To Hear a Nightingale Read online

  ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Can I help yous?’

  ‘It’s me,’ the woman replied. ‘Cassie Rosse. From the hospital.’

  Even when she stepped into the kitchen and she was no longer silhouetted against the morning sun, Kathleen would scarcely have recognised her. Cassie looked so gaunt, and unkempt, with her usually lustrous shining hair all lifeless and unwashed. And underneath her smart blue wool coat, she was still in her slippers and long cotton nightdress.

  Kathleen pulled a kitchen chair out from under the table and offered it to her. Cassie smiled at her vaguely, then stared at the baby which was still on Kathleen’s hip.

  ‘I’ll just put the nipper in his pram,’ she said. ‘There’s tea in the pot.’

  She disappeared outside and Cassie sat at the table. But she didn’t help herself to any tea. That wasn’t what Cassie had come for.

  Kathleen came back in, pushing back her hair, and peeling off her apron. She sat down opposite Cassie and poured herself some dark strong tea.

  ‘That’s the sort of tea Tomas likes,’ Cassie informed her. ‘Or rather “tay” as he calls it.’

  ‘Is that right now?’ replied Kathleen, wishing her husband was home. He’d know what to do. ‘And who’s Tomas?’

  ‘Tomas is Tomas,’ Cassie said. ‘He delivered my Prince. How are you?’

  ‘Jeeze I’m fine, Mrs Rosse, just fine. A little surprised to see yous all the way out here. But no, I’m great.’

  ‘Tomas is my husband’s head lad, and please. You must call me Cassie. If we’re still to be friends.’

  ‘Cassie. Right yous are, Cassie.’

  Kathleen sipped her tea and watched Cassie as Cassie slowly looked around the room. She’d begged her husband to put a telephone in, but he was too blasted mean. If ever there was a time she needed a telephone, this was surely it.

  ‘Where’s Sean?’ Cassie suddenly asked.

  ‘Sean’s got the croup, Cassie,’ Kathleen answered. ‘So I left him be in bed.’

  The girl offered Cassie a cigarette, forgetting that Cassie didn’t smoke. But Cassie took one, and Kathleen lit it for her, and then lit her own. Cassie sat there puffing at the cigarette, while staring at the ceiling. Kathleen, feeling more and more frightened, prattled conversation at her, talking about anything and everything. Finally she fell to silence, disconcerted by Cassie’s remoteness.

  ‘I think I should explain,’ Cassie suddenly said, out of the blue. ‘I think perhaps I should explain why I’m here. You see, I’m here, because I have to find my baby.’

  Kathleen stared at her blankly. Cassie looked back at her.

  ‘You don’t understand, Kathleen, do you? If you remember, I lost my baby. And I must find it again. Now I remember that you had a baby.’

  Kathleen nodded, and relit a fresh Woodbine from her nearly finished one.

  ‘Of course I had a baby. You’ve just seen him, Cassie. That was my baby I put in the pram there.’

  Cassie opened her purse, as if Kathleen hadn’t even spoken, and took out her wallet. Then she closed her purse again and put it on the table. She held up her nearly smoked cigarette.

  ‘Where shall I put this?’ she asked.

  Kathleen took it from her and stubbed it out in her saucer.

  ‘You did say, if I remember, Kathleen, in the hospital,’ Cassie continued, ‘that you didn’t want your baby.’

  ‘Well now, I might have done,’ Kathleen replied, wondering whether she should make a run for the door and take her baby with her. Then she remembered Sean sleeping in his room upstairs.

  ‘Yes,’ she said nodding and drawing on her cigarette, ‘yes, I might well have done. But then hospitals are funny places, aren’t they now? And besides, I hadn’t had the baby then.’

  Cassie looked up sharply.

  ‘You haven’t changed your mind, I hope, Kathleen?’

  ‘Changed me mind about what, Cassie?’

  ‘About not wanting your baby.’

  Kathleen didn’t reply. She knew instinctively that this was a time to keep silent, or at worst, not to say anything that might annoy or upset this crazy woman who was sitting across the table from her.

  ‘OK,’ Cassie said. ‘Then if you haven’t changed your mind, I’ll have it. I’ll have your baby.’

