To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Well it didn’t.’

  Cassie’s reply was a lie, because it did. Worse than that, she still had the underwear on.

  Tyrone looked at her quite suddenly, as if he too knew she was wearing it, because he was smiling. Cassie thought he was also smiling because he thought he had her enthralled. She could have got up and walked out there and then. But she didn’t. So she knew he was right.

  She was saved by the telephone, which suddenly rang beside Tyrone.

  He excused himself and answered it, explaining he was expecting a call from someone. Cassie excused herself and went in search of the bathroom.

  Before she closed the door she heard Tyrone talking back to whoever it was on the telephone. It was a woman, someone called Hélène. He was laughing and flirting with her, and calling her his love.

  Cassie banged the bathroom door, and then leant against it, the way she’d seen girls do in the movies. And wasn’t this just turning out to be like one of those movies she and Gina occasionally saw? Where the girl from the sticks nearly makes A Big Mistake with The Older Man?

  She looked at herself in the mirror and tried to see if there were any visible signs showing from her close brush with disaster. She could still hear him laughing away on the telephone, so she eased the bathroom door open again to hear what he was saying. Now he was promising to fix up a lunch date with his Hélène my love! So that’s what he was! Just a two-bit seducer. And she was just another two-bit shop assistant.

  ‘You’re a fool, Cassie McGann!’ she said to herself in the mirror. ‘A silly little fool! Who was just about to allow herself to be made into a great big silly fool!’

  She reopened the bathroom door quietly and tiptoed back to the door between the bedroom and the sitting room. Tyrone had loosened his tie and collar, and was still talking on the phone. He had his back to her, and to the door. Cassie picked up her coat and purse without him seeing and was out of the suite before he realised.

  She ran down the corridor, in the opposite direction to the elevator. She knew if he came after her he’d head straight for the elevator, and maybe catch her while she was waiting. So instead, with a kind of innate cunning, she made for the service stairs and started to race down them. Halfway down, when she realised there was no one coming after her, she stopped, and waited for a while. Just enough time for him, if he’d taken the elevator down, to arrive and find her gone from the lobby, and to return to his suite.

  Then she continued on her way, going out of a side entrance of the hotel into the bitterly cold night.

  When she arrived back at her apartment, having finally got a cab, she opened the door and found Tyrone waiting for her on the sofa. Cassie stood momentarily dumbstruck, then came in and closed the door.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him.

  ‘Waiting for you,’ he replied,

  Cassie looked round for Gina, but Tyrone was alone. He sensed what she was looking for and told her that Gina had gone to bed. Cassie thought that made sense because Gina had a really early photocall the following morning. She looked at her watch. That morning.

  Tyrone bought her back to the present with a jolt.

  ‘You need your bottom smacked,’ he told her.

  Cassie’s eyes flared, but she said nothing as she took off her coat and hung it in the closet. He’d obviously out-thought her and come straight out of the hotel, into a cab and over here.

  ‘Running out on me like that.’

  ‘I didn’t run out on you.’

  ‘Really? Most people I know say thanks for a lovely evening and goodnight, before grabbing their coat and disappearing.’

  ‘I bet,’ Cassie said over her shoulder, going through into the kitchen to make herself some coffee. And to give herself time to think.

  Tyrone followed her through and leant on the door frame.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what now?’

  ‘So why did you run away?’

  Cassie heaped the coffee grounds into the percolator and didn’t answer.

  ‘Weren’t you enjoying yourself? If anyone had asked me, I’d have said you were having a good time.’

  Cassie nodded miserably, her back still to him.

  ‘Sure I was. I was having a great time.’

  ‘Then why did you run out like that?’

  He was behind her now, turning her round to face him, gently. Cassie laid her head on his chest, without looking up at him, and Tyrone put his arms round her. They stood like that in silence, for several moments, then Cassie broke away, shaking out her hair and trying to find resolution.

