To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I’d say that made it one match all,’ she grinned. ‘Wouldn’t you, Paddy?’

  On the day of her sixteenth birthday, Cassie arrived back unannounced in Westboro Falls. When her grandmother discovered what had happened, she locked the front door, and taking a heavy walking stick from the stand, started to beat Cassie. She beat her on the back, and round the head, and on her arms as Cassie tried to protect her head. Then she beat her on the backs of her legs as Cassie ran bruised and bleeding and half-conscious up to her bedroom, and on her backside. She chased her up the stairs and along the landing, still raining blows on whatever part of Cassie’s body she could, until Cassie reached the sanctuary of her bedroom and slammed the door behind her, leaning on it so that her grandmother couldn’t get in. Finding the door shut against her, Grandmother simply turned the key which for Cassie’s misfortune was still on the outside, and locked Cassie in.

  At that moment Cassie didn’t care. She was just supremely grateful to have escaped her grandmother and to be free of the vicious blows which she had landed on her. She fell on to her bed, and lay there holding the bedposts tight with her bruised and bleeding hands, with her swollen face buried deep in her pillows.

  Grandmother unlocked Cassie’s door at six o’clock the following morning, after Cassie had been hammering on it for the best part of an hour. She stood outside on the landing, holding the heavy walking stick, while Cassie rushed past her to the bathroom. When Cassie came back out of the bathroom, a good twenty minutes later, she saw through her one open eye her grandmother standing in front of her holding up Cassie’s bed sheets. Cassie watched her, as Grandmother threw them on the floor by Cassie’s feet.

  ‘I want those washed at once,’ she told Cassie. ‘I want every mark removed from them, and by that I mean every mark.’

  ‘What do you think I was hammering at the door for?’ Cassie cried through her swollen and bruised lips. ‘I didn’t have any towels! Everything’s still in my suitcase down in the hall!’

  ‘You should have thought of that,’ her grandmother replied. ‘You should have known when you were due.’

  Her grandmother walked off back to her own bedroom, leaving Cassie to pick up the sheets and go down to the utility room, where she washed and scrubbed them by hand, in a pointless effort to shift the stubborn bloodstains. She now ached all over, inside and out, but even the worst of the bruises her grandmother had inflicted on her didn’t hurt as much as the terrible dragging pain in her stomach. She tried once again to get the sheets clean, but with just soap and water it seemed a task of Herculean dimensions. Then the cramps in her stomach increased in their ferocity, and made her gasp out loud. Clutching at her stomach, and with tears coursing down her cheeks, Cassie slowly slid to the cold stone floor and surrendered to her emotions.

  She must have fallen asleep, because when she reopened her eyes the sun was higher in the sky and there were signs of early life in the street outside. She remained on the floor thinking for a while, and then decided what to do. There was only one person to whom she could turn, only one person who loved her enough to give her help.

  Cassie stood in the hall for a minute, to make sure her grandmother’s bedroom door was still tight shut. Grandmother had taken lately to sleeping in longer than usual, so since it was only just after seven a.m., not even Delta was up yet and going about her duties. So Cassie went back up to her room and threw some old clothes on. Then taking a scarf from her cupboard, in order to hide as many of the bruises on her face as possible, collected her still soaking laundry from downstairs before stealing out of the house and across the road to Mrs Roebuck’s.

  Mrs Roebuck had long been up and was already out attending to her plants. She saw Cassie crossing the road and pushing open her white-painted gate.

  ‘Why hello, Cassie!’ she cried, slowly straightening up. ‘Mr O’Reilly said you were back from your trip! I thought from what your grandmother told me you were staying till the end of the week.’

  Cassie muttered something thickly in return, but Mrs Roebuck didn’t even have to see her face or hear what she said to know that something was seriously wrong. The pain and anguish seemed to radiate from Cassie. Mrs Roebuck put down her gardening things and held open the porch door.

  ‘Come on, child,’ she said, ‘you’d best come inside at once.’

  Cassie stood for a moment, smelling the heady fragrance of the herbs in Mrs Roebuck’s garden, then she followed Mrs Roebuck in through her immaculate hall, and into the ever welcoming kitchen.

  ‘I was wondering if you could do some washing for me,’ Cassie said, standing in the shadow with her head well down.

