It Was the Nightingale (13 page)

“I—I must ask her——”

“In your case, it’s morbid for a man not to want to put the girl he loves, whom he wants to share his life, in the family way. Perhaps she requires an operation?”

Arthur didn’t like this turn of the talk. “By the way, Phillip, Aunt Hetty said that Doris had offered to adopt your son.”

“Oh, I can’t think about it! My brain is a pulp.”

“Before we leave the subject, I think I ought to tell you that I have asked Gladys if she would agree to adopt a child.”

So that was it! Nobody was going to adopt Billy while he was alive!

“What did she reply?”

“She was against it, I fear. She said that the baby might come of bad stock and turn out to be a criminal, so she couldn’t risk it. So I thought of asking her, if it is all the same to you, and Doris doesn’t want to adopt your son, if she would consider Billy. After all, your son is my cousin, I suppose.”

*

After a good dinner of roast mutton, with baked potatoes and braised onions, Phillip felt glad to be with his cousins in the sitting-room, the gramophone going and Arthur looking over records. Topsy and Mae wore their glad rags, as the term still prevailed
in the suburbs, having arrived there some years after the boy-and-girl dances in Mayfair during the war.

Topsy, Arthur’s younger sister, was sixteen years of age and still at school. She was tall and graceful, taking after her mother, and wanted to be a dress designer. She wore clothes, when not at school, which she made for herself with the help of Miss Jones the housekeeper.

During the dancing the front door bell rang. Topsy peeped round the door when Mae went to open it. She looked back and said while screwing up her nose, “It’s Herbert! I bet he said he wasn’t coming, just to be different!”

Herbert Hukin, dressed in his Sunday best, with tall linen collar in place of his usual (economy) washable celluloid affair, came into the room. After shaking hands all round he turned to Phillip and said, “So you’ve returned from France. What was it like?”

“Warm in places, with a little rain.”

Herbert stared critically at Topsy’s dress. It fitted close to her figure, and she wore it with a languid manner, in imitation of an imagined mannequin. Phillip liked Topsy; she had fine even white teeth, like her mother’s. At the age of twelve Topsy had asked the dentist to take out her bicuspid teeth, saying she wanted her mouth to look decent when she smiled. Now at sixteen they did look decent; and she often smiled. When Arthur smiled it looked like a grin, for his mouth had retained the crowded front teeth nature had given him to replace those whose roots had dissolved with childhood.

“Rather near the bone, isn’t it, that dress?” said Herbert, looking Topsy over.

“What bone?” enquired Topsy, with a smile.

“You know very well what I mean.”

“Herbert’s private bone, perhaps?” suggested Phillip.

“What d’you mean?” demanded Herbert.

“Well, people talk about having a bone of contention, don’t they?”

Phillip wondered how he could make a character like Herbert, in a book, sympathetic. He must have a good side: where or what was it? Was it in admiration of his father that he wore that tallish stiff starched collar and trousers baggy at the knees? How far could unawareness of the feelings of others be related to a strict chapel upbringing? How far was stupidity lack of experience?

Herbert, according to Arthur, had, out of curiosity, bought a copy of his ‘Pauline’ novel the year before. Herbert had paid five shillings for it, having got 33
⅓
per cent off retail price by buying it through the trade, being in his father’s printing business. Herbert, having looked through it for what he called ‘hot’ scenes, had pronounced the book to be decidedly immoral.

Herbert’s face was large and square, and his body, as Phillip had observed when the three of them had gone swimming together at the public baths, was entirely white, with flabby muscles; a body altogether too fleshy for a man of thirty. Phillip had not actually disliked Herbert until Herbert had told a story about his cleverness in removing several bottles of whisky from the officers’ mess-cart when he had been marching directly behind it in column of route somewhere in Salonica during the war. Herbert had stayed in the ranks, he explained, because he ‘had refused a commission’; who had offered Herbert one he had not said. And in telling his story of appropriating the property of those who had been commissioned, Herbert had expected his listeners to share in the self-approval of his cunning. Poor Mae, thought Phillip: no wonder the young girl was already hiding her real self under camouflage as Mae.

