To Hear a Nightingale Page 17

  Then the moment passed, as she looked and saw Joe’s handsome but serious face staring down at her.

  ‘C’mon,’ he said. ‘This is important.’

  Cassie smiled and tightening her grip on Joe’s hand, turned to walk down to the lake and a future life with Joe.

  ‘Cassie McGann?’ said a voice through the microphone.

  Cassie stopped at the end of the path and listened, unsure of what she had heard.

  ‘If there’s a Miss Cassie McGann here,’ the announcement continued, ‘would she please come to the bandstand where there’s an urgent message for her.’

  Cassie’s heart sank right down to the new shoes Joe had given her to go with her dress, and she closed her eyes.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered grimly to herself, as she turned and started to walk back up the path. ‘Not tonight of all nights. Please God, not tonight!’

  Joe caught her up and took her arm.

  ‘I missed what you said, Cass. What do you think it can be?’

  ‘What do you think, Joe?’ Cassie replied. ‘It has to be Grandmother!’

  Jennifer’s mother was waiting for her by the bandstand. She led Cassie away from the music and into the house. Joe followed.

  ‘It’s my grandmother, isn’t it?’ Cassie asked her, unable to keep the bitterness and disappointment from her voice.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Mrs Gathorne replied. ‘A Doctor Fossett rang, and said it would be best if you returned home immediately. Would you like me to drive you, dear?’

  ‘I’ll take her, Mrs Gathorne,’ Joe volunteered. ‘It’s no problem.’

  He drove very fast back to Westboro Falls, as if every minute spent on the errand was eroding into the happiness he had planned for Cassie and himself. Cassie said nothing for a long time, as she was doing her best to fight back the rage she felt.

  ‘She’s always doing this you know, Joe,’ she told him finally. ‘Ever since I was a kid. Always faking illness, so as I’d have to come home from wherever I was, particularly if she thought I was out enjoying myself. I even had to leave Jennifer’s telephone number tonight. In case something happened. “My heart, you know”.’

  Joe turned and looked at Cassie. He was surprised by the anger and bitterness in her voice. He put his hand out and she took it for a moment, before laying her head on his shoulder.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with her heart, you know,’ Cassie said with a sigh. ‘Doctor Fossett says these pains she’s been having are just gastric.’

  ‘Then why the emergency?’ Joe queried, swinging the car left into the main street of Westboro.

  ‘Because knowing my grandmother,’ Cassie replied, ‘if I didn’t rush back at once, to spite me she’d kill herself.’

  But her grandmother was still alive when Cassie got home, just as she thought she would be. Joe waited outside while Cassie talked to Doctor Fossett who was standing in the living room when Cassie went in, examining the silver in Grandmother’s corner cupboard.

  He moved away from the small collection of silver when he saw Cassie, and picked up his overcoat, which he had left draped over the back of a chair. Cassie also noticed that he had helped himself to a drink.

  ‘I should imagine it’s only a chill,’ he told Cassie, slipping his coat back on with the practised ease of someone used to putting it on and off many times during the course of a day. ‘She has a raised temperature, and some congestion in her lungs. I’ve started her on a course of penicillin, which you’re to administer every six hours.’

  He picked up his bag and walked out to the front door. Cassie followed him.

  ‘That means I have to stay home, I guess,’ she said.

  Doctor Fossett glanced at her party dress, then nodded.

  ‘I’m afraid so, young lady,’ he answered. ‘At times like this there are more important things than going out dancing. I’ll look in and see how she’s getting on in the morning.’

  Joe jumped out of his car when he saw Cassie standing so forlorn on the steps, and ran up to her.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘I have to stay here, Joe,’ Cassie told him, taking his hands. ‘Grandmother’s got a fever.’

  ‘Can’t the maid look after her?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Delta doesn’t live in,’ Cassie replied. ‘I’m sorry, but the doctor says I really have to stay.’

  Joe and Cassie stood on the porch for a moment in silence, looking out at the night, neither of them quite knowing what to say or how to pick up the pieces.

  ‘I’ll stay with you, Cassie,’ Joe announced. ‘Come on.’