  Mrs Roebuck leant across and put her hand under Cassie’s chin, to tilt the girl’s face up to her. Cassie had done her best to conceal all the other cuts and bruises by putting on a long-sleeved cardigan, her longest skirt and some thick stockings. But there was little she could do about the abrasions on her face. Mrs Roebuck looked at them in silence, then sat Cassie down at the table.

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it, Cassie?’ she asked as calmly as she could, ‘while I make us some coffee?’

  ‘I had a riding accident,’ Cassie replied, her answer well rehearsed. ‘It was my own fault. I was showing off on a horse which was far too good for me, and got hit in the face by a branch.’

  Mrs Roebuck put on the kettle and for a while said nothing. It was perfectly possible of course that Cassie could have suffered a riding accident. But then why should that have brought her home early?

  ‘When did this accident happen, Cassie?’ Mrs Roebuck enquired.

  ‘The day before yesterday,’ Cassie answered. ‘On our last ride.’

  ‘You hurt your hands as well, I see,’ Mrs Roebuck remarked, as she put the coffee cups out on the table.

  ‘I guess I did that when I fell,’ Cassie told her. ‘I mean I really took a fall.’

  Cassie tried to smile at Mrs Roebuck, but her lips were too swollen and the side of her face too deeply bruised.

  ‘Well they do say, don’t they,’ said Mrs Roebuck, ‘that you’re no horseman till you fall off. Least that’s what they told the folks round us when we were kids.’

  Cassie sat at the table and drank her coffee, relieved that Mrs Roebuck had accepted her story.

  ‘Now what’s this laundry you want me to do for you?’ Mrs Roebuck asked as she sat down opposite Cassie, putting a plate of home-made cookies in the middle of the table. ‘That Delta gone on strike again or something?’

  Cassie looked down, avoiding Mrs Roebuck’s shrewd eyes.

  ‘I had an accident, Mrs Roebuck,’ she confessed. ‘And I’m afraid Grandmother’s a bit angry. I was early, you see. And – well. I guess I should have remembered I was nearly due.’

  Mrs Roebuck clicked her tongue and shook her head. But the remonstration was aimed not at Cassie but at her grandmother. Mrs Roebuck stood up, took the bundle of laundry which also included some of Cassie’s underthings, and disappeared to her utility room to put them all in to soak. Then she returned with a bottle of aspirin which she put in front of Cassie.

  ‘Take two of those at once,’ she ordered, filling a glass of water from the cold tap. ‘Then I’ll tend to those cuts and bruises of yours.’

  Mrs Roebuck peered closely at Cassie’s face.

  ‘Most odd, I’d say, that no one put anything on them,’ she added. ‘And this cut by the side of your mouth – why, it’s still bleeding.

  Cassie remained silent, unable to think of a plausible excuse why her face still should be bleeding.

  ‘Where else are you hurt?’ Mrs Roebuck asked.

  Cassie shrugged in reply.

  ‘I asked you where else you were hurt, Cassie McGann.’

  Cassie looked up at Mrs Roebuck, at the woman who loved her, at the woman she wished could be her mother, and her eyes filled with tears an she lowered her head on to the table in front of her.

  After Mrs Roebuck had bathed her, during which time she made no remark about the multi
ple cuts and contusions to Cassie’s body, and dressed and treated every mark, bruise and cut, she wrapped her up in a thick woollen dressing gown and sat the girl, who was obviously still in great shock, in front of her famous stove. Cassie sat drinking some hot milk and honey. There was nowhere she was so happy as she was in Mrs Roebuck’s kitchen. Not even when she was staying on Mary-Jo’s farm in Locksfield did Cassie feel this sense of tremendous warmth and peace. At the moment there were jars of bottled fruits waiting above the stove to be labelled, and beside them, hanging to dry, bunches of herbs for use in the winter. Cassie was never so aware of the seasons as she was in this kitchen. Whatever was happening outside was always reflected within this sanctum. And now because it was almost the fall, the rusts and fading greens of the landscape were present all round the room, colours once radiant but now fading, waiting to be preserved for the winter in jars or pots or muslin bags, making the approach of winter no less cheerful than the first buds of spring.

