To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I’m afraid that you will be seeing me from time to time, alas.’

  ‘On the contrary, Jean-Luc. I shall look forward to your company.’

  That night, as the moonlight poured in through her open window, Cassie slept the first deep and untroubled sleep she had slept since her beloved Tyrone had been taken from her.

  Celine knocked on the door at half past eight the following morning, and in answer to Cassie’s call, wheeled in breakfast on an old mahogany trolley. Then she brought Cassie her wrap, put it round her shoulders, and plumped up her down-filled pillows for her, before disappearing with a smile to go and run a bath.

  Cassie sat up and looked with undisguised pleasure at the coffee and rolls, the curls of butter lying on ice and the bowl of homemade apricot jam. It had been a very long time since she’d enjoyed the luxury of breakfast in bed. She had really almost forgotten what it was like not having to scramble out of bed and into a pair of old riding breeches before grabbing a lonely cup of instant coffee in the kitchen on her way out to ride work.

  The maid returned from running the bath to enquire in her wonderfully fractured English if there was anything else Cassie required, before leaving her in peace to eat her breakfast and stare at the view outside her windows. Jean-Luc had told her she could stay in bed all day if she wished, but Cassie considered that would be a precious waste of golden moments. So she finished her breakfast, bathed, then dressed in her best slacks and dark blue cashmere polo-neck sweater.

  As she sat brushing her hair at a window, looking out over the perfectly cultivated gardens and grounds of the château, she wondered if what she was looking at was real, if life could actually be like this, like the vision she was looking at, like the dream she was in. And if this sort of life really was possible and did exist in actuality, what then would it be like? Would she hate it? Cassie wondered. Would she grow quickly bored and long for the discipline of hard work once more? Or was it actually possible to live such a life and be happy?

  If it was, she would never have to get up first thing every morning, knowing that, whatever the weather, she would be out in it, either riding or supervising her string at work, while the late winter winds and rains toughened and cut deep lines into her once soft skin. She wouldn’t have to keep her weight down, so that she could still ride the best of her young horses without causing them unnecessary strain or hurting their still unmade backs. She could get up at her leisure, then be driven into town to shop idly, and have a gentle lunch outside a café with a girl friend, while they watched the world go passing by. She could go out to parties and stay late dancing, secure in the knowledge that she could lie in the next morning under perfectly laundered linen sheets, propped up on swansdown pillows. She could relax; she could be free; she could be a woman; she could return to humanity.

  It was a perfect October day as she and Jean-Lucstrolled through the grounds. He told her the history of the château and of his family, and asked her if she would like to visit the vineyards after lunch. Cassie said she would be delighted, and then in answer to his gentle inquisition, found herself telling him the story of her young and unhappy life. He listened most attentively, nodding sometimes, and at others making peculiar French interpolations when he considered some chapter of incidents particularly shocking.

  By the end of their walk, as he led her back into the château for lunch, Jean-Luc stopped for a moment, and holding her by the elbow, looked directly in Cassie’s eyes.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I see now that you are in especial need of care and attention.’

  The longer she was at the château, the more relaxed and happy Cassie became. Jean-Luc became very serious on the matter of her well-being, and after three days declared himself well satisfied with the progress his houseguest was making.

  ‘When you arrive,’ he told her, ‘still you look like a woman in mourning. You wore your sadness like a mantle. No – please, I know you were doing your very best not to let anyone know your grief, but it was in your very aura. Now, you are more at peace. You have tranquillity. And this is good.’

  ‘It has to be this wonderful place, Jean-Luc,’ Cassie replied. ‘This wonderful place, and you.’

  Jean-Luc nodded seriously, and very carefully took Cassie by the arm.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I am so very glad that you said that to me.’

  That afternoon, the fourth day of her stay, he took Cassie walking through the typical deep woodland of the Loire valley. The leaves were just on the turn and in the clear October sunlight the trees were a blaze of autumnal colours.

  ‘You’re very privileged to live here, aren’t you?’ Cassie asked him. ‘I mean, this has to be one of the most heavenly places in the world.’

