To Hear a Nightingale Read online

  For no one Cassie met in New York seemed to own up to having parents. It just wasn’t chic. The ‘in’ thing was rather to surround yourself with an air of mystery, particularly with regard to your background. If you didn’t have parents, you could be anyone. Particularly if you changed your name. With a different and more exotic-sounding name you couldn’t be identified with some small town, or hick-farming community. Instead you could instantly become someone who could possibly be invited to lunch with Barbara Hutton, or to cocktails centred round a white piano being played by some celebrity, or someone who might even make it to Hollywood.

  Fortunately Cassie was not in the least stage-struck, nor did she wish to change her name. Indeed part of her determination was to make her illegitimate name acceptable. She did, however, relish the anonymity of the enormous city, and was not one bit deterred by its apparent impersonality. Knowing Gina helped, sure it did, because without her Cassie would have been stuck for introductions. But once you’d been introduced to someone, you were once again on your own, and you had to make it on in there without any more outside help. And Cassie was learning how to do just that.

  She had also made positively meteoric progress at Bergdorf Goodman’s. From day one she made it quite plain that she wasn’t interested in remaining just a sales assistant. She wanted to become a junior buyer, and in double-quick time. From that first day she determined always to be the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night. In her lunch break, she didn’t go and eat like the other girls, but stayed on to watch how the senior assistants operated, and how the display artists created their shows. She saw what lines sold at once and found out why, and she learned by watching how even a dud line could be pressed on an unsuspecting customer. And she asked questions. She was like a child – why this, why that? – annoying some of the more toffee-nosed employees, and intriguing others, usually the ones in more senior positions, who recognised in Cassie the sort of spirited and intelligent girl they generally never had the good fortune to find as their sales assistants.

  Oddly enough, she was also popular with most of the other girls. One or two took exception to what they liked to think of as Cassie’s ‘vulgar ambitions’, as there are few as snobbish as shop girls. But most of the others, girls either younger than Cassie, or even of the same age, liked the determined and bright dark-haired girl who had joined their ranks, attracted to her company as they saw at once, as girls often do about each other, something rather special in Cassie McGann.

  So by the end of her first eighteen months in the lingerie department, Cassie was already one of their most valued sales assistants, and her supervisor had already marked her down as her top recommendation to make junior buyer. She’d even had a rise.

  The rise was enough to allow Cassie off her extra waitressing work, which gave her more time to enjoy her growing social life. With Gina as a friend and companion, there was no shortage of dates. Gina was usually too tired after a long day’s photography to want to do more most nights than lie on her bed with a face-pack on, watching TV. As a consequence, Cassie often acted as Gina’s stand-in on certain dates, and her circle of acquaintances grew rapidly.

  Her closest friend was Arnie, a young man born and bred in New York, who knew the city backwards. He was a jazz freak, and he introduced Cassie to a whole new world. Two or three times a week he’d take her to bars, and introduce her to the sounds of musicians, the like of Coleman Hawkins, Art Blakey, Stan Getz and the Adderly brothers. Cassie was at once taken with the music, although she had seldom heard any hard bop or East Coast jazz before at all. The hottest music she’d ever listened or danced to was the music of the late Glenn Miller, or at parties the swing music of Benny Goodman soundalikes. This music she was learning about now was much tougher and more determined, and altogether suited Cassie’s emerging personality.

  Arnie liked to think of himself as pretty cool, but he found that stance hard to keep up when in the company of his new girlfriend Cassie. She was, as he liked to say, something else, and Cassie, making fun of his up-to-date slang, would seriously enquire what else was she? Whereupon Arnie would redden, and become totally tongue-tied when asked to explain his feelings in more conventional ways. He was, of course, falling hopelessly in love with Cassie, as most of her dates did. Cassie sometimes wondered why, when – as she explained to Gina – she did nothing whatsoever to encourage them. In fact, in most cases she positively discouraged their advances.

  ‘Sure,’ Gina answered, ‘which just makes ’em queue up all the more.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want them queueing up,’ Cassie answered. ‘I mean I don’t want to go giving them the wrong impression.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Gina assured her. ‘These guys like you for what you are, or – in Arnie Puterman’s case – love you for what you are.’

  Gina grinned at her and then turned back to her dress mirror to see how her latest outfit was hanging on her lean frame.

  ‘I don’t want Arnie to love me,’ Cassie said, somewhat, Gina thought, defiantly.

  ‘That’s OK, Cass,’ Gina replied over her shoulder. ‘I quite fancy him. So you can throw him back over here when you’re done.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll go,’ Cassie sighed. ‘He’s getting awful serious, and that’s not what I want at all. But on the other hand, I don’t want to hurt him.’

  Gina threw the outfit down on her bed, and held up another one against her.

  ‘Listen, Cassie McGann,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to sort out what you want. And fast.’

  ‘I know what I want, Gina,’ replied Cassie. ‘And at the moment, there’s not a lot of room for Arnie.’

  Gina turned round and looked at her.

  ‘What do you want, Cass?’ she asked.

  Cassie looked back at her steadily.