“Come on, let’s have a fox-trot,” said Herbert, trying to pull his
fiancée
off the sofa by one arm. “Put on
Yes,
We
Have
No
Bananas.
I like that song.”

“Don’t pull, you’re hurting my arm!” cried Mae.

“Well, come on when you’re asked!”

A slow dance of sorts then proceeded round the mahogany table, Herbert pushing Mae before him.

“Aren’t you dancing?” he asked Phillip, who was lounging on the sofa.

“Are you?”

The record of
Yes,
We
Have
No
Bananas
ran down with a groan.

“Wind it up, Topsy, let’s have it again,” said Herbert.

“Wind it up yourself,” replied Topsy. She gave Phillip a wide smile of white and splendid teeth and threw herself on the sofa beside him and wound her arms round his neck. He kissed her soft lips; Topsy was a darling.

May looked at him with Mae’s sorrowful grey eyes. Phillip wondered how Herbert kissed her: probably he gave her an insensitive he-man kiss, intense and false as in the films, bending her
head back until her neck hurt, while telling himself it was the stuff to give them.

“What’s Paris like?” asked Mae, leaning against the edge of the table. “I want to go to Paris,” she sighed.

“What for?” asked Herbert.

“Oh, I just do, that’s all!”

“What’s wrong with London?”

“Oh—London!” exclaimed Mae, as though rehearsing on a stage. “It’s a place devoted to Business—and inhabited by people with cramped souls—all hurrying to get more business, and then hurrying to get away from business—with no thoughts of poetry, or beauty, or anything but—money.”

“Ever thought where you’d be if it wasn’t for Business?” demanded Herbert. “Ever thought of that?” He looked at Phillip and repeated, “What’s wrong with London?”

“There are dirty, dreary bits of paper everywhere,” said Phillip, imitating Mae’s dreamy tone. “There are hard pavements. Orange and banana skins lie all over the place. Whereas Paris is a place of light and gaiety—art and beauty flourish there——”

“I expect it’s no better than London, as regards the streets, if the truth be known!”

“Except that there are naked women on the stage,” said Phillip.

“Oo, I’d like to be one!” cried Topsy.

Arthur grinned with full display of canines.

“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” Herbert asked Phillip.

“Oh no, I haven’t a sense of humour.”

“I can well believe that!”

“Darling cousin of mine,” said Topsy. “Can you drink cocoa, or would you prefer tea? Or both? Just say the word, it’s Liberty Hall. Come closer, darling cousin Phil, and tell me about Paris. Did you see any lovely clothes?”

Herbert led Mae out of the room.

“I say, I hope I haven’t driven him away!” said Phillip, with mock concern.

“Not more than usual,” grinned Arthur.

“They’ve gone down to the summerhouse in the garden,” said Topsy.

“That must be where my father used to visit my mother secretly, over thirty years ago! Topsy, don’t you ever marry until you find a young man who is
fun
to be with, in ordinary circumstances!”

He held her in his arms, imagining that she was Barley: and then thinking that she had her own sweetness and warmth and gentleness. She was Topsy, she had replaced for the moment the image of Barley. He felt that he loved Topsy, without desire, without longing; content to be with her, to share the moment with her, without demands, but to
be
with her.

“I wonder what Herbert would think if he saw you two now,” said Arthur.

“Anything but the truth.”

“They’re going to be married next year, he’s just insured his life for a thousand pounds. His father has promised him a directorship after two years. I’ve just given him an intro to the Cremation Society——”

Phillip laughed so much that Topsy said he was shaking her to a jelly.

“Seriously, Phillip, it’s the thing of the future. You become a shareholder as well as a beneficiary by paying an annual subscription. I am an agent for the Society, which is a non-profit-making concern. It’s only a guinea a year. What’s the joke?”

“Arthur, you
awful
thing!” cried Topsy. “Fancy talking like that to Phil, at this time!”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, darling,” said Phillip, stroking her hair. “It’s Business. Everything is Business. I met Ronald Harsnop at the Parnassus Club; he dresses his heroes in Thatch’s hats, Bonedry’s raincoats, and Bashem’s boots, in exchange for those goods in real life. Perhaps he’ll get on the free list if he mentions Arthur’s Crematorium in his next book.”

