Sandlands (11 page)

As he stood he closed his eyes and let his mind trace out the melody as it rose and fell. He knew no other bird which could combine within a single phrase that round, full-throated tone like a thrush or blackbird before soaring up as impossibly high as the trilling of a skylark. But his favourite of all was a low, bubbling warble, a note so pure and liquid clear you felt refreshed to hear it, as if you had actually drunk the spring water the sound resembled, welling fresh from the rock.
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth
. It was a line from an English poem he'd had recited to him that lodged in musical snatches in his mind. The poem was about a nightingale, he knew, and although he didn't completely understand the words or what they had to do with the little bird, their mysterious sound seemed somehow to match the other-worldliness of its song.
Beaded bubbles winking at the brim
... With the late sun bathing his tilted face, Salvatore stood still and drank deep.

 

* * *

 

At the crest of a small rise where the lane swung left, Flavio stopped for a rest. He was more than a little breathless, though he hadn't walked far and the gradient had been slight. He sounded like an old man – and perhaps after all that is what he was, or shortly would be – an old man like his father. Not that Salvatore had lacked for breath, for his lungs had always been strong and it was his mother whose last months had been measured out in snatched and wheezing gasps. With Salvatore it was the liver and stomach that failed him at the end, so that he lay gaunt and sallow on the pillows and was constantly cold, clutching the quilt up high over jutting collarbones and ribs. There was a peculiar intimacy about the care of the old, bringing Flavio physically closer to his parents than he had been since a small child, or even a baby. Physically closer, but not, in the end, emotionally. Perhaps it was the preservation of self-respect which produced, as it seemed to him, with both mother and father in turn, a compensating withdrawal into self, into memory and an interior life beyond the immediate, mundane indignity of spooned soup, bedpans and the sponging of limbs. Maybe as eyesight faded there was a natural retreat into a past which stood preserved in fresher colours. Or perhaps it was simply an effect of the proximity of death. Whatever the reason, Flavio perceived the distancing and respected it, though it frequently left him feeling lonely even before he was finally alone.

It was almost evening now, and the twittering of skylarks which had formed the background soundtrack since he alighted on the single platform at Campsea Ashe, seemed all at once to have ceased. They were like the cicadas in the countryside back home; you only noticed them when they stopped. The silence was suddenly palpable, so that the faint noise of one distant passing engine called attention to itself, like a cough at a funeral. Such a quiet spot. Could he live somewhere this quiet? His father had never mentioned the silence, but maybe the rest of the world back then had been less clamorous.

Then into the stillness came a sound he recognised at once in his stomach and diaphragm – although it took his mind a while to catch up, to register first that it was birdsong, and then that it could only be a nightingale.
Directly
from the throats of angels
, he thought. It was his father, though, and not Nonna, who had told him about the nightingale's habit of returning to the same nest site. That was something Salvatore had found out here in England. All those thousands of kilometres of journeying, and they came back to the same small clump of bushes where they had reared their chicks the summer before, or where they had themselves been fledged. It was beyond the resource of science to understand, his father had said, how it should be so, what genetic patterning or undetected sense enabled these little birds, with their simple, elementary brains, to trace one-eighth of the globe's circumference and find their way back home. A miracle of nature.

Indeed, there was much, it appeared, that his father had learned in England on the subject of the nightingale. There was a poem – a poem in English, seemingly taught to him by the daughter of the house, the young Miss Beck, who had learned it by heart at school.
The self-same song
that found a path
... Old Salvatore could recite phrases from its stanzas even as closer memory grew dim; Flavio's English was rudimentary and unadapted to the language of poetry but his father had repeated the words so many times that some at least had taken a flimsy hold.
The
self-same song that found a path
... But it was no good – the rest of the line was lost.

