To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘How do you do, Mrs Christiansen,’ she said.

  ‘I’m fine, Cassie,’ Mary-Jo’s mother replied. ‘How was the journey?’

  ‘Very exciting,’ said Cassie.

  Mary-Jo’s mother smiled back at Cassie then nodded backwards with her head.

  ‘I should hop in and grab a seat, if I were you,’ she advised. ‘Otherwise you might end up running behind.’

  Cassie got in by way of a door, while Mary-Jo and her brother tipped themselves back in through the open windows. Cassie, over-dressed as usual by her grandmother, felt like an old woman in this car full of check-shirted and blue-jeaned free spirits.

  ‘Take off your coat,’ Mary-Jo ordered. ‘You’ll boil.’

  Cassie gratefully removed her coat and rolled her woollen socks down as Mary-Jo’s mother engaged gear and roared out of the station yard at high speed. Everyone fell into each other, screaming with laughter. Cassie righted herself and pushed up the sleeves of her dress, and pulled the ribbons from her hair. Soon she was looking as dishevelled as the rest of the kids in the station wagon.

  ‘How’s Prince?’ Cassie shouted at Mary-Jo over the noise of the engine.

  ‘Great!’ Mary-Jo shouted back. ‘He’s gotten enormous!’

  Cassie swallowed hard. It seemed as if in the excitement her heart had leapt right up into her throat.

  The car then turned right at high speed into a dirt track and headed up through fields of corn. After what seemed to Cassie at least two or maybe three miles, they arrived at Mary-Jo’s house, a large white clapboarded farmhouse, surrounded by barns and outbuildings. A pack of dogs of all shapes and sizes rushed out barking to greet the station wagon, and once again most of the children piled out of the doors and windows long before Mrs Christiansen had stopped. Cassie tried to emulate Mary-Jo by tumbling out of the rolled-down window at the back, but got hopelessly stuck, and ended up having her face washed from top to toe by a wildly friendly longhaired sheepdog.

  ‘That’s Erasmus,’ Mary-Jo explained, helping Cassie extricate herself from the window. ‘He’s mad.’

  Then still at the run, Cassie was taken into the old barn which was used as a summer dormitory for the family children and their friends. The top floor was lined with old double bunks, and the ground floor was a huge play area. Mary-Jo lifted Cassie’s suitcase with her on to her bunk and opened it, to search for something more appropriate for Cassie to wear. They rifled through all the dresses and skirts and jumpers Grandmother had made her pack, but of course, as Cassie knew there wouldn’t be, there were no casual clothes like everyone else was wearing.

  ‘You need a pair of jeans, Cassie,’ Mary-Jo said firmly. ‘These clothes are no good.’

  Mary-Jo ran off with Cassie as always running obediently some way behind her. Mary-Jo stopped in front of a large old closet and pulled open the doors. A pile of riding clothes, jeans, pants and check shirts tumbled out, all old, faded and patched, but washed and cleaned and smelling of the same starch that Delta used back home.

  Mary-Jo selected a pair of faded and patched jeans and held them up against Cassie, then chose a blue check shirt with long sleeves.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘They ought to do you.’

  Cassie looked at the clothes, her eyes shining.

  ‘Can I ride in these?’ she asked.

  ‘You can do what you like in them,’ Mary-Jo replied. ‘You can sleep in ’em if you want to.’

  Cassie hugged the old clothes to her then ran back to the dormitory. She picked up all the clothes Grandmother had made her pack and crammed them back into the suitcase, and then looked desperately for somewhere to hide it.

  ‘Shove it under the bed,’ Mary-Jo suggested. ‘You won’t be needing anything from it.’

  Cassie put the case on the floor, and was just about to kick it under the bunk, when she remembered something. She bent down and took the little box from the side pocket.

  ‘Here,’ she said, offering it to Mary-Jo. ‘This is for you.’

  Then while Mary-Jo carefully opened it, Cassie took off her dress and slipped into the jeans and shirt. Mary-Jo lifted the little china horse out from the tissue paper as if it was a living thing, then looked at Cassie.

  ‘Oh Cassie,’ she sighed. ‘You’re not going to believe it, but it’s just like Prince!’

