The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  Cassie attempted to talk to her daughter in the back of the taxi, but Josephine refused to be drawn, preferring to keep the talk to nothing more particular than shopping for presents and the crowded state of London until they were well past the Ritz and heading for the west end of Piccadilly.

  ‘I’ll drop you off at Harrods, if you don’t mind,’ Cassie said, ‘because I want to take the cab on.’

  ‘You’re not staying at the Dorchester?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I just have to go and see someone.’

  ‘Joel Benson, I take it,’ Josephine said without affection. ‘Oh yes, I know all about Mr Joel Benson. The man who killed his father. Nice.’

  ‘He didn’t kill his father, Jo,’ Cassie protested. ‘He helped him to die, put him out of his agony, which is hardly the same thing as killing someone.’

  ‘Mr Benson is not a very nice person.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘Oh, I know all about him, Mums, and so does half of London,’ Josephine replied, turning to face her mother. The look of unalloyed hostility in her face frightened Cassie. ‘He’s a fortune-hunter. Why else do you think he bumped off his father? According to Mark his father was worth a small fortune.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Cassie said grimly, looking away out of the window next to her and trying to control her temper.

  ‘You bet I do. You should hear your friend Leonora on the subject – she’s known Mr Joel Benson for years. Ever since he was shacked up with some Swedish or Danish heiress. Nina Von Prost or something.’

  Cassie turned back to her daughter with a look of amazement. ‘Nina Von Prost?’

  ‘Ask Leonora.’

  ‘Leonora lies.’

  ‘Ask anyone.’

  ‘I shan’t ask anyone. I shall ask Joel.’

  ‘You think he’s going to tell you the truth? I hear he has a certain amount of trouble in that area. Anyway, he got bail, I take it.’

  ‘Of course,’ Cassie replied. ‘Why shouldn’t he?’

  ‘Exactly. Why shouldn’t he? He’s white and he’s well connected.’

  Cassie didn’t bother responding to the jibe.

  ‘OK,’ Josephine said, preparing to get out. ‘Harrods coming up – so have fun.’

  As the store loomed into view and Josephine collected her things, Cassie leaned forward and held her by one arm. ‘What is it, Jo? Have I done something or what?’

  ‘You haven’t actually done anything,’ her daughter sighed by way of reply, just the way she had when she was much younger, like a child play-acting badly. ‘It’s more the fact of who you are. Think about it, and have a Happy Christmas. Ciao.’

  With a brief and frosty smile Josephine slammed the taxi door shut, in a moment to be swallowed up in the throng of Christmas shoppers.

  Joel opened the door to his house with a Burmese cat on one shoulder and a half-eaten digestive biscuit on one hand.

  ‘I thought you were shopping. Come in.’

  Cassie followed him inside as he wandered ahead of her, leaving her to close the front door. It was a large, handsome Edwardian house overlooking a duck pond, the inside of which, Cassie noted, was like an art gallery. There were paintings, drawings and sculptures everywhere, not all by Joel – indeed far from it. It was an eclectic collection, ranging from small delicate landscapes in oils to huge rough drawings of sheep and horses done on heavy cartridge paper stuck up unframed on the side of the staircase and above a fireplace in one of the rooms she passed by. On the other hand, much to her surprise, the house was not only well furnished albeit in a highly individualized style but it was also tidy, orderly and clean.

  ‘I know,’ Joel said with a smile as he faced her once they had reached the large terracotta-tiled and buttermilk-painted kitchen where he had been having his tea. ‘I can see by your face. You thought I’d live in a slum.’

  ‘I admit I didn’t think you’d live in a small Tate Gallery,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Things I’ve picked up over the years,’ Joel said, pulling a chair out for Cassie at the large scrubbed pine table. ‘Some by mates, but not a lot. Most of it’s by total unknowns. Least they were when I bought them. The girl who did the large sheep and pigs and things you were looking at is very well known now, and so she should be. So what happened to the shopping?’ He felt the teapot, and having decided it was still hot enough poured Cassie a cup without asking her before topping up his own hand-painted mug.