  ‘I’m not used to men like you,’ she said, finally. ‘I don’t think I can handle you.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve obviously known so many women. You obviously still do.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, turning the heat down under the percolator for her. ‘Let’s deal with first things first. The woman on the phone. She’s an old friend, the wife of a very old friend, and they’re business. Strictly business. She’s in New York, and I like to have lunch sometimes with my old friends. If you have no objection?’

  He looked at her without malice, and asked her without sarcasm.

  ‘Second, yes, I’ve known a lot of women. Quite a lot. Many women in fact. But none – not one – not one woman like you.’

  ‘I’m not the type who has affairs,’ she told him.

  ‘I don’t want to have an affair with you,’ he replied.

  ‘But tonight?’

  Cassie looked up at him and bit her lip.

  ‘Wouldn’t you have taken me to bed tonight?’

  ‘I wasn’t even going to dream of asking you,’ Tyrone replied perfectly truthfully. ‘I was loving just being with you.’

  Cassie stared at him and knew he was telling the truth. And then she felt ashamed of herself, because just before the telephone rang she had made up her mind to go to bed with him.

  He took the coffee through into the living room, and Cassie hung behind for a moment, to wipe the tear away that had somehow found its way out of one eye. Then she followed, and sat in a chair opposite him, deliberately keeping her distance so that she could also keep her head.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Is it yes then?’

  ‘Tyrone—’ she started to reply, but he interrupted her.

  ‘I want no more excuses. I want you to marry me, and there’s an end to it.’

  ‘I’ve something to tell you, Tyrone,’ she told him, looking down at her coffee. ‘I’m illegitimate.’

  There was a long silence, during which Cassie didn’t dare look up. She just sat in her chair, staring into her coffee.

  ‘Yes?’ Tyrone finally answered. ‘And?’

  Cassie then looked up, sharply and in surprise. Tyrone was looking at her, but not with rage. More with a kind of quizzical surprise.

  ‘I’m a bastard, Tyrone,’ Cassie said, spelling it out. ‘You can’t marry a bastard.’

  Tyrone just continued to stare at her, and then suddenly started to laugh.

  ‘Who says I can’t!’ he roared. ‘I’d like to see who’ll stop me!’

  ‘Everyone will stop you! I’m a bastard!’

  ‘So what? So bloody what?’

  ‘What do you mean – so bloody what?’ Cassie retorted.

  ‘I mean so bloody what, child! It couldn’t matter less!’

  Cassie leaped out of her chair and stood before him, hands on her hips, her eyes flashing wildly.

  ‘It couldn’t matter less, could it? Maybe not to you! but it bloody well matters to me!’ she shouted, swearing for what was probably the first time in her life.

  ‘You imagine it does, I’m quite sure,’ Tyrone answered gently. ‘But I assure you it doesn’t.’

  ‘That’s all very well for you to say!’ Cassie continued, infuriated that this man was trying to minimise what to her was the key aspect of her life. ‘But you try being a bastard!’

  ‘Back home, a lot of people consider tha
t I am,’ he replied, tongue in cheek.

  ‘That isn’t funny!’ Cassie yelled, looking round for something to throw at him. ‘There’s nothing funny in being illegitimate!’

  She threw one of her shoes at him, which missed. So then she threw the other. Tyrone caught it and looked at it.

  ‘God – you’ve got lovely little feet.’

  Cassie didn’t know what to say. Life was so unfair, with its constant unpredictabilities. He shouldn’t have reacted like that. He should have been aghast, he should have been horrified, he should have been too shocked for words. Then he should have taken her in his arms and rocked her, and she’d have cried, as they realised their future together was doomed. But instead he was sitting upon the sofa with a stupid smile on his face, nursing one of her shoes and telling her she had lovely little feet.

  ‘Tyrone,’ she finally said, through rather clenched teeth. ‘You cannot possibly marry me if I’m a bastard.’

  ‘Child,’ he replied. ‘I’d marry you if you were the child of the Pope himself.’

  Cassie gasped in horror at the blasphemy. But when she saw the soft look in Tyrone’s eyes, and the gentleness of his smile, she suddenly couldn’t help smiling back. He held his arms open to her, and she came across to him, and sat beside him, in his embrace.