  Cassie smiled shyly and pulled a belt through the loops on the jeans. Mary-Jo and Cassie didn’t go in much for hugging each other and kissing. It was one of their many unspoken pacts that they would try and behave more like Mary-Jo’s older brothers, who never hugged each other or did anything which could be construed as ‘soppy’. But Cassie could tell from Mary-Jo’s expression how much she loved the little horse. She could tell by the way she stroked the horse’s nose and kissed the top of its china head.

  Then once Cassie was completely changed, into her baggy blue shirt and jeans which were two sizes too big for her, but which were the most exciting clothes she had ever seen, let alone worn, the two girls ran downstairs and out into the late afternoon sunshine.

  As she ran down behind Mary-Jo, to the pastures, Cassie could sense that this was a place where everything just happened naturally, just the way nature was happening all around her. She could sense the freedom, and the happiness, and the feeling that no one was going to call you in the middle of a game and send you somewhere where you didn’t want to go. Here was a place where the days would go past helping with the horses, playing with the foals, paddling and fishing with worms on bent pins in the river that lay to one side of the house, lying chattering and sunbathing on the roof of the old station wagon, and hiding from each other in the branches of the huge trees.

  And here was the place where Prince lived. Cassie stopped running and slowed to a walk the moment she saw him standing grazing by his mother. Mary-Jo called to him and he whickered, then cantered over in curiosity to the fence.

  ‘Come on!’ Mary-Jo called. ‘Come over and stroke him!’

  Cassie walked slowly up to the post and rails, anxious not to frighten the youngster. She put a hand through the fencing and Prince sniffed it. Mary-Jo was right. It was the softest nose she had ever touched.

  ‘Hello, Prince,’ Cassie said to him, her eyes shining brightly. ‘Hello, boy.’

  ‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ sighed Mary-Jo. ‘Isn’t he the most beautiful foal you have ever seen?’

  It wouldn’t have been hard for Cassie to agree because of course she had never ever seen a real live foal before. But she agreed because it was true. Prince was quite beautiful.

  ‘Come into the paddock,’ Mary-Jo said, jumping down off the fence. ‘It’s OK. Prince won’t mind, and neither will Bella his mother.’

  Cassie slipped through the rails and did as Mary-Jo did, plucking a handful of fresh grass and holding it out in front of her. The foal came back to them, lowered his head and blew at the grass held on the girls’ outstretched hands. It scattered up into the air. So they plucked some more, and the same thing happened again. Mary-Jo laughed, her blue eyes crinkling with the joy of it all. Cassie had never seen Mary-Jo laugh like that. She had never seen anyone laugh like that. It was quite different from the sort of laugh girls gave when someone dropped their rosary during Mass.

  Mary-Jo caught Prince by his slip and held him for Cassie to stroke. Cassie ran her hand down the foal’s soft furry neck. The foal struggled against Mary-Jo’s hold and butted Cassie in the stomach. Cassie stroked him again and laughed delightedly.

  ‘He thinks you’ve got milk,’ Mary-Jo said solemnly.

  ‘Well I haven’t, Prince,’ Cassie replied. ‘So there.’

  Mary-Jo released the foal and he stood on his hind legs, waving his forelegs in the air, before running back to his mother’s side. Cassie watched him canter away.

  ‘He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Mary-Jo,’ she told her friend. ‘Nothing bad must ever happen to him.’

  ‘If it did,’ Mary-Jo replied, ‘I’d kill myself.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Cas
sie agreed, and they shook hands on it.

  Then they just stood and watched Prince and Bella until the light started to fade, when they turned for home and walked back to the house side by side in silence, each with a long grass hanging from her mouth.

  Mrs Christiansen was not the cook Mrs Roebuck was, but then she didn’t have to be. The children spent so long out of doors that by the time they came in they’d have eaten the furniture. But what there was there was plenty of, and it was all homegrown. The pan-fried eggs were so buttery and soft that when they were slid on to the crisp french fries they seemed to be as good as anything Cassie had ever eaten at Mrs Roebuck’s. Everyone talked as they ate, and no one was told to take their elbows off the table.

  Cassie looked at all the sunburned faces round the table. It was easy to tell which were Mary-Jo’s brothers, because they all had the same huge blue eyes and freckled noses, and the same serious way of looking at people. The other children were cousins, friends and neighbours’ children. Cassie tried to count how many were seated round the huge table, and had just got to nine when her plate was whisked away and she was given a shiny red apple and a homemade cookie.