  ‘What happened to the shopping,’ Cassie said, taking off her favourite long St Laurent topcoat and draping it over the back of another chair, ‘was that I wasn’t in the mood.’

  ‘Don’t blame you,’ Joel said, sipping his tea. ‘Can’t stand Christmas shopping. By the way, trial’s set for the third week of March.’

  ‘That’s Cheltenham week.’

  ‘I know,’ Joel sighed, looking at her over his mug. ‘What’s up? You look as though someone stole your bun.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Nina Van Prost?’

  Joel barely reacted to the question other than put down his mug of tea and stare into it. ‘I suppose because I didn’t think it was important,’ he said finally. ‘It shouldn’t be, because it didn’t matter to me. I suppose Leonora told you.’

  ‘My daughter told me.’

  ‘And who told her?’

  ‘Leonora.’ Cassie shrugged, matching his steady gaze.

  ‘How that woman must hate you,’ he said. ‘And all because you beat her at tennis. Except that’s not the real reason she hates you. As you well know.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for any crackerbarrel philosophy, thanks.’

  ‘This isn’t crackerbarrel. The reason why Leonora hates you has nothing really to do with the famous school tennis match. As you said, she was after you from the word go, and I reckon the reason for that was because she instinctively knew you were always going to have it over her, that whatever happened to the two of you you’d always come out best. Now that’s the worst kind of jealousy, the totally irrational sort. No one wants to be on the end of that kind of resentment.’

  Cassie looked at him, trying not to betray her sudden interest but obviously without success judging from Joel’s expression.

  ‘Worse, you got happy, and that’s a bird people just love to shoot down, Mrs Rosse. The little bluebird of happiness.’

  Cassie pulled the initially unwanted cup of tea towards her now to cover her confusion. Her intention had been to beard Joel, not to be subjected to a session of pyschoanalysis. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Then if we’re into whys and wherefores, I’d quite like to hear why you find it necessary to lie. Don’t you know how much lies hurt?’

  Joel shook his head once and then shrugged. ‘Sometimes telling lies stops the hurt. Not only the hurt the truth might bring to other people but also the hurt it causes you yourself. I didn’t tell you about Nina because I have tried to forget it, and the reason why I have tried to forget it is because it still hurts. It’s got nothing to do with love, so you can take the worried look off your pretty face. The fact of the matter is I had an affair with Nina a year after my wife left me. It was what they like to call a whirlwind romance.’

  ‘I still would have rather you’d told me,’ Cassie insisted. ‘Nina Van Prost is such a gossip column item, and you and she – well. It puts you in a different light, as if you’re not really the kind of person I thought you were.’

  ‘I’m exactly the sort of person you think I am and Nina Von Prost’s the main reason for that if you’d just listen,’ Joel said. ‘When I met her Nina Von Prost was – and still is for all I know – unimaginably beautiful.’ He took a cigarette from his pack but did not light it. Instead he just sat tapping it slowly on the table while he talked. ‘She was also very rich, and I mean seriously – which is probably what started all the stories about me being a fortune-hunter. I was nuts for her and she said she was nuts for me, although what I think she was nuts about was the artist lover bit, being
painted in the nude, sculpted in the nude and then put on show for all to see. All that sort of thing. She loved seeing people looking at a drawing or a sculpture of her and only her and me knowing the circumstances of its genesis. She got a kick out of that, for a while, just as she did out of going to jazz clubs and smoking the odd joint now and then. Très outré. It was just all very different from anything the spoiled little rich kid had done before. Then, and don’t ask me why, I asked her to marry me and she said yes, much to my surprise, I can tell you. I think she’d thought it would be dead sexy living in a studio and pretending to be poor because she was always going on about how bored she was with being so rich and how at last she’d found Real Life with me. Which of course was just complete toss. But the most pathetic part about it all was I believed it. Having this incredibly beautiful broad allegedly in love with me, I suppose I just totally lost it, but not for long. You have never seen anyone get bored so fast. One moment we were going to live this wonderfully sexy and exciting vie Bohème and the next moment she wanted out. That’s where it hurt. It would have hurt a lot less if it had been something physical, or psychological maybe, but not boredom. Having someone getting bored with you, and so quickly—’ Joel shook his head and sighed. ‘It’s pretty soul-destroying, believe me,’ he continued. ‘When somebody thinks you’re boring and tells you so, it’s an absolute killer. After that it’s practically impossible to think of yourself as interesting. Let alone act interesting.’

