The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Cassie McGann,’ she said, adjusting her long blond hair, which she wore swept back from her face. ‘You know I still actually can’t believe it. Little Cassie McGann we all used to tease so unmercifully at the Academy, who we all voted the Girl Most Unlikely to Succeed – and just look at you. Europe’s top woman horse trainer. The first woman ever to train the winner of the English Derby, and then the Irish Derby, and now the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. You know something, darlin’? If I were still drinking, I sure as hell would drink to you, Cassie McGann.’

  Cassie eyed Leonora disbelievingly, too long used to her boasts of having given up drinking. ‘What exactly did you want to see me about, Leonora?’ she asked. ‘You said it was urgent.’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake sit down first, will you?’ Leonora replied, unwrapping a piece of Nicotel chewing gum. ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re standing up, and if you’re wondering about this ghastly new habit of chewing gum, I’ve managed to kick the old cancer sticks as well.’

  ‘Next thing you’ll be telling me is that you’ve been born again.’

  Leonora looked back at her with an almost imperceptible tightening of her eyes. ‘You’d be surprised, Cassie McGann,’ she said. ‘Anything is possible once you set your mind to it.’ She smiled coldly once again, before drinking most of the glass of sparkling mineral water her butler had set beside her. ‘So.’

  ‘So?’ Cassie echoed, finally sitting down opposite Leonora on a straight-backed chair she swung round for herself from in front of a fine William and Mary escritoire rather than in one of the deep armchairs. ‘I would much rather you came to the point, Leonora. I really don’t have very much time.’

  ‘No, of course you don’t. How awfully selfish of me,’ Leonora sighed. ‘A woman as famously successful as you. So OK – let’s cut right to the chase, shall we? What I want to know, Cassie McGann, is what’s next on the agenda for our famous owner and her even more famous horse.’

  ‘You could have asked me that on the phone.’

  ‘You’re always too busy to talk on the phone, Cassie McGann.’

  ‘Rosse,’ Cassie reminded her.

  ‘Rosse, of course.’ Leonora smiled at her. ‘It’s just that now with Tyrone gone—’

  ‘Tyrone died a long time ago, Leonora,’ Cassie replied evenly. ‘A very long time ago.’

  ‘Oh, my God, yes. I suppose it really is a long time.’ Leonora suddenly looked as stricken as if she had only just learned of the tragic news, but Cassie knew better than to remark on it. Leonora had always been singularly adroit at getting fish to rise to her bait.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Cassie.’ Leonora frowned as if Cassie was staring at her which Cassie was not. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I know you’re thinking I have no right to feel as I do about Tyrone—’

  ‘Tyrone was my husband.’

  Don’t, Cassie, don’t, Tyrone’s voice called to her. You’re always doing this with Leonora. You’re like a snake responding to the charmer’s pipe. Leave her be. Didn’t I tell you anyway never to come here again?

  ‘You’re absolutely right, Cassie darling,’ Leonora was continuing. ‘I should imagine you’d like to box my ears but really I can’t help it. Not now I’m sober and in my right mind again. You know how I felt about Tyrone, and now that he’s gone – I mean, where’s the harm?’

  ‘To his memory,’ Cassie said very quietly. ‘I don’t want his memory spoiled.’

  She knew it was absurd but the thought of having to share Tyrone’s memory with Leonora was more upsetting than she could say. Such was her antipathy to her old acquaintance she did not even like to hear Leonora say his name. So, taking a deep breath, she decided to leave the subject and return to discussing the matter of why she had been summoned so urgently to Derry Na Loch.

  ‘There’s no use asking where I next intend to go with The Nightingale, Leonora,’ she said. ‘I make it a rule never to discuss my racing plans with anyone outside Claremore.’

  ‘You make it your rule, do you?’ Leonora wondered mockingly. ‘My. How very imperious.’

  ‘That’s the way it is,’ Cassie said in her best take it or leave it manner.

  ‘Pity,’ Leonora sighed. ‘I’m so very interested in just everything you do. Particularly how well you’re doing. I mean you must be simply coining it now. Little penniless Cassie McGann must be worth a not so small fortune. Not just from your winnings, but from the stallion fees that horse of yours is going to command.’

