To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Some weather, huh?’ the driver remarked over his shoulder.

  Tyrone ignored him and brushed some snow solicitously off Cassie’s skirt.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Cassie. ‘I’m not going to get pneumonia.’

  ‘Who said you were?’ Tyrone replied, and then looking out of the other window started whistling Peter and the Wolf.

  ‘Why are you taking me back to my apartment?’ she asked him.

  ‘I should imagine you’ll want to get bathed and changed before tonight,’ he answered. ‘That’s why.’

  ‘Why? What’s going to happen tonight?’

  ‘It’s going to get dark, that’s what’s going to happen.’

  Tyrone then continued whistling, so rather than allow him to provoke her further, Cassie resumed her watch on the blizzard.

  He dropped her off at her apartment, after telling her that he would send a cab back for her at six o’clock prompt. Before she had time to protest, he ordered the driver to take him back uptown. Cassie ran inside the building, more determined than ever to resist him.

  Tyrone then went shopping and ordered what he bought to be sent around immediately to Miss Cassie McGann at her given address.

  Gina collected the parcels from the driver who brought them round. There were several boxes, all gift-wrapped. She took them upstairs and put them on Cassie’s bed.

  ‘Father Christmas is a little early this year!’ she shouted through the bathroom door, and then went back through to the kitchen to finish what she was cooking for dinner. Tonight was a stay-in night for Gina and Buck, and Gina was busy cooking some home-made pasta.

  Cassie, wrapped in a towel, came through into the bedroom and saw all the boxes on her bed. She opened them, curiously, one by one. In the first square box was a pair of exquisite handmade Italian shoes, right in fashion. In the next was a set of silk underwear and stockings. In the third was a knee-length black voile dress with practically non-existent shoulder-straps. In the last was a white fur wrap.

  There was no note in any of the boxes. Tyrone had obviously felt there was no need.

  ‘I don’t have a purse to go with all this!’ Cassie remembered, as the ever-patient Gina re-did her hair.

  ‘Stand still, will you?’ Gina demanded. ‘I’ll lend you a purse! I have hundreds of the damn things!’

  ‘I don’t have any gloves either!’

  ‘I’ll lend you some gloves too! There!’

  Gina turned Cassie round, and appraised her.

  ‘You look great,’ she said, beaming. ‘Just great! You don’t look at all like somebody who’s just about to turn down a marriage proposal.’

  Cassie pulled on the borrowed gloves and took the small purse Gina was offering her.

  ‘Would you say yes?’ she asked. ‘To a mad Irishman? On just your second date?’

  ‘I think,’ Gina said, suddenly serious, ‘if you get a chance to grab at happiness, you should grab it. This isn’t a dress rehearsal, you know.’

  ‘What isn’t?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Life,’ said Gina, giving her a kiss. ‘Life isn’t.’

  Cassie regarded herself in the mirror. The black voile dress fitted her perfectly, showing off her youthful figure to full advantage, the silk stockings flattered her shapely legs, and French underwear made her feel both excited and exciting.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Gina enquired.

  ‘OK,’ said Cassie, thoughtfully.

  ‘OK,’ grinned Gina. ‘OK she says. You look like something on the front of Vogue.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so.’

  Cassie stared and stared at her new image, and then suddenly kicked off the handmade Italian shoes and unzippered the black voile dress.

  ‘In that case—’

  ‘Hey!’ cried Gina. ‘What the hell’s going on here? What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter with me,’ Cassie replied, stepping out of the dress. ‘This is just not who I am, that’s all.’

  She was quarter of an hour late, as Gina had told her to be. She waited outside the swing doors for a moment, watching Tyrone pacing up and down the lobby, for all the world like an expectant father. He kept looking at his watch, and then raising his eyes to the ceiling. Obviously he wasn’t a man to be kept waiting.

  A party of middle-aged ladies with blue-rinsed hair and figures which indicated they’d enjoyed a lifetime of good living, made their way carefully through the swing doors. Tyrone looked round, but saw that Cassie was nowhere in their midst. He then returned to a chair where he’d been sitting, from which he could keep an eye on the main doors, and picked up his drink. He took a draught from it, flicked open the evening newspaper, and made a brave attempt at reading it. Cassie then made her way quietly through the doors.