  ‘How long did she stay with you?’

  ‘Six weeks. Not altogether unsurprisingly I lost my nerve a bit after that. Everyone said forget it – put it out of your mind. Pretend it didn’t happen. Call it an accident, not a failure.’

  Cassie reached across the table and took Joel’s hands. ‘The one thing I’d say people couldn’t ever be with you, Joel, is bored,’ she said with a smile. ‘Exasperated, yes. Infuriated, certainly. Bored – never.’

  ‘Nina Von Prost was,’ Joel replied.

  ‘No she wasn’t. What people like that are bored with is life. Or most probably themselves. Is there anything else you should tell me that you haven’t?’

  Joel thought for a moment, rubbing his face one-handed with finger and thumb down his cheekbones to the point of his chin. ‘I have a thing about high heels,’ he said very seriously.

  ‘What man doesn’t?’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Do you have anything you feel you should tell me that you haven’t?’ Joel asked in return, straightfaced.

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie nodded. ‘I have a thing about men who have a thing about high heel shoes.’

  Instead of falling asleep, after they had made love they just lay on their sides looking at each other without talking. Outside the early evening traffic hummed by and rain began to fall against the bedroom windows.

  ‘There’s a wonderful poem that exactly describes this moment,’ Joel said, still looking into Cassie’s eyes. ‘But I can’t quite remember it.’

  ‘How does it go?’

  ‘If I knew that, Mrs Rosse, I wouldn’t be lying here trying to remember it.’ Joel rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. ‘It’s something about love hanging still as crystal over the bed and filling the corners of the enormous room.’

  ‘Joel—’ Cassie began, slipping an arm across his bare chest. ‘Joel, what’s going to happen?’

  ‘Happen as in what, Cass? If you mean as far as the trial goes—’

  ‘Yes. Yes that’s exactly what I mean.’

  ‘I suppose if I’m realistic about it, a suspended sentence is too much to hope for. I expect in the end I shall go to prison,’ he said after a moment, still looking up at the ceiling. ‘Not for long, but I can’t see them not sending me down for a while.’

  ‘No, Joel.’ Cassie raised herself up in the bed and looked down at the man beside her. ‘No, Joel, surely not,’ she said again. ‘Surely they won’t send you to prison.’

  ‘Will you stop calling me Shirley?’ Joel said lamely, attempting a joke only to change his smile to a frown when he saw the concern on Cassie’s face. ‘My barrister chum still holds by a suspended sentence, but he says if they do send me down it’ll be six months at most.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go to prison, Joel,’ Cassie replied, lying back down in the cradle of his arms. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘No,’ Joel agreed. ‘Neither could I.’

  They made love again, this time as if for the last time, as if they were never going to see each other again, as if Joel was going off to war. They never took their eyes from each other’s, looking into each other the whole time, as if to imprint every moment of this loving on their minds so that the memory would always be there whatever happened in the days that lay immediately ahead.

  ‘Voices will hector, and your voice become a drum in tune with theirs,’ Joel said afterwards in the darkness.

  ‘What’s that?’ Cassie whispered. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘It’s from the poem,’ Joel told her. ‘When they finish making love he says he will lose her, that she will go back to being the person she was before, that the very voice which avowed their identity will become a drum in tune with theirs.’

  ‘Never,’ Cassie said. ‘Never ever ever,’ she added, a little too forcefully.