Might he now in fact be close to the place where his father had stayed? Of course it was simplistic to assume that the presence of a nightingale must indicate the proximity of Nightingale Farm. Perhaps they were a common species in these parts, and they were singing all round the village at every lane corner. And yet something stirred inside him which was more than the growl of a stomach that had had nothing inside it but a plastic-wrapped airport sandwich since his morning espresso. Something told him he was near the spot, that this was the same nightingale, or rather, the great-great-great grandson of the one that Salvatore had heard. How long was one nightingale generation? A year, or two, or three? In seventy years, how many birds had hatched, and fledged, and flown?

The people of the farm, those earlier Becks, what had become of them? Of the older couple – the farmer, Harry, and Marjorie, his wife – and their two surviving children? Salvatore had spoken of one son killed outside Tobruk in '41, but another was away fighting in Singapore and Burma at the time of his billeting with the family and might have come through unscathed, and then there was the younger child, the girl – Eileen, was it, or Irene? – who was fifteen or sixteen and still at school. About her, Flavio's father had been almost entirely silent – except as the source of the nightingale poem. Their ages were not so very far apart. But a man of eighteen, nineteen, who had been to war – he doubtless regarded her as just a
bambina
.

After he left the farm, towards the end of '43 following the signing of the Sicily Armistice, Salvatore had lost touch with his English hosts. Flavio never understood quite why, whether there had been some breach or falling-out between them – though it was an irony if that were so now that they were no longer enemies but allies – or whether their connection was just another casualty of the upheavals of war. Flavio knew only that his father heard no more from the family in Suffolk and that it was a sadness to him.

 

* * *

 

Salvatore stirred himself from the reverie induced by the bird's song. It was growing late and he would be expected. There would be rabbit stew tonight to go with their potatoes; Harry had trapped a brace of them early this morning on the Five-acre, up near the edge of the little beech copse. He'd made a rueful joke of it at breakfast, self-mocking. Even a farmer can't be sure of pellets for his shotgun nowadays, he'd said, with everything commandeered for the Home Guard. Here am I, setting traps for my own rabbits like some skulking poacher, while we save our shot for Hitler. Marjorie had glanced up at that and sent her husband a warning look. We're past all that now, Salvatore had wanted to say. If I'm here then it's your side I'm on, if I'm on a side at all; when it comes to empty stomachs, war's the same for all of us. And maybe she'd caught the echo of his thoughts, because she laid a kindly hand on his shoulder and said, ‘I hope your mum and dad have got a rabbit for the pot tonight as well.' Irene, at the end of the table, said nothing at all, but her smile was like a shaft of sunshine on a foggy day.

She'd be back in from feeding the chickens by now, would have her pinafore on over her school blouse and be helping her mother peel the potatoes for supper. ‘Taters', the old couple called them; it seemed that half the time there were two words to learn in English for every one. They were proud of their lass in their gruff, unspeaking way – a scholarship pupil at sixteen when most girls her age were out in the fields or else in Ipswich, at Turner's on the munitions line – but she still had to pull her weight at home. Maybe, chores done, she'd be curled in the small armchair beside the kitchen range, with her algebra primer and that wrinkle of concentration between her eyebrows that made him want to smooth her forehead as if she were a cat – or perhaps with one of her books of poetry.

From behind him, as he turned into the sandy track which led down to the farmhouse, the nightingale's song still trailed on the breeze.
My heart aches
... Why should a sound so beautiful make you, hearing it, feel sad? But it did: the English poet knew it, and he was right.
...where beauty cannot
keep her lustrous eyes
... In his head the song of the bird merged and melded with Irene's voice, speaking the words of the poem: her soft voice, her soft blonde hair and softer eyelids, half lowered over eyes so liquid dark they made him think of
mirtilli
. ...
or new
love pine at them beyond tomorrow
... He hardly knew what the lines might mean. He only knew that, like the birdsong, they filled him with a nameless longing – for peace, for family, for home in Italy, and for home at Nightingale Farm. Whatever the future might bring, he knew that when he reached the farmhouse door Irene would be there, and that she was beautiful, and he loved her.

