been back at The Eagles for weeks; by dinner-time she might never have been away. The long quiet hours drifted into days, and the days into a week, two weeks. There was no excitement except an occasional meeting with Lady Dovewood in Chesterbourne, or tea with the Parshams, or, rarely, a visit to church with Mr and Mrs Wither on Sunday because Mrs Wither said that she really ought to go; also, she loved the little old church, where she had used to walk with her father sometimes on Sunday afternoons and where she had dreamed of being married to Victor Spring, and though it made her sad to go there, it also, in a queer way, made her happy. She bought a few winter clothes (Mr and Mrs Wither seemed to think that her clothes were brought by the ravens, like Elijah’s dinner, for they never asked her where she got the money to buy them), and once she went to Town to see Shirley, very fat and bored and crossly waiting for her baby.

  It was a long, dull, sad time. Autumn had come, with mists wandering over the flat, river-threaded countryside that seemed to grow more silent as the winter drew near. There was no news of the Springs, except that they were having a gay time in London; and Viola, with no news, no hope and no one to talk to, now pined indeed.

  Her unhappiness was deeper and more genuine than it had been in the summer, and perhaps in her confused way she knew this, for she no longer luxuriated in it, but attempted to occupy her mind and not to give way to grief.

  She re-read Twelfth Night and As You Like It; but although she was comforted by the fact that the other Viola had been crazy about a rich young man who was keen on a marvellous girl, and had been awfully fed up yet had got him in the end, and although As You Like It was all about some historical people in a wood that made her think of the little wood across the road, the plays were so difficult to understand when they were not read aloud in her father’s fine voice that she did not read them all, as she had planned to do. But she did a good deal of sewing and accepted Tina’s offer to teach her simple embroidery stitches and French.

  Tina was funny since they had got back from Stanton. She was different. Viola had expected that she would be miserable because Adrian Lacey was dead; but she was cheerful and serene, though sometimes Viola (when she came out of her private unhappiness) caught her with a very worried look. She went for a long walk every day, occasionally with Viola but usually alone. She no longer took driving lessons because they were not necessary; she could now drive so well that she often took the family for long excursions.

  Saxon was glum, too. Viola never heard him whistle nowadays and Fawcuss, Annie and Cook hoped that he might be seriously thinking about giving up the old selfish, careless way of living, and going to church regular. There was no doubt, they told one another, that that dreadful quarrel with his mother and that man in the summer, in front of everybody like that, had made a great difference to him. You could see it. It was hard on him, of course, but it was all for the best, no doubt of that.

  Tina did not mention Victor except casually when the Springs came up in conversation, and Viola, trying to be sensible, followed her lead. I suppose she thinks I’ll never get over it if we’re always talking about it, she thought. All the same, I do wish I had someone to talk to. It’s awful. I wish she’d be more like she was when I first came. She is funny these days. I’m sure there’s something up.

  She had confided a few details about Victor to Shirley, in the laughing, half-ashamed style used by the Crowd when it had fallen for somebody, but Shirley had only snapped ‘Well, if you want him why don’t you go all out and get him? It’s easy enough,’ and then gave some smart, stinging generalizations about Getting Your Man that were not helpful. Poor Shirley, thought Viola, gazing mildly at her friend, she feels like that because she’s so enormous.

  While the sleep of winter settled over Sible Pelden, the Springs were having a grand time in Town. They were established at the Dorchester, which was close to the Barlows’ large luxurious flat, and conveniently near to Buckingham Square, where Phyllis and Victor intended to bespeak one of the most expensive flats in the block that was now shooting up on the site of Buckingham House.

  Phyllis was on top of the world. Engaged to a rich and personable young man who let her have her own way in almost everything, surrounded by other young men who would plainly have liked to marry her and showed their regret that they had not won her, her time occupied by fittings, hair-dressing, beauty treatments, dancing, and parties, she had not a moment of the day that was not crammed, and she was seldom in bed before three in the morning. There would be time after Christmas to choose the furniture and scheme of decoration for the flat, but she occasionally looked in at some show of modern furniture or textiles, just to get ideas, and she planned her trousseau and gave some of the orders for part of it, for spring, 1937, would be a busy year for dressmakers. She took all her activities with immense seriousness and was convinced that they were important; and doubtless, as they were all good for trade, they were.

  Victor good-naturedly endured the whirl in which his betrothed liked to live. He was working very hard over the Bracing Bay development scheme in the weeks before Christmas; it had had setbacks, but was now progressing, and would be started in the spring. He managed, all the same, to spend enough time with Phyllis to satisfy such conventions as are left, and more than satisfy Miss Barlow, who thought that Vic was certainly coming up to scratch but was rather heavy going.

  Phyllis, like her rival down in Essex, was no psychologist, but she did wonder once or twice, impatiently, why she always felt so flat after a party, when she and Victor were driving back in the car, silent and tired. This ought to be the time for a little mush. Sometimes it was; but it was not satisfactory mush. Vic did his best but.