  He held her tightly in his arms, and then Cassie started to weep, very softly.

  ‘Blast you, Tyrone Rosse,’ Cassie said, half-smiling and half-weeping.

  ‘Why, Cassie?’ he asked. ‘Why blast me?’

  ‘Blast you,’ she answered, ‘because I hadn’t catered for you, that’s why.’

  Tyrone smiled at her and shook his head.

  ‘No, God damn it,’ he said. ‘And I hadn’t catered for you either, Cassie McGann.’

  They sat silently for some time, and then Tyrone made sure she went to bed, before he let himself out to return alone to his hotel.

  Tyrone stayed in New York until Christmas, making plans for their wedding. He wanted Cassie to fly back to Ireland with him for the holiday, and she was all set to go when Tyrone’s favourite aunt died suddenly and he had to return early and without Cassie for the funeral.

  He told her it would be no way to introduce her to his remaining relatives when they were grieving, and Cassie agreed. Instead she remained behind in New York, finalising all the arrangements for their wedding which was to take place in March. Tyrone hoped to be able to get back before then, but had warned her that once he set foot back home, he would be set upon to catch up on all sorts of business, and there was a very strong chance that he wouldn’t see her again until the week of the wedding itself.

  But love had become a strangely isolating experience for Cassie; and none of her friends, not even Gina, could cross back over that line. Cassie stood alone now, singled out by love, trying to learn how to cope with the helplessness engendered by great desire, as well as the dawning realisation that great love could, after all, exist.

  In the time left before Christmas, and before Tyrone’s aunt died, Cassie and Tyrone spent every moment of their free time together, Cassie worked out her notice at Bergdorf Goodman’s, where Mrs Wellman, who was deeply romantic at heart, had quite forgiven Tyrone his indiscretions, and considered their whole romance just like something out of a Doris Day movie. Tyrone told Cassie all about Claremore, and showed her a photograph which he always carried around in his wallet when he was away from it of the house and grounds. It looked quite beautiful.

  ‘Quite beautiful?’ Tyrone had teased, ‘or quite beautiful?’

  They discussed their future together, and tried to guess how many children they would have, and what they would call them; and Cassie pictured herself seated by a roaring wood fire, surrounded by tousle-headed and laughing children. She imagined Tyrone coming back home from work, and the dogs running down the steps of the house while the children clung to her skirts, ready to welcome their father back. In her dreams the sun always shone, and the fires always burned bright, and the children which she was to bear Tyrone were always happy and healthy. Cassie was determined that the family life she was to lead in Ireland was in no way going to be anything like the life she had led growing up in New Hampshire.

  And they had gone shopping, insisting that they should choose together everything Cassie was to have.

  ‘No, not a bridal gown,’ he’d told her, as she lingered over white lace dresses. ‘Bridal gowns are the biggest waste of money known to woman. You only wear them once, and then it’s up in the attic with them, to be brought down later to be shown to your children. No, what you need is something beautiful and sophisticated, something you’ll be able to wear over and over again, and remember your great day.’

  He’d helped her to choose everything, from the colour of her stockings, to the hair ribbons bought to match her negligées. No detail was too dull, or too trivial. Hats, gloves, coats, dresses – everything was chosen with the utmost care and patience. Even her underwear, which was bought to the enjoyment of all in the lingerie department of Bergdorf Goodman. They went in there on Cassie’s half day, and chose Cherry to serve them, whom Cassie considered most in need of the commission.

  Tyrone had justified his tireless supervision of her wardrobe and trousseau by telling Cassie that he would be seeing her in what she wore more than anyone else, therefore she had to reflect his taste.

