To Hear a Nightingale Read online

  Cassie stood up slowly and looked at her grandmother, who was staring at her in fury and loathing. There was a long silence as Cassie searched her soul for the truth of that moment, the moment when she had stood over that box with Mr O’Reilly’s book in her hands, loath to drop it, loath to give up her adored picture of all the dogs who had become her closest friends, loath to sacrifice the only possession she had which she truly loved.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ hissed her grandmother.

  Cassie looked up at her.

  ‘I gave it away, Grandmother,’ she replied, ‘because I loved it.’

  ‘What nonsense!’

  ‘But I did, Grandmother!’ Cassie persisted. ‘I gave the book away because I loved it!’

  ‘No you didn’t!’ shouted her grandmother. ‘I’ll tell you why you gave it away! You gave it away because you were showing off! Pretending you were some smart little rich girl! Pretending you were somebody who could afford to give away books! Other people’s books!’

  At that, Cassie dropped her eyes and stared at the dark stained floor-boards of her room. Her grandmother went out, and for a moment Cassie thought the storm might have blown over. But she was soon disillusioned. Within a minute her grandmother was back carrying a chamber pot which she placed in the cupboard beside Cassie’s bed.

  ‘You’re to stay in your room for the rest of the week,’ she announced, then left, locking the door behind her.

  Cassie stood stock still in the middle of the room, suddenly filled with feelings she couldn’t understand, feelings which frightened her. She went over to the window and looked out on to the sunlit street outside where the other children were already playing. And then she stepped back from the window, almost as if she’d had an electric shock, as she realised what those feelings she was having meant. Because Cassie knew that at that moment she could have killed herself, had her single window not been barred and bolted.

  By the weekend, when Cassie was allowed out of her room, Grandmother seemed almost cheerful. The incident with what was now referred to as Mr O’Reilly’s beautiful book had apparently proved to her that Cassie was not as pure as the nuns had painted her. And now Cassie was to atone further for her crime, and also to pay Grandmother back for the donation she had been forced to make to St Anthony over the matter of Cassie’s communion dress.

  Cassie was made to slave. Up and down the stairs to fetch books, spectacles, medicines, more books, other spectacles, more medicines. She was sent to the mail and for the mail, to the baker’s, the butcher’s and the grocer’s; she was made to run endless petty errands, and to sweep the garden path and the street in front of the house. There wasn’t a moment of the day that Cassie had to herself. And if Grandmother ever caught her as much as drawing breath, a job usually even more demeaning than the last one was found at once for her. Other children went to summer camp, but not Cassie: Cassie slaved for her grandmother.

  In the evenings, with all her chores done and yet another early night in prospect, Cassie used to long with all her heart to be back at school and amongst her friends. She would stand by the window and tears would roll uncontrollably down her cheeks. Before she had gone to the convent, she hadn’t known that she was lonely; she hadn’t understood the word. Now she knew that not only was she lonely, but that she was alone.

  One morning, Cassie brought in the mail and noticed that there was a letter addressed to her grandmother postmarked Locksfield, Pennsylvania. Cassie’s heart leaped. Locksfield was where Mary-Jo lived. Then she banished any further thoughts from her mind, lest her grandmother, already seated at the dining table, should read them. Cassie put the letters down in front of Grandmother and took her seat at the other end. Her grandmother studiously ignored the day’s mail, as was her habit, preferring to open the letters once she had finished eating. Today she seemed to take longer than ever over her food, until finally she started to sift through the correspondence. She picked up the yellow envelope from Pennsylvania, with the unfamiliar handwriting, and held it up to the light, as if it might contain something distasteful.

  ‘Who on earth can this be from?’ she wondered out loud, before carefully slitting it open with a small ladies’ knife kept especially for the purpose. Cassie kept her head bowed over her food.

  Grandmother read the letter once, front and back, before turning it over and reading it through completely once again. Then she placed it on the table before her and looked at Cassie over her spectacles.

  ‘This friend of yours, Mary-Jo,’ she said.

  Cassie counted to five then looked up as calmly as she could.

