Nightingale Wood (37 page)

‘It’s true that Saxon and I are lovers,’ she said, trying to speak coolly, but trembling as she stared at her sister’s red, disgusted face.

‘Tina!’ cried Mrs Wither, starting forward. ‘It isn’t true … you’re joking … My little girl … my baby …’ trying to put her arms round her, ‘how could you? Oh Tina … a common boy … out of the village …’

Tina shook her off.

‘Well, it’s beastly, that’s all I’ve got to say,’ said Madge loudly, hands in her pockets and her feet apart, her chin stuck out. ‘Just beastliness. Of course, we all know you’re man-mad, but I didn’t think you’d ever go as far as this. You must be off your head … carrying on like some tart in the back streets in Chesterbourne. My own sister … be jolly for me up at the Club, won’t it?’

Mr Wither’s face was a mask of frozen, disbelieving horror, his skin was patchy grey and purple. Twice he tried to say something. Then he sat down, trembling, shaking his head dazedly like an old dog that has been hit.

‘How long has this been going on?’ he almost whispered at last.

‘Six months. I fell in love with him the first week he came here. You see, he’s so beautiful, and in this house,’ Tina’s voice was hard and calm, but what exquisite relief there was in letting these warm words come from her lips; the truth, the lovely truth, bare as Venus! ‘We’re none of us beautiful, and the life we lead isn’t beautiful either. He’s like the God of Spring. No woman could resist that, you know, Father, especially a woman of my age who’s been sexually starved for years—’

‘Dammit, Tina, you needn’t be disgusting,’ cut in Madge.

‘—and as I’ve trained myself to look at the truth in a way that none of you can, I thought it all out and decided it was better to risk having a baby—’

Faint cries and movements from the audience.

‘—by Saxon and have the delight of sleeping with him than never sleep with anyone at all, or with someone old and ugly, like we’re all getting to be in this house, except Viola.’

Viola, kneeling before the fire and staring at her sister-in-law in fascinated horror, jumped at the sound of her name. Was it Tina, saying these awful, shocking things?

‘Oh, Tina,’ sobbed Mrs Wither, ‘you aren’t going to have a – have a—’

‘I don’t know … yet,’ said Tina grimly, and lit a cigarette.

‘Everybody will know,’ muttered Mr Wither, his hands spread on his kneecaps, staring at the floor. ‘Everybody. Good God Almighty – you’ve been brought up decently, given everything you wanted – a good home, pocket money, all this art stuff and writing, free to go anywhere you like – and you go on as though you’d been dragged up – no thought for all we’ve – your mother and I—’

He was choking, he could not talk for his fury and disgust.

‘… a boy I took in out of charity, off the streets practically, whose father drank himself to death, his mother taking in washing – I can’t believe it, I can’t believe that you’re my daughter, you’re like some girl off the streets – talking like that … about sex, like that … and that devil shouting it all over the neighbourhood, so that everyone’ll know you’ve gone wrong with the chauffeur …’ He got up and tramped up and down, shaking his fists over his head ‘… like any bitch—’

‘Father,’ moaned Mrs Wither.

‘—off Piccadilly—’

Tina stood quietly by the mantelpiece, through the storm, staring at him. She felt that she had never seen her father before. The coarse raging words poured from his mouth as though he, too, felt a relief in letting them come. Perhaps I haven’t been the only starved one, she thought.

Her own rage was dying. She had vented her anguish for her wasted youth by saying those warm naked words to her family, and now she felt quieter. She was even sorry that she had been so stagey, letting them think that matters were worse than they were.

Madge had started it, blurting at her like that, looking at her with suspicious sly eyes and
wanting
what people called The Worst to be true. Her family were all raw-minded about sex; their natures all had that one secret, sore place and when it was touched, they winced and ran mad. Only they themselves knew what old longings and crushed miseries her warm naked truths had let out of prison.

But millions of people were like that.

Poor wretched human beings, making their best of a bad job. Now she was calm, and a little sad and ashamed of herself. She said quietly, when her father had choked himself into a silence—

‘I’m sorry, Father. I ought to have told you at once that we’re married.’

‘M
ARRIED
?’ shrieked everybody, looking more horrified than ever.

‘Married? To a chauffeur?’ shouted Mr Wither, making a run at his daughter as though he were going to hit her. ‘It’s a lie, you’re lying.’

‘No, Father. We were married at Stanton in September.’

‘Then
you
must have known about it, you sly little beast.’ Madge whirled on Viola. ‘You were there.’