  * * *

  It was late when they reached the club, much later than they had intended, Cassie having insisted on going back to the Dorchester to change despite Joel’s assurances that she looked just fine the way she was. The place was packed and smoky, the crowd having been attracted by the notable booking of the Gene Harris trio who according to Joel on their arrival were already well and truly cooking.

  ‘Diet Coke,’ Cassie said in answer to his enquiry at the bar as to what she wanted.

  ‘You’ll need something a little stronger than that,’ he replied with only the suspicion of a smile. ‘And don’t worry about me, OK?’

  He ordered her up a whisky sour which he knew she liked and a Coke for himself and was about to order them both some dinner when his brother came over and muttered something in his ear before hurrying away.

  ‘He wants me to sit with his quartet that is now a trio,’ he explained. ‘His drummer’s had an accident. Nothing serious, but he’s not going to make it here tonight.’

  ‘You play the drums?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘You’d better reserve judgement on that.’ Joel smiled, drumming out some double time on the bar with his fingers. ‘I can keep time.’

  He did more than keep time, Cassie observed once the quartet had taken over from the guest group. As far as she could see and hear Joel was a halfway decent drummer since the group swung nice and easily, earning an approving nod from both his brother and the bass player. While Joel played through the set, Cassie sat on up at the bar enjoying both her drink and the music while wondering where exactly her growing relationship with him might lead. From nowhere all at once it seemed to be going somewhere, and going there so fast now that Cassie had not really taken the time out to think about what actually might happen to them both. Even when they had finally become lovers, that was as much as Cassie would let herself think their relationship might be, a love affair pure and simple, and thinking like that gave the affair some sort of finitude. Where she was now in her life Cassie didn’t want to think in terms of a till-death-do-us-part relationship. She had done that, she kept telling herself, she had been there with Tyrone with whom she knew she had been lucky enough to experience the greatest sort of till-death-do-us-part association of which anyone could ever have dreamed, and that once death had indeed parted them there was never the remotest chance of meeting anyone else with whom she would feel the same sort of consummate affinity.

  Yet now with Joel she was beginning to sense that it wasn’t going to be quite as she had imagined it might be. She and her best friend Mary-Jo Christiansen’s brother Frank had loved each other very much but not deeply enough to want to get married. They had talked about it once when they had both concluded perfectly amic
ably that neither of them was suited to the state of matrimony, mostly because they both had burgeoning careers which neither of them wanted to give up, although the real truth was that even then, so long after Tyrone’s death, his shadow still hung heavy and neither Frank nor Cassie was willing to try to step out from it.

  Joel had forced her hand. He had come at her head-on and made her look at her life anew, obliging her to realize that falling in love again or even just having a physical affair was in no way a betrayal of a man who had been laid to his final rest. For that she was grateful to him, yet that was not why she loved him, which was what had stunned her. What she loved about Joel was the man himself. She was attracted to him not because he brought her comfort and kindness as Frank Christiansen had done, but because he excited and provoked her. She felt stimulated by him, engrossed by the complexities of his character as well as physically attracted to him, more physically attracted than she had been to any man since Tyrone, but in an altogether different way from how she had been drawn to her husband. Tyrone had offered her a deep and romantic love which had been almost mystical in its power. Ever since the day she had first met him Cassie had been swept along by what she felt was the force of their mutual destiny, as if their love had been written long, long ago in some ancient Irish legend, as if they had always been destined to meet and were part of something ordained so that when he was lost to her the size of the tragedy seemed to assume an epic proportion.

  Joel was different, so different that there could be no compare. Whereas everything about Tyrone had seemed classical, Joel was totally modern, not someone dreamed up in some cloud-shrouded Irish mountains by mystical gods and goddesses who liked nothing better than to shape people’s destinies. Tyrone had been a horse trainer who was also a poet, tough and fearless, yet sweet and gentle. Joel was an artist who was also an artisan, kind and considerate yet intense and demanding. The boundaries crossed nowhere yet the two men seemed to run into each other, because they each gave Cassie something very different yet what they both gave her fulfilled her every need.