The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘You might have said where you were going,’ Joel remarked as they battled along the narrow road in the teeth of the storm.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Not to me you didn’t.’

  ‘No, not to you I didn’t.’

  ‘Any particular reason, I wonder?’

  ‘Maybe because I didn’t want you to know.’

  ‘You just kiss and run, right?’

  ‘Because I kissed you last night—’ Cassie said.

  ‘Because I kissed you,’ Joel corrected her.

  ‘That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you kiss me today,’ Cassie finished.

  ‘Rose kissed me today,’ Joel murmured, wiping the condensation off the windscreen with his hand. ‘Will she kiss me tomorrow?’

  He glanced at her, then got to work on the dashboard, looking for the demister and fan controls. Cassie put a hand out to work the controls for herself and after she had turned the fan up Joel caught her hand, held it for a second, then kissed the end of her fingers.

  ‘I’m trying to drive,’ Cassie reminded him, taking her hand away with a glance at him. ‘Conditions are bad enough without you making them worse.’

  ‘Conditions are perfect,’ he agreed. ‘For staying in.’

  The house stood on a hill overlooking the windswept Atlantic. It was white-painted and comfortably furnished with old furniture draped with locally woven throws and rugs, its windows hung with rough curtains of bright red tweed. The hand-made bookshelves were filled with old paperbacks and magazines, the paintings on the wall were all obviously executed by keen amateurs, and none of the china and crockery matched. It was in fact exactly the way the ideal holiday house should be.

  While Cassie had been out shopping the fire had died in the grate so Joel rekindled it with blocks of well-dried peat while Cassie cooked supper. They ate potato soup and spaghetti al olio which Joel relished, the perfect antidote to the amount of whisky he had been forced to drink when trying to discover Cassie’s exact location. Afterwards they sat in front of the fire while the storm raged unabated outside, finishing a rough but drinkable Beaujolais and playing a variation of patience called Racing Demon.

  ‘I don’t know what it is about you, Joel,’ Cassie said after he had beaten her at the game for the fourth consecutive time, and then paused for a moment. What she wanted to say was that when she was with him he ended up infuriating her to such an extent sometimes that she really didn’t care whether or not she ever saw him again, but then immediately she was away from him she wanted to see him more than she had wanted to see anyone since she had lost Tyrone.

  But watching him slowly dealing out another hand of cards all she actually said was that as far as playing patience went he seemed to be impossible to beat.

  ‘Your problem is a simple one, Mrs Rosse. You keep looking for short-term gains rather than taking the long view. Viz – as soon as a card comes up, you play it. That’s why you lose. You have to look at the cards behind the cards. You have to play for what’s coming up, not for what you can see on top of the deck.’

  They played another round and Cassie lost again.

  ‘Why did you follow me down here?’ she asked, as Joel threw some more peat on the fire.

  ‘Why did you come down here?’ he returned, lighting another Gauloise from a split of paper.

  ‘I wanted time to think. I wasn’t prepared for you.’

  Joel shuffled the cards as expertly as a croupier. ‘A woman surprised is half won.’

  ‘So how are you going to win the other half?’

  ‘Unhappy the general who comes on the field of battle with a stratagem,’ Joel said, laying his cards out. ‘Now this time, look to see what all the cards you hold are. And then play to your strength.’

  This time Cassie did, and she won.

  ‘Bed,’ she said, getting up and stretching. ‘You must be exhausted. It’s a long drive.’

  ‘It’s a bit too early for me,’ Joel said. ‘I bought some whisky. Have a nightcap.’

  Cassie hesitated, then declined, taking their dinner things through into the flagstoned kitchen. Joel followed, carrying the rest of the dishes on a tray and the bottle of whisky under his arm.

  ‘Fresh glasses,’ he said, putting the dishes and bottle down on the table. Cassie indicated a cupboard and bent over the sink to start the washing up. A moment later Joel had his arms round her waist and was kissing her on the back of the neck. Cassie straightened up so that he had to stop, but all he did was turn her to him. She leaned backwards, away from him.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  He kissed her all the same and for half a moment Cassie almost relented, pulling herself away only just in time.