  ‘Come on,’ said Frank, the eldest of the brothers. ‘We’re going to play in the barn. You girls can come too.’

  Cassie took her apple and cookie, like everyone else, and like them she jumped backwards off the long school bench upon which they’d been sitting, and ran out of the back door. What freedom, thought Cassie, never having to sit at table longer than the time it took to eat! Not having to ask to get down! And not having to eat things you didn’t like which made you feel sick! Cassie ran deliriously after her new friends, her gang, and joined in the happy shrieking and shouting as they rushed to romp and play in the barn.

  Later Cassie lay in her bunk, too drunk with happiness to think straight. Grandmother with her dark house and her cruel ways seemed as far away as the stars she could see through the skylight in the barn shining above her. Mary-Jo’s face appeared upsidedown from the bunk above her.

  ‘What time do you want to get up tomorrow?’ she asked Cassie.

  ‘Whatever time you think,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Let’s get up at five,’ Mary-Jo suggested. ‘Before everyone else. I’ll set the alarm and put it under my pillow.’

  But they were both so exhausted and they both slept so deeply that they slept through the alarm, and didn’t manage to crawl out of their warm beds until just after six. They were the first up, nevertheless, and as the early morning sun started to climb its way up into the sky, they stood in the fields looking at the awakening world around them. Soon early morning would become another day, and the precise freshness of each drop of dew would have long disappeared. The diamond earrings which hung from each blade of grass would have gone, the dust that was now settled would be swirling and rising angrily in the air, and all the sounds would elide together, making a chorus of the single note of life that the children could feel pulsating quietly around them. Human voices layered between the shouts of children playing, the shouts of the children drowned by the sudden call of horses. The birds would no longer be heard calling their individual songs, some insistent, some joyous, but all would be blended into the orchestra of the day.

  Mary-Jo broke the silence.

  ‘Let’s go and see Prince,’ she said.

  ‘OK,’ Cassie replied. ‘And on the way, you be Monarch, and I’ll be Rainbow.’

  They went on playing Monarch and Rainbow all week, except when Cassie was learning to ride the real Rainbow. With her legs straddled across the broad back of the patient pony, she was led round and round the outdoor school by Mary-Jo, and sometimes, while Mary-Jo was having a jumping lesson, by Mary-Jo’s mother, herself an expert rider.

  Sometimes as she bumped up and down at the trot, clinging in desperation to the pommel of the saddle, it seemed to Cassie that riding a pony was a sight more difficult than pretending to be one. But she stuck at it, sometimes falling off by sliding down the pony’s neck, sometimes being tipped off backwards, and once or twice by being shot straight over Rainbow’s head and through his furry ears.

  At bathtime she would examine her bruises rather proudly. As the days passed, and Cassie grew more confident, so the bruises got smaller and fewer, until at last she was off the leading rein and learning to rise correctly and comfortably to the trot. By the end of the second week Cassie had had her first canter, and so enthralled was she now with riding that she could hardly bear the hours wasted in sleep. By the beginning of the third week, she was riding out of the school, alongside Mary-Jo and her mother. They rode across the farm and down the sides of the huge cornfields, some of which were already being harvested, then back through the woods and down over the hills which rose behind the house.

  One morning when they came back from their ride, they found an injured bird lying in the barn. From the look of it, it had broken its wing. Mary-Jo at once went and fetched the laundry basket which always served as a general hospital for abandoned or injured small animals, and together they laid the bird on a bed of cotton wool. They took it in turns to sit with him, trying to get him to eat the worms they had dug up, or to take warm milk from an eye-dropper. They sat up through the night with him, but the bird refused nourishment and by the morning, when Mary-Jo woke with a start, she found Cassie in tears holding the dead bird in her hands.

  ‘We did everything we could, Cassie,’ Mary-Jo told her. ‘When they’ve broken a wing, they hardly ever live.’

  ‘It’s true, Cassie,’ Mrs Christiansen told Cassie at breakfast. ‘We’ve saved one or two, but they’re the exception rather than the rule. You really couldn’t have done any more.’