  ‘You didn’t ask me here to discuss the health of my bank balance, surely?’

  ‘Well, yes I did, in a manner of speaking. And what am I thinking? You don’t have a drink. Just because I’m off the sauce doesn’t mean you have to die of thirst as well, darlin’.’ Leonora pressed a bell button concealed under the table beside her and smiled her brittle little smile again at Cassie. ‘Champagne? I imagine that’s your tipple nowadays. One of the many things that’s good about being rich, I always say. Being able to drink champagne when and where you feel like it. Most of all when you don’t even feel like it.’

  While she waited for her butler to reappear Leonora opened a fresh stick of Nicotel gum and, popping it into her brightly painted mouth, crossed one elegant leg and started to swing one beautifully shod foot up and down, watching it for a while with great interest as if she had never observed the movement before. Then she slowly returned her gaze to Cassie who had decided that as far as this conversation went the mountain could come to Muhammad.

  ‘Talking of drink and such related topics,’ Leonora continued, ‘you do understand, don’t you? As I said in my letters, it was drink and the drugs of course that made me act the way I did. Over Tyrone, and then over the Derby. Sober and in my right mind, as you well know, I would never have behaved that way because it is just not me. We’ve known each other long enough for you to know that what happened between us was not typical of my real character, right?’ Cassie said nothing. As far as she was concerned what Leonora had done was totally in keeping with her character. ‘Seriously, Cassie,’ Leonora continued, ‘the way I behaved over Tyrone was mostly to do with what I was taking, not with what I was feeling. I know perfectly well that it was you he truly loved, not me. And I can live with that. Really I can.’

  Leonora paused significantly in the way people do who are intent on making it seem that by confessing that they have reformed their ways they are somehow performing a great favour to the whole of humanity. Cassie tried once more to contain her exasperation. The last thing she needed to be told was something she knew better than anyone, namely that her husband had loved her and nobody else, and the very last person she needed to be told that fact by was Leonora.

  ‘I wonder, Leonora, will you get to the point?’ she asked, as Leonora’s Oriental butler arrived silently by her side to offer her a crystal flute of champagne from a small silver tray.

  ‘This is for Mama’s benefit, Cassie, not mine,’ Leonora said, holding up her glass for the butler to fill from a jug of fresh peach juice.

  ‘Why in heaven’s name would your mother want you to see me?’ Cassie asked, remembering how she disliked the mother nearly as much as she did the daughter. ‘We haven’t had any dealings with each other since she summarily removed her string of horses from Tyrone and frankly I have never had any wish to do so.’

  ‘That’s all so long ago, isn’t it high time we let bygones be bygones, darling?’ Leonora sipped her drink and eyed Cassie over the top of the glass. ‘Que sera sera, as the old song has it?’

  ‘I imagine you mean what’s done is done,’ Cassie replied, ‘rather than what will be will be, and if that’s so, then I have to beg to differ, Leonora. In this instance I can’t see why in hell I should forgive and forget. Your mother damned near ruined us.’

  ‘She was just doing what mothers do, darling. She was protecting her own. You’re a mother. Surely you understand?’

  ‘She was not protecting her own, Leonora. She was protecting her own interests.’
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  ‘Because she’d had a fling with your husband.’

  ‘Tyrone was not my husband when that happened, Leonora. It was well before I came into Tyrone’s life.’

  Leonora just smiled. She smiled the way she always used to do in order to give the impression that what had been said was in fact a lie.

  ‘I think I can guess what your mother wants,’ Cassie continued. ‘She wants in on The Nightingale.’

  Leonora moved her gum to the other side of her mouth and regarded Cassie with steely blue eyes. ‘You’re obviously going to syndicate this horse of yours, right?’

  ‘What makes you think I haven’t already?’

  ‘I’d have heard, that’s what, Cassie McGann.’

  ‘Rosse.’