  ‘I do not consider it to be privileged, Cassie,’ Jean-Luc answered gravely, ‘to live anywhere without someone to love.’

  Uncertain how to take that remark, whether it was reflection upon the loss of his wife, or whether it was intended as an introduction for Cassie to enter the next stage of their association, she wandered ahead and stood on the banks of the river. After a moment, Jean-Luc came to her side and put his arm through hers.

  ‘I’m not at all sure, Jean-Luc,’ Cassie said, ‘that I’ll ever be able to love anyone ever again.’

  ‘No, no,’ he argued. ‘That is not what you mean. What you mean is that you will perhaps never be able to love anyone in quite the same way ever again.’

  Cassie watched the river flow past, flattening the reeds and racing round the stones. It was like life, slip-sliding past her, seemingly going faster and faster the longer she watched it go. Then she turned to Jean-Luc.

  ‘Do you really think that’s what I mean?’ she asked him.

  ‘I am quite sure,’ he replied. ‘Like I am that there are many other ways to love.’

  He smiled at her, then stroked her hair very gently, finally tipping her face up towards him with his long, slender fingers.

  ‘You are a very beautiful woman,’ he said, before kissing her. He kissed her as if he had been kissing her all his life, and then, taking her hand, he led her away from the river and back towards the far distant château.

  Somewhere in the woods behind them a single bird began to sing. It was not a nightingale.

  Jean-Luc had finally fallen asleep, his head turned away from Cassie, but one hand still holding hers. The sheet barely covered him, and Cassie looked first at her own naked body, and then at the body of the man lying naked beside her. She waited for the shock wave to hit her, the shock of revulsion and the remorse that she must surely feel. But she felt nothing. Nothing at all.

  But then she hadn’t felt very much when they had made love. Jean-Luc had done nothing wrong; in fact he had been very sensitive and gentle. Without a further word he had led her upstairs and into her bedroom, where kissing and caressing her with quiet passion, he had undressed her, and taken her to bed. He had been attentive and imaginative, and Cassie hoped that she had been the same. But it had all been dream-like, a distant experience which seemed to be cocooned within an echo. She knew that a man, someone, was making love to her, and she knew that she was making love to him back. She felt his kisses, his hands on her body, his body against hers, and she felt him inside her, strong and urgent. But the more passionate he became, the slower seemed the motion of her mind. Reality receded from her; it was almost as if someone else other than she, Cassie, was experiencing the encounter.

  And now he slept. Cassie looked at him, eyes fast closed, a half-smile on his face. She drew the sheet up over the rest of his slim and still very athletic body, and then quietly moved away from him, to turn on her side and stare at the wall. For a long time she thought about what she had done and wondered why it all seemed to lack any significance. Then she suddenly realised that the reason why she felt no remorse and no guilt was because she felt nothing; and she had felt nothing because she still only loved Tyrone. She could only have felt guilty for what she had done if she had fallen in love even halfway with the
man lying asleep beside her.

  She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. All in all, she thought, Tyrone Rosse was a quite impossible act to follow.

  She was woken from a deep sleep by Jean-Luc making love to her again. As she realised where she was and what was happening, Cassie panicked and wanted to stop him. But he seemed to misinterpret her struggles and her cries for passion, and turning her face roughly to him with one hand, kissed her so hard that she could feel blood in her mouth. Then still kissing her fiercely, he started to make violent love to her.

  When he had finished, he turned on his back and lay in silence. Cassie turned to him, strangely puzzled and bewildered, the taste of her own blood still on her lips, silently searching for an explanation. Jean-Luc raised himself up on one elbow, smiled at her, stroked her hair gently and kissed her cheek.

  ‘Are you not hungry?’ he whispered, lying back and stretching both his arms in the air above him. ‘Mon Dieu – after love like that, I am.’ He turned and stroked her hair again. ‘And what about you, ma petite? Are you not hungry too?’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about it,’ Cassie said, putting a finger to her bruised lips.

  ‘I will send down for a little love feast,’ he said, getting out of bed, and walking naked across to the house telephone.