  Mrs Roebuck came back into the kitchen from whatever she had been doing and ordered Cassie to bed.

  ‘I have to go home, Mrs Roebuck,’ Cassie protested. ‘Grandmother will soon be up and wondering where I am.’

  ‘Let her wonder,’ Mrs Roebuck answered tartly. ‘I’ve been doing a fair bit of wondering myself.’

  She led Cassie upstairs and tucked her into Maria’s bed.

  ‘You’re to stay there and sleep, do you hear?’ she ordered Cassie. ‘And leave any worrying and wondering to me.’

  Then she tucked Cassie in, kissed her on the forehead, and went out, shutting the door.

  Cassie lay quite still between the cool clean sheets, and thought she must be in heaven. The aspirin had eased the pain, particularly in her stomach, and soon she drifted off to sleep. She didn’t hear Grandmother arrive unannounced and uninvited and order her return. And she missed Mrs Roebuck taking her through to the back porch and warning Grandmother that if she didn’t let the child sleep for as long as she needed, and stay with her until she was better, she would call the doctor here to her house at once to hear his explanation of the cuts and bruises she had discovered all over the young girl’s body.

  She missed her grandmother’s explanation too, of how they’d been caused by Cassie falling downstairs, and most of all she missed her grandmother’s indignity of being asked to leave Mrs Roebuck’s house this instant. She was too fast asleep, and too busy dreaming of Dex riding her first racehorse to a ten-length victory to hear her grandmother being chivvied out of the house, and the door slammed angrily behind her.

  She did stir awake once, near midday, when Mrs Roebuck looked in on her to make sure she was all right, and to give her some more aspirin. She sat up to take them, then as she lay back on her pillows, Cassie’s heart suddenly grew warm, as she realised that kind people could never finally be defeated. Not long after that, she fell again into another deep sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Pentland, New Hampshire

  1958

  Mary-Jo’s hair was held back by flowers, a thick garland which crowned her beautiful face. The flowers held in place the veil which covered her long lustrous, dark hair.

  Cassie walked up the aisle behind her best friend, chosen by her especially to hold her veil. Everyone’s head in the chapel turned as Mary-Jo walked past, and it seemed to Cassie that she heard one or two of the congregation actually gasp at the beauty of the bride.

  Her father stood waiting for her, to give her away. Cassie could see how rigid his back was, as he stared down at the floor in front of him. She wondered how her own father would have felt if he had been here, and it had been Cassie, not Mary-Jo. Mrs Christiansen turned and looked at her beautiful daughter when she stopped in front of the altar and smiled. Mary-Jo turned to her mother and smiled back, radiantly, then gazed to the front and lifted her eyes high to the tabernacle.

  The organ stopped and Cassie made a small adjustment to the bride’s veil. Mary-Jo’s wedding dress was quite the most beautiful Cassie had ever seen. Her father had bought the material for it ten years before, when he had been out in Siam. It had lain at home in a bottom drawer, wrapped in paper and moth balls, waiting for the day his dearly beloved daughter was to be married.

  And now this day had arrived. But still Mr Christiansen couldn’t bring himself to look up from the ground and at the vision which was Mary-Jo. Cassie glanced at him, and felt a terrible pity for him, because she knew how hurt and bewildered he was at Mary-Jo’s decision to become a nun.

  ‘It’s when they cut the hair off,’ Maria said afterwards. ‘That’s the bit I hate.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Rosella. ‘Mary-Jo had such gorgeous hair, and now it’ll never ever be seen again.’

  ‘It was only hair,’ Cassie said, then found it quite impossible to believe what she had just heard herself say.

  She couldn’t get out of her mind’s eye the image of Mary-Jo standing in the simple white shift; of the nuns whisking away her beautiful wedding dress and veil; of Mary-Jo prostrate on the floor in the sign of the Cross, in front of the altar; of the sudden sound of Mr Christiansen’s sobs; or the image of him being comforted by Mary-Jo’s mother, who stood behind him pale and silent. Why Mary-Jo? How did she know God had wanted her? How did anyone know? Did He appear to you one night and tell you that you were chosen? Or was it just some sort of internal revelation? And why, most of all, hadn’t Mary-Jo told her?