  ‘Sure. OK – you’ve got it. Mama would like a bit of the action. Why not? She can afford it. And her money’s no different from anyone else’s.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ Cassie replied, beginning to enjoy herself as she realized how much this was costing Leonora in loss of face. Obviously Mrs Von Wagner had been applying endless pressure to make Leonora make the appeal on her behalf, as she would never have dared approach Cassie directly herself. ‘Let’s get this absolutely right. Your mother would like to be part of a syndicate on The Nightingale—’

  ‘I think you mean the syndicate, darling,’ Leonora interrupted.

  ‘No I don’t actually, Leonora. I haven’t yet formed any syndicate so it’s perfectly correct to refer to it in the abstract. So if I may just start again, if you don’t mind – your mother would like to be part of a syndicate on my horse and besides that no doubt you’re thinking and maybe hoping, I guess, that you too would like to be part of the action and maybe send a couple of your mares to him. Am I warm?’

  For the first time since Cassie’s arrival Leonora showed signs of the impatience she was feeling, clicking her tongue sharply in response to Cassie’s summation and then dispensing of her no longer wanted chewing gum, which she deposited back in its wrapper before throwing it in a waste basket.

  ‘So what would it matter if I did?’ she said, her Newport manners suddenly snapping. ‘Where in hell is the harm in two friends wanting to do business together? You have to consider the interests of racing here, let me tell you. Mama and I between us have several high-class mares as you well know, and it won’t do your financial future much harm, will it, if The Nightingale starts producing quality two-year-olds? You’re surely not going to let the past stand in the way of the future. Even you couldn’t be—’

  ‘Yes?’ Cassie enquired as Leonora stopped herself. ‘Stubborn? Stupid? Obdurate? Take your choice, Leonora. I can be all three, if I so wish.’

  If Cassie had been feeling less impatient she might have smiled as an agitated Leonora drained what was left of her peach juice in one gulp, just the way she used to empty a glass of vodka when she was drinking. She then sprang to her feet and, scooping one of her lap dogs up from where all four still sat on the sofa, walked over to the French windows to stare out at her manicured gardens.

  She must be in terrible debt to her mother to have to humiliate herself like this, Cassie thought, which again would be par for Leonora’s course. For the truth was that it would not matter a jot how much money Leonora married for – she would always need more. There had probably never been a moment in Leonora’s married life when she had not been in debt to her mother, and since in the eyes of the Von Wagners money could buy anything, even forgiveness, much against her will Leonora had obviously been forced to engineer this meeting.

  But for a long time Cassie had ignored her entreaties, and, as she now realized in the awkward silence that followed Leonora’s move to the windows, she had only finally agreed to make the visit out of sheer curiosity. In much the same way as motorists cannot help but stare at the outcome of a road accident however hard they may try not to, Cassie had been drawn to come and have a look at Leonora, expecting to find her old adversary much the worse for wear due to her constant abuse of alcohol and drugs. For a moment, when she first saw the new slim and suntanned Leonora, Cassie had almost been pleasantly surprised until she remembered that, despite whatever programme of detoxification Leonora might have undergone, underneath she would still be the old Leonora. When they were teenagers at Miss Truefitt’s famous Academy back home in the States Leonora Von Wagner had been a spoiled and dangerous brat. The difference between then and now was that now Leonora was simply an older spoilt and dangerous brat, and that was all.

  ‘If all you want to know is whether when the time comes I will consider any of your and your mother’s mares, Leonora, then of course I shall be perfectly happy to do so, once I have all their details and your applications in front of me,’ Cassie said. ‘But as for the question of any syndicate—’

  ‘Maybe you won’t have to go as far as full syndication,’ Leonora interrupted. ‘Not when you hear what Mama has to offer. She’s prepared to invest five million pounds for a one-third share.’

  Leonora looked so impressed by the information she was imparting that she poured herself another peach juice without ringing for the butler.

  ‘I’m not in the slightest bit interested,’ Cassie said.

  ‘It’s a mighty generous offer,’ Leonora continued as if she hadn’t heard Cassie’s reply. ‘Your horse is probably worth at top ten million and even that’s pushing it, so an offer of five for only a third share – well. You’d have to be crazy to refuse. It would sure as hell secure your future—’

  ‘I said – I’m not interested, Leonora.’

