Green woodpeckers
Good Morning, Midnight (Reginald Hill Edition)The Green woodpeckers in the garden of Moscow House connect Lavinia Maciver and Laurence Waverley’s first meeting with a later moment of grief. Their presence gives Lavinia a reason to return, briefly, to a shared memory: a bird, its nest in an old beech, and the beginning of her friendship with Waverley.
First Meeting and the Beech
When Waverley visits Lavinia at Moscow House, she tells him that the Green woodpeckers are still there. Their return recalls the first time they met: they heard one hammering, and Lavinia was able to lead him to its nest in an old beech. She wonders whether the birds still use the tree, which was already quite rotten ten years earlier and might have blown down. The recollection links the birds to a specific place and to the early history of Lavinia and Waverley’s relationship.
A Memory Amid Bereavement
The exchange takes place after Waverley tells Lavinia that her nephew, Palinurus Maciver Junior, has died by suicide at Moscow House. After the shock of the news, her attention turns to the garden and the birds. She invites Waverley outside to look for the old beech, and he agrees. The remembered nesting place thus offers a small, familiar purpose within a visit otherwise shaped by death and uncertainty.
The Interrupted Outing
The proposed walk does not proceed as planned. Waverley tries the locked back door, but Peter Pascoe asks him to use the front entrance instead; Pascoe wants to prevent the house from becoming a public thoroughfare during the investigation. The scene leaves the birds’ continued use of the old nest uncertain: Lavinia has seen the Green woodpeckers, but neither she nor Waverley gets to check the beech. Their narrative significance lies in that conjunction of presence and uncertainty—the birds are still there, while the place that holds their shared memory may no longer be.
