Nightingale Wood (19 page)

Civilization as we know it is corrupt. It may be doomed; there are plenty of omens. Its foundations are rat-eaten, its towers go up unsteadily into lowering clouds where drone the hidden battleplanes. But it can, and does, supply its young daughters with luxuries at prices they can afford. No woman need be dowdy, or shabbily genteel. While she has a few shillings to spend on clothes, she can buy something pretty and cheerful. This may not be much, but it is something. Tomorrow we die; but at least we danced in silver shoes.

Saxon put his head round the kitchen door and told Cook that he was going home for lunch today. Cook nodded. The three elderly maids at The Eagles, all Chesterbourne women, approved on the whole of the young chauffeur, because he was polite and hardworking and so far they had not been able to find out anything against his character. They felt that he ought not to have been so good-looking, but after all that was hardly his fault, and no doubt as he got older he would get uglier and that would be all right; it was more natural, the maids felt, for everyone to be plain. They were all three plain, and they looked rather like three elderly fat pebbles which have been quietly rolling round in a pocket in the bed of a stream for so many years that all their corners have worn away and they resemble each other.

But despite their virtue and the fact that they never gossiped about their betters in front of him, Saxon was not going to give their six gimlet-eyes a chance to fasten on him when he was feeling bucked and flattered by Miss Tina’s interest, so he went off through the wood, whistling. He would get some bread and cheese and beer at the cross-roads pub.

‘Mornin’, son,’ called the Hermit, waving at him a can – presumably full of Rosie.

Saxon took no notice. He hated the lousy old bastard, always jawing and making an exhibition of himself down at the pub, a dirty, half-mad liar, sponging on fools who ought to know better than to give him anything. How could a chap keep himself respectable when there were people like that hanging round him, who ought to be in prison or the asylum? And he had good reasons for hating to hear himself called ‘son’ by the Hermit.

I wish Mr Spring ’ud turn him out of the wood. He could, if he wanted to. The Council ‘ud listen to him. If the Old Boy (this was Mr Wither) had
his
way, the dirty old devil ’ud have been kicked out long ago.

But as he climbed the opposite hill where the beech-trees began, he started to whistle again, because he was so bucked about Miss Tina. Half-way through the lesson he had given up trying to pretend, for prudence’s sake, that he thought she really wanted to learn driving. She wanted to be with him. He was sure of it. He grinned and sent a shower of brilliant whistling notes up to join the whistles of the birds as he walked vigorously up the hill. That’s one up to me, he thought. He was not flattered because Tina, an individual, liked him (women always liked him, he was used to that); but because she was a lady and the daughter of a comfortably-off father. She was Gentry; not high-up Gentry like Lady Dovewood, of course, nor such smart Gentry as the Springs, but Gentry all right. Educated, nothing to do, coming into a bit of money when the Old Boy hands in his dinner-pail, I expect.

Might be worth my while staying on there for a bit, after all, he thought, grinning as he went into the pub. You never know your luck.

In fact, he had not the vaguest idea as to what luck might come from Miss Tina’s interest in him, but his masculine vanity was so tickled by her attention that he felt on top of the world, like a young rooster bugling away, feathers spread and scarlet comb glowing, in the early morning sunrays.

‘Well—’ said Saxon, lifting his glass. He shifted his elbow to avoid a slop of beer on the bar, and nodded at the barman.

The barman, a realist, nodded back.

Saxon looked in at the cottage before going back to work because there was something he wanted to say to his mother. This new business with Miss Tina made him feel he must stop the way she carried on with old Falger (of whom Saxon refused to think as the Hermit). What was the use of him, Saxon, being taken up by Gentry if his mother was going to disgrace them both by letting that dirty old devil have the run of their place? He had ticked her off more than once about it, and this time he was going to put a stop to the whole business.

‘Mum,’ he said, walking into the sitting-room where she sat sluttishly over a cup of tea and the newspaper with her arms on the table, and going straight to the point, ‘I don’t want you to have old Falger round here. Understand? Never again.’

