Authors: Stella Gibbons
Nightingale Wood (52 page)
‘Houses aren’t very safe just now, ha! ha! Vi, come up and give me a hand, will you? There’s just time—’
She vanished.
Viola passed Polo to Fawcuss and, ignoring the roars of Mr Wither and the whimpers of his wife, ran up the steps. She felt as if this was a nightmare, for she was still dazed from the heavy sleep Madge had roused her from, and she wore only a thin sleeveless nightgown. Her feet were bare and her teeth chattered with cold. Of course, the house
must
catch on fire tonight, when she felt so awful and only wanted to stay asleep as long as possible! Tears overflowed again as she ran, holding up her nightgown, up the smoke-filled staircase.
Madge met her half-way along the undamaged corridor, carrying a load of old blankets.
‘Here …’ dumping them on Viola, ‘I’m going back to get a lot of Father’s shoes, we can all get into those. Is Polo all right?’ coughing.
‘Fine. Hurry up, it’s getting louder.’
For the fire, up till now almost silent, was starting to make a horrifying noise, like the caverns of hell sucking. The glare crept steadily along, masked behind thick, fat, evil-smelling smoke. The old furniture, polished for thirty years with inflammable waxes, burned fiercely. As Viola waited at the stairhead, her eyes pricking with smoke, a sudden fierce wall of heat rushed at her.
‘Madge!’ she shrieked, terrified. ‘Oh, be quick!’
‘I’m coming – hold your horses!’
Her sister-in-law’s heavy body, wrapped in a blanket, charged head down through the smoke, sending a cascade of shoes down the stairs, and they stumbled after them, stopping long enough at the bottom to collect them, then hurried down the steps into the garden.
The women were huddled on the other side of the road, where the wood began, staring up at the now blazing second floor, the flickering red light on their pale faces, but Mr Wither had gone round to the garage to get the car. Shivering, gripping his blanket round himself, his old heart banging, Mr Wither fumbled with the garage door and thought about insurance money.
‘Don’t cry, Mum.’ Madge put her stout arms round Mrs Wither. ‘It might have been a damn sight worse,’ patting her. ‘After all, we’re all alive’ (thankful murmurs, in which references to the Dear Lord could be distinguished, from Fawcuss, Annie and Cook). ‘We might have been burned in our beds if’ (defiantly, bursting with pride) ‘it hadn’t been for Polo!’
But Mrs Wither was not listening.
‘Oh, Madgie – my lovely home! Your father and I were so proud of it … all gone.’
‘No it isn’t, Mum. They’ll manage to save some of it, I expect. Don’t cry, there’s a dear.’
Everyone suddenly felt cold and exhausted. Viola rubbed her smarting eyes, and covered her face with black smears. And suddenly, far off on the Chesterbourne road, sounded the thrilling, clanging bell of the fire-engine.
The party at Grassmere was still going strong at two o’clock. Mrs Spring had not intended that it should be so late, for the excitements of the evening had so worsened her headache that she meant to pack the guests off as early as she decently could, and go to bed: but the guests were not having any. Hetty, exhilarated by the knowledge that her fight was won, had asked if they might have champagne, and that put everybody into a party mood, and there happened to be an especially good programme of dance music that night and they danced to that until late and after London Regional had closed down they fiddled about and hit on a band in Budapest and danced to that, and Mrs Spring, though still unhappy and disturbed about Hetty’s rebellion, and dreading the fusses there were sure to be tomorrow about the broken engagement, surprisingly found herself enjoying the evening about twelve o’clock, and her headache gone. She was really very pleased that dear old Vic was not going to marry that little harridan, and perhaps the next one would not mind giving her a grandchild!
At ten o’clock Victor came rather sulkily into the drawing-room, explaining that he had been working upstairs and was sorry he could not get down before, and drank a good deal of champagne. In his low state it had little effect on his sobriety, but it helped to pass the time and kept him from thinking, and that was something. He danced with the prettiest of the girls, and she made him laugh once or twice, and he stayed on, instead of going upstairs to bed as he had meant to. At one o’clock a lot more delicious and exciting food was discovered laid out in the morning-room, and everybody sat about, with young faces flushed with laughter and exercise, and ate while they insulted one another. Mrs Spring smiled on the scene in a dress sparkling with black sequins, and Victor sat with his arm round the prettiest girl, sharing her champagne. Everyone enjoyed themselves.