  ‘No,’ she repeated, more quietly but just as insistent.

  ‘I think you and I are going to have to have a talk, Cassie Rosse,’ Joel said, sitting back on the table and pouring out two large whiskies.

  ‘That’s too much for me.’

  ‘It seems it’s all too much for you,’ Joel remarked, pouring some of her whisky into his glass. ‘Look, if you don’t want me around, why don’t you simply tell me to bugger off?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do.’ He handed her the glass which Cassie put down on the draining board, returning to her washing up. Joel took a draught of whisky and then picked up a tea towel to start drying up.

  ‘We’re about the same age, aren’t we?’ he asked.

  ‘If you say so,’ Cassie replied, handing him a plate.

  ‘You know perfectly well we are,’ Joel continued. ‘And neither of us have as much time as we once had.’

  ‘Meaning we shouldn’t miss an opportunity,’ Cassie said wryly, handing him another plate.

  ‘Do you find me as attractive as I find you?’ Joel asked, putting the two dry plates to one side.

  ‘How can I answer that?’ Cassie sighed. ‘I don’t know how attractive you find me.’

  ‘If I heard you’d gone to the moon I’d have followed you.’

  ‘Maybe you’re after my money,’ Cassie said, handing him a soup bowl.

  ‘I’m not interested in money,’ Joel replied, wiping the bowl dry.

  ‘So what do you want, Joel?’

  ‘Something more than I’ve ever wanted something before.’

  She looked at him as he looked at her. They stood in silence for a long time, eye to eye.

  ‘Of course I find you attractive, Joel,’ she said at last. ‘And you wouldn’t have dared ask me that unless you knew.’

  ‘So what are we going to do about it?’ Joel wondered. ‘Because we’re going to have to do something.’

  ‘It can’t be here,’ Cassie said, turning away and busying herself at the sink, draining away the water and starting to dry the last of the crockery. Joel picked up a glass and slowly wiped it dry, then held it up to the light to make sure it was perfectly clean. ‘What is it exactly you’re afraid of Cassie?’

  ‘In a word? Trespass.’

  ‘No. You’re not really afraid of what you call trespass. That’s just a smokescreen. What you’re afraid of is having a love affair and enjoying it because you think that somehow it might knock a few points off your legendary happy marriage.’

  ‘Look,’ Cassie said, taking the tea towel from him and throwing it aside. ‘If it’s any of your damn’ business I’ve had lovers. Several of them if you really want to know, OK? So so much for your neat little theory.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Joel murmured, picking up his whisky glass. ‘But I’ll bet they were all safe as hell choices. I’ll bet you chose carefully so that none of them would be a threat to the memory of your husband.’

  ‘I don’t know how you dare,’ Cassie said, rounding on him. ‘I really don’t know how you dare say such things!’

  ‘Somebody really should have said them to you long ago,’ Joel said, getting up and catching hold of Cassie in case she hit him as she seemed to be just about to do.

  ‘Let go of me,’ Cassie said
, struggling to get free. ‘I’m going to bed now, and you can do what the hell you like.’

  ‘I’d quite like to go to bed, too.’

  ‘Then go.’

  ‘Where do you suggest?’

  ‘Try the sofa. And if you don’t fit – too bad. You should have thought of that before you came charging down here uninvited. Good night.’

  After Cassie had gone upstairs, Joel piled some more peat on the fire, refilled his glass and settled into an armchair. He smoked a couple of cigarettes while he flicked through an old copy of the Irish Field without focusing on either pictures or text. All he could see was Cassie and all he wanted was to have her in his arms. Finally he chucked the magazine to one side, threw his cigarette into the fire and finished his whisky, resting his head on the back of his chair to stare at the ceiling above him.

