The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘You sure we were right to leave his arrival until tomorrow morning?’ Mattie wondered. ‘Nightie’s not always been the best of travellers.’

  ‘That was really only at the beginning of his career,’ Cassie replied. ‘Travelling doesn’t get to him at all now, and as far as security goes we were all agreed that the longer he is at Claremore the safer he will be.’

  ‘And you really have had no more threats.’

  ‘Not one. Touch wood.’

  By the time Josephine appeared back in the dining room they were both still of the opinion that on form the only real threat lay from Leonora’s horse Mot Cambron, although Mattie had been at pains to point out the stable was also running a mare called Tootsuite as a pacemaker.

  ‘And I’ll bet you they’re doing it for a good reason,’ Mattie said as Josephine made her way across to their table. ‘Mot Cambron is a front runner, and if the mare’s in season, which at this time of the year there’s every chance she will be, knowing how The Nightingale likes to hang out at the back of the field all they have to do is make sure the mare stays just in front of him.’

  ‘Like everyone said the French did when they contrived to get Santa Claus beaten in the King George VI,’ Cassie mused. ‘In that case we might well have to change our tactics tomorrow.’

  Mattie got up to pull his sister’s chair back out for her.

  ‘Thanks,’ Josephine said, before sitting down to regard them both with a widening smile. ‘Well? So what do you think?’

  ‘He seems to have swept you off your feet,’ Cassie told her daughter after lunch when they were alone in Cassie’s suite high above Park Lane.

  ‘So what’s so terrible about that?’ Josephine wondered in return. ‘After all, isn’t that what Dad did with you?’

  ‘I didn’t say I’d marry him right away.’

  ‘Fine – so I did. So what? I’m in love. I’ve really never been in love like this, really. I’m crazy about Mark and he’s crazy for me, so it’s only natural to want to get married, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Cassie replied. ‘It’s just that you seem to be in a bit of a hurry, that’s all. Don’t you think you might need a little more time? If rather than rushing things you both took your time you don’t have anything to lose. If you feel the same about each other say in six months or even a year—’

  ‘I never thought I’d hear you talk like that,’ Josephine sighed, moving away from her on the sofa and crossing her long shapely legs. ‘You of all people.’

  ‘What do you mean – me of all people?’

  ‘You’re talking straight from the dictionary of clichés.’

  ‘OK, Jose, just try to see it from my point of view. From a mother’s point of view, corny though we mothers all may be. We’ve always been very close, you and I. I really love being part of your life and you being such a part of mine. And because we’re so close all I’m doing is trying to point out to you in all honesty what I feel. Sweetheart – I have only just met the man you think you might marry—’

  ‘The man I am going to marry—’

  ‘But why did you spring it on me like this? Like a bolt out of the blue? You could have called me – you always call me about everything. But this time, not a word. Why?’

  ‘I wanted it to be a surprise.’

  ‘You sure as hell succeeded.’

  ‘Look,’ Josephine sighed defensively. ‘I was worried you wouldn’t like him in advance because of his father.’

  ‘Nobody I know likes his father.’

  ‘Mark isn’t his father!’

  ‘Mark is the son of his father – and that is something you really have to consider. Your father used to say that a young man should always try to meet the mother of the girl he wants to marry to see what the girl may grow into, and I guess the same goes for young women when they’re thinking of getting married. The impression Major Carter-James gives to everyone is that he’s not quite a gentleman, shall we say.’

  ‘Mark is not his father,’ Josephine repeated. ‘Come on – you saw for yourself how thoughtful and kind he is. What his father’s like really is neither here nor there.’

  ‘As I said, it’s just something you should take into account. And what does Mark do for a living? I take it he has got a job.’

  Josephine got up from the sofa. ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said. ‘I just don’t believe what I’m hearing. Of course Mark has a job. He is not after my money! Mark has a very good job as a bloodstock agent as it happens and earns good money so you can stop worrying on that particular score, OK?’