But at two o’clock someone said they really must go home and that broke up the party. The boys collected their coats, the girls tied handkerchiefs, fisher-wise, over their carefully cherished curls, and everyone went out to the front of the house where the cars were parked.
In one of those pauses in the ragging and laughing, someone looked up and saw a glare in the sky above the oak wood, and at the same instant, far off, they heard the clang of fire-bells.
‘Must be a fire somewhere.’
‘That? That’s the sleigh bells. Always try out the sleighs round here in the small hours. Didn’t you know there was a sleigh factory—’
‘Sparkling, aren’t you? Look! There – can’t you see? Over there – there it is again! It must be quite near.’
‘It must be at The Eagles,’ exclaimed Mrs Spring, standing on the doorstep in a fur cape and peering up at the sky. ‘Yes – look, Vic, it’s quite bright … there! It must be The Eagles – that’s the only house over there.’
‘I say, how about beetling over?’ suggested one amateur in thrills. But Victor was already running to the garage.
Afterwards he said it was the champagne: then, he only knew that he felt sick. It was not an over-statement; he thought that any instant he would be sick. Of course she’s all right, he thought, climbing into the car, starting up, swerving out of the garage and tearing away up the road past the astonished faces at the gate (‘Hi! wait for baby!’) Of course she’s all right. Making a damn fool of myself … I’ll just see if I can do anything and get back. Perhaps it isn’t there, at all …
The car, zooming round a curve, screeched as it just missed the solid back parts of a fire engine. Everything was lit with a beautiful demoniac rosy glow from the gold and black furnace that had been the house. The flames burned in enormous long golden plumes, with a solemn roaring noise. The road was flooded. Four solid hissing curves of silver water, steady as bridges, sighed their way into the heart of the fire. A little crowd, sooty-faced and staring, stood at the edge of the wood on the other side of the road; there were two or three cars parked there, and Doctor Parsham was bounding about accompanied by Chappy, who was not being much use as all he did was to sniff loudly at people’s bare ankles and frighten them even worse than they were already. But Doctor Parsham was doing his stuff, prescribing for shock, patting people, and offering to put up some of the homeless Withers for the night, a proposal which was most gratefully accepted.
But she was not there.
Victor pushed his way through the little crowd to Mr Wither, who was staring dismally out of the car’s window at the destruction of The Eagles.
‘Where’s Viola?’ demanded Victor.
Mr Wither was so agitated that it did not strike him as at all strange that young Spring should appear from nowhere, demanding where was Viola.
‘Good heavens, isn’t she here?’ cried Mr Wither, falling with fatal ease into a state. ‘She was here a minute ago, I saw her, I’m sure I did, I thought everybody was safe, Emmy, Emmy, here’s Mr Spring can’t find Viola anywhere, have you seen her?’
‘She was over by the path just now, sir,’ volunteered Fawcuss, speaking respectfully from the depths of a very old Church Army blanket with ironing-stains on it. ‘By the wood, sir, I mean,’ and Fawcuss retreated once more into her tent.
Victor hurried off.
But she was not by the path. Was that her, down in the smoky depths of the wood where the rosy flickering light faded into confusing shadows? It might be. He blundered down into the dusk, shouting, ‘Viola – are you there?’ Presently he felt the ground sloping under his feet, caught the red glare in the sky reflected in water among the dark trees, and found that he was where he had parted from her, seven hours – a hundred years – ago.
It was not quite dark. The hollow was full of an indescribable dim light, half from the fire, half from the stars. The smell of smoke, the delicious perfume of young leaves, came in gusts. It was very cold down there, and suddenly – the strangest possible sound at that hour and in that place – a bird sang four or five very loud and beautiful clear notes from somewhere overhead in the dim, faintly reddened boughs. Startled, Victor glanced up, then down again; and there Viola was, sitting on the tree-stump where he had sat earlier in the evening, wrapped in a blanket, her face hidden in her hands.
‘Darling – thank God you’re all right,’ he said, kneeling down beside her and putting his arms round her in the ragged old blanket. ‘Darling,’ he muttered, trying to pull her hands away from her face, ‘I’ve been feeling such a swine. Will you forgive me? I didn’t mean to hurt you – I didn’t, truly. Please, Viola. I’m sorry.’