  ‘What I want,’ she replied, ‘is for no one ever to call me a bastard.’

  She had just walked out of her final promotional interview with the department supervisor when Cassie saw him. It was a sight she always dreaded seeing. A man in the lingerie department. Luckily, it wasn’t a frequent occurrence.

  Cherry, one of the new juniors, was doing her best to cope with him, but from the colour of her face, didn’t seem to be succeeding too well. Cassie moved in to the rescue.

  ‘May I be of some help here?’ she enquired, in her perfectly trained manner.

  The man, who was very tall, turned round and looked at her.

  ‘That depends on whether you share the same objections as this young lady here,’ he replied, staring Cassie right in the eyes.

  Cassie had never seen such piercing deep blue eyes, nor did she think she had ever seen a man quite so handsome. Not off the movie screen, anyway.

  ‘What’s the difficulty, Cherry?’

  Cassie turned her attentions to the young girl, who was still bright crimson.

  ‘I simply wanted her to model some lingerie for me,’ the man replied in her stead.

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t model garments in this department, sir,’ Cassie replied. ‘Perhaps if I could help?’

  ‘You mean you’ll model them for me?’ he asked, without a glimmer of a smile.

  Cassie felt the skin under her blouse begin to prickle, and she only hoped and prayed that she wasn’t going to start blushing.

  ‘No, sir,’ she replied as calmly as she could. ‘I meant if I could help by trying to help you find the sort of thing you’re looking for.’

  The man picked up in one of his strong, long-fingered hands, a frail wispy collection of undergarments.

  ‘I’ve found what I want,’ he told Cassie. ‘Now all I need to know is if they’ll fit. Which is why I asked this young lady to hold them up in front of her.’

  ‘You don’t know your wife’s exact size,’ Cassie essayed, trying to make it sound more of a statement than a surprised question.

  ‘I’m not buying them for my wife,’ the man countered.

  ‘Your daughter then.’

  ‘I�
��m not buying them for my daughter, either.’

  ‘I see,’ Cassie said.

  ‘I’m buying them for—’

  The man paused, quite deliberately, his eyes firmly on Cassie.

  ‘I’m buying them for a friend.’

  Cassie turned and dismissed Cherry, who as far as her colour went, was more than living up to her name.

  ‘I’m the same size as Miss Garson,’ Cassie told the man, who was now carefully laying out the flimsy underthings on the glass showcase in front of him. ‘Perhaps if I held them up against myself . . .’

  ‘Or perhaps if I held them up against you?’ the man argued.

  Then he sat down on the chair and crossed his long, elegant legs. Cassie thought she’d never seen such long legs since she’d first seen Gary Cooper in High Noon. Come to think of it, she thought, stealing another glance at him as she collected the underclothes, he didn’t look at all unlike Gary Cooper, with his deep-thinking countenance and his slightly quizzical eyebrows. But his eyes were larger, and turned down at the ends, which gave him a funny sad look.

  The man placed his hat on his crossed knee and nodded at Cassie.

  ‘Let the floor show commence,’ he said.

  Cassie picked up the first garment, which was a black slip. She held it up against herself. The man just sat there and tapped his hat on his knees. After a good two minutes, he nodded.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Now the next.’

  The next was a nightdress, in white silk crêpe de Chine, with a deeply plunging bustline. Cassie held it up.

  ‘No, that’s far too high,’ the man told her. ‘Nobody has bosoms on the collarbone. At least no-one I know does.’

  Cassie knew she was blushing now, as she dropped the nightdress down to a lower level. But the man wasn’t looking at the garment. He was staring at Cassie’s face.

  ‘You look rather hot,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

  Had she not valued her job and career so highly, Cassie would have stuck her tongue out at him, and draped the stupid nightdress over his head. But seeing as she was one of Bergdorf Goodman’s favourite girls, and was also on the verge of promotion, she endured the torment, and thanked God that so few men visited the lingerie department.

  ‘Is that better, sir?’ she enquired, holding the nightdress in the current position.

  ‘Yes, that’s better,’ he replied. ‘It’s not good, but it’s better. Now if I may see the panties.’

  Cassie folded the crêpe de Chine nightdress carefully and replaced it on top of the equally carefully folded underslip, in order to give herself time.

  ‘The panties are exactly the same size as the underslip, sir,’ she told him. ‘So there’s really no need for you to worry.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, miss,’ he replied. ‘But the lady in question isn’t a regular size all over. She’s more your shape. So if you don’t mind.’

  Cassie drew in a deep breath and then picked up the black panties. Then she turned round and held them against her.

  ‘They’re back to front,’ the man informed her.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Cassie replied, wishing that he’d drop dead.

  She turned the panties the right way round and waited for the man’s verdict. He was looking at the panties, very seriously. Then he shook his head.

  ‘I’m not sure about those at all,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could show me others in black silk.’

  Cassie collected some panties of slightly different cut and designs, and laid them out on the glass counter, inviting him to take his pick. She was trying to place his accent. From the way he was behaving, he should have been a Texan. But he wasn’t. Anyway, his whole manner was actually far too sophisticated for a Southerner. He wasn’t British, because she knew a British accent well enough. Lots of Englishmen and their wives came to Bergdorf Goodman’s when they were in New York. And this lunatic certainly wasn’t English.