 

* * *

 

There had been a picture on his father's bedroom wall, in the last months: a painting executed by his own hand. Its appearance had taken Flavio by surprise, since Salvatore had never picked up a brush in all the time he'd known him. It was pleasing enough in a broad-stroked, naive way, and Flavio wondered why it had not been out on view while his mother was alive. He'd asked his father as much, and received no more than a shrug in reply. Perhaps there had once been words between them. She had laughed at his artistic efforts, perhaps, and his pride had been wounded, and the painting stored away. Towards the end, when he was confined to the bed, Salvatore had gazed at it increasingly often. Flavio had caught him several times staring with tears in his eyes, and had wondered why – though old men could be sentimental and cry for no great reason. The subject matter, at any rate, was no secret: his father had told him it was Nightingale Farm.

Thus it was that now, as he stopped at the top of a sandy track and looked down the gentle incline, he recognised the house at once. There could be no mistaking it: the configuration of trees had shifted slightly, but the big oak was still there to the left of the gate, and the walls were painted the same warm shade of dusky pink. From the central brick chimney, in defiance of the season, there even spiralled a twist of smoke, exactly as in the painting. It was almost as if he knew the place himself; he could almost have been coming home.

His luggage would be at the inn by now; they would be looking out for his arrival. Mrs Beck or Miss Beck, whose letter was in his trouser pocket, was not expecting him before tomorrow. Surely it would be a gross intrusion to arrive unannounced a day early, and at this hour? The English, he had heard, were a conventional people, with particular ideas about good manners. But even as these logical, practical arguments rehearsed themselves inside his head, his feet were turning down the track towards the five-barred gate, familiar from his father's depiction, and approaching the farmhouse door.

The bell was an old brass one: a ship's bell, with a chain attached. He took hold of the metal ring and pulled, setting the bell swinging to emit a clear, resounding clang. A pause, then muffled footsteps; the door swung open and a woman stood before him on the step.

She was about his own age or perhaps a little older, with a wing of smooth hair that must once have been black. The berry eyes that lit on him held curiosity but no surprise.

‘You've come,' she said.

One two, one two. It's not hard, it's not complicated. It's just a case of putting one foot in front of the other.

Starting out is always tough, though. There's the stiffness in my calves, and the way my feet feel heavy, flat-soled as if I'm wearing giant clown shoes:
slap slap, slap slap
. The movement isn't automatic yet, as running ought to be. It feels deliberate, the lifting and placing, having to think about each step.

I think of how it works with engines, how the oil needs to heat before it liquefies, before its levels rise sufficiently to wash over the moving parts. Until then it's metal on metal, grating and jarring, unlubricated. It was Matt who told me, while degreasing chain and sprockets on an old newspaper at the kitchen table.

I feel the unoiled grind inside me, ball in socket, bone on bone; I feel my tendons dry as an unrosined bow, more fit to snap than to give and stretch. But then it comes, the rising oil, the rising sap. I hit my stride. The beat establishes control,
one two, one two
, and it takes me over, drives me. My limbs are pure rhythm. My body working now on instinct, my mind is released for thought.

I've done some of my best thinking when I'm out on a run. It's why I've never been one for running with a radio or iPod – that, and the alien tempo of the music, always slightly out of step with my own measure, with the natural cadence of my stride. How often has running made the gearshift, bumped the circuit, freed the logjam: problems unknotted, conundrums solved? When I'm running I can hatch great plans, receive revelations, crack a mystery, write a poem. Or once I could, but recently... but now... Time to think is a knife that cuts two ways.

One two, one two
. I focus instead on what I see: on the peace outside, instead of the tangle within. This road is beautiful in the early mornings, in any weather, any season. Today the tarmac under my feet has the silver-grey sheen left behind by an overnight frost, and the ice melt falls in heavy droplets from the hedges on either side of the lane, their patter accentuating the surrounding stillness. The air meets my trachea in round, wet mouthfuls, saturated with the flavours of autumn: leaf mould and mushrooms and the woodsmoke of early chimneys. Over the stubbled fields which slope away towards the river and the railway line, a low, damp mist is gathered, huddling in the dips and hollows like sluggish cattle, while, above, a watery sun gilds everything it touches in a chill lemon-white.