  Cassie stopped him by the door.

  ‘And miss all the fun? Are you crazy?’

  She turned him back towards the car.

  ‘You go right back to the dance at once and enjoy yourself,’ she told him. ‘There’s no point in us both being miserable.’

  ‘That does it,’ Joe said, turning back and taking one of Cassie’s hands firmly. ‘If you’re going to be miserable, how in hell am I going to enjoy myself?’

  He pulled her after him back into the house, and closed the front door.

  Cassie went upstairs to see her grandmother. She was lying propped up by two extra pillows, half asleep, and Cassie noticed that her breathing did sound rather thick and rasping. But then whenever her grandmother had a cold, her breathing always sounded constrained.

  She also looked pale, whiter than usual in fact. Cassie couldn’t help entertaining the thought that, knowing her grandmother, she had probably powdered her face that colour specially, to frighten Cassie, and punish her for going out and enjoying herself. She also made herself a private bet that Grandmother’s sixth sense had told her that Joe had bought an engagement ring and was going to propose to her that night.

  Grandmother woke up just as Cassie was tiptoeing back out of the room.

  ‘Is that you, Delta?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Grandmother,’ Cassie replied, turning back. ‘It’s Cassie.’

  ‘Go and tell Delta to make me a hot drink,’ she ordered, still well enough to give her usual peremptory commands.

  Cassie was about to tell her that Delta had long gone home, when she stopped. This was just another of Grandmother’s bear traps. Always giving the credit for whatever Cassie might do for her to someone else. Cassie never did anything for her out of kindness, while everything Delta did was always altruistic and nothing to do with earning her salary.

  Joe followed Cassie into the kitchen, and watched her as she made her grandmother a hot drink of milk and cinammon.

  ‘How old is your grandmother?’ Joe asked her, putting his arms round Cassie’s waist from behind.

  ‘Careful, Joe!’ Cassie laughed. ‘Unless you want me to get burned!’

  ‘That’s the last thing I want,’ Joe replied, and turning her round to him, kissed her.

  ‘How old is your grandmother?’ he repeated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cassie answered with a shrug. ‘Not very old. Sixty-four, sixty-five. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘About the same age as mine. That’s no age.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Meaning it’s probably just the ’flu.’

  Cassie took Grandmother up her drink, careful not to spill anything in the saucer, and thought that she’d never considered it might be anything other than a cold, or the ’flu. Her grandmother might be small, but although she was always complaining about her health, and carrying on like a semi-invalid, it had never affected her activities. She still went out three or four times a week to play bridge, and walked to the beauty parlour every Friday morning.

  But she had fallen back asleep when Cassie went back into her bedroom, with her mouth wide open, and her right hand hanging out of bed. Cassie put the drink down, and gently replaced the hand under the bedcovers. She noticed her grandmother’s breathing sounded slightly more congested, but then decided that if indeed she did have the ’flu, this was only to be expected. She turned the light out a
nd closed the door, before tiptoeing back downstairs.

  Joe had made them a jug of coffee, which he had taken through to the living room, where he was now fiddling with Grandmother’s old radio set, trying to tune it in to some dance music.

  ‘Not too loud for heaven’s sake, Joe!’ Cassie hissed with a backward glance up the stairs before closing the door. ‘We don’t want her waking up.’

  ‘Too right,’ grinned Joe, taking Cassie in his arms as a band on the radio played ‘The Nearness Of You’.

  ‘What are you doing, Joe?’ Cassie asked, knowing full well.

  ‘There’s no reason why we have to stop dancing,’ Joe replied. ‘There’s no reason I can’t ask you here what I was going to ask you by the lake.’

  Cassie looked up at him and smiled. Then she rested her head on his chest, loving him even more at that moment than she’d loved him before. He sang the words of the song softly to her, resting his chin on the top of her hair.

  When you’re in my arms, and I feel you so close to me –

  All my wildest dreams come true –

  They didn’t hear the footfalls on the staircase, nor did they even hear the door opening behind them – most likely because they were fast in each other’s arms and miles away. But they were rudely disturbed by the overhead light suddenly being switched on.