  ‘I don’t see why. Good money as opposed to what you’re worth? Whether you like it or not, Josephine, you’re quite a catch.’

  ‘Really? Dad was a bit of a catch too, wasn’t he?’

  ‘I didn’t even know what your father did till after I married him. Until we got on the plane back to Ireland.’

  ‘You see? And you’re about to tell me I don’t really know Mark well enough to know that I want to marry him.’

  ‘I was actually going to ask you how you met, not when,’ Cassie replied, wrongfooted.

  ‘Mark came with a party to see the play, came round backstage afterwards and asked me out to dinner.’

  ‘Yes, but that can only have been quite recently, surely? The play only opened a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So when did Mark come and see it? Was it on the first night or something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So when exactly, Jo?’

  ‘If you really want to know he came to the play last Friday.’

  Mattie nearly went through the roof on his return to the hotel when Cassie brought him up to date with events. ‘She’s making a fool of herself,’ he growled.

  ‘We have to be a little careful here, Mattie. Jo’s not some immature teenager. She’s a grown-up woman now with a mind of her own.’

  ‘And a great deal of bread in the bank, notionally at least,’ Mattie returned. ‘I rang a couple of chums this afternoon and asked a few questions about Mr Mark Carter-James. Nobody had a good word to say about him.’

  ‘Did anyone have a bad word to say about him?’

  ‘Well – no. Not specifically. The point is, Ma, he is just not liked.’

  ‘By how many people is he just not liked, Mattie?’

  ‘You mean how many people did I ring.’ Mattie leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘Enough, OK? I spoke to a couple of people who had been at Eton with him and they told me everyone loathed him. I rang another couple of chums in bloodstock – and as for being a successful bloodstock agent? The firm he works for hardly sees him and they reckon he won’t hold his place there very much longer. Apparently he spent most of his time at the racetrack.’

  Cassie thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘As I said, Mattie, Jo’s a grown woman.’

  ‘Fine – well, if you’re not going to say something, then I will,’ Mattie replied.

  ‘It’s really not your place to say anything,’ Cassie warned him. ‘Besides, you know your sister better than that. Jo’s pretty damn’ stubborn at the best of times. She always has been. When she was a little girl I soon discovered the best and only way of dealing with her was not to disapprove directly of anything she wanted to do, for the more I disapproved the more determined Jo was to defy me. I always had to come at her from left field, letting her think that the decision we’d arrived at was of her making, when in fact ninety-nine per cent of the time the opposite was true. And as far as I can make out, if ever there seemed to be a time for not taking on Josephine face to face this has to be it. One word of disapproval from anyone and she’ll marry Mark the next minute.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Mattie agreed thoughtfully.

  ‘I am right,’ Cassie corrected him. ‘And you know it.’

  ‘OK – but now let’s hear what you thought about Mark. Did you like him or didn’t you?’

  ‘I told you – as far as first impressions go, I thought he was well mannered and perf
ectly presentable.’

  ‘Whoa . . .’ Mattie laughed ironically. ‘Talk about damning with faint praise. What you’re saying is you really didn’t take to him.’

  ‘There wasn’t any good reason why I shouldn’t. He behaved impeccably. He wasn’t rude, he didn’t get drunk or anything.’

  ‘Yet the moment he came into the room, it was fingers down the throat time. I saw you.’

  ‘You don’t have to be quite so graphic, Mattie,’ Cassie sighed. ‘At the end of the famous day I guess what I thought was maybe he seemed a little too good to be true. You know, sort of altogether too plausible. And when I see plausible I hear your father, I’m afraid. Tyrone always used to say you only need to be plausible if you have something to hide.’