  ‘But it isn’t yours, Cassie. I thought you said you were trying to find your baby.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to, Kathleen. But if you don’t want yours, and I have it, then your baby could be mine, you see. I’d have your baby and it would be mine.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kathleen nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I see.’

  Cassie opened her wallet.

  ‘So how much do you want for it, Kathleen? I can give you a hundred and fifty pounds.’

  Kathleen saw a way out.

  ‘That’s nowhere near enough, Cassie,’ she said. ‘I want a thousand.’

  ‘A thousand,’ Cassie repeated thoughtfully.

  ‘No – no, two thousand,’ Kathleen announced. ‘My baby’s very dear to me, you see, even though I didn’t want him in hospital. So it’ll cost you two thousand pounds, Cassie!’

  Cassie sat nodding slowly and repeating the new sum of money over and over again. Then she rose and smiled so tenderly at Kathleen, that if she wasn’t so frightened, Kathleen could have cried.

  ‘Thank you, Kathleen,’ Cassie said, doing up her coat over her nightgown. ‘I’m so glad I met you in hospital. You’re such a dear girl. And I’m so glad we can help each other. Thank you. Two thousand pounds. I’ll go home and get the money now.’

  Kathleen watched her speechlessly as she turned and walked out of the kitchen. Then she jumped up after her, remembering her baby.

  Sure enough, Cassie was bent over his pram as Kathleen ran outside. She wasn’t stealing him. She was just stroking his head and smiling at him.

  ‘There we are,’ she was saying. ‘Mummy won’t be long now. She’ll be back in a minute. As soon as she’s got the money, you’ll see. You just wait there and be a good boy now, Michael.’

  Doctor Gilbert was all for sending Cassie to a clinic in Bray, what with Tyrone away in Italy.

  ‘I’m not sure otherwise how I can be responsible for his wife’s mental health,’ he told Lady Meath.

  Cassie was lying upstairs in her bed, heavily sedated. She had driven safely all the way back to Claremore and, when everyone had returned from their initial fruitless search, Erin had found her in Tyrone’s study, on the telephone, trying to locate Mrs Von Wagner.

  ‘I have to find her, Erin,’ she explained, ‘because she’s got so much money, she’s the only one who can help me buy my baby.’

  Sheila Meath saw Doctor Gilbert’s point of view, but persuaded him to stay his hand. After all, she reasoned, she’d been making great headway with Cassie in at least getting her to talk, and except for the unfortunate but finally harmless incident with Kathleen O’Donnell, there had been no real harm done. Doctor Gilbert agreed, once Sheila Meath assured him she would be entirely responsible.

  She waited a day before she even brought the subject up once more with Cassie; who, having slept for nearly twenty-four hours as a result of the sedating injection, seemed in much brighter spirits.

  ‘Do you feel well enough to get up, Cassie?’ Sheila asked her. ‘You must be getting sick and tired of this room.’

  Cassie looked round it, and instinctively pulled the sheet up tighter under her chin.

  ‘Don’t if you don’t want to. But it’s such a lovely day, I thought we could stroll across to the yard.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Look, dear, don’t if you don’t want to. I’ll go by myself.’

  Perhaps it was the thought of seeing the yard again, or perhaps it was just the kindness in Sheila Meath’s voice. But whatever, Cassie found herself getting out of bed once more, but this time taking great care to get dressed. They then strolled very slowly with Brian bounding good-humouredly beside them, through the now cultivated gardens and down the track to the
yard.

  Tomas greeted her as if he’d seen her every day instead of not for nearly three months, and then escorted Lady Meath round the boxes. Tomas told Cassie how well Prince was doing, and she said she’d drive down and see him tomorrow. Tomas and Sheila Meath exchanged a hopeful look between them, and then it was decided it was time to stroll back to the house.

  ‘I lost a child, you know,’ Sheila told Cassie as they paused by a large fish pond Tyrone had dug himself. ‘I was about your age, and rather like yourself, the child was stillborn.’

  Cassie looked at Sheila as if she’d been hit in the face. For a moment Sheila wondered about her shock tactics, as Cassie’s eyes seemed to flash first in anguish then in rage. But Cassie remained silent, instead just turning away again to throw food to the fish.

