A Nightingale in the Sycamore Read online

  A NIGHTINGALE IN THE SYCAMORE

  Jane Beaufort

  Virginia was delighted to inherit Meadow House from her father. But the sundry debts that came along with it were another matter, a rather serious one.

  Then an accident brought the handsome, young pianist-composer, Charles Digby Wickham, into Meadow House and Virginia’s life—and it wasn’t just her financial situation that changed!

  “A living river by the door,

  A nightingale in the sycamore.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  It stood beside the river where it had stood for several centuries, and the fact that it was a golden, sun-drenched afternoon meant nothing at all to its weathered thatch. It was used to golden, sun-drenched afternoons, and it was used to mushroom mornings, when the mist rose over the river, and the water-meadows between it and the reeds where the kingfishers darted like sapphire brooches were blanketed with something that looked like cotton-wool, and would only disappear when the sun’s rays penetrated it.

  It was used to frost, and snow, and bleak and biting winds. It was used to warm flower scents, the lazy droning of bees, and the sweeping voice of the scythe when it severed the long grass in the orchard.

  But none of these things ever seriously affected the Meadow House. Adverse or friendly circumstances passed off it without disturbing any vibrations at the heart and core of it. It just went on being the Meadow House, and dreaming away the three hundred and sixty-five days of a year without being aware, apparently, of their passing.

  Not so, however, Midge, sitting on the low orchard wall, and slowly sucking peppermints. He was so much affected by the recollection of that letter which had swept through the letter-box while they were having breakfast that morning that his sandy brows were drawn together in a frown, and he felt really disturbed.

  He could see the letter now, on the dining-room mantelpiece, where his Auntie Jinny had stuck it after she had read it through twice, and looked while she was reading it as if someone had struck her an unexpected blow from behind.

  Midge only sucked peppermints when he was upset about something. As a rule he preferred bull’s-eyes, or strips of liquorice like boot-laces which were economical because they cost less than bull’s-eyes, and lasted considerably longer. But peppermints—hard, round, white peppermints, purchased in little tubes—he did not like, although he found that they aided thought, and were useful to have by one for an emergency.

  He was quite sure that an emergency had arisen that morning. Auntie Jinny—or Virginia, as she was really called—was not one to panic easily, and after living with her for two years he knew every expression that crossed her face, and every shade and inflection that ever entered her voice. Usually her expression was calm and untroubled—even placid, beneath the level line of her brows that were slightly darker than her hair, and her hair was about two shades darker than her sister Iris’s, which was as near being flax-white as made no difference. But, whereas Iris’s eyes were an unclouded larkspur blue, Aunt Virginia’s were grey and thoughtful, and the merest suggestion of a cloud seemed to hide behind them sometimes when she thought no one—certainly not shrewd, small, brown faced boys who went by the name of Midge—was looking.

  And if Iris’s complexion made most people think of a drift of apple blossom, Aunt Virginia’s recalled those creamy-white butterflies that hover about the roses at the time of high summer.

  Or that was Midge’s, unasked, opinion.

  Midge had long since constituted himself his Aunt Virginia’s most devoted admirer, and everything that affected her affected him acutely. He could see Iris struggling with a puncture in the inner tube of her bicycle without burning to go to her assistance; but if Aunt Virginia asked him to fill a coal bucket he simply leapt to obey her behest. He scrubbed potatoes for her, when he was not at school, and helped make the beds, and even dusted her precious china ornaments in the drawing-room with great thoroughness when he was permitted.

  And when she sat up late doing what she called her “accounts,” he listened to the mounting chimes of the grandfather-clock in the hall, and wished she would go to bed. He carried trays to the people in the orchard when they stopped for tea in response to an inviting sign that had very recently been placed there, as a bait for motorists, and collected the threepenny bits under the saucers afterwards. His money-box was quite heavy when he rattled it nowadays, and he thought he would buy a present for Auntie Virginia when it was really full.

  But the memory of this morning was somehow unpleasantly disturbing. The letter had come through the letter-box with the other letters, and Virginia had read it while she sipped her coffee. Her face, when she started to read, had looked almost hopeful; and then she had actually turned a little pale, had exclaimed “Oh, no!” and dropped the letter as if it was an adder that had turned on her and bitten her.

  “What do you mean by ‘Oh, no!’?” Iris had asked, ready to leave for her School of Art, and doing things to her face with the aid of something she called a flapjack.

  “Nothing,” Virginia had answered, rather dazedly, “nothing... Nothing at all!” she had added quickly, and thrust the letter behind the fattest of the Toby jims on the mantelpiece, and obviously tried hard to forget all about it.

  But her nephew had not forgotten about it. As he sat, slowly masticating his peppermint and watching Bartholomew, the cat, edging his way along the summer-house roof, he fell to considering the matter in all its possible, and least pleasant, aspects. It could, for instance, have been a bill—Aunt Virginia did sometimes receive bills, usually, however, in buff envelopes with Cellophane windows, and this one he had noted particularly had not been a buff envelope. Then she had looked quite cheerful before she opened it. And even if, as she sometimes said, she would sell the house if she got a good enough offer, the mere fact that she had received a good offer would not account for her cheerfulness. It would have been much more likely to make her look deathly miserable, for the very idea of parting with the Meadow House was enough to upset all three of them—even Iris, with her ash-blonde head away up in artistic clouds, and her larskpur eyes so full of dreams of the success that would be hers one day. One day!