  She was by his side before he noticed her. But once he saw her, he was on his feet, dropping the paper and practically knocking over his drink.

  ‘Cassie!’ The way he greeted her, it was as if he hadn’t seen her for a year. ‘Let me take your coat.’

  Cassie noticed the tone of his voice changing slightly, as he suddenly realised she wasn’t wearing the fur. She turned her back to him and he removed her simple tweed coat in silence.

  Then she swung back round to him and smiled. Tyrone looked at her. She was wearing a simple plain dark-blue wool dress, with matching-coloured court shoes, and round her neck a strand of costume pearls. Her shoulder-length dark hair shone lustrously, but she had left it down and unadorned. Tyrone, wanting to feel angry at the snub, couldn’t, because dressed as she was, Cassie was a picture of innocent beauty.

  ‘Do you know something, Cassie McGann,’ he asked. ‘Do you know that you’re really quite beautiful?’

  ‘Quite beautiful?’ Cassie enquired back. ‘Or quite beautiful?’

  ‘And you’ve a lip on you as well, as we say back home,’ he replied, taking her arm and leading her into the bar, where minutes later, for the second time in a week, Cassie sat drinking champagne. At first she had been a little taken aback when the cab Tyrone had sent for her brought her back to the famous hotel, afraid that she might once more bump into Leonora, who would try and revenge herself on Cassie for the trick she had played on her with the opera tickets. And then she thought, what the hell? What could Leonora do to her when she had Tyrone Rosse by her side? Looking at him, she wondered what the hell anyone could do.

  Because there was no doubt about it at all. Tyrone was the best-looking and most attractive man she had ever seen, let alone met. He wasn’t classically handsome, but then Cassie wasn’t attracted to that sort of man, as she always felt that sort of man was so busy being attracted to himself, he didn’t need anyone else.

  Tyrone was, as Arnie would say, something else. Standing a good two inches over six feet, he was immensely strong-looking without being in any way heavy. And he was perfectly proportioned, with those wonderful long legs, and those oddly sensitive hands. Looking at them, Cassie wondered idly whether or not he rode. They looked like perfect horseman’s hands.

  But best of all were those eyes, large and doe-like, giving him, when serious, that oddly wistful appearance. But when he smiled, or at best laughed, his eyes danced and stole your heart away.

  Tyrone knew he was being studied, and so for a moment, pretended to be absorbed in some distant thought. Then he signalled the waiter for more champagne.

  ‘I thought we’d have dinner, and then maybe go dancing,’ he told her. ‘How does that sound?’

  ‘It sounds like fun,’ Cassie replied.

  Tyrone stared at her.

  ‘You are without doubt, Cassie McGann,’ he said, ‘the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. Slainte.’

  With that he raised his glass to her.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Irish for good health.’

  She raised her glass back to him, and they drank their champagne. Then Tyrone rose, and took her in to dinner.

  Their table overlooked the park, but Tyron
e had eyes only for her. Cassie tried to resist him, because she had made up her mind on the way over that she would try to remain detached and sophisticated. Gina had time and time again told Cassie in their endless conversations how possible it was to be loved and remain uninvolved. That’s what sophisticated New York girls did. They took care of their emotions. They stayed cool. Getting involved was not cool.

  But talking was one thing and doing was quite another. Now that Cassie was sitting opposite Tyrone, it was very, very different. When she had silently reminded herself in the cab about how uninvolved she was going to be, she wasn’t being mesmerised by a pair of startlingly blue eyes and a wonderful baritone voice. She had been alone. But now she was there with him, and the two of them were talking and laughing as if they had always known each other, as if they had been made for each other.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ he asked her at one point, as Cassie suddenly looked away.

  ‘No. No, not at all.’

  ‘You look slightly flushed.’

  ‘It’s kind of hot in here.’

  Cassie had held her glass of iced water to her cheek, but the burning had only momentarily ceased. As soon as she looked back at him, and was caught by his eyes, it started all over again. And she knew she was lost.