  They were finally married in the following March, as planned, in a small church in the Italian quarter, which Cassie had made her regular place of worship. Gina supervised the making of the wedding dress, which was designed by Gina and sewn by a family of tiny Italian women all dressed in black and covered in so many pins that Cassie called them the hedgehogs. They worked in what had been an old sweat shop on Second Avenue, their once thick black hair now grey and tied back tightly into buns, and their teeth gleaming with gold fillings every time they removed a pin from their mouths to make an adjustment or to smile at the bride-to-be. They treated Cassie like she was a daughter, down to giving her advice on what she should do and what she shouldn’t do on her wedding night. And what it would be like. They told her it would be painful the first time, but that she must be brave, and that making love would get better after she had had a baby. They told her that the baby must be born screaming, but that she must not scream when it was born or it would not have courage. They told her the baby must be a boy, the first born, and if it wasn’t a boy then her husband wasn’t a man; that being a woman was all tears; and that not being married was worse than being married. And they made her a beautiful dress in pure white silk with white fur trimmings, which quite by chance echoed the famous negligée which Tyrone had bought for Cassie on the day they met.

  As he had predicted Tyrone failed to return to New York until two days before the ceremony. He had telephoned Cassie two or three times a week, mainly to tell her he loved her and to find out what she was doing. When he arrived back in America he came with a man called Niall Brogan, a handsome red-faced fellow in a thornproof suit, who was to be Tyrone’s best man. To the wedding itself he also invited several of his many American friends, all apparently rich, and all apparently devoted to Tyrone. Cassie asked all her new friends from New York. Even Arnie relented and consented to play some great jazz piano at the reception afterwards. Maria and Gina were her bridesmaids, and Mrs Roebuck journeyed down from Westboro the night before the wedding and stayed at Gina and Cassie’s apartment for the very first time. Cassie was so nervous that the priest was forced to ask her to speak up a little, and when Tyrone kissed her, the ladies who had made the wedding dress and were sitting up in the gallery all cried and applauded.

  The organist started to play the Widor Toccata and Fugue and Tyrone took his young bride’s hand and wrapped it through his arm. As she passed Mrs Roebuck, Cassie gave her a special smile, a smile reserved for someone who had given her the happy days of her childhood in Westboro, and Mrs Roebuck smiled back, remembering the first day that a shy little child had arrived to play in her yard, and looking with love at
the vision that was now the grown-up Cassie.

  At the back of the church, uninvited and unnoticed in the crowd of well wishers, sat Mrs Von Wagner and her daughter Leonora. They both wore dark glasses and large hats. Leonora didn’t take her eyes off Tyrone once as he walked down the aisle, and neither did her mother.

  The reception was held in Tyrone’s favourite Italian restaurant, which was the best in the neighbourhood. The gingham-clothed tables were a profusion of white flowers, and Andrea the owner presented Cassie with the traditional baskets of almonds which Italian brides always handed around. Cassie accepted the basket, which took her back to her First Communion when she had handed the almonds to the men smoking in the yard, and when Mrs Roebuck had baked them a beautiful cake shaped like a church. All her friends hugged her and kissed her, and Tyrone’s friends shook him by the hand and kissed Cassie’s hand; and one or two of them, emboldened by the wine, kissed Cassie on the cheek. She and Tyrone danced, while Arnie played the piano. Tyrone sang unrequested ‘The Star of the County Down’ solely for his bride, and once Andrea and his brothers discovered what a beautiful baritone voice he had, demanded an encore, which was followed by any other song which came into Tyrone’s head. Tyrone, happier than he had ever been, or had ever thought he could be, sang them a selection of Irish songs, and then, with both Cassie’s hands in his, he sang her his favourite ballad.

  Well out of his knapsack he took a fine fiddle

  He played her such merry tunes that you ever did hear –

  He played her such merry tunes that the valleys did ring –

  And then they both sat down together, love,

  To hear the nightingale sing.

  And they kiss’d so sweet and comforting as they clung to each other –

  They went arm and arm along the road like sister and brother –

  They went arm and arm along the road till they came to a stream –

  Then they both sat down together now to hear the nightingale sing.

  They had to cancel their Paris honeymoon at the last minute because Tyrone told her he had to return at once to Ireland because of his business. Cassie didn’t mind, because anywhere with Tyrone would be a honeymoon, and besides, she was dying to see her new home.