  Cassie spun round in surprise to see the figure of her grandmother leaning against the doorway, her nightgown clasped around her.

  ‘What do you think you two are doing?’ she croaked, one hand at her throat. ‘Don’t you realise I am lying at death’s door above your head?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Grandmother,’ Cassie said. ‘We didn’t think you’d be able to hear the radio.’

  ‘Dancing indeed,’ her grandmother continued. ‘Smooching and dancing while someone lies waiting to meet their Maker. Have you no sense at all?’

  Cassie went towards her grandmother as she grabbed hold of the lintel to stop herself slipping to the floor.

  ‘It was entirely my fault, Mrs Arbuthnot,’ Joe said. ‘You mustn’t hold Cassie to blame. It was entirely my fault.’

  Cassie’s grandmother ignored him, as she tried to catch her breath.

  ‘Help me get her back upstairs, Joe,’ Cassie said, taking her grandmother by the arm. ‘Then I must ring the doctor.’

  Grandmother didn’t seem to know what was happening to her as they almost carried her back up the stairs. She started to mutter deliriously, and sweat was running profusely down her face. They got her back into her bed, where she lay shivering with fever. Cassie fetched a cold flannel and wiped her grandmother’s face and neck, then piled some more bedclothes on to the bed. They sat with her for a while, as she tossed her head restlessly from side to side on her pillow, all the time muttering dark and delirious imprecations.

  Then she fell asleep, quite suddenly, and very deeply. Her breathing seemed more regular and much less congested, and under the welter of bedclothes, she had quite stopped shivering. They went quietly out of the room, and Cassie hurried downstairs to the telephone.

  When it rang in Doctor Fossett’s house, he was just sitting on the side of his bed, unlacing his shoes, having just returned from a good two hours in his regular poker school. He had also consumed the best part of half a quart of Jack Daniels.

  Cassie, when she heard his voice on the telephone, thought the thickness of his speech was due to sleepiness.

  ‘I know it’s late, Doctor,’ Cassie said, ‘but she’s really very feverish.’

  ‘She would be,’ Doctor Fossett replied, undoing his tie. ‘It’s a very nasty ’flu. Mrs Fossett had it, and wasn’t at all well.’

  ‘I still think you should come over and see her,’ Cassie continued, prompted by Joe. ‘She went really delirious.’

  ‘Just like Mrs Fossett,’ Doctor Fossett nodded, undoing the waistbelt of his pants. ‘If she wakes up, give her three aspirin, and don’t forget her penicillin. I’ll look in in the morning.’

  ‘It would only take you ten minutes to look in now,’ Cassie suggested.

  ‘Young lady,’ Doctor Fossett said with unconcealed impatience. ‘I still have other calls to make. Your grandmother isn’t the only victim of this influenza. We could have an epidemic on our hands.’

  And with that he put the telephone back on its cradle and fell into bed, still in his underclothes.

  Cassie and Joe kept a nightwatch. They took it in turns to stay awake, in case anything further should happen, but by four o’clock in the morning Grandmother was still sound asleep. While Cassie was upstairs checking her, Joe took the ring box out of his pocket and opened it. The stones on the pretty ring gleamed and shone by the firelight, but Joe knew that this was now neither the time nor the place to propose to Cassie. So he put it back in his pocket, and planned when next he could ask her.

  Cassie came back down and told Joe that her grandmother was still asleep, and that he should now go home as the crisis seemed to have passed. Joe was reluctant to leave Cassie, but she insisted, as Joe needed some sleep before he went to work, as indeed Cassie herself did. They kissed on the doorstep then, turning once to wave at Cassie and blow her another kiss, he was gone into the dawn.

  Cassie tidied up the living room, doused the fire down and prepared to go up to bed – when quite suddenly there was the sound of a heavy crash from her grandmother’s room which was directly above her. At once Cassie dropped everything and rushed up the stairs, taking them two, three at a time. She flung open her grandmother’s bedroom door to see her lying sprawled on the floor, face down, one leg still hitched up on the bed and caught under the bedding.