  ‘Yes, Grandmother?’

  ‘For some reason or other, her mother has invited you to go and stay with them,’ she informed her, peering down at the letter. ‘In Locksfield, Pennsylvania, wherever that may be.’

  Cassie’s face betrayed no emotion. She knew all too well that any enthusiasm on her behalf for such a notion would be enough for her grandmother to rule against it straightaway. It would be too expensive. Too difficult to arrange. Pennsylvania would be too far away. She would be too young to travel by herself. Or most likely of all, Mary-Jo’s family would be declared as being ‘the wrong sort of people’. So Cassie sat straightfaced and silent.

  ‘I suppose you want to go, do you?’ her grandmother asked her, without a trace of solace in her voice.

  ‘Not especially,’ Cassie replied as calmly as she could.

  Her grandmother stared at her, trying, Cassie was sure, to read her thoughts.

  ‘Not especially?’ she repeated, unable to believe her ears. ‘I thought this Mary-Jo was meant to be your best friend.’

  ‘She was,’ said Cassie carefully. ‘But that was ages ago.’

  ‘Then why is her mother inviting you to stay with her if you’re not best friends any more?’ Grandmother demanded.

  Beneath the table Cassie crossed her fingers, praying silently to her guardian angel for forgiveness for all the lies she was telling and the lies she was about to tell.

  ‘Because Mary-Jo still wants to be friends, I suppose.’ Cassie replied.

  The reply had the required effect. Grandmother removed her spectacles and glared down the table at her.

  ‘You wretched, spoilt and ungrateful child,’ she said. ‘First of all you’re forever complaining you’ve no friends, then when some poor child wants to be friends with you, and wants you to go and stay with her, you just shrug your shoulders and say “not especially”. I really don’t know what gets into you. And of course I suppose her poor mother’s got nothing better to do than to invite ungrateful children down to stay with her poor lonely little girl, eh? Ungrateful spoilt little children who are too wrapped up in themselves to bother.’

  Cassie kept staring down at the table and crossing her fingers more and more tightly.

  ‘Not especially indeed,’ her grandmother continued. ‘You’ll go up to your room this minute, child –’

  At this, Cassie couldn’t help but look up, to find out whether she had won or lost.

  ‘You’ll go up to your room,’ Grandmother said, ‘and you will sit down straightaway and write to this Mary-Jo’s mother. And you will thank her for her kind invitation, and tell her you will be delighted to come and stay with her for as long as she’ll have you.’

  Cassie bit the inside of her cheek hard, to stop herself smiling.

  ‘But Grandmother –’ she began to protest.

  ‘No buts!’ Grandmother snapped. ‘Upstairs this minute and write that letter, and thank God that with a character like yours you’ve any friends at all!’

  It had worked. Cassie knew it shouldn’t have worked – telling a lie in order to get what you wanted – but nevertheless the truth was that the deception had worked. Cassie was leaping up the stairs two at a time with excitement when she felt that the dining-room door was being opened quietly below her. So at once she stopped running and walked sedately up the stairs holding on to the bannisters with her eyes cast downwards, the way the nuns did. When she got to
the top of the stairs and turned to go into her room, she saw indeed that her grandmother had been standing in the hall below, watching her.

  ‘I want to see the letter written out in pencil first, mind!’ she called. ‘And then in pen when I’ve checked the spelling! I don’t want this Mary-Jo’s mother thinking you’re some sort of ignoramus!’

  With that her grandmother walked off to the morning room to read the daily paper, and Cassie was free to skip happily across the landing to the privacy of her room. She was going to see Mary-Jo and Prince. Mary-Jo and Prince.

  Cassie was just finishing her packing when her grandmother came into her bedroom. She saw the little box lying on the bed before Cassie had time to slip it down the side of her case under her nightclothes.

  ‘What on earth, pray, is this?’ Grandmother said, opening the box.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Cassie. ‘Just a present for Mary-Jo.’

  ‘So now you’re buying things for girls you don’t particularly like, are you?’ Grandmother queried, taking a little china horse out from the tissue paper. ‘I suppose it never occurred to you that it might be nice if you gave your grandmother something once in a while?’