  But as they dug the tiny grave, Cassie was still blaming herself, wondering whether or not the milk in the eyedropper had been at the right temperature, and whether trying to give it worms had necessarily been such a good idea. Mary-Jo was busy carefully laying out the dead bird in an old soap box that still smelt of lavender which they then sealed down with sticky tape, and carefully placed in the ground. Cassie picked some flowers and placed them on the grave, while Mary-Jo went inside to fetch two veils.

  ‘Lord, grant this bird eternal rest and let your perpetual light shine upon him,’ Mary-Jo read.

  ‘Amen,’ said Cassie.

  The boys all sat on the fence watching them, as Mary-Jo and Cassie sprinkled earth on the little box before covering it completely over. Mary-Jo put a little cross made from sticks on the grave to mark the spot, then both the girls closed their eyes and said silent prayers for the soul of a sparrow.

  ‘On Saturday,’ Mrs Christiansen announced that evening at supper, ‘there’s going to be a party.’

  All heads turned to her.

  ‘A barn dance,’ she continued, ‘to which you are all most cordially invited. Besides the usual fun and games, of course there’s going to be a fancy-dress competition for you children, with an extra special first prize this year.’

  Later as Cassie and Mary-Jo were getting ready for bed, Mary-Jo explained that they had a big barn dance every year once the main part of the harvest was taken in. Everyone in the neighbourhood came, and it was just the greatest fun in the world. The prize for the fancy-dress competition was always worth winning, thanks to the generosity of Mary-Jo’s father, of whom Cassie had seen very little because he was so busy on the farm. And the rumour was that this year the prize was going to be a pony.

  ‘You don’t know which pony I suppose?’ Cassie asked breathlessly. ‘I mean, I don’t suppose it’s Rainbow?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mary-Jo replied. ‘Least I do, but I’m sworn to secrecy.’

  Cassie lay back on her pillow and thought of winning Rainbow for her own. She had no idea at all what she would do with the pony should she win; she’d probably give it back to Mary-Jo, she decided, and just ride it whenever she came down and stayed. If ever she came down and stayed again. She couldn’t tell Grandmother if she won, that was for certain. Grandmother would probab
ly shoot it.

  She turned in her bunk and stared out of the skylight which she could see by lying on her side. No, if she did win it which wasn’t really at all possible, Cassie suddenly decided that she would sell it and give all the money to Sister Joseph’s charity. She turned back on to the other side. No she wouldn’t, she thought. She couldn’t. She lay on her back. Anyway, she wasn’t going to win it, so what was the point of worrying? But there again, she thought dreamily as she turned once more on her side and started to fall asleep, there again, somebody had to . . .

  The rest of the week was spent in feverish activity getting costumes prepared for the dance. There was tremendous secrecy, because no one wanted anyone else to know what they were going as, although heavy hints were dropped at mealtimes, and barely veiled questions were asked just in case any two people had alighted on the same ideas. Cassie had long decided on her costume. She was going to go as the Straw Man from The Wizard of Oz. It was the only movie she had ever seen in the cinema, and it had taken all her powers of persuasion to get Grandmother to allow her to go with Gina and Maria and Mrs Roebuck on Gina’s last birthday. They had sat through the film twice, and Cassie could still remember the lines of dialogue and the songs as if it was yesterday.

  So with a lot of secret help from Mary-Jo’s father, who, having brought in a good harvest, now had some time to spare, and who had taken a great liking to Mary-Jo’s serious-faced little friend, Cassie made her costume. One thing she knew they wouldn’t be short of on the farm was straw, so she had chosen wisely, and well. Two days before the dance, when she got up very early to work in private on her costume, she saw Mr and Mrs Christiansen hard at work on it themselves, tearing up a more suitable old jacket, and reshaping one of Mr Christiansen’s old hats. Cassie, unseen by them, backed away into the shadows and watched. She saw Mrs Christiansen smile at her husband and whisper something to him. Mr Christiansen smiled back and put the reshaped hat on himself. Then he took Mary-Jo’s mother into his arms and together they danced around the corner of the old barn where Cassie had hidden her costume. Mr Christiansen then stopped dancing and kissed his wife, for, it seemed to Cassie, a very long time. Something, she didn’t understand what, prompted Cassie then to slip out of the small barn and away altogether.