The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  Whizz was the second horse home, beaten by what was later officially declared to be twelve lengths. Hokey Cokey was a neck behind Whizz in third, Filmgoer was another neck away in fourth spot, Mot Cambron faded to finish two lengths away in fifth and Tootsuite ran on to snatch sixth place from a completely exhausted Esplanade. The rest of the field hacked in another dozen lengths behind. Those who witnessed the race were of the opinion that The Nightingale’s triumph had to be the most emphatic victory ever seen in a horse race of this quality.

  Even easing up in the last fifty yards he still knocked one and a half seconds off the existing course record.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ Cassie asked Mattie on the plane back to Ireland.

  ‘Leonora’s face,’ he said. ‘Talk about bad losers.’

  As always whenever Leonora’s name was mentioned, Cassie felt a moment of despair which annoyed her, since she realized that all the adversities over which she had triumphed should at last have liberated her from the hold Leonora had once had over her. Yet back came the old anxiety, like a well-conditioned reaction. So bad was it that even now at the moment of victory Cassie could still manage to feel guilt.

  Beside her Mattie started to laugh all over again. ‘I actually thought she was going to throw a blue fit,’ he said. ‘And as for the roasting she gave her poor jockey.’

  ‘Sometimes I think she’ll never ever rest,’ Cassie said, looking out at the clouds beyond her window. ‘At least not until one of us is six feet under.’

  * * *

  Euphoria returned as soon as the raiding party landed back in Ireland and journeyed in high fettle triumphantly to Claremore where, once the hero of the day had been safely transported back from the airport and settled in his stable with a supper of bran mash and Guinness, Cassie threw an informal drinks party for everyone who worked for her, all her nearby friends and colleagues, and everyone who wanted to come and celebrate from the tiny but now world-famous village. They sang and danced, drank and told stories until the dawn broke and it was nearly time to pull out the first string of horses.

  Finally tired out by the excitement, the travelling and the revelry Cassie excused herself from riding work and took to her bed where she fell into a deep and untroubled sleep. Erin called her at midday as she had requested with a pot of fresh coffee, a pile of newspapers and a hot bath already drawn. After Cassie had bathed and read the reports of the race in all the main papers she went down to the drawing room to crack a bottle of champagne as promised with Mattie.

  He was on the telephone when she came into the room which Erin had bedecked with flowers picked that morning from the gardens. While Dick performed his usual wrestling act with the unopened champagne bottle Cassie waited, pretending to rearrange some roses in a vase on top of the grand piano. Once he had finished taking the call Mattie also waited until Dick had finally managed to win his battle with the recalcitrant champagne cork, poured them some wine and retired muttering mild Gaelic oaths under his breath.

  ‘Who was on the phone?’ Cassie wondered as she handed her son his glass of champagne.

  ‘Tony, the guard on duty at the main gates,’ Mattie replied, clearing his throat and trying to look at his most relaxed. ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘What sort of nothing exactly?’

  ‘Nothing nothing.’

  ‘Come on, Mattie,’ Cassie urged him. ‘I am your mother, you know. I’ve been looking at that face of yours since you were a baby and I know when a cloud goes across it. So what was the call about?’

  ‘Oh, Jeez, it was just some joker. Some silly bugger sent an undertaker’s van out from Wicklow.’

  Mattie shrugged his shoulders as if it was of no account, but as he turned away Cassie saw him reach into his pocket for his spinhaler and take a long, deep pull on it.

  Five

  On her way back from church Cassie stopped in the yard to see The Nightingale. It was lunchtime and with the horses all duly fed no-one except the security guard was about. The horse looked up at her from his manger as she quietly entered his box and seeing who it was went on methodically eating his food. Cassie went over to him and stood beside his head but besides giving one swish of his thick tail in friendly warning he paid no further attention to his visitor.

  ‘You really do like to get stuck in, old friend, don’t you?’ Cassie said, gently stroking his big, strong neck. ‘Since you were weaned for the life of me I can’t remember you leaving an oat.’