  It was the word lunatic that clinched it. That and those amazing eyes, and that deep musical voice. He was a mad Irishman.

  And he was picking up the briefest of all the black silk panties which lay before him.

  ‘I think I’d like to see these on you please, miss,’ he said, without the hint of a smile.

  Just at that moment the department supervisor walked past, having seen the odd charade from her office.

  ‘Is everything all right, sir?’ she enquired. ‘Miss McGann?’

  ‘Everything is fine, ma’am,’ the man replied. ‘We’re just undecided about the panties.’

  ‘The gentleman was insistent that I model them for him, Mrs Wellman,’ Cassie explained.

  ‘I see,’ replied Mrs Wellman, in the tone she reserved for suspected sexual deviates. ‘Well if you need any further assistance, Miss McGann, I’m right there in my office.’

  She pointed out the proximity of her office for the gentleman customer’s benefit, not Cassie’s, then walked off.

  ‘She reminds me of a mare I have back home,’ the man said. ‘Least from the back she certainly does.’

  Later, Cassie was to decide that that was the moment she fell in love with Tyrone Rosse, because part of her burst into laughter. But the other part, and at that moment Cassie thought the better part of her gained control, and decided to ignore the remark altogether.

  Instead she held up the tiny pair of black panties against her, by now almost inured to the ignominy. The man looked at her and shook his head at once.

  ‘I really don’t know how you could have recommended those,’ he scolded her. ‘They’re most improper.’

  Cassie sighed, but held her tongue. The man rose from his chair and pointed to an altogether more demure pair.

  ‘I’ll take those,’ he said, ‘and the nightgown, and the underslip. And I want a negligée as well. Like the one Grace Kelly wore in Rear Window, remember?’

  ‘No I’m afraid I don’t, sir,’ Cassie answered. ‘Can you possibly describe it a little more fully?’

  The man rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then frowned down at her.

  ‘Do you know I can’t?’ he said suddenly looking up at Cassie and catching her looking down at him. ‘All I can remember is that it was very sexy. It’s when Grace Kelly arrives in Stewart’s apartment, and he’s in a wheelchair, you see—’

  ‘I did see the movie,’ Cassie volunteered.

  ‘The whole scene was very sexy, didn’t you think?’ her customer asked her, managing to sound not in the least provocative.

  Cassie sidestepped the question with a polite smile, and pointed to a beautiful negligée which was on a dummy.

  ‘Was it perhaps something along those lines, sir?’ she enquired.

  ‘You know, I think it was,’ the man nodded. ‘I’ll take it, if you have it in your size.’

  ‘You mean in the size I’ve been modelling,’ Cassie corrected him.

  ‘Yes. Which is your size,’ he replied. ‘Do you like that colour?’

  ‘I think that blue is very sophisticated,’ Cassie told him.

  ‘Good,’ said the man. ‘Sold.’

  Then he stood and taking from the front pocket of his pants a thick roll of dollar bills, started to count out some money, as Cassie collected a negligée in the correct size off the rail. She was glad it was sold, too, because it was the most expensive negligée in the store, and Cassie would earn a nice commission from it; besides the fact that Mr Know-It-All would feel the pinch in his pocket. Then as she glanced at him, flicking through the fat wad of bills, she wasn’t so sure he would feel the draught: that looked like a big bank roll.

  She returned with the negligée and started to fold it with the other lingerie. ‘I want that wrapped and delivered separately,’ he informed her, barely looking up. ‘What’s the damage?’

  Cassie totted up the total on a pad, which she then showed to the man. He nodded and counted out the bills exactly.

  ‘I’ll take everything except the negligée, which I want delivered.’

  ‘To what address would you like
it sent, sir?’ Cassie asked, as she carefully packed the gorgeous underwear away in thin tissue paper.

  ‘Where do you live?’ the man asked her.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re not allowed to give our addresses to customers, sir,’ Cassie answered, as calmly as she could.

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘It’s a store rule I’m afraid, sir.’

  Cassie handed him the box of lingerie.

  ‘So if you’d like to write down the address where we’re to send the negligée.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he replied. ‘Not unless you tell me where you live.’

  ‘I really don’t understand,’ Cassie said naively. ‘I don’t see what where I live has to do with where you want us to deliver the negligée.’

  The man sighed deeply, and shook his head.

  ‘I want to know where you live,’ he told her, ‘because that’s where I want you to deliver the negligée.’

  Cassie stared at him, and just in time stopped her mouth from falling open. The man picked up the box containing the negligée.

  ‘Better still,’ he said, shoving it into her arms, ‘let’s save on the postage.’

  Then he put his hat on and ambled out of the department.

  Cassie heard nothing more from the man, which was all she knew him as, for what seemed months, but was in fact only three days. When she told Gina about the encounter, Gina, who was usually so bored with tales of guys meeting girls, really sat up and listened. She thought it was funny, and cute, and about the most romantic thing she’d heard since Grace Kelly upped and married that Prince Rainier.