Arthur thought this funny, and laughed loudly. “Seriously, Phillip, I can get you anything you want at a discount of five, ten, or even twelve-and-a-half per cent, through a customer of the firm who is a commission agent. If ever you want a new motor-bike, let me know. You don’t want to sell your Norton, I suppose? I wouldn’t mind making you an offer, if you did.”

“Oh, I couldn’t sell my beautiful ’bus, Arthur!”

“You have such soft lips, darling,” whispered Topsy, just before her mother came into the room.

*

Mrs. Joseph Turney was a homoeopathic invalid. She lived out of jars and packets, the contents of which were eaten with vegetables. She was a beautiful woman with a serene face, who sat
in her own room most of the day and seldom came out for meals. Miss Jones, an elderly lady housekeeper-cook looked after the needs of the household, and since both Mae and Topsy helped her, because they liked her, it was altogether a happy home to be in. Before living there Phillip had thought of his Uncle Joe as a bit of a nitwit; now he realised that there was more to a man than brains. Uncle Joe was kind. He was narrow, but not intolerant.

“I saw your mother today,” he said. “She hopes you will go and see her soon, and wants you to stay there.”

*

During the day, when he was alone with his mother, Phillip felt a light-hearted freedom about the house; they had the place to themselves. Doris still lived on the outskirts of London in what was once an Essex market town, but now rapidly becoming a London suburb; Elizabeth shared a flat with her friend Nina at Sydenham. Doris was still forbidden the house by Richard, for eloping with ‘Mr. Willoughby’; so was Elizabeth, for what he considered to be her ill manners toward himself as head of the family.

Both girls were Hetty’s constant concern. Doris was not happy with her husband, although she had at last yielded to the marriage consummation, with the result that a baby was expected in August. Hetty had hoped its coming would draw Doris and Bob closer; she still hoped for such a state, despite her experience; her dream was of Billy and the new little one growing up together, and Phillip somehow content in the background with his writing.

In addition to the actual worries about her children and grandchild, Hetty suffered anxiety on account of Elizabeth’s health. The doctor had, more than once, stressed the point that her only chance of growing out of her liability to fits was to start her own life away from home, and—this was most important, he said—never seeing her father.

But how would Elizabeth be able to manage without her mother? There were Elizabeth’s chronic demands for money to pay her dress bills. The girl lived to be prettily dressed, and in the latest styles as they came into suburban shops a year or so after they had ceased to be fashionable in the best shops of the West End. When, in the course of time, a fashion got to the factory girls, Elizabeth became obsessed with the desire for an entirely new rig-out. At the moment it was Russian boots. Only that evening there had been a crisis.

“Mother, I
must
have a pair! You must lend me the money! All the other girls at the office are wearing them! Oh you
are
unkind! You are
horrible
sometimes! You know very well that my salary isn’t enough to keep me properly!”

“Very well, dear, but this is the
very
last time!”

It was always the
very
last time: but it was better than an ‘attack’. Having got the money, Elizabeth hurried away before her awful Father returned. She was down in the High Street before the shops shut, to buy the kind of boots Margot Asquith, whose photographs were constantly in the papers, had been the first to wear, eighteen months before.

Hetty was happy with Phillip. Sometimes they took the morning train to Reynard’s Common, and walked over the heath where, in Edwardian days, Hetty had taken the girls, to be joined by Richard and Phillip who had bicycled there. Phillip did not care to go by ’bus, for all around Cutler’s Pond was becoming a vast new suburb, pressing upon his spirit as streets and houses pressed upon once-green fields and little cattle-drinking ponds, each with its pair of moorhens and small roach which, in early boyhood, had made part of his life. Devon scenes had superseded those of north-west Kent, now a dark patch on the map; but places, once loved, that have disappeared are as friends who have died, he said, quoting a phrase out of cousin Willie’s books by Richard Jefferies.

“‘Faces fade as flowers, and there is no consolation’. Honestly, all religion apart, is there any consolation? Beyond feeling that the dead are steadfast?”

“We must live for others, dear. For our children, especially.” Phillip and his ‘little son’ were seldom out of her thoughts.

“I do try to, Mother, only——”

“I know you do, dear. You are a good boy, you always were, really——”