  Phyllis, who spoke contemptuously of those loose-living writers, painters and scenic designers who live on the edge of society, did not suspect that she wanted the company, and the mush, of bad men. She was scathing in her condemnation of a man in her set who had taken to the cin
ema and become an English star and was living a very uninhibited life indeed; she almost cut him when they met. She did not know that, had she not had the sense to snub him, she would have been one of his most willing victims. What she missed in Victor was vice.

  However, the lovers got on amiably enough, and Mrs Spring’s doubts about the suitability of the match went to sleep; for not only did Vic and Phyl seem to be settling down but Mrs Spring’s own health was so much better that she could thoroughly enjoy the Little Season, and this made her take a cheerful view of everything. She was interested in every detail of Phyllis’s trousseau and her visits to furnishing and textile shows, and often accompanied her. Sometimes Phyllis’s elder sister, Anthea, went with them. She was a restless, smart, hard person of thirty-four, living apart from her husband with one pale, discontented little boy. She was ill-tempered with worry because she was always in debt. Mrs Spring disliked Anthea. When she looked at Anthea (who was outwardly all that Mrs Spring liked a woman to be) she feared that Phyllis might get like that, later on; so she avoided looking at Anthea more than was necessary.

  Hetty was excessively bored with the life in London. True, she could sometimes get away by herself to visit bookshops and museums and picture galleries, but not often. Her aunt liked her to be on tap for whatever fun might be going. Hetty would trail round the expensive shops with Mrs Spring, Phyllis and Anthea, bored and silent, a book stuffed in the pocket of her suit, wishing that it was April and she was twenty-one.

  Mrs Spring proposed, after the wedding, that Grassmere should be sold and she and her niece take a flat in London, where they would be near to Victor and Phyllis and could lead a more social life than they could in Essex.

  But Hetty had other plans. They were vague, but they were precious to her. As soon as she was of age she meant to leave Grassmere, or the flat in London, it did not matter which – for ever; take an attic in Bloomsbury, fill it with books and settle down to the life of a student on her own income. I love learning for its own sake, she thought. I don’t want to teach, to write, to criticize, or review or be a poet. I just want to learn.

  And while she sprawled in some important shop, watching Phyllis and Anthea sweetly bullyragging the young lady assistants, she was dreaming about a view of red and dark chimneys against the pale blue sky of London in summer, she could smell coffee brewing on the gas-ring and hear the drone, far below, of a busy street; and in fancy her gaze moved over the page of a book, and she was happy.

  I suppose they’ll let me take my books.

  When the first shock’s over, I imagine they’ll be rather relieved.

  Victor was behaving well. He let Phyllis have her way about the decorations for the flat, and agreed that it would be fun to fly to Monte Carlo for the honeymoon. He danced, efficiently, every night after a tiring day. He hardly thought about Viola at all; but when he did, he thought: That kid’ll always mean something to me. I nearly fell harder than I’ve ever fallen in my life. Funny-peculiar.

  Presently it occurred to him how well he was behaving. He went on letting Phyllis have her way, in spite of his vow, before they became engaged, that he would not. He gave (it could not be called a loan) Anthea a hundred pounds because Phyllis asked him to, and as he watched it disappear into Anthea’s handbag for ever, he thought how very well he was behaving. Then he wondered, idly, if Phyl would want to dance every night when they were married. He supposed that he liked dancing as much as the next man, but he also liked billiards, bridge, tennis and squash, and none of these things did he want to do every day. Occasionally, after a heavy spell of Bracing Bay business, he even felt a little tired. Phyl was never tired. He could not remember, in the fifteen years that he had known her, ever having heard Phyllis declare that she was tired.

  Would she ever get tired after they were married? He hoped she might, but was pretty sure she would not.

  The truth was that the pastimes enjoyed by Phyllis and her set were a little too feminine for Victor’s taste. He would have been more content in the social life of fifty years ago, when the pleasures and interests of the sexes were more widely separated. He enjoyed an occasional wild, or stodgy for that matter, evening with men, he enjoyed brooding over a newspaper in the peculiar drugged way that men do, thinking sleepily about the news without discussing it with anyone. He liked watching football or tennis matches by himself, and motoring by himself.

  And he kept to himself, from everybody but his mother who had the same views, what he thought about women.

  He had stupid, old-fashioned, ultra-masculine views on women. He never lost the feeling (though of course he had to suppress it in front of Phyllis and her friends) that women ought to be kept busy with some entirely feminine occupation like sewing or arranging flowers or nursing children until a man wanted their attention. He had not a shred of admiration (though he had to suppress this, too) for women who flew the larger expanses of sea, won motor-racing trophies, wrote brilliant novels, or managed big businesses.

  He admired women only for being pretty, docile, and well dressed. He had to pretend he admired the other achievements because everybody else admired them (or said that they did) but to himself he thought coarsely All a lot of B. And when he got with other men, who agreed with him, they would smile in a certain way, and look at each other, and mutter ‘All a lot of B.’ Brainy women, sporting women, arty women – all a lot of B. This may have been due to suppressed subconscious jealousy. Or it may have been due to the natural resentment of a healthy creature, existing efficiently in its own sphere, because another creature with different powers and aims was muscling in on a comfortable racket. There are the two points of view.