  Down his back, Cassie could see red marks where she must have torn at him with her nails. She suddenly felt very confused. As a person, he was so kind, so solicitous. So why had she tried to stop him making love to her again? Why had she cried out and pleaded with him to stop? Why had she clawed in desperation at his back? And why had he paid her no heed? Had her fierce resistance only excited him all the more? Reality was now returning to her, sternly and sombrely, as Jean-Luc reeled off in French the recipe for what was obviously his favourite after-intercourse picnic. Cassie pulled the bed-sheet up protectively under her chin and watched him as he put down the telephone.

  ‘I have sent for champagne of course,’ he said as he walked back to the bed. ‘And some little mushroom pies the chef makes, very small, very delicious. And some salmon. Salmon is always so good after making love.’

  Jean-Luc got back into the bed and smiled at her. Cassie moved slightly away from him and, excusing herself, picked up her wrap and went and locked herself in the bathroom, where she ran herself a hot bath in which she lay soaking until she heard the maid arrive with the trays of food.

  Cassie knew that the telegram she had rung and instructed Tomas to send to her, requesting her immediate return to Claremore, would not arrive until morning, so she still had to survive one more night. As she dressed for dinner, delaying her arrival downstairs until the last possible moment, Cassie decided her best tactic was to behave as if nothing had happened – nothing, that was, to upset her. She had been very frightened by the sudden violence of his lovemaking, but she blamed only herself. She had encouraged him into her bed by not discouraging him, and the reason she had not discouraged him was because she wanted someone to make love to her. She wanted to know what had happened to her feelings. She wanted to know if she could survive the experience; and if she could, she would know that she could recover from her most terrible loss, and with time on her side most probably she could be capable of rebuilding her life.

  And until the second time he had made love to her, in a way that for some reason had frightened her, she had found Jean-Luc most attractive, gentle, intelligent and amenable. But she only blamed herself. She blamed herself for her ignorance. She knew that a lot of men liked to make love roughly, without always first making sure their passion was being reciprocated, just as she was quite well aware that within the confines of a bedroom and a relationship, many women liked to be symbolically raped. But she and Tyrone hadn’t had a relationship like that. Their lovemaking had been passionate, frequent and, above all, fun. It had never been unnecessarily nor unexpectedly violent.

  Then perhaps Jean-Luc hadn’t asked her if she wanted to be raped because he had simply assumed that her manner had suggested she might be the sort of woman who would enjoy it. It had to be entirely her own mistake, Cassie finally decided, fastening up the neck of her silk blouse, and no real fault of his at all. She should simply have told him that she didn’t like what he was doing and then, no doubt, being a man of such sensitivity, he would have stopped. Tyrone had always said that in life you only got what you asked for.

  When she went downstairs in search of him, he was not as usual in the salon. Instead, hearing voices and laughter coming from across the hall, she turned and went in to the library.

  Jean-Luc looked up in surprise as she entered, and for a moment Cassie thought she saw a look of anger in his eyes. But it passed so quickly that she thought she must have been mistaken. There was another man there, dressed in a pair of worn cord trousers, old tennis shoes, and a thick blue fisherman’s sweater. Jean-Luc introduced him as Georges Boutin, a painter friend of his from the town.

  Georges was older than Jean-Luc, and much bigger too; a bear of a man, with wild grey hair and laughing blue eyes. He took one look at Cassie, kissed her hand, and went off into a stream of rapturous French to Jean-Luc. Jean-Luc smiled and laughed politely while he listened to the tirade of compliments concerning Cassie, while Cassie smiled and tried to get a quiet look at one of the canvases which Boutin had brought with him. But they all were turned away, with their painted faces to the wall.

  Boutin saw Cassie looking at the backs of his paintings, and immediately picked one up. But Cassie was watching Jean-Luc, who visibly stiffened, and said something quickly and quietly to the painter in French. Boutin ignored whatever it was Jean-Luc had said and twirled the canvas round dramatically for Cassie to view.

  It was an oil, stunningly painted and conceived, of two naked women in bed, kissing.

  ‘Yes?’ he shouted, roaring with laughter. ‘You like?’