  The horse snorted into his food and pushed what was left of it round his manger while Cassie stood back and took stock of him. When she was away from his stable and not watching him work or race, she found herself nowadays sometimes wondering whether he was worth all the anxiety which he seemed to be bringing with him in ever-increasing amounts. Never for one moment when she had helped Tomas with his foaling four years earlier could she have anticipated what a huge responsibility the birth of that strapping black foal would bring. Like every breeder watching their stock grow, the most she had hoped was that he might win a race somewhere, sometime. Of course like every breeder she had occasionally dreamed that the race in question might be a Derby, but she knew the odds against producing a classic winner were astronomical to say the very least. So as The Nightingale grew into a big, strong yearling she had contented herself simply with thinking that he looked a good enough sort to earn the right to go into training as a two-year-old. But never did she imagine, or indeed could she ever have imagined, that a colt foal born out of her bargain clubfooted mare was on his way to becoming one of the most famous racehorses in the world.

  Now, however, with the way his fourth year was turning out Cassie certainly had her doubts and with good reason. With the threats now being directed not at the horse’s welfare but at that of her family she was seriously reconsidering her decision to keep The Nightingale on in training. The incidents with the wheelchair in London and then with the local undertaker’s van back at Claremore had already made it perfectly plain that there were bound to be more threats and she knew it would be foolish to take these lightly. So although withdrawing the horse now and sending him to stud would disappoint everyone, the move would put her family out of any further danger as well as minimizing the risk of anything befalling The Nightingale. It would also secure for ever the family’s and Claremore’s financial future.

  Yet like her late husband Cassie baulked at defeat, and taking the horse out of training would be an admission that her unknown enemies had her beaten. It would also be an unacceptable precedent since it would mean that no-one who owned a decent racehorse might ever really be safe from villainy. So on that hand it was vital that Cassie should at least appear to remain unaffected by the intimidation, and most important of all she and the rest of the racing fraternity should do everything in their joint power to find out who was responsible for the outrage. Failure to do so could have a lasting effect on the whole racing industry, particularly on the bookmakers, who were the odds-on favourites in most people’s minds to be those with the most to gain from scaring off the horse and its connections. But Cassie was old-fashioned enough still to think that people were innocent until proved guilty, and consequently considered it would be unpardonable if the future of the bookmaking profession was endangered purely as the result of rumour-mongering.

  ‘The trouble is I’m frightened,’ she had admitted earlier to Tyrone as she had knelt by his grave, fixing an arrangement of roses cut freshly from their gardens. ‘I’m frightened. Not for myself but for our children. As well as for everyone who works at Claremore, come to that, since there’s no knowing what these people might do. I know it’s no good asking you what you’d do in the circumstances because I know perfectly well what you’d do. You’d say blow the lot of them, and go right on with what you were doing, but I guess maybe I don’t have your courage, or your determination. God, how I wish you were still alive, how I wish every day that—’

  She stopped as she fingered the gold locket at her neck that Tyrone had given her and w
hich she had lost that fateful day after the magical birthday party he had thrown for her, when together they had ridden up into the hills behind Claremore, even happier and more passionately in love than they had ever been – only for Cassie to find the locket had fallen from her neck somewhere in that last field across which they had come, so that Tyrone had got off Old Flurry in order to help her with her search. One fly kick was all it had taken Tyrone’s faithful old hack to despatch him to eternity. A horse fly or a wasp sting on the horse’s soft underbelly, a sudden lashing kick, and Tyrone had been taken from her, there in the fold of the hills where March hares boxed, under clear blue summer skies and where larks rose at dawn.

  There you are! he had called up to her as he had found the locket. God is kind! Only for God to take him from her the very next moment and in an instant, leaving her cradling his dead body in her arms and forlornly calling out his name on the warm summer breeze.