  When he woke up the storm had stopped and all he could hear was the sound of the sea somewhere far below him. The fire had died and he was cold, so he got up to see if there was something warmer to wrap around him other than the tweed throws but all he could find downstairs were a couple of stiff oilskins and what looked like an old dog blanket. Stiff and cold he carefully made his way upstairs intending to try to find a spare bedroom, but the first of the closed doors which he opened was Cassie’s.

  She was asleep in a large cane-headed double bed under a green hand-woven cover. Her clothes lay neatly folded on the chair, and she was curled on her side with one arm bent up to cover her ear and the top of her head in the way children often sleep when they are unhappy. She had left the curtains open so that her outline was lit by the piercing light of the moon whenever it appeared from behind the fast scudding clouds. As he stood there and his eyes became accustomed to the half light Joel could make out two photographs, one on each of the bedside tables. One was of Cassie leading her famous horse in after a race and the other was of herself in the arms of Tyrone.

  He turned as quietly as he could to leave the room.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ a voice asked him from the bed. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’

  ‘Couldn’t you?’ he asked back.

  ‘I was sleeping fine until you burst in.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Joel began to close the door. ‘I was looking for a spare bedroom.’

  ‘The bed isn’t made up,’ Cassie said. ‘And the mattress will be damp. I wasn’t expecting visitors.’

  ‘Fine. Well, if you wouldn’t mind just telling me where I might find a couple of blankets,’ Joel replied. ‘The fire’s out, there’s no more fuel, and I’m half frozen to death.’

  For a moment Cassie didn’t reply. Finally she removed her arm from the top of her head, pulled the bedclothes up more tightly under chin and looked round at him in the moonlight, childlike and vulnerable.

  ‘Unless you have horse in you, you’re not going to be able to sleep like that,’ she said pokerfaced.

  ‘Any suggestions?’ Joel wondered.

  ‘This is a perfectly good bed,’ she said. ‘I mean it’s aired, and it’s warm.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Cassie replied. ‘I’m inviting you.’

  For a while in the bed Joel lay on his back with his hands behind his head trying to work out quite where he was headed, while beside him still on her side and turned away from him Cassie was trying to do exactly the same thing. To Joel their relationship seemed to have its own momentum. Never at one point since he had first met Cassie had he made any definite plans as far as they were both concerned. Everything had just seemed to happen, organically as it were, yet everything that had happened had also been invested with a dreamlike quality, lacking the proper rhyme and reason of reality. For example at this very moment it seemed Joel had been solidly rooted in actuality, in the middle of yet another argument with a woman with whom he was fast becoming convinced he was falling in love, yet the next moment he found himself lying in her bed without really remembering how he had got there, in exactly the same dislocated way things happen in dreams.

  So too it was with Cassie, who was also unable to make any sense of what was happening to her. She kept finding herself thinking one thing then doing something altogether opposite. Tonight she had wanted to give him his marching orders and now she wanted him to make love to her.

  This has to be a real love-hate relationship, she thought, pulling her pillow down further under her head. Yet I don’t really hate him. In fact I don’t hate him at all. Yes I do, she corrected herself, settling her head deep into the pillow. Of course I hate him. Why? Because he’s always so goddamn right.

  And what about love? Having made herself comfortable on her pillow, she now turned herself round to face him in the dark, very carefully and slowly, half hoping that he might have fallen asleep so that she could lie watching him and perhaps find out what she really felt. Instead she found herself staring into a pair of large dark eyes.

  They lay there for a while, looking into each other, saying nothing and doing nothing. Cassie was the first to speak. ‘I thought you had fallen asleep,’ she said. ‘You were so quiet.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Joel replied.

  ‘I was thinking as well. Snap.’ She reached out under the bedclothes and took one of his hands. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been totally unreasonable.’

  ‘You have nothing whatsoever to be sorry about,’ Joel replied, smoothing her hair and then her cheek with his free hand. ‘Nothing at all. I just think it’s time you were happy again.’