  Cassie bit her lip and continued with her packing. No, it never had occurred to her to do such a thing, and she couldn’t in all honesty admit that it had. She gave her grandmother gifts at Christmas and on her birthday, presents she made herself since she had no money with which to buy anything, offerings which were sniffed at and soon discarded. But no, she’d never thought of buying something for her grandmother at any other time of the year. There didn’t seem to be any reason.

  ‘You can have that, if you like, Grandmother,’ Cassie offered, watching as Grandmother examined the china ornament.

  ‘Don’t be absurd, child,’ Grandmother replied. ‘You know I can’t stand horses.’

  Cassie’s grandmother put the china horse untidily back into its box, and dropped it on the bed. Cassie picked it up and lovingly repacked it in the tissue paper.

  ‘Where did you get the money to buy such a thing anyway?’ Grandmother continued. ‘I very much hope you didn’t take it from my purse.’

  ‘I got it with the money I saved from the bread,’ Cassie answered. ‘You said whenever you sent me for the bread I could keep the cents. So I have. Since last summer.’

  ‘And now you’ve decided to waste it all on some cheap little gew-gaw.’

  Cassie remained silent. She wasn’t sure what a gew-gaw was, but from the way Grandmother had said it, she imagined it wasn’t anything very nice. She packed the box containing the china horse, and was just about to fasten her case up, when Grandmother pushed her aside.

  ‘Not till I’ve examined your packing,’ she said. ‘I’m not having you going off with a badly packed suitcase.’

  Grandmother then proceeded to rifle through Cassie’s carefully packed belongings, deliberately untidying them. Cassie watched helplessly as her grandmother then tipped out the entire contents of her case on to the floor.

  ‘Disgraceful,’ she announced, as she walked out of the bedroom. ‘Do it all again.’

  A cab took them to the station. That at least was a treat, Cassie thought, as she sat back in her seat and watched the town pass by.

  ‘Will you miss me?’ her grandmother suddenly asked.

  Cassie frowned. Her grandmother hardly ever asked her such a thing.

  ‘Yes,’ she lied.

  ‘No you won’t,’ Grandmother replied. ‘I daresay you won’t miss me one jot.’

  Grandmother turned round and stared accusingly at Cassie.

  ‘You never miss me when you’re at school,’ she went on. ‘Whenever you deign to write to me, it’s all about you and those friends of yours. But never a word about missing me.’

  Cassie caught sight of the cab driver’s eyes watching them both in his driving mirror. He gave Cassie a wink, and she looked down, anxious lest Grandmother should catch her smiling back at him.

  ‘You really should think less of yourself, child,’ Grandmother said. ‘You should think less of yourself and more of what a burden you are to me. Can you imagine what it was like for me, being left to bring you up when your parents died? It’s not as if I ever liked children.’

  Cassie caught sight of the driver’s eyes again. She’d often seen him driving through the town and they always waved at each other. This time as he looked at her in his mirror he crossed his eyes at her. Cassie had to bite her lip even harder to stop herself from laughing.

  ‘You’ll be sorry when you’re older,’ Grandmother sighed, looking out of the window as they approached the station. ‘When I’m dead and buried. You’ll be sorry you didn’t buy me flowers, and thank me for all I’ve done for you.’

  Cassie frowned and wondered why Grandmother was telling her all this. Particularly on this day, when she was just off to spend her first holiday away from home with her very best friend. Grandmother sighed deeply besided her, putting her hand to her chest and giving a small cough. Cassie looked out of her own window and instead of thinking of her grandmother lying dead and unloved, thought of Prince and his soft brown nose, which Mary-Jo had promised her was the softest and most velvety nose you’d ever touched in all your life.