  Thereafter everything Cassie had done she had done for him. Her whole life had been and still was dedicated to Tyrone’s memory and now that she had reached perhaps the most crucial stage of her long widowhood she missed his counsel and his strength more than she had ever missed them before.

  ‘As I said, I know it’s no good asking you what to do, Ty,’ she had told him with a sigh. ‘At least everyone tells me it’s no good because there is no way you can answer my questions. But I feel it does me good, because somehow whenever I come up here to talk to you I go away feeling so much stronger. And now I need the strength you give me more than ever. Because it’s not just the worry about The Nightingale. There’s Josephine, too. She’s fallen in love with someone – someone she says she wants to marry – and Mattie can’t stand him and I’m not at all sure about him either – which isn’t really fair seeing we’ve only met him a couple of times. But then you know what you were like yourself. First impressions were everything to you and if you didn’t like someone or something at once that was it. Nothing or nobody could ever make you change your mind afterwards – and that’s how it is with this young man. At least as far as Mattie and I are concerned it was. One look at him and it was hate at first sight.’ She paused. ‘You know, Tyrone, I only wish I could hear you the way I know you can see me.’

  Josephine was quite her old effervescent self when she wasn’t with Mark. When they had met her with Mark, as Mattie said afterwards, she had not been firing on all six cylinders, yet two weeks after the drama and final triumph of the Eclipse, when the play in which she was appearing in the West End had suddenly closed and Josephine flew over by herself to Ireland for a week’s holiday at Claremore, it was obvious she was right back on song. Cassie and she spent as much time together as they could find, which with the King George VI Stakes at Ascot now less than a week away was not as much as both of them would have liked. Happily Josephine was only too eager to ride work and generally help out in the office and the yard, so although hours alone together were hard to come by they still found enough time to talk about almost everything that needed talking about. All that was except Mark Carter-James.

  Every time the subject came up, however subtly Cassie introduced it, Josephine buried it. She would talk in general terms about the relationship, including even the plans to get married which much to Cassie’s relief seemed very vague and not at all well determined. As long as her daughter’s plans remained in such a state Cassie felt that Josephine and her intended were perhaps not as serious about each other as they had first made out, or at the very least that Josephine had decided to be a little more circumspect. So rather than press for details which Josephine was not willing to volunteer, at the same time being aware that too much concern masquerading as maternal interest could rekindle Josephine’s determination, Cassie tried instead to be as uninterested in the details of the love affair as she could be without seeming to be indifferent. Josephine seemed more than happy with this attitude, and as the week went by and little time was spent discussing the subject she was quite her old, sunny self.

  ‘Maybe she’s frightened of him,’ Mattie said on the one morning Josephine slept in and he found himself alone with his mother watching the first string being exercised. ‘She’s talked to me quite a bit about him, and although she didn’t go into any details I got the distinct impression that he dominates her. It’s often the way with small guys, or at least so I’ve heard. They like tall women whom they then dominate.’

  ‘And what about small women?’ Cassie wondered. ‘Like me? Do you reckon we’re bullies as well? I don’t think your father would have agreed with you there.’

  ‘You’re not a bully, you’re just seriously determined,’ Mattie replied. ‘When you want something, God help anyone who gets in your way.’

  ‘I guess a lot of that comes from the way I was brought up,’ Cassie said. ‘Maybe having an unhappy childhood is the making of people. If I’d had a perfectly idyllic childhood perhaps I wouldn’t be where I am today. In fact I know I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I think our childhood was pretty idyllic,’ Mattie said, adjusting his reins and resettling his hack who was getting restless. ‘All except for not knowing our father.’

  ‘How do you think it’s affected you?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s hard to say,’ Mattie replied. ‘I know Jo feels it, even though she does at least remember Dad.’

  ‘It might explain her problem with men,’ Cassie said, never taking her eyes off the string of horses coming up the gallops. ‘Maybe that’s why she just doesn’t best know how to be with them. It seems she’s always been at either their feet or their throats.’