  ‘And the future of Claremore. There must be all manner of things you’re still dying to do there to keep the old place state of the art – and an investment like this—’

  ‘Even if my life depended on it, I wouldn’t take a penny of your or your mother’s money, and you can tell Mama that from me – OK? And if your new sober self likes to imagine that while there’s life there’s hope – I am sorry to tell you there isn’t. Not where you and I are concerned, Leonora, and most of all not where The Nightingale is concerned, because I am not going to syndicate him. The Nightingale stays where he belongs, in the family. Not only that but he’s not retiring to the paddocks. Not yet.’ Cassie paused to make sure that she had Leonora’s full attention. ‘Fact is I’m keeping Nightie on in training as a four-year-old.’

  ‘You’re what?’ Now it was the old Leonora who was looking at her, just the way she had used to look when they were in school and Cassie would come into the classroom to find Leonora sitting at Miss Truefitt’s desk surrounded by her cronies, waiting for the target of her taunts to come into her sights. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I’m entirely serious, Leonora,’ Cassie replied. ‘It’s what the racegoers deserve. When will they ever get the chance again to see a horse like The Nightingale in action? Possibly never.’

  ‘You’re mad, Cassie McGann,’ Leonora said, laughing without humour. ‘What on earth would you want to do that for?’

  ‘For a very good reason, because Tyrone would have wanted it, Leonora. Why – I really can’t believe that you knew him so little that you wouldn’t know that?’

  ‘You know that everyone is going to think you’re mad, don’t you?’ Mattie said, pouring them all out some more champagne and looking across at his mother with his usual mixture of affection and condescension. ‘On the bloodstock side that is. No-one in their right mind keeps a dual Derby winner on in training as a four-year-old.’

  ‘Vincent O’Brien did so with Roberto and with Ballymoss,’ Cassie returned. ‘You’re surely not faulting the great Dr O’Brien’s judgement?’

  ‘Yes, but that was way back when, Ma,’ Mattie sighed. ‘Roberto was over twenty years ago. And Ballymoss – Ballymoss was some time back in the blasted Dark Ages.’

  ‘1958 to be precise,’ Cassie told him.

  ‘That is half a century ago. Anyway, neither of those horses won the Triple Crown.’

  ‘The Triple Crown and the Prix de l’Arc de Tri
omphe,’ Josephine chipped in. ‘And certainly not in the same year.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Jo.’ Cassie turned and smiled at her Titian-haired daughter. ‘So you think I’m nuts as well, right?’

  ‘We’re thinking of Nightie. We just don’t want anything happening to him, that’s all.’

  ‘You think I do?’ Cassie raised her eyebrows in deliberate exaggeration. ‘You don’t think I’ve thought this thing right through? Anyway, it’s Christmas Eve for heaven’s sake. Don’t let’s involve ourselves with this now, OK? Let’s leave it on the back burner until after the festivities.’

  Mattie eased himself into a large chintz-covered armchair opposite Cassie and stretched out his long legs. ‘It’s nothing heavy,’ he said with a reassuring smile. ‘It’s just that Nightie’s a very big star, you know—’

  ‘He’s more than a star, Matthew Rosse,’ Josephine cut in. ‘Everyone says he’s the horse of the century.’

  ‘Fine, Jo,’ Mattie continued. ‘So do you have any idea what his stud value is?’

  ‘Of course I do. I remember you and Jack Madigan discussing it on the flight back from Longchamps.’

  ‘Right. So you know we’re talking big money. You’ll know that Nightie’s probably going to command a stallion fee of £100,000 a throw.’

  ‘Now just hold everything, you two. I mean it,’ Cassie cut in. ‘Nightie doesn’t belong to a set of rules because he happens to be the exception and not the case. I bred him, I train him and I own him. He’s not owned by a syndicate that wants to realize its profit nor is he ever likely to be, so if I want to keep him on in training as a four-year-old that’s my business. I don’t have to consider anyone else’s feelings in the matter. Only those of the racing public, and you can bet your last dollar they would just love to see him back again next year.’

  ‘Yes all right, fine, we take your point,’ Mattie said, giving his sister a good long look which Cassie picked up as she knew she was intended to do.