  She didn’t seem to be breathing as she lay with her face twisted sideways on the carpet. Her eyes were open and staring at Cassie, and from the side of her mouth ran a dark trickle of blood. Cassie stood for a moment, rooted to the spot with horror, before rushing to her grandmother to try and pick her up and put her back in bed. But even before she had lifted her light frame off the floor, Cassie knew it was too late. Grandmother was dead. She had died before she had even hit the floor.

  Doctor Fossett seemed more interested in the silver in Grandmother’s cabinet than in the figure seated in black by the fireside behind him. His head was still throbbing from the amount of whisky he had drunk the night before, and already his internal mechanism was telling him it was time for a hair of the dog.

  ‘There was nothing more you could have done, Cassie,’ he assured the young woman, bending closer to look at a particularly pretty little silver cream jug he hadn’t noticed before. ‘With older people, there’s just no telling where or when.’

  ‘Or how,’ replied Cassie, curious as to what had caused her grandmother’s sudden death. ‘It surely can’t have been the ’flu.’

  ‘No,’ said Doctor Fossett gravely, taking the little jug out of the cupboard and turning it over to examine the hallmarks. ‘No, no, I would say there must have been sudden and acute complications.’

  ‘But not her heart,’ Cassie persisted. ‘You said there was nothing wrong with her heart.’

  ‘As far as I could diagnose,’ Doctor Fossett replied, clearing his throat, ‘there was absolutely nothing wrong with her heart whatsoever. Nothing whatsoever. And as I keep trying to assure you, you really mustn’t blame yourself.’

  She wasn’t, Cassie thought, watching the doctor replace the piece of silver he had been examining. She knew who was to blame, and so, in his heart, did Doctor Fossett. Cassie knew he should have called back during the night when she rang him. He might not have been able to save her, but his presence would have made sure that there could be no accusations of neglect levelled against either party. Grandmother must have known she was dying, and if Doctor Fosset had been there, and able to confirm this, she could at least have had the Last Rites. Cassie knew she would mind about that. And she felt sorry for the dead woman, for missing her last chance to make her peace with God.

  ‘I’ve made all the necessary arrangements,’ Doctor Fossett said, buttoni
ng up his coat. ‘So there’s nothing about which you need immediately concern yourself.’

  ‘I want a post mortem,’ Cassie said suddenly, as Doctor Fossett was just pulling on his gloves.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he replied, with the ghost of a smile. ‘There’s absolutely no need. Your grandmother died of influenza and complications. That’s what I’ve put on the death certificate.’

  ‘She didn’t die of influenza, Doctor,’ Cassie told him. ‘As I think you probably suspect yourself. I called Joe Harris, who then spoke to his father—’

  Cassie looked up, curious at what reaction that would bring from the doctor. She noticed with some satisfaction that what colour there was to his face was fast draining away.

  ‘And he was of the opinion that there could be a misdiagnosis here,’ Cassie finished.

  ‘I think you’ll find my diagnosis was perfectly correct,’ Doctor Fossett faltered. ‘They invariably are.’

  ‘Probably because invariably they are never questioned,’ Cassie answered calmly. ‘Anyway, Doctor, it’s not for me to find out if it was correct.’

  Cassie rose to see him out. She wasn’t demanding the post mortem for the sake of her grandmother, but for the sake of all the sick and dying people who were being treated by Doctor Fossett. Cassie had heard the tales about him, and in particular how all the old spinsters and widows lived in almost mortal fear of his predatory ways. She knew for a fact that he was always helping himself to valuable knick-knacks from his terminally ill patients; only last week, so the story went, he had helped himself to Mrs Edith Clarence’s 150-year old silver fruit bowl, before the woman had drawn her last breath. In fact she had staged a late rally and embarrassed Doctor Fossett, as she saw him putting the bowl in his bag. She rallied long enough to live another day and to tell her sister of the scandal when she came to visit her that evening.

  So Cassie was determined that her grandmother was going to do one good thing in her life, even by the leaving it, and that was to expose Doctor Fossett’s malpractices.