  ‘I have been happy.’ Cassie frowned, but didn’t take her eyes from his. ‘At least I think I have.’

  ‘Not really. You’ve been treading water and there’s no need. Nothing’s going to spoil.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Cassie frowned more deeply, but this time from a different sort of anxiety.

  ‘I don’t. It’s just a feeling I have.’

  Cassie put up a hand to touch his cheek. ‘You don’t say very much, but what you do say—’

  ‘They put on calendars,’ Joel finished for her.

  Cassie smiled and moved closer to him, putting her arms round his waist. ‘I just didn’t want to get it wrong, that’s all.’

  ‘You didn’t. And you haven’t. And you won’t.’

  Cassie kissed him, briefly, sweetly. He smiled at her and kissed her in return, briefly and sweetly. She moved closer to him and they kissed again, this time longer and more passionately, only for Joel to suddenly resist and pull away.

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ he groaned, turning on his back and staring up at the ceiling. ‘But I can’t.’

  Cassie stared at him, totally at a loss. ‘You can’t?’ she echoed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Joel repeated now with a sigh. ‘Not here. There’s just too much baggage.’ His eyes strayed past hers to the picture behind her head, to the photograph of her in Tyrone’s arms, and Cassie smiled to herself and with a kiss to Joel’s cheek settled herself down to lie in his different embrace.

  For once he was up long before her in the morning, Cassie awakening to the sound of him singing downstairs. When she finally made her way down to the kitchen in her dressing gown she found him busy making the breakfast.

  ‘All we did was sleep,’ she said, when she saw the size of the fry Joel was making.

  ‘I know, but it still made me hungry.’

  While he cooked Cassie sat in the window seat overlooking the sea. When he had settled her there with a cup of coffee and a rug for her knees, Joel resumed singing. He had a strong, smoky voice, well suited to the old Sinatra numbers he was working his way through.

  ‘Great day,’ Cassie said, studying the view. ‘I love this time of year.’

  ‘Me too,’ Joel agreed, before breaking into ‘Autumn in New York’.

  The day indeed had dawned fine and gentle, the awakening landscape bathed in that clear but wistful light late autumn brings, with the sea now almost calm after the gales of the day before. A small boat had just set out from the jetty far below to make its way across to the nearest
of the Blaskets, carrying some of the last of that summer’s visitors to explore the islands and spot the basking seals.

  Joel idly asked Cassie how long she was intending to stay down in Dingle. Cassie replied that she had no real idea, particularly now. They then sat in near silence, both of them watching the ever-changing landscape of the sea and shore until they had cleaned their plates with slices of the delicious barnbrack loaf Cassie had bought at the village shop and drunk the last of the freshly ground coffee.

  ‘OK,’ Joel said, standing up and taking Cassie’s empty cup. ‘Time to pack. Pack your things and don’t ask where you’re going.’

  After she was dressed and was locking up Cassie found Joel’s pack of Gauloises on the table by the fireplace.

  ‘You forgot these,’ she called, tossing him the pack.

  ‘No I didn’t,’ Joel replied, dropping them in the waste basket.

  Joel sang while Cassie drove following his orders, southwards towards Bantry through the beautiful Kerry countryside.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Joel replied good-naturedly, ‘and tell me why it’s called the Ring of Kerry – because it goes round in a ring, of course.’

  ‘Since you know all the answers, I won’t bother to ask you if you’d like to drive all the way round it,’ Cassie said.

  ‘On the way home,’ Joel replied. ‘Right now I’d like to get where we’re going.’

  The weather had improved even more by the time they were on the road, with not a cloud to be seen anywhere in the October sky. It was so mild that they drove with the roof of Cassie’s BMW convertible down, although Cassie insisted on putting the heater on for her feet.

  ‘Yes,’ Joel agreed thoughtfully. ‘Can’t have you getting cold feet.’

  Cassie laughed as Joel looked out of the window and began singing ‘Our Love Is Here To Stay’.