  “One day,” Virginia said, “we shall all be rich, and pigs will fly, and Bartholomew will take wings, too, and I shall feed him on choice red mullet which he will absolutely adore, and the hens in the orchard will all lay golden eggs!

  “One day!...”

  As he sat on the orchard wall Midge thought he heard a curious noise away on the ribbon of broad main road. It was a noise not unlike a quiet and orderly explosion, followed once more by silence, lapped by the lazy murmur of the river.

  The voice of the river was as insidious as any siren’s voice where Midge was concerned, and he got up and decided to go and examine the patch in the old canoe, over which he had been labouring the previous day. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and sauntered away across the garden in the direction of the road, and when he reached it, and the cool shade of the Lombardy poplars which bordered it, he followed the shade as far as the first bend to the river. And there, somewhat to his astonishment, he saw a man coming towards him, walking a little erratically—even zig-zagging a little, as if he might be slightly drunk, rather like Ben Cheetham, the postman, on a Saturday night.

  “Hal-lo!...” said the man, when he got within hailing distance. He stood, swaying noticeably on his feet, tall, very well-dressed—a little pansy-ish Midge would have said, if he’d been asked—with a brown face, and browner hair that looked as if it wanted to curl crisply but had never been given the chance, and brown, friendly eyes. “Hallo, old chap! ... I say, I—Is there a house near here?”

  “My Auntie Jinny’s house, yes,” M
idge answered.

  “Your—Auntie—Jinny—?”

  Although there was a strangely vacant look in the man’s eyes, they smiled at Midge.

  “Only a few yards down the lane,” Midge told him. “Then, be a—good fellow, and take me to—your Auntie Jinny, will you—please, old chap?” the man asked, and Midge was suddenly sure he was not drunk, for there was blood on his face, trickling down from a cut above his right eyebrow, and he seemed to be losing a great deal of his brown—he was actually turning a little grey while Midge’s intrigued eyes studied him. “Car turned upside down on the road,” he offered, weakly. “Silly thing to do, but—back there!...” He flung out a vague hand. “And now where’s—Auntie Jinny ...?”

  To Midge’s horror he staggered a little towards him, made a clumsy attempt to catch hold of him by his inadequate shoulder, missed, and then went down like a log in the road. Midge gazed down at him like one too appalled to think. But he did think. He thought: “First the letter this morning!... And now this!...”

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was very quiet in the room, so quiet that a family of house-martins under the eaves could be plainly heard carrying on a conversation. It was a soothing conversation, made up of a soft twittering, and many pauses. As the light died, and the glow in the western sky was replaced by a mystic haze through which the first stars twinkled, the pauses grew longer, the house-martins plainly went to sleep, and an absolute hush settled down over the river as it slipped like a whisper past the house.

  Inside the room there was a smell of beeswaxed furniture and lavender-scented sheets. Virginia sat beside the bed, putting miraculously tiny stitches into a pink nylon nightdress she was making for her sister Iris, and a square of silk over the bedside-lamp made it necessary for her to lean a little towards it.

  The man in the bed had been lying watching her for a few minutes without her being aware of it, and suddenly he addressed her in a husky voice.

  “Hallo,” he said—“hallo, Auntie Jinny!”

  Virginia quickly put down her sewing, and removed the square of silk from the lamp. She looked at him closely in the mellow, palely gold rays.

  “You mustn’t talk,” she said.

  “Mustn’t I?” His expression was restless. He did not really see her, she felt sure—or did he, she wondered? His eyes were uncannily clear, and rather like cairngorm, under their thick black eyelashes. He had a straight rather blunt nose, a good mouth, an excellent chin, but at the moment it was covered with a dark stubbly growth because he had not received a shave for several days.

  He put up a hand and felt his chin, and it seemed to worry him.

  “I want a shave,” he muttered.

  “All in good time,” Virginia murmured soothingly. She placed her own hand on his forehead, and it felt hot and dry to her touch. The crisp ends of his hair brushed against the back of her hand, and felt alive, ·and wiry, and vital, somehow. “Go to sleep again,” she advised him, in her soft, pleasant voice. “It’s late—very late. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “I feel better now,” he answered her, surprisingly—“much better!”

  “Do you? But that still doesn’t mean you must talk.”

  “Why not?” he demanded, a little querulously. He was lying looking at her, and he was trying to get her face into focus, the pale oval of it, the dark shadows where her hair rested on her brow, and then sprang back into tendrils that seemed to be dusted with gold dust. Her eyes were without expression—or, at least, they were simply compassionate, and grave. She had a grave mouth, but it was soft, and pink, like something—something he tried to liken it to... He wished he knew what it was...

  “Auntie Jinny!” he exclaimed.

  She frowned at him almost severely.

  “Go to sleep,” she said.