‘I didn’t – I didn’t know a thing about it,’ stammered Viola. ‘She never told me a word.’

‘You must have guessed, unless you’re a born fool.’

‘No, I didn’t, and I’m not a born fool, either.’

‘Then you’re a liar, too, I expect,’ said Madge contemptuously. ‘Breeding will out. It’s like dogs.’

‘I’m as good as you are, even if I did work in a shop!’ cried Viola hotly.

‘Sh – sh—’ Mrs Wither held out a distracted hand towards them. ‘Tina, is it true?’

‘Of course it’s true,’ impatiently. ‘What would be the point of saying so, if it wasn’t?’

‘Then it’s all right about the—’

‘Oh, I’m not going to have a baby either, if that’s what you mean,’ said Tina crossly, stubbing out her cigarette like an early Noël Coward heroine. ‘I just said that to shock you. You seemed to want shocking, so I supplied shocks.’ She stared moodily into the fire.

‘That settles it,’ said Mr Wither, breathing heavily. ‘You leave this house tonight, and you don’t come back – er – you don’t come back.’

‘What a pity it isn’t snowing.’

‘What?’

‘I said: it’s a pity it isn’t snowing. Oh well …’ She straightened herself, turned, and gave one long curious stare round the drawingroom. If she ever saw it again, she would see it through the eyes of a wife, the wife of a young chauffeur keeping them both on three pounds a week. She herself had about seventy pounds.

‘All right, Father. I’ll go over and collect my husband’ (in spite of fear, and wondering how Saxon would take this upheaval, what satisfaction there was in saying
my husband
! She saw disgust, struggling with some other feeling, on her sister’s face as she said it). ‘Goodbye, Mummy. We’ll go to the Coptic, and I’ll write you from there as soon as we know what we’re going to do. Will you send my clothes on and my books?’

Mrs Wither could only sob. Mr Wither, after staring dazedly round at his womenfolk, lurched out of the room and shut the door. He had gone to his den.

‘Oh, Tina,’ said Viola eagerly, ‘can I help you pack?’

‘It would be more help if you’d look up a train for me.’

‘I’m awfully sorry, Tina,’ apologetically, ‘I can’t make out those time-table things.’

Tina, half-way up the stairs, looked back impatiently.

‘Well, then, ring up the station.’

Fawcuss came slowly out of the door leading to the kitchen stairs, with no expression on her face, waddled across the hall, and began to pong the gong to announce dinner.

Viola went to the telephone and gave the station’s number, looking uneasily at Fawcuss out of the corner of her eye. Did Fawcuss know?

Fawcuss, Annie and Cook knew All … except that Tina was married. They had heard every word that the Hermit had said, and while setting the table for dinner in the dining-room, Annie had gathered the rest from the loud voices in the drawing-room. Though they were three religious women, whose Vicar (a man with a long experience of village life) was always warning his congregation against the evils of gossip, Annie would have been an angel had she not repeated everything that she heard to Fawcuss and Cook when she got downstairs again and they would not have been human had they not listened.

All three were very shocked and truly grieved. Little Miss Tina! whom Annie had known since her pigtail days, to whom Cook had given dough to make dollies when she was a tiny thing, whom Fawcuss had first seen as a pretty child of ten … and Saxon, that nice respectable boy! It didn’t seem hardly possible … only Miss Tina had said so herself … said awful things … that made you quite hot to overhear them. And her poor mother crying so, and Miss Madge sounding so hard and angry (she was a hard one, Miss Madge was) and the Master taking on so … and now Mrs Theodore was phoning about trains.

Surely the Master wasn’t going to turn Miss Tina out on a night like this!

The world seemed coming to an end.

Tina came downstairs in her fur coat, carrying a big suitcase.

‘There’s an eight o’clock, gets in at nine-twenty,’ said Viola. ‘I say, can’t I come with you?’

‘No, thanks awfully. I’m going over to see if I can find Saxon. He’s probably on his way back here; he must know there’s been a frightful row.’

She paused at the front door, which Viola was holding open, and glanced back across the hall. Fawcuss’s solid figure was just disappearing slowly through the door to the basement.

‘Fawcuss. Just a minute,’ called Tina, a shade nervously.

‘Yes, Miss Tina?’

Fawcuss slowly turned and slowly came across the hall, her large pasty face all inquiry, suspicion and grief.

‘I just wanted you to know that Saxon and I are married,’ said Tina steadily. ‘Will you tell the others for me, please? and say goodbye to them? I’m going to London, with Saxon, and I don’t quite know when I shall be back.’