  * * *

  Since as far as the big race went their nerves were beginning to get the better of them both, they had dinner together in Cassie’s suite. By the time they had read up all the form yet again and all the printed forecasts for the coming contest they had put to the side for the moment any further thoughts about Josephine’s alliance, preferring instead to hypothesize as to how the race might be run, even though as Mattie ruefully remarked at one point it was about as idle a speculation to make as was the possible outcome of a marriage between Josephine and Mark Carter-James.

  ‘If ifs and ans,’ Mattie sighed as they were closing up their copies of Timeform and Horses in Training. ‘And you don’t have to tell me what Dad always said about supposition because it’s practically engraved on my heart.’

  ‘With the help of an if—’ Cassie began.

  ‘I said I know, Ma, I know,’ Mattie interrupted, getting to his feet and stretching. ‘With the help of an if you might put Ireland into a bottle.’

  Cassie smiled at her handsome son and then rose to kiss him good night. As she did so there was a knock on the main door.

  ‘Who is it?’ Cassie called after they both had made their way into the lobby. No-one answered, despite a second query, prompting Mattie to look through the spyhole.

  ‘There’s no-one there,’ he said. ‘At least not as far as I can see.’

  ‘I definitely heard a knock,’ Cassie said.

  ‘So did I,’ Mattie agreed, having another careful look through the optic set in the door. ‘But there still isn’t anyone there – except – hold on. There isn’t anybody, but there definitely is some thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s pushed right up against the door.’

  Putting the door on its chain, Mattie eased it open.

  ‘Well?’ Cassie asked him from behind.

  ‘Jeez,’ Mattie said, once he had opened the door fully. ‘Jeez, that is just so sick.’

  ‘What is?’ Cassie asked again, with increasing impatience, easing her son to one side so that she could get a clear look at what had been delivered to her suite.

  It was a brand new wheelchair.

  ‘Forget it,’ Cassie said finally, after they had both stared at it for several seconds. ‘I’ll have Reception come and remove it.’

  There was a card envelope attached to one of the wheelchair’s arms by a string tie. Cassie ripped it off before she marched back into her suite to telephone the reception desk, tearing the card open as she did so.

  ‘I know just what this is going to say, so I don’t know why I’m bothering,’ she announced.

  But Cassie was wrong. The card did not contain a personal message to her to heed the previous warnings she had received. What the card said was

  This gift comes to you not for yourself

  But for your handsome son.

  Unfortunately, before she could pretend otherwise, Mattie had taken it from her hand.

  ‘First thing tomorrow I shall withdraw the horse,’ Cassie said as she poured them both a large drink.

  ‘No way,’ Mattie countered, accepting his drink. ‘You withdraw the horse and you know what you’ll be doing. Giving in to the bastards.’

  ‘It’s only a horse race, Mattie,’ Cassie said, walking over to stare out of her balcony windows at the city lights. ‘You’re much more important to me. Infinitely so.’

  ‘Look,’ Mattie said, coming to stand beside her. ‘Listen to me. If you don’t run Nightie they will have won. They’ve been trying to scare you off and if you withdraw the horse they will have scared you off, and scaring you off means they can scare anyone off. So let’s look at this sensibly, with a cool eye and a clear head. We know the horse is OK. They haven’t got at the horse—’

  ‘As far as we know they haven’t—’ Cassie chipped in.

  ‘If they had, they wouldn’t have bothered with the wheelchair routine. This is eleventh hour stuff, that’s all. They’re getting desperate.’

  ‘Desperate enough maybe to try to hurt you,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘If you’re worried about me, guv’nor—’

  ‘Of course I’m worried about you. You’re my son.’

