To hear a nightingale

I was wakened at first light yesterday by a bird call of such piercing sweetness – such a joyful crescendo of rising and falling notes - that I rose at once and rushed out into the garden to see what bird it was that made it. It came from high in the banches of a tall conifer where squirrels nest, so I thought it must be a large bird indeed that would dare to linger there. Its song was loud too – louder by far, than any average garden bird could make. I stood perfectly still to hear it as on it sang, a full five minutes of matchless sound. Before a pair of magpies landed with a squawk nearby, and drove it off.

And did I catch a glimpse of it before it flew away? No I did not. Since even with my glasses on, I’m unable to identify disappearing birds at such a distance. And could it have been a nightingale? I like to think it could, though I’ve never heard one, and can’t say for sure. Nightingales sound rather like blackbirds, people say: the difference is, they sing at night, when other birds are silent. This nameless bird of mine was like no blackbird I have ever heard though, nor any thrush. So I have told myself it must have been a nightingale - having long dreamt that I might hear one before I die.

I’m feeling the need for a little solitude just at present. And had been enjoying several days of it, until Frances came yesterday with her rather extraordinary request. Before that, Bill and I had been staying quietly at home, unwilling for the moment to be involved in neighbourhood activities. Flawless summer days have returned, and we have been spending them in our gardens; finding respite there perhaps, from Rose’s conversations, and Lady Macauley’s secrets - and the nagging little anxieties about Frances herself. Our two little gardens are long and narrow; each more or less a replica of the other, and straggling, low-hedged, for fifty yards or so on either side of the little public path.

Bill’s has been given over mostly to his vegetable plot, where everything flourishes so admirably now that he has lately been able to turn his attention to mine. Here, there are neglected borders to be cleared and re-planted; and the remains of an ancient pergola have given Bill the idea of constructing a flowering, fragrant walk. It was there, beneath the half-constructed pergola, that Frances came upon us unexpectedly at three o'clock yesterday. Bill was tying rustic poles together with willow for the framework, and I struggling with the tangled lengths of rose and jasmine that are to climb its poles and make a flowering canopy above.

“How very industrious you look!” Frances gaily cried. But her demeanour somehow belied her words. There was very little of gaiety about her; she looked vaguely troubled, if anything, and this despite the fact that her hair was arranged in a new and rather becoming way, and that she wore a crisp linen dress and a neat little pair of matching shoes. Frances’s shoes had tended to be rather boatlike in the past, making a kind of flapping sound when she walked. I remembered it now as a friendly sound, and wished that it hadn't gone away.

She seemed happy to linger a while with us in the garden, admiring our efforts. She thought the pergola an enchanting idea - and would have Mr Jessop look out for sturdy climbers of theirs that would assist us in our enterprise. She had clearly come here with a definite idea of some sort however; she fairly seemed to quiver with it, and so I soon found reason to suggest she come up with me to the house, while I prepared a jug of iced lemonade for us all.

What she wants of us is on the face of it perfectly simple and straightforward – yet it took the breath from me momentarily just the same. She wants us to ask David and her to come to tea here one afternoon, in company with half a dozen other invited guests. She thinks it important they should be seen together in public as a couple at last: it would 'seem to put the formal seal of approval on their union’, didn’t I see? And she can think of no happier way of accomplishing it than through the sort of little informal party that might seem to have happened just by chance. She had thought that my nice little sitting room would provide the perfect backdrop – but now that she had seen Bill’s pergola, she wondered if tea beneath the roses wouldn’t perhaps be better still?

She wouldn’t think of imposing on me to provide anything of course – she would have Mrs Meade make sandwiches and cakes. She had a number of small chairs and tables stored in one of her outhouses, besides; they were remnants from the days when her grandmother had used to hold little musical soirees in the garden, and were rather pretty, in the Edwardian style. She would have Mr Jessop fetch them out of storage; he would spruce them up, as she put it, and see that they were delivered here in plenty of time.

It occurred to me that it had evidently been planned ahead in perfect detail, this apparently spontaneous little party of theirs. I saw the mind and hand of David Porteous at work here; and was angered by it, feeling an almost irresistible impulse to protest. I didn't protest of course. Though I did go so far as to suggest that her own garden (for the life of me I couldn’t also call it his!) might provide a more fitting backdrop for the occasion? But this she waved aside in a manner which was, for her, almost peremptory. That was just it, didn’t I see? They might entertain in their own garden every day of the week - they would certainly do so, would hold a great party, when the moment to announce their engagement finally came. But until somebody else had done it for them first, they wouldn’t be seen formally as an acknowledged couple, nor be able to feel that they had been accepted, and 'arrived'.

There seemed to me a deal of sophistry in this view of the situation, and I knew for sure that Frances hadn’t reasoned it out for herself. I wished that Bill had been with us – I had a feeling that he would have known how to parry and deflect. But in presence of Frances alone – of Frances standing there in mute appeal before me; not quite meeting my eyes, but with every ounce of her rather grotesquely duped good faith somehow shining in her own – I confess that I took the line of least resistance. I said that of course I would arrange her little party for her – it was only a question of our deciding between us when, and with whom, and how.

So there it is. I am to arrange a carefully choreographed yet apparently extemporaneous little party – and set the seal of approval upon a union I more and more dislike. Bill exploded later when I told him about it. He’ll be damned if he’ll be there himself, he said! Though I know that when the moment comes, he will.

I heard my unknown bird singing again in the conifer this morning. But there was a note of sadness in its song this time – and I no longer believe it is a nightingale