  ‘Very much,’ Cassie replied. ‘Yes I do.’

  Boutin picked up another bigger canvas and turned that round for Cassie to inspect as well.

  ‘Et alors! And this?’

  The second one was of three naked people. A man, who looked suspiciously like Boutin himself, lying with two girls. Not peasant girls, but two beautiful, sophisticated-looking women, both making love to the man.

  ‘I don’t like that one as much,’ Cassie informed him.

  ‘Too vulgaire, peut-être?’ Boutin asked, knocking back a large brandy. ‘A little too real for the American fantasy, yes?’

  ‘No,’ said Cassie. ‘It’s just very badly painted.’

  Boutin stared at her as if she had struck him on the face. Jean-Luc seized this opportunity of turfing him out of the study, having collected the remaining four or five canvasses.

  The painter was still staring at her as he was dragged out through the door. Cassie helped herself to a glass of champagne, while the painter’s angry roars receded across the vast hall, finally to be silenced as Jean-Luc slammed the huge front door.

  ‘My apologies, Cassie,’ Jean-Luc said on his return. ‘He is a drunken oaf, but at times a very fine painter.’

  ‘Do you buy much of his work?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Only the ones which interest me,’ her host replied. ‘Now if you would like to come in to dinner?’

  Over yet another superb meal Cassie reconsidered her feelings, particularly in light of her host’s quiet and caring attentions. So he’d been a little over-enthusiastic maybe, second time round. And sure, he’d ordered up that love feast like it was a thrice-weekly occurrence. But maybe he and his late wife had always had little love feasts. Maybe this was just a return to the good old ways, in celebration of Jean-Luc himself being able once more to make love, rather than part of a normal aprèsseduction routine. And as for the paintings, Jean-Luc was a Frenchman. Frenchmen were renowned the world over for their interest in art, and in women. So what more natural than good paintings of naked women, erotic or not?

  And then there was his lifestyle. The way he lived at his glorious château was so effo
rtless, and the very easiness of the existence constantly seduced Cassie; so much so that she was dreading her return to Claremore and its demanding routine. As she sipped an exquisite Chablis, Cassie seriously wondered what marriage would be like to this strange, elegant and serious Frenchman; and what her children would make of living in this wonderful house, which was like something out of one of their fairy-tales. She suspected they would love it as much as she would, and that Jean-Luc would most likely make a very sensitive and responsible step-father. And she, Cassie, would help run this great house, and perhaps become a famous hostess. She would certainly be rich enough to have her own racehorses, and somebody else to train them.

  ‘You are dreaming,’ a voice said. ‘Please tell me what you dream about.’

  She woke up and looking through the candlelight saw Jean-Luc smiling at her.

  ‘Perhaps you are dreaming of what the night has in store, yes?’

  Cassie smiled but said nothing. Because underneath she wasn’t smiling at all, as she realised that if they were both beginning to entertain serious feelings for each other, which Jean-Luc had certainly indicated that he was doing over dinner, then she realised she was going to have to do a little more homework to find out if they really were compatible, and that the afternoon’s violence had not been a sudden aberration.

  ‘Please, I would like you to come to my bedroom tonight,’ he whispered as they climbed the stairs hand in hand. ‘You have not yet seen my room, and I have some very fine works of art in there.’

  ‘Isn’t this a little late in the day to be inviting a girl to see your etchings?’ Cassie laughed.

  ‘No,’ Jean-Luc replied very seriously. ‘I think on the contrary.’

  She understood what he meant when she saw the room. Dominated by a huge oak four-poster bed, it was like an art gallery, with practically every inch of its walls covered with erotic prints and paintings. Jean-Luc led Cassie round the room by the hand, talking her through his collection of erotica in much the same manner as Sheila Meath had taken her round the Louvre. He indicated with particular interest certain line drawings, which he considered witty, but which Cassie thought were nothing short of grotesque. In fact there was nothing on any wall which Cassie would account to her liking, with the exception of one magnificent painting by Georges Boutin of a naked young girl spreadeagled across the bed in her sleep. The rest of the collection ranged from the oddly bizarre, to the openly sadistic.