  ‘So don’t. I’ll organize some muscle for tomorrow. I know plenty of guys who’ll come and look hard, OK? And as long as I don’t go walking down any dark alleys—’

  ‘And what about after the race?’ Cassie supposed. ‘You can’t walk round with a pack of bodyguards for the rest of your days.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not how it goes, Ma!’ Mattie flopped down into one of the armchairs, setting his drink on the table before him. ‘After the race it’ll all be over. The horse will either have won or lost and that will conclude the entertainment. If Nightie wins the damage will have been done, and if he loses putting me in a wheelchair isn’t going to change things. So there’s nothing to be gained in pulling the horse out of the race. Think who you’ll be letting down. Not just the tens of millions of people who want to see him race, but people who have never seen him race before and probably right at this very minute are dreaming about what tomorrow’s going to bring. So no – you can’t take him out of the race because I’ve been threatened rather than you. A threat is a threat is a threat, and since you’ve always said you’re not going to be bullied whatever they try to throw at you, you have to stick by what you said. You’re going to stand your ground and so is the horse.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cassie said uncertainly. ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘OK,’ Mattie sighed before getting back out of his chair and going to his mother, turning her round by the shoulders so that they were looking each other in the eye. ‘Try this on for size, then. In the same situation, what do you reckon Dad would have done?’

  Four

  By the time The Nightingale was being walked round the pre-parade ring there was still an apparently endless queue of cars making their way slowly up the middle of Sandown Park to the enclosures. The grandstands were already packed to bursting as were Tattersalls and the Silver Ring and had been so for a good hour before the first race, so much so that it was hard to believe any more people could be packed in or onto the course. Moreover the weather which was glorious had encouraged even more people to turn out than had been anticipated with the result that the executive had run out of racecards and the bars of anything remotely resembling a cold drink long before the runners and riders were announced for the Eclipse Stakes, a contest which had been billed as the Race of a Lifetime with The Nightingale being opposed by the winners of the French, German and Italian derbies, and eight other horses which between them had won prize money of well over one and a half million pounds. Nor, according to the pundits, was the race the open and shut affair it had once seemed, due exactly as Cassie and Mattie had predicted to the rumours which were circulating concerning the well-being of the Claremore horse. With the exception of the racing correspondent of The Times, the rest of the experts were suggesting there was a much harder race in store for the wonder horse than had been forecast, three of them even going as far as to tip Mot Cambron to beat The Nightingale.

  For the Claremore entourage this only added to the excitement and failed to dent the unshakeable confidence they all had in their horse. Even Cassie
had recovered her inner composure as well as her sense of keen anticipation, thanks in the main part to her son’s grit and determination, so much so that she changed her mind and allowed herself to be interviewed before the big race.

  ‘First I have to ask you about the well-being of your horse, Mrs Rosse,’ the interviewer asked. ‘I know you wouldn’t bring him here unless he was one hundred per cent, but since there are still some Doubting Thomases about the place maybe we can silence the rumours by hearing it if not from the horse’s mouth itself then the next best thing, from the trainer’s.’

  ‘The Nightingale is right on song, John,’ Cassie replied. ‘As everyone knows he sustained a slight knock one night in his box but it was such a minor bump he really didn’t miss a day’s work that would matter.’

  ‘So your confidence is undiminished, obviously.’

  ‘If he’s beaten there won’t be any excuses, I promise.’

  ‘I had a look at him earlier and I have to say he looks a picture. Now to turn to something much more serious—’

  ‘Can we stop the tape here, please?’ Cassie requested, turning away from the camera. ‘Forgive me, but I wasn’t prepared for this. I really would rather not talk about the threats we’ve been getting, if that’s the way you were headed.’

  ‘Well, yes it was, as a matter of fact,’ the interviewer agreed. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Cassie, perhaps I should have mentioned this to you before we started. It’s just that it seems to be common knowledge. After all, that business with the wheelchair was all over the tabloids this morning.’

  ‘Was it?’ Cassie wondered with a frown, wondering who had leaked the story. ‘I haven’t looked at the papers today.’

  ‘If you’d rather not talk about it, I quite understand,’ her interviewer said.

  ‘I think you should talk about it,’ Mattie said, having come over to his mother’s side during the break. ‘Think what it’ll do for racing. And for all the people who want a Tote monopoly—’