  While Tyrone ordered dessert, Cassie turned away and stared out of the window, through the flurries of snow and into the darkness of Central Park. She wished suddenly to be a child again, staying with Mary-Jo, waiting for the dawn to break so that they could creep down and see the diamonds in the grass and the foals grazing rhythmically and gently as the sun rose. It was all so simple then. Everything was taken care of. Other people made all the hard decisions.

  And marriage had been a game they played in Mrs Roebuck’s back yard.

  ‘Penny for them,’ Tyrone said, touching her arm.

  ‘I was remembering my childhood,’ she said.

  ‘It must be very fresh in your memory. The way you look tonight, you look fifteen.’

  Cassie looked back at him. He was sitting staring at her, rubbing his mouth thoughtfully with a long slender finger.

  ‘And you look like someone trying to decide whether or not to buy a horse,’ she replied.

  Tyrone laughed.

  ‘Do I?’ he said. ‘Do I indeed? Now there’s a thing!’

  Dessert arrived, and was placed in front of them. They both made a pretence of eating it, but neither had a mind for food. Their first two courses had been taken away virtually untouched.

  Tyrone drank some wine, then took one of Cassie’s hands.

  ‘Dear God but I love you,’ he announced, rather too loudly for Cassie’s comfort. ‘Blast you anyway.’

  Then he drained his glass and rose from the table to take her dancing.

  There was something else about him which infuriated Cassie. He was an even better dancer than Joe. His right arm held her so lightly, yet so firmly, that she felt she could dance with him right through rush-hour traffic on Fifth Avenue without turning a hair. And with his left hand he held her right hand against his chest, occasionally lifting it to brush her fingertips with his lips.

  ‘There’s no good you fighting this, Cassie McGann,’ he told her at one point. ‘I’m very much afraid we were meant for each other.’

  ‘No we were not,’ Cassie said defiantly, but without any real authority.

  ‘The moment I saw you in the store, I knew that was it.’

  ‘You were buying lingerie for someone else.’

  ‘For a going-away present.’

  ‘She was leaving to go somewhere?’

  ‘I was leaving her to go somewhere.’

  He looked down at her, the smile in his eyes.

  ‘I took one look at you,’ he said, ‘and that was that. Nothing else mattered until I saw you again.’

  The band was playing ‘Stardust’. Other people danced by them. Tyrone lifted Cassie off her feet, right in the middle of the dance floor, and kissed her.

  ‘I love you, Cassie McGann, and you love me.’

  ‘No I don’t. I can’t possibly.’

  ‘Love isn’t a possibility. It’s a disease. For which there is no known cure.’

  He turned her round and round, as the tune came to an end.

  ‘That’s how they treat it in India, you know,’ he continued. ‘They commiserate with you if they know you have fallen in love. They’re very wise people. They know it’s an illness. And you and I are both very ill.’

  ‘I don’t feel it,’ Cassie said.

  ‘Yes you do,’ Tyrone contradicted her. ‘And you know it.’

  As the band started to play ‘All The Things You Are’, and they continued to dance, Cassie knew he was right. She did know it, but she didn’t want to recognise it. And yet it was all so unlikely. He was so unlikely. And so was she. He was so much older than her, and genuinely sophisticated. And she was just out of her teens, trying to be a sophisticate. She was still looking for something, and was not sure what, while he knew exactly what he was searching for, and when he had found it.

  But then it was so much easier for men. Men had more straightforward feelings, they knew what they wanted, and they knew how to get it. They were the conquerors, with a simple morality. Men didn’t sit for hours talking to their best friend, wondering whether they should or they shouldn’t. Because they wouldn’t be men if they did. Men were expected to do it. Good girls weren’t.

  Tyrone tilted her face up to him and kissed her once more, gently. She sighed and buried her face in his chest, wishing he wouldn’t keep kissing her. It was all right until he kissed her. She could keep a clear head. But then when he kissed her, all those freshly made resolutions just vanished. His kisses were intoxicating. Tyrone was intoxicating.