  ‘I also had a breakdown,’ Sheila continued. ‘In fact I took to my bed for the best part of a year.’

  Cassie threw the last of the food to the fish, then started to walk back towards the house, ahead of her friend.

  ‘Then an old chum from Trinity came to stay,’ Sheila said, having caught Cassie up. ‘She was a doctor, specialising in this sort of problem. Particularly with the loss of babies.’

  Cassie stopped dead, and Sheila could see her painfully thin body beginning to shake. She wanted to take the girl in her arms, and hold her, and comfort her. But she knew if she did, her last chance would go. So she resisted the temptation, and continued.

  ‘The problem was,’ she said, ‘and still is, in allowing the hospital to bury the child. It seems the right thing to do, but it’s not. And by not burying a child we have lost, we deprive ourselves of the proper mourning process. Which in turn leads to this sort of breakdown. So she got me out of my bed, and we found where the hospital had buried my baby, and she made me give it a proper funeral, and that was that. I mourned the child naturally, and I regained my sanity. Which is why you’re right in what you’re saying. You must find your baby. And you must then bury it accordingly.’

  For minutes, Cassie stood staring away from Sheila, out into the skies above her and beyond. She put a hand to her lips, and just stood there, looking at the universe. Then she turned to her friend and adviser and, putting her arms round Sheila’s waist, buried her head on her shoulder and held on as tight as she possibly could.

  They had to wait until Tyrone was back, of course, both to get the necessary permissions ratified by both parents and, more importantly, because Sheila Meath told Cassie that Tyrone too must mourn. On the day of the funeral, Cassie was unable to get out of bed. Tyrone and Sheila sat and talked to her for two hours, until they got her up and dressed her, in a simple black dress and a hat with a veil. Tyrone drove them to the church where, in the company of Tomas, his wife, daughter and Sheila Meath, Father Patrick held a service in memory of a life that never was. The tiny coffin, with a simple wreath of pure white flowers, stood on a trestle in front of Cassie and Tyrone. Tyrone couldn’t look at it, nor for a long while could Cassie. Then having prayed to God for the strength, she lifted up her head and made herself look; and as she did so, she took Tyrone’s hand. Tyrone’s face was streaked with tears and his body was shaking with the sobs he could hardly contain. Cassie grasped his hand even more firmly and Tyrone, at last, but only because of Cassie’s great courage, also lifted up his head and looked at their dead son’s coffin.

  They laid him to rest in the graveyard of the village church which nestled in the shelter of the blue-green hills beyond. As Father Patrick wished him eternal rest, a single bell tolled in the church behind them, and a lark gave song high above their heads.

  By a coincidence, on the day Tyrone and Cassie buried their baby son Michael Joseph McGann Rosse, a man unknown to them personally, but known to all the world, was also burying his infant boy. He too was deeply affected by the loss of his son Patrick Bouvier, so much so that he had to be restrained by Cardinal Cushing, who was presiding over the funeral mass, and reminded that God was good. Three months later, on 22 November, the same man was shot and murdered while driving in a Presidential motorcade through Dallas; and Cassie and Tyrone sublimated their personal sorrow and joined in a world grieving for the loss of its prodigal son.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Claremore

  1966

  It was at Leonora’s annual pre-Derby dinner and dance that the idea of an adoption was first mooted. Cassie, one of the last to arrive, as usual, thanks to Tyrone’s appalling sense of social punctuality, was standing in the enormous marbled hall while Tyrone, again from custom, closely scrutinised the ‘placement’ for dinner, which was always left on display for the illumination of Leonora’s guests.

  ‘Jesus God,’ Tyrone groaned, ‘she’s really done you this time. You’re between not only the two biggest bores in Ireland, but probably in the whole bloody universe.’

  Tyrone immediately altered Cassie’s placement so that she would be seated between two far more entertaining and attractive gentlemen, and then asked Leonora’s butler to go and alter the place cards in the dining room. The butler was only too pleased to do so, since Tyrone was often in the habit of tipping him off about the stables’ ‘certainties’.

  Leonora seized Tyrone and whisked him away from Cassie the moment they stepped in the drawing room. Cassie took a glass of champagne and looked carefully for someone to whom she could talk. She was well used to Leonora commandeering Tyrone on these occasions and, by not letting it bother her, Leonora was the one who became increasingly infuriated.