Mrs Caker looked up in angry surprise, her blue eyes without their glint of laughter.

‘Deary me! And who’re you, givin’ orders ter maye about who I’ll have in the place, I’d like to know! You mind your business, and I’ll mind mine, see?’

‘It’s my business, all right. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is, having a beggar round the place, and I won’t stand for it. The next time he comes up here I’ll kick him out.’

‘You’d better try,’ she jeered, putting her arms behind her head so that her jumper was pulled tightly over her full bosom. ‘He’s a proper match fer you, any day, though he is old enough fer yer grandad.’

‘Well, you mind what I say, that’s all. I mean it. It’s a disgrace.’

‘Proper worked up, aren’t ’ee?’ she said, looking at him curiously. ‘What’s Falger been a-sayin’ ter you? I haven’t seen him up here terdaye, come ter that. And if I do, where’s the harm? It’s company fer maye; it’s lonely up here, day in day out, no one ter talk to or have a bit of fun with.’

‘That’s not all,’ he said, going red, ‘not by a long chalk.’ He was half-way out of the door, looking down at her with mingled embarrassment and disgust.

Mrs Caker burst into a loud laugh.

‘Ah, wait till yer grown up! You don’t know half yet, little boy. Then yer won’t be so down on the old ’uns.’

‘You shut your gab,’ he muttered, the Essex drawl strong in his low angry voice. ‘And mind what I say. If he shows up here he’ll get my boot up his backside, and you can tell him I said so.’

He strode into the wood, dragging off his cap to let the wind cool his forehead. His mother called angrily, staring after him with a red hand shading the sunlight from her eyes:

‘I’ll do as I please. You go to hell!’

When Viola was very happy, which had not happened many times since her father died, she always thought about her childhood and the delightful times he and she had had together, in the three little rooms above the shop. It was as though her present happiness, so rare and so quickly gone, sent her mind back to the years when she had been happy all the time, even when she was asleep.

She was very happy the next morning as the train carried her, past woods covered in freshest green and hedges white with may, to London. She sat in a corner warm with sunlight, a copy of
Home Notes
open unread upon her knee, and watched the green meadows flying past while the business men in the carriage talked about the news in the papers – awful, as usual – their golf, their gardens, and the detective stories they were reading.

She was in a waking dream, staring out of the window without seeing the buttercup-fields floating by, or a sudden silver swirl of moon-daisies on the bank near a tunnel. She was remembering, for no apparent reason, the tattered old volume of Shakespeare’s plays with no cover that Dad used to read to her when she was a little girl. She liked to get hold of the book after he had hurried downstairs again into the shop, and sit in front of the fire looking at the pictures in the book, while Catty cleared away the teathings, with her mouth full of a last radish or a knob of crusty bread.

The book was illustrated with paintings by famous artists of the best-known scenes from the plays. There was a slender Hamlet with fair hair floating on his shoulders, dressed all in black and wearing wrinkly stockings that fascinated the little Viola (whose own socks were so firmly hauled up by Catty). He stood under a cedar-tree with a skull in his hands, while in the dim background whispered a group of his friends, looking sadly at him. There was a gipsy Cleopatra too, with bare chest and a crown made of feathers, holding the little snake to her heart while a black man, waving a mighty fan of palm-leaves, stood behind her couch. And lastly there was the picture which Viola felt was her own special picture, because (so her father said) this was the girl she was named after.

Underneath the picture (she could remember the words, all these years afterwards, and said them over to herself as she sat in the railway-carriage staring out unseeingly at the flying fields) there was some poetry. It said:

… She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud

Feed on her damask cheek.

Viola had never been quite sure what this meant, and later on, when she was at school, the girls always made a joke about it and said
damaged
instead of
damask
, which, of course, made it funny, and you laughed.