  And now he was leading her out of the night club.

  ‘Where are we going now?’ she asked him in the cab.

  ‘I thought we’d go back to the Plaza. For coffee. And a nightcap.’

  She didn’t have time to argue, because he was kissing her again.

  At the hotel, he led her over to the elevator and stepped aside to let her in.

  ‘Now where?’ she asked a little late, as the doors were already closing.

  ‘I have a suite,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to sit in the bar at this time of night.’

  They walked down the corridor to his rooms, Tyrone slightly ahead of her, the key in his hand. Cassie swallowed and determined to keep a clear head. She would have coffee, and nothing else, then thank him for another wonderful evening, and get him to call her a cab home.

  Tyrone opened the door. Cassie went in and remarked on what a lovely suite it was without being able to see one stick of furniture. All she was aware of was the double bed which she could see through the half-open bedroom door. Tyrone closed the bedroom door, took Cassie’s coat, then kissed her.

  Tyrone’s kisses were unlike any other kisses Cassie had ever experienced They were real kisses, searching kisses, kisses which asked for something else than just another kiss in return. They were questioning kisses. And they were demanding kisses.

  Cassie tried to push away from him.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘I can’t breathe.’

  ‘Good,’ he replied, still holding her tight.

  ‘I can’t! I feel faint!’

  ‘Excellent.’

  And with that, he kissed her again. It seemed to Cassie he kissed her several hundred times.

  She finally escaped, and stood by a wall, looking at him, seemingly bewildered by his passion. And by her response. He smiled gently at her, then took her coat and rang room service. Cassie tried vainly to hang on to her coat. But Tyrone took it from her quite firmly, saying he was not having her sitting around his suite in her overcoat. Then while they were waiting for the coffee, Tyrone produced a travelling flask and poured them both a drink.

  ‘What’s this?’ Cassie enquired carefully.

  ‘An aphrodisiac,’ Tyrone replied, poker-faced.

  ‘What’s that?
’

  ‘Never you mind.’

  He put the glass down in front of her.

  ‘It’s brandy,’ he said.

  ‘No thanks,’ Cassie answered. ‘I don’t drink brandy.’

  ‘Do you get a lot of opportunity?’ Tyrone asked her.

  ‘OK,’ she admitted. ‘I have never drunk brandy.’

  ‘Then try some,’ Tyrone encouraged her. ‘It didn’t do Napoleon any harm.’

  ‘I wonder if the same can be said about Josephine?’

  Tyrone smiled and raised his glass.

  ‘Slainte.’

  ‘Slainte,’ Cassie answered perfectly.

  ‘Good,’ said Tyrone. ‘We’ll make an Irishwoman of you yet.’

  Cassie wasn’t sure she wanted to be an Irishwoman. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be anything other than Cassie McGann.

  She avoided drinking the brandy, but readily accepted the coffee which had now arrived.

  Tyrone brought the cup over to her and looked down at her.

  ‘Didn’t you even wear the underwear?’ he enquired.

  ‘Pardon me?’ Cassie faltered, almost spilling the coffee.

  ‘I said. Didn’t you even wear the underwear?’

  ‘What underwear?’

  ‘The clothes I sent you.’

  ‘Oh yes. Those. No. No I didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t you like them? Most girls like silk underwear.’

  Cassie didn’t reply. She just looked down and drank her coffee.

  ‘Most girls would have liked that dress as well. And the shoes. And the fur.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m not most girls.’

  ‘No,’ Tyrone agreed. ‘You certainly are not.’

  He went back and sat in a chair, stirring his coffee and staring at her.

  ‘So why didn’t you wear the clothes?’

  ‘Because they weren’t me.’

  ‘You mean they didn’t suit you?’

  ‘I mean they weren’t me.’

  ‘I’d like to see you in them,’ Tyrone said. ‘I think they would very much be you.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like me to model them for you sometime,’ Cassie replied, with a fairly hopeless attempt at sarcasm.

  Tyrone ignored it, and sighed, leaning back and sipping his brandy.

  ‘And I really can’t believe the underwear wouldn’t have suited you.’