She resisted, holding her hands against her face in silence.
‘Darling. Viola. Will you marry me? I mean it. Please, Viola, do. I … I love you, as a matter of fact. (Must have all the time, I suppose.) Please, Viola, will you? I don’t want anyone but you. I do love you so much. Will you, Viola?’
Then her hands came away, slowly and cautiously, from her sooty little face. She looked at him, then nodded, twice.
On a Saturday afternoon late that summer, the old church at Sible Pelden is decorated for a wedding. The ceremony is over, and the wedding guests are waiting for the bride and bridegroom to come out of the vestry.
It is a beautiful day, with a blue sky, and brilliant sunlight tempered by a soft wind. The lanes round the church are full of glowing wild roses and the elms looking over its walls are laden with splendid masses of summer leaves. It is difficult to realize that Hugh Phillips has been killed in Waziristan.
The church is full, and (which is very convenient) nearly all the people in the story are there.
There are Mr and Mrs Wither, looking older and more shrunken than they did some months ago; the burning of The Eagles has been a great shock, and they still feel bewildered and forlorn in the furnished house which they have taken in Chesterbourne until their new home, a smaller and more convenient version of The Eagles, shall rise like a phoenix upon the site by the oak wood. Were it not for the fact that Fawcuss, Annie and Cook have followed them to 13, Croftmere Gardens, and are slowly building up a Wither atmosphere there, Mr and Mrs Wither would feel that their old life had been completely destroyed on the night of the fire. But already the furniture (though it is of course not so good as that at The Eagles) is acquiring a well-polished gleam, and Annie has found a dungeon for the Vim under the sink. Mrs Wither has mummified some leaves, ready for the autumn, and the three maids are hard at work on things for the Give What You Like stall. Of course, they find it a nuisance being a bus ride from church, but M’m always has cold supper on Sunday evenings so that they can ride out together to this very church where they now sit, and they are quite getting into the way of it. All three have been given leave to come to the wedding today; 13, Croftmere Gardens is locked up for the afternoon, and there will be high tea instead of an elaborate dinner.
Fawcuss, Annie and Cook are soberly pleased about Mrs Theodore’s good fortune. She is a nice young lady, and they wish her every happiness. Since her engagement to Mr Spring, so rich and respected, the three naturally think of her as a young lady. A year ago they found it difficult to think of her as Mrs Theodore: money certainly does make a difference.
Mrs Wither, looking round the packed church, has a vague feeling that her daughter-in-law has played some kind of a dirty trick. For months she went about so quiet and subdued and apparently contented with her lot: then suddenly burst out into an engagement with Victor Spring, a gorgeous trousseau, and all the pleasure and excitement of a smart wedding with half the county to see! White roses and violas all over the church, a smart, tired woman journalist from London taking the names of guests in the porch, press photographers, a honeymoon in Paris and a flat in town … Mrs Spring feels that all this is a kind of insult to poor Teddy’s memory. Why, Viola looks so young and so happy that she might never have been married before! Mrs Wither thinks that Viola must have been very underhand, very cunning, to have carried on this affair with young Spring under her mother-in-law’s nose without Mrs Wither guessing.
Madge sits between her parents, sturdy and upright in a light coat and skirt that make her look twice her size. She is thinking about Polo, who is waiting for her out in the churchyard, tied to the railings of somebody’s tomb under the eye of Mrs Fisher up the Green Lion. Polo does not need the eye of Mrs Fisher, for he is now so well trained that even Colonel Phillips can find no fault in him, and, as we know, Madge holds Colonel Phillips’s opinion very high indeed. But Mrs Fisher has offered to ‘see no one don’t run off with him’, and Madge, flattered by Mrs Fisher’s obvious admiration for Polo, accepts. Lately, Madge and Colonel Phillips have been talking seriously about going into partnership. The Colonel thinks that Madge’s enthusiasm, common sense and capacity for hard work would be very useful in his kennels, and Madge can think of no career that would give her more satisfaction. A nice, sensible woman, Madge Wither, thinks Colonel Phillips. No nonsense about her. And Madge thinks, I shall see quite a lot of the kid, I expect. Hugh’s kid. Funny that sounds. I suppose they’ll make a soldier of him, too. Best life for a boy. When he’s a lot older and can manage a dog, I might give him Polo, only Polo’ll be pretty ancient by then, of course.