But she had liked the picture better than the poetry: and she could remember that, too, so clearly. There was a beautiful young man with a long drooping moustache and a hat with a plume in it, sitting in a chair with a high carved back, and a big dog resting its head lovingly, as though in sympathy, on his knee and gazing up into his face. He looked very sad. Standing in front of him, with her arm raised as though she were saying the piece of poetry under the picture, was the girl, Viola, that our Viola’s father had called her after. She was tall, and dressed prettily as a page in long stockings, full breeches that came far above her knees, a tight-fitting jacket with big buttons, and a jaunty little cap. But what Viola had liked best of all was her hair, cut short like a boy’s and curling prettily all over her head. Viola never tired of looking at those boyish-girlish, gallant curls. They had spelled all romance for her, all adventure, and escape from her own soft floppy mane of hair that would never keep tidy.

Fancy my remembering all that, she thought, impatiently pushing up a soft unmanageable curl. It must be fifteen years ago. And the train slowly drew into Liverpool Street.

Because she did remember it, the whole pattern of her life was changed that day.

Victor Spring, driving home in the evening from Bracing Bay where he had been inspecting the site for the new housing scheme, saw a very pretty girl getting on to the Sible Pelden bus. That was not unusual; there are thousands of very pretty girls in England and some of them lived in Chesterbourne. But this girl was different … that word, that danger-signal Victor had often guffawed over when he heard it used by an infatuated acquaintance. But this girl, she really
was
different. She was taller than most girls and she wore no hat, she was swinging it in one hand while in the other she carried a load of parcels. She was pale, with a pretty pink mouth, and seemed rather sleepy and bewildered as though the traffic in Chesterbourne High Street were too much for her.

He did not notice much what she had on: black, he thought; anyway, she was very well dressed. But what was really striking about her, what made him turn round to stare after the Sible Pelden bus while he slowed the car a little, was her hair. It was ash-pale and cut very short in big soft curls all over her head. The curls rolled and tugged in the breeze, and the very pretty girl tossed them as though she liked the feeling.

That’s a swell bit of goods, thought Victor, accelerating. Ve-e-ery nice, I call that. Now I wonder, would that be local produce?

It would.

CHAPTER XI

There was a tradition about the Infirmary Ball. It was always a roaring success, not only in raising money for the Infirmary (which was perpetually at its last gasp and flopping hysterically on everybody for succour) but in the number of guests, the decorations, band and refreshments. The Ball was under the personal supervision of Lord and Lady Dovewood. Lord Dovewood’s great-grandmother had started the original Infirmary in a disused shed in 1846, helped by a band of devoted ladies brave as buffaloes, who did not care what people said about them; and hence his family was Patron to the present Infirmary. It was Lord Dovewood who saw to the refreshments, and very good they were, for they included dishes made from old family recipes, while Lady Dovewood saw to the decorations which had to be better every year. The young Dovewoods acted as unofficial Masters of the Ceremonies, and saw that the parents did not pick on too leprous a band.

Envious souls had been heard to mutter that there was a sight too much Dovewood about the Infirmary Ball, but there were not many of these. Most people, being warmly natural snobs, enjoyed the feeling (which the Dovewoods managed so well to convey) that, even though they had paid for their tickets, they were the guests of a Lord. They enjoyed mingling with the gentry and noticing what they wore and how they behaved; and as the common herd usually made itself up into parties and arrived like that, few people at the Ball went partnerless or felt out of things.

This year they had proposed to have Ray and His Five Demons for the band, but two days before the Ball an awful event occurred. Ray and His Five Demons betrayed the Infirmary and the Dovewoods by coolly accepting an engagement to play at a much higher fee for a private dance in Stanton. This was felt to be all the baser because Ray was actually one Stanley Burbett, a Chesterbourne boy who had made good, and he knew well how important the Infirmary Ball was to the district and the tradition that it was always a blazing and cloudless success. Many harsh remarks were made about Ray and His Five Demons, and discontented local boys were told that Getting On and making money did not always mean an improvement in the character.

‘Oh, Mr Spring,’ said Lady Dovewood, on the telephone, ‘I do hope I’m not interrupting you …’