  The train was crowded with people, most of whom were a lot poorer than the people who lived in Grandmother’s neighbourhood. Cassie, wedged where her grandmother had sat her between two ample spinsters, sat watching the poorer passengers watching the countryside go by. They watched it, Cassie reckoned, in the way people who seldom see it do. And soon Cassie was watching it that way too, because she had hardly ever seen anything except the streets and houses of Westboro Falls and the twenty miles of rather monotonous landscape that lay between her home and the convent. The ladies she sat between took care of her, and asked her with real interest where she was going. When Cassie told them, they asked if she’d been there before, and when Cassie said she had not, they told her how pretty it was. Cassie then told them about Prince and, unlike Grandmother, they responded with real enthusiasm and interest, and one of the ladies told her all about the livery stable her father had run. At midday they rose and went to the restaurant car, and asked Cassie if she would come with them. But Cassie politely declined, pointing out that Mrs Roebuck who lived opposite had made her a special luncheon box of hot meat pie wrapped in a napkin, some fruit and a flask of homemade lemonade.

  Cassie got down the luncheon box from the luggage rack and put it on her knee. Grandmother had told her not to have her lunch until she really needed it, lest she got hungry on the last part of the journey, and though her tummy was rumbling, anxious to please Grandmother even though she was a hundred miles away, she made herself wait until the very last moment before she tucked into Mrs Roebuck’s picnic, with the consequence that she had barely finished eating as the train rolled into Locksfield.

  It was a small station, set in rolling countryside. There were only six or seven people waiting to meet the train, and as Cassie was helped off with her luggage, she looked at once for Mary-Jo. There was no sign of her. Everyone else who got off the train met up almost at once with their friends and relatives, soon leaving Cassie standing alone on the platform beside her suitcase.

  The porter, having safely delivered his last charge to the waiting cab, wandered back on to the platform and saw Cassie. He pushed his cap back on his head, sighed and walked up to her, hoping that she wasn’t yet another child who had alighted at the wrong stop.

  ‘You sure you got out at the right station, miss?’ he asked her.

  ‘This is Locksfield, Pennsylvania, isn’t it?’ Cassie replied anxiously, looking past the porter in case she missed Mary-Jo’s arrival.

  ‘This is Locksfield, Penn. all right, young lady,’ the porter nodded. ‘Any idea of the name of the people meeting you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie said. ‘Yes, it’s Mary-Jo Christiansen and her mother.’

  The porter suddenly roared with laughter, and took Cassie by the hand.

  �
�Well, if it’s the Christiansens who’re meeting you, you’d better come with me and have a long, cold drink!’ he said. ‘The Christiansens are always late! That is if they don’t forget you altogether!’

  He winked at Cassie, and led her back to the station office, where he sat her down in front of the electric fan and poured her a ginger beer.

  ‘If they’re not here by next week,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I might even give them a call on the telephone here.’

  Cassie smiled at his teasing and drank her ginger beer. She looked out of the back window of the office and stared at a distant farm, with its perfectly tended fields of barley and corn waving gently in the summer breeze. Then she noticed faraway down the narrow road what seemed to be a ball of dust travelling towards them very fast. She stood up and stared harder. The porter stopped sorting out a new batch of rail tickets and came to Cassie’s side.

  ‘Looks like your friends have remembered,’ he chuckled, as they made for the door. ‘Not like one time last summer when they turned up the following day!’

  Cassie laughed and ran out into the station yard, the porter following her with her luggage. She held on to her hat as into the yard amidst a cloud of white dust roared an old station wagon, with what seemed like a dozen children leaning out of its windows. Cassie waved and waved when she saw Mary-Jo, and long before the station wagon had fully stopped, Mary-Jo and most of the other children had jumped out of the windows and were running towards Cassie.

  One of Mary-Jo’s brothers arrived first and stood in front of her grinning silently, twisting his cap in his hand. Mary-Jo arrived next, hotfoot, and, pushing her tongue-tied brother out of the way, grabbed Cassie by the hand.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Sorry we’re kinda late, but we had to pick up the horse food.’

  Mary-Jo then ordered her still-grinning brother to pick up Cassie’s luggage, as she took Cassie back to the car.

  A very pretty woman at the wheel leaned out of her window.

  ‘Hi, Cassie,’ she said. ‘I’m Mary-Jo’s mother.’

  Cassie smiled at her and held out her hand.