‘Oh yes, miss … Madam, I should say. Well, what a surprise, I’m sure! Good-bye, Madam,’ she took Tina’s outstretched hand and shook it awkwardly, then added, in a sudden emotional rush, ‘I’m so glad for you, Miss Tina, Madam, I should say. I always did say he was a nice respectable boy.’

She slowly retreated again, looking relieved, but also perhaps the least bit disappointed.

‘Good-bye, Vi. Thanks awfully. Write to me sometimes, will you? I’m sorry I had to tell you such a lot of lies at Stanton, but it couldn’t be helped. I don’t know quite what we’re going to do, of course; the first thing is for Saxon to get another job, and as soon as he does, I’ll let Mother know. I expect Father’ll cool down after a bit, but the truth is that I don’t care much what he does, or Mother and Madge either. I know it sounds awful, but I never have liked them much.’

To Viola, who had liked her own father better than anyone she had ever known, it sounded worse than awful.

‘I just want to get away, and start a normal life with Saxon, and never see this hole again,’ Tina went on, staring out into the dark, misty drive. ‘The last two months haven’t been much fun, you know … Well. Good-bye.’

She kissed her hastily, and went quickly down the steps. Viola hurried after her.

‘I say, Tina, are you all right for money? I’ve got seven pounds, if that’s any use?’

‘Oh no, thanks awfully, I’ve got about three myself, and Saxon’ll have a little and I can get some from the bank in Town tomorrow. Good-bye. Run in, you’ll catch cold.’

Viola watched her cross the damp drive by the light from the open door, a small fur-coated figure pulled sideways by the weight of the suitcase. When she saw the beam of Tina’s torch flash into the dark wood, she slowly shut the door.

CHAPTER XXI

Tina went down into the little valley, and the trees closed behind her.

The path was slippery with fog-damp and it was difficult to carry the case, so heavy, in one hand and to poise the torch, so light, steadily in the other. Once or twice she slithered, and only got her balance by leaning against the wet, ridged black bole of an oak. She could see nothing but tree-trunks and slowly writhing mist, but she had known this path all her life, and soon she came to the stream and picked her way across. A fire glowed inside the Hermit’s shack. Surely he doesn’t sleep down here on nights like this, she thought, vaguely.

She began to climb the hill on the other side, staring steadily at the path under the torch-beam, for no landscape is so wildly confusing as a wood filled with mist, even if the ground be familiar to the traveller, and on this side the path was fainter.

She felt frightened and sad. All her anger had gone. She had cast off her family (well, they had cast her off, actually, but it came to the same thing), the house where she had been born, all the wellknown framework of her life, and was going to trust herself to a stranger. That was what Saxon seemed to her as she climbed, drawing the chill, winter-tasting mist into her throat. Their relationship had always been romantic and secret, leading her to compare her husband to young wolves and spring gods, but suddenly these comparisons seemed ridiculous to her, and Saxon just a pleasant, friendly young man whom she took great pleasure in kissing and whom she hoped was going to come up to scratch in the present unpleasant situation.

Her meetings with him since their return from Stanton had also been romantic, taking place in damp autumnal dells and remote teashops on the outskirts of Chesterbourne but both he and she had stopped feeling that they were romantic. It was a confounded nuisance to have to lurk around like someone in an Eberhart thriller when you had the legal right to sit by the fire calling bits to each other out of the books you were reading and sucking toffee.

The feeling between Tina and Saxon, in short, had changed from romantic love to married love.

(It would take too long to argue, and explain, and illustrate the difference. Everybody knows there is one. One love is as worthy of support as the other. It just depends which you prefer.)

The change happened during the holiday at Stanton, and it happened while they were lovers but before they were married. Saxon it was who had first discovered that the natural bond for this new feeling was marriage. He had proposed to Tina and been accepted.

He had wanted to tell Mr Wither at once, for he disliked making love in damp leaves, calling his wife Miss Tina in public, and behaving like a stealthy seducer when he was in fact a respectably married man; but Tina had got, on their return to Sible Pelden, into what used to be known as a State; had dithered weakly, putting off and putting off the day when her family should be told, and even having little quarrels with Saxon about the delay. She had wanted him to get a new job, in London, before telling her father that they were married. She so hated scenes, she hated and dreaded them, and had not wanted the first weeks of her wifehood spoilt by a hideous row with Mr Wither. She had, in fact, been nervous, pettish and thoroughly foolish about the affair. She now saw this plainly, and told herself that she was glad the bomb had burst, the scene was over, and she and Saxon free to take up the burdens and dignity of the married state.