  ‘Usually at their feet,’ Mattie said with a grin. ‘Maybe it also explains why – at least according to Jo – I’m so defensive. Particularly in the company of older men.’

  ‘Let’s just wait to see what you bring home in the way of a wife,’ Cassie replied.

  She smiled at Mattie who smiled back at her, both of them knowing that the reason he was so often bullish was because he had a problem believing in himself. He was fine as long as he was around Claremore, but Cassie often feared for the future if he ever found himself cut off from the security of his home.

  ‘Anyway,’ she called, preparing to canter off down to where the first string was pulling up below them. ‘You’re not the person who needs sorting out at the moment. Your sister is our main concern.’

  ‘Just leave her to me, guv!’ Mattie called back. ‘I’ll get to the bottom of it, don’t you worry!’

  He got further than his mother had done, thanks to the help of a couple of joints he’d procured from one of his friends in Dublin.

  ‘Mums would have a fit,’ Josephine said as they lay on their backs that evening in the long grass watching the swallows cooling themselves in the carp pond.

  ‘Do her some good,’ Mattie murmured, passing the cigarette back to his sister.

  ‘Might do,’ Josephine agreed. ‘She sure is uptight à ce moment.’

  ‘No she isn’t.’

  ‘Oooh yes she is. Is she uptight.’

  ‘Maybe if she met somebody, Jose. Maybe that’s what she needs. She needs to meet somebody.’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe. Then maybe not.’ Josephine took another deep draw and passed the joint back to Mattie.

  ‘I talked to her about all that stuff with Pa, you know.’ Mattie lay back and closed his eyes. ‘Like you asked me to. I talked to her all about that. And she lost it. She didn’t like it at all – but at least it got aired.’

  ‘You think she’s ever going to get over it? I don’t.’

  ‘That’s why I said maybe if she met somebody …’

  ‘I think she needs something more than that,’ Josephine said after a long silence.

  ‘She doesn’t. She just needs a man who’d sort of – yes. She needs a man to do what whatsisname’s done to you.’

  ‘You know bloody well what Mark’s called.’

  ‘Fine. So what did Mark do to you?’

  Josephine took a last draw on what was left of the smoke before fl
ipping the stub into the reeds.

  ‘I said—’ Mattie slowly began.

  ‘I heard,’ Josephine replied before exhaling. ‘I heard.’

  ‘I asked you what whatsisname did to you.’

  Instead of replying Josephine began to giggle.

  ‘God, you’re not going to get silly, are you?’ Mattie asked, and then picking up the infection started to laugh himself. ‘Once you start laughing I’ve had it.’

  As they both continued to laugh, Josephine sat up and bent her head down through her knees so that her long hair fell either side of her face. Then she straightened up and pushed her hair back with her hands, holding it in a bun at the back of her head.

  ‘OK. So you want to know what Mark did, right?’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘He bothered. He bothered about everything. Right from the word go. He really bothered about me, I mean like who I was, rather than just trying to get me between the sheets which is what everyone else has always tried to do.’

  ‘Maybe he can’t do it.’

  ‘That’s not even remotely amusing. And anyway he can.’

  ‘Oh. You mean you have.’

  ‘That isn’t what I said!’

  ‘OK. Oh-K.’

  Josephine lay back with a sigh. ‘Next thing you’ll probably say is what everybody else says. That because I never knew Dad – and because Mark bothers – blah blah blah …’

  ‘Suppose it might figure.’

  ‘Yes, well, it goes a whole lot deeper than that. He’s about the first man I’ve known who wasn’t after something. Ever since Nightie kind of burst onto the scene, and lo and behold I started getting a lot of work all of a sudden, because all of a sudden I came with a story – honestly, after we won the Derby there wasn’t anyone who didn’t call me. There wasn’t a place to be seen I wasn’t taken to. And God it was awful. No-one was interested in me. They were just interested in trying to lay a bit of the glory.’