  “But I don’t like the name of Jinny,” he told her, ignoring her recommendation. “It must have something more to it than that! Jinny doesn’t mean anything—Jenny might! No,” with an exasperated sigh, “I don’t like Jenny, either.”

  She got up and moved away from the light. She came back with a glass in her hand.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked.

  “I’d like to drown myself in a drink!” he replied fervently. It was long and cool, and when he had had it he sank back wearily on to his pillow. “Nectar and ambrosia!” he exclaimed. “When do I have another one?”

  “Not yet,” she answered. “You’ve got to have another sleep first.”

  “Then tell me what your name is?”

  “Virginia.”

  “That’s pleasant,” he observed. “That’s very pleasant!” He closed his eyes as if to dwell upon it. “Virginia,” he murmured, and almost immediately afterwards he fell asleep.

  In the morning the house-martins were busy before even the sun was up, and a lowing of cattle came up from the water-meadows. The river slipped softly and sensuously in and out of the clumps of reeds and willows, and the cotton-wool like vapour rose and drifted towards the garden of the Meadow House, where June was now at its most flamboyant, and the roses unfolding beneath the windows were deep and dark like velvet.

  Virginia had a tiny herb garden, where rosemary, rue, verbena and lavender bordered the paths. The paths were crazy-paved, and overhung by bay trees, and the coral-fruited barberry. Southernwood (lad’s love), bergamot, mary-gold, and the pink and purple mallows all had a sunny corner in that tucked away place. In the very early morning they joined their incense with the incense of the roses, and when Virginia, after only a couple of hours’ sleep, rose and pulled back her curtains and, as was her custom, threw wide her tiny lattice, the air was as exotic as new wine, and laden with moisture from the river.

  Virginia loved the river. She loved the sluggish way it flowed, with barely a ripple on its surface, and the tall, Lombardy poplars lined up like sentinels on its banks. She loved the flat country around her, rising to gentle hills in the distance, and crowned by the glory of Cleverdon Woods. In all her lifetime—and she was only just twenty-six!—she had known no other kind of scenery, or any other setting save this quietly peaceful one; and it was all she wanted—all she asked for.

  “By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.”

  The birds were singing down in the trees by the river, as well as making a valiant attempt to shatter the peace beneath the eaves. By leaning forward a little out of her window, and craning her neck to look upwards, she could see the mother house-martin popping dainty morsels into the mouths of her vociferous young, and then flying away again to look for a second course for them. It was all as simple as that! No worry about unpaid bills, tradesmen’s or otherwise. No worry about the telephone being cut off, or the coalman refusing to deliver the anthracite for the boiler, or money to find for art classes—or new shoes for Midge!

  No worry about anything very much! ...

  A deep, and rather ragged, sigh forced its way up from the depths of her being, and as she leaned there in her old red ripple-cloth dressing-gown that would scarcely survive another visit to the cleaners, she thought of the letter she had received yesterday morning at breakfast from her solicitor. What a bitter disappointment that letter had been! Instead of the only two investments which remained to her, and which had been bequeathed to her with the house when her father died, having increased their value, as she had been led to hope, by an unwise study of newspapers, they had suddenly ceased to have any value at all—or they were not even worth the money that had originally been paid out for them! Mr. Cummings, of the old-established firm of Cummings, Cummings & Cummings, had advised her that she could do nothing about them at the moment. Certainly she had little hope of selling them!...

  And that meant there was only one thing she could do now. She must make up her mind to sell the Meadow House, as Mr. Cummings had been strongly urging her to do for weeks. Before the bottom fell right out of the house-market, and the prices of properties came tumbling down.

  It was the only sensible th
ing to do, as surely, Mr. Cummings insisted, she could see for herself. To try and maintain an old house, even if it had all the charm of antiquity, and the advantages of a well nigh perfect situation, when such things as drains, gutters, overflows, vermin in thatch, and so forth, were always demanding a hand in a pocket, on next-door-to-nothing a year, was the height of absurdity. Indeed, it was quite ridiculous.

  It was no use imagining that a few people coming for teas while the weather remained fine could make any difference, or even the sale of a few jars of homemade pickles and jams from the produce of the orchard. And whole evenings spent addressing envelopes for circulars for a microscopic remuneration were just so much wasted effort. Praiseworthy attempts to keep the ball rolling, but almost as valueless as practising stringent economies—pathetic economies like going without stockings in the summer (or, at least, Virginia did!) and resisting every temptation to buy new clothes for the winter (naturally Iris had to have new clothes, because she was attending the school of art, and in any case she was only nineteen, and so pretty that a few sacrifices were very well worth while if they kept her looking young and happy). Other little attempts at self-denial on Virginia’s part included never by any chance going to a cinema, or wasting money on coffee in her favourite bun-shop in Little Mallow when visiting it to do absolutely essential shopping.

  Mr. Cummings had no sympathy to spare for anyone who strove to keep a roof over their head at the expense of everything else that made life worth living. Now, a tiny flat in one of the towns nearby, a job perhaps in an office, or even behind some attractive counter, and a little money in the bank left over from the sale of the Meadow House, and all debts and everything settled comfortably—now that would be sensible!