  Very soon Cassie was in conversation with a circle of people, all of whom were well known to her, with the exception of a tall, intellectual-looking Frenchman, who had broken off his conversation to stare at her.

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said, leaving the woman he was talking to and coming over to Cassie. ‘Jean-Luc de Vendrer.’

  ‘Cassie Rosse.’

  ‘Enchanté.’

  The Frenchman fetched them both fresh glasses of champagne from a passing footman, and handed Cassie her glass.

  ‘Beware what you say about the wine,’ he warned her.

  ‘Why?’ Cassie asked, sipping some more. ‘It’s very good.’

  ‘I know. I made it.’

  He nodded seriously at Cassie, who looked up at him. He had a very high forehead, accentuated by the recession of his hair, and a very bright, interested eye. Cassie found herself smiling.

  ‘Something about me amuses you?’

  ‘I’m sorry. That was very rude. It’s just – well, I guess I see too many horses. I was looking at what we call your finer points.’

  ‘And how did I rate? Would I fetch a high price at the sales?’

  ‘Do you know about horses then?’ Cassie asked, deflecting the direct flirtation.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ de Vendrer replied. ‘But if I am to be a horse, then I do not wish to be bon marché.’

  Cassie frowned at him, forgetful of her French.

  ‘Cheap,’ he translated. ‘Et puis. What would you like to talk of? Myself, I find there are only two subjects worth the discussion. Women and love, and not necessarily in that order.’

  He shook a Gitanes from a packet and lit it. As he did, Cassie laughed.

  ‘Not bad for openers.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Most people start in with the small talk. But not the French.’

  ‘You know a lot about the French, Mrs Rosse?’

  ‘About as much as you do, I guess, about horses, Monsieur de Vendrer.’

  De Vendrer drew on his cigarette thoughtfully and stared at her.

  ‘Perhaps you would prefer to talk about your children,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you say that?’ Cassie asked, looking down into her glass.

  ‘Oh, every American woman loves to tell you about her children! Do you have children?’

  ‘No,’ said Cassie, ‘I don’t. Not at parties.’

  ‘Ah bon,’ said de Vendrer, smiling. ‘Perhaps at last France and America may have an entente cordiale.’
>
  Cassie smiled back at the implacable Frenchman, who was watching her closely. He was definitely most attractive, and sophisticated. But there was something about him, something in this initial meeting which Cassie couldn’t quite define.

  As he walked her in to dinner, Cassie identified the portraits about which de Vendrer enquired. She knew them all off by heart now from her many visits to Derry Na Loch, so much so that she felt like a guide as she identified the splendid paintings of beautiful women in their carefully arranged clothes, posing with their backs against trees while their grooms held their horses; or surrounded by adoring-looking knee-breeched husbands and children; or sitting in a garden under a parasol with their lap dogs; or posing somewhere in their houses dressed in their finest ballgown and jewels. And none of them had anything to do with Leonora Von Wagner or her husband whatsoever.

  But Cassie gave Leonora her due. She had bought Derry Na Loch lock, stock and barrel. Nothing in the grand house had belonged to her previously, and yet she had made it all now somehow look a part of her; most probably, Cassie thought, because wherever Leonora roamed, and however much she complained about Ireland and its terrible climate, she always came back to the beautiful white mansion that was Derry Na Loch, because it was her home. Cassie would have been quite happy had it been otherwise, because since Leonora’s arrival in their lives she had without much apparent difficulty relegated Cassie to the role of the ‘wife’, the chattel, the person who got pregnant, and often the person who stayed at home, while Leonora had very often and quite successfully promoted herself to the woman seen socially most often by Tyrone Rosse’s side.

  Happily this was no longer a cause for jealous worry in Cassie, because since the loss of their child, and the poignancy of their mutual grief, Cassie knew that Tyrone and she loved each other more than even life itself. The strength of their love was there to be felt by them both, more, much more than could ever be put into words. While they mourned their dead baby, they grew ever closer together, so much so that often their two identities would merge into one. Tyrone could be the other side of the world and Cassie would know when he was thinking of her, and what.