  Cassie had been staying with her only three months before, just after Christmas, and there hadn’t been a word said about it. There’d been the usual tomfoolery, and there’d been snowball fights, and skating parties, but there hadn’t been one word from any of them, least of all her best friend Mary-Jo, about the discovery of her vocation. Maybe, when Cassie came to think of it, maybe Mary-Jo had spent more time on her knees each night before they went to bed, but then she’d always been a very devout girl, so there didn’t seem anything unusual in that. And then Cassie remembered waking briefly in the middle of one bitterly cold night, and imagining she heard the sound of someone crying. They all slept in the house in the winter, as the old barn was far too cold. Cassie had pulled her blankets up around her to block out the sound of this distant sobbing she had heard. Then being only young, and tired from the exertions of the day, she had fallen back to sleep and forgotten all about it.

  But now she knew who had been crying that night. When she heard those terrible sobs in the chapel, it carried her back to that night in Mary-Jo’s house, and she knew now that the person crying then had also been her father. She looked around the room for Mr Christiansen, but could see him nowhere.

  ‘He’s gone home,’ Maria told her. ‘He wouldn’t stay for the breakfast. It’s broken his heart. Just as Grandma said it would.’

  But Cassie could see Mary-Jo, wearing her new habit, and standing talking to her mother. She was a nun. One of the nuns. One of the nuns from whom when they were all so small they used to run, giggling. One of the nuns who later singled them out from class to give them a star, or a reprimand; one of the nuns who told them to sit up straight and to remember those less fortunate than themselves in their prayers. One of the nuns. Mary-Jo was one of the nuns.

  Yet there was no doubting Mary-Jo’s happiness. It radiated from her. No bride could have looked happier. It was Cassie’s own happiness she was doubting, as she watched her best friend moving sweetly from group to group, accepting their congratulations, and their blessings. It was Cassie who was finding it unbearable, who could hardly look at the friend with whom she used to wrestle in the grass, chase butterflies, and ride helter-skelter over the hills and fields of Locksfield Farm, as she stood there now in the habit of a nun, her arms tucked up her voluminous sleeves, with all that wonderful lustrous hair which they used to plait together all gone, all shorn off.

  Cassie couldn’t help it, this feeling of overpowering resentment she felt when she looked at the person she loved most in the whole world, and who loved her back with all her heart. She knew it was the end of the first
part of her life, of their shared age of innocence, and she wanted to turn the clock back so that she could try and persuade Mary-Jo not to take this momentuous step which was going to change both their lives so completely.

  Mary-Jo came across to them and Cassie found herself looking at the ground. Mary-Jo took them all by the hand, one at a time and kissed them. Cassie looked in her eyes and Mary-Jo smiled back at her. At first Cassie thought her smile was as it had always been. Then she realised, the longer she looked at her friend, that Mary-Jo was no longer smiling with her, but for her. Her best friend was no longer Cassie. God was in her place.

  Before they left, they gave her presents. Holy pictures inscribed with loving messages for Sister Teresa, which was Mary-Jo’s newly adopted name. Mary-Jo had taken the name of the Little Flower, her favourite Saint. Mary-Jo had always prayed to Saint Teresa. And when Mary-Jo died, there would be the smell of flowers from her, too, as there had been from her patron saint. Cassie thought of these things, as she tried to stop remembering their races to be first to the bathroom, and their endless talks in bed as they waited for the blessings of the nun on duty. Always about horses. Horses, horses, horses. Who would Cassie talk to about horses now? Who would share her love of those wonderful animals? Where would she ever, ever find such a soulmate again?

  Cassie was very silent for a long time as she drove away from the convent with Mary-Jo’s mother, who was going to drop her back in Westboro Falls. Everyone was very silent: all her brothers and her mother. It was raining heavily.

  Mr Christiansen had already left in his own car. On the journey back, as they passed through a town, Mrs Christiansen saw her husband’s Dodge outside a bar. She stopped and went inside. After five or so minutes, during which time no one talked, she came back out again and called Frank out of the car. Frank was now twenty-one, and held a full driver’s licence, and was obviously being instructed by his mother to bring his father home safely and in one piece. Frank went into the bar, and Mary-Jo’s mother got back in the driving seat and drove off.