  Vic is really coming along nicely, thought Phyllis complacently. Being no trouble at all.

  This was more than she could say of that beastly little Hetty, who was always making snooty remarks about the colour-schemes and furniture that Phyl admired and rooting for those that Phyl thought hideous. Her dislike of Hetty grew every day. They got on each other’s nerves so much that they could hardly be civil to one another, and Mrs Spring gave each of them a sharp private lecture that had no effect at all. Phyl wished that Hetty would marry somebody, anybody, and immediately emigrate, and Hetty only wished that Phyl would catch cold and die. Neither thought the other of any use. The fact that Vic was indulgently fond of his old Het-Up made Phyllis dislike her the more; he had no right to support anyone whom his betrothed disliked.

  Despite these undercurrents, everyone except Hetty enjoyed the stay in London so much that the Springs decided to stay on until the New Year. Then Phyllis would go to Mürren for three weeks with a party of friends, and when she came back would begin furious preparations for the wedding in April.

  One gloomy afternoon early in November Saxon was on his way home through the oak wood. Evening had set in early; mist had lingered all day among the trees, muffling the sound of car wheels on the muddy roads and making the song of a robin who haunted the thickets near The Eagles sound startlingly loud and sweet in the languid gloom. Drip … drip … drip … came the small, heavy noise of fog-drops on wet earth in the Hermit’s hollow. The stream was full but clogged with leaves, and crept between its wet, buried banks. Saxon crossed the plank and went up the hill on the other side.

  He was thinner, and looked worried and irritable. He stared at the ground as he walked, and once he sighed heavily.

  It was almost dark as he went through the last glade of leafless beeches before the cottage, and he had to pick his way carefully by the beam of his torch. Lights shone dimly from the public-house and filling station at the cross-roads, and there was a light in the cottage, too. As he came up, he could see into the parlour, for the curtains were not quite drawn.

  The first thing he saw was a bottle and two glasses on the table, then a red arm, flung round a neck covered with thick silver curls.

  Saxon kicked open the door. ‘You get out,’ he said, standing against the misty darkness of the doorway.

  Mrs Caker struggled off the
Hermit’s knees, pulling her blouse together and laughing, but she also looked a little frightened. The Hermit, who appeared to be drunk, returned Saxon’s fierce stare with one of extreme, if squintful, dignity, and waved his hand tolerantly as though to dismiss the incident.

  ‘Well, fancy meeting you,’ said Mrs Caker, buttoning herself. ‘We thought you was over Chesterbourne. Proper sneak you are, comin’ in on anybody like that.’

  ‘Get out,’ jerking his head at the door and staring at the Hermit.

  ‘Now, now,’ said the Hermit mildly, also buttoning, but making no move towards the door. ‘None o’ that, cock. I’ll go when I wantsh, and not before. I bin very good a’ you, ’know. Never shaid word. Never ask penny more, never shaid word. You be shenshible. Don’t want to give you a shender, like I done before. You le’ me alone, I’ll le’ you alone. Shee? Fairsh fair.’

  He poured out some beer, slopping it on the table, and shaking his head reprovingly.

  Saxon strode across and gripped him by his thick shoulders. Through the sacking coat with its pads of paper he could feel their power; they were thick as a bull’s, massive with bone and firm muscled flesh. His own hands, spread on that bulk, looked thin and helpless.

  ‘Keep your ’ands orf me,’ roared the Hermit, staggering up. ‘You dare touch me, you little bastard, and I’ll cut— By Chrisht, I will.’

  He staggered against the table and the beer bottle went over, foaming, fell on the floor and smashed. They struggled clumsily for a minute, breathing hard, slipping in the pool of beer and broken glass. Mrs Caker hovered in the doorway, screaming helpfully.

  ‘Shut up, can’t you, you’ll have the whole bloody cross-roads here in a minute,’ panted Saxon, crimson. The Hermit was forcing him to the door.

  ‘Don’t hurt him, now,’ begged Mrs Caker, seeing that Saxon was getting the worst of it. ‘Let him go, Dick; come on now, let him go.’

  ‘Laid ’andsh on me,’ bellowed the Hermit, his tremendous voice echoing over the dark misty valley ‘– of a boy laid ’andsh on me. All becaush I like a bit, shame as anyone else. Shame ash he doesh, dirty—. Now I am going to tell, shee?’ slowly pushing the scarlet, sweating and swearing Saxon out through the door. ‘Never shaid a word, sho help me, never ashked for a penny up till now, but now I’m a-goin’ to, sho help me Chrisht. Goin’ right over to Mishter Wither, I am, and I’ll shay, your jorter, I’ll shay. Thish very ni’. Wot your jorter been up to, eh?’ jerking Saxon violently over the threshold, ‘with your shuvver, eh? Goin’s-on. I know. I shee ’em. Jay after jay, I sheen ’em. Down inna wood’ … he shook off Saxon as though the tall young man had been a child, and sent him sprawling – ‘shee? Like that. Now I’m off to Mishter Wither.’