‘Let’s start again,’ Josephine nodded. ‘Why me?’
‘Oh, because,’ Cassie said, accelerating quickly away from Nugent land now they were back on the road. ‘I guess because I reckon you might just have one or two unfulfilled ambitions left.’
‘Suppose I fail.’
‘You won’t. You’re not into failing.’
‘Look at my marriage. If that wasn’t a failure, I don’t know what was. And as for – I don’t deserve this. Really.’
‘On the contrary, sweetheart. You deserve this all the more. And if we don’t pull it off, it will have had nothing to do with you. This one’s down to me. Now tell me something. I haven’t asked you before because I wanted to wait until you were better – but what did you mean exactly about Mark marrying you to get back at me?’
Josephine looked round at Cassie then turned away to stare silently at the countryside flashing past her before she replied. ‘It’s just a theory, that’s all,’ she said. ‘He was obsessed by you and Nightie, so was his father. I just don’t think they could take it, not in their world. A woman being that brilliant and successful. They both absolutely hate women, that I do know, and to my cost. I just think you represented everything they both hated. And I was there ready for the taking.’
‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ Cassie said, reaching out a hand to take one of Josephine’s. ‘Sometimes it seems as if Nightie’s brought us nothing but unhappiness.’
‘Oh, come on, Mums,’ Josephine said with a wry grin. ‘What happened to me was hardly the horse’s fault. I’m old and ugly enough to know better. Right?’
Cassie and Josephine went into training together, once Josephine had been given the all clear by Dr Gilbert who have her a thorough examination to make sure all the breaks were well and truly mended and all the internal bruising was completely healed, following Cassie’s tried and true get-fit regimen.
‘It’s hardly state of the art, I know,’ Cassie grunted as they pounded up the hills behind Claremore in three layers of running clothes with weights attached to their wrists and ankles, ‘but it does the trick.’
‘It’s those dreadful half-crouching exercises I can’t stand,’ Josephine groaned back. ‘I could hardly put one leg in front of the other yesterday.’
‘Tomas taught me that,’ Cassie said, swinging left now they’d reached the top of the hill and running along the level track that stretched out for a quarter of a mile ahead of them.
‘The only way to get your calf muscles, your thighs and your back strong enough to race ride.’
‘You can do it in a gym half as painfully,’ Josephine replied.
‘And about half as effectively. Being women, we have to work twice as hard in those areas as men because we just don’t have the muscles there. Particularly in the lower leg.’
‘I don’t want them, thank you,’ Josephine returned. ‘Gareth says I’ve the best legs he’s seen.’
‘This getting serious between you and that young man?’
‘Would you mind if it was?’
‘Not at all. You’ve seen him practically every day since he began taking you out.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite as nice as Gareth. And you’re fifty-three times as fit as I am.’
‘I’ve been riding out every day, sweetheart. And swimming. And walking. I have to keep myself fit.’
‘Then maybe it should be you riding the horse, not me.’
‘Hey!’
Cassie had stopped running and called out to her daughter. Josephine turned and came back to join her and both of them stood for a moment with their hands on their hips, catching their breath and looking down at Claremore which lay stretched out in the spring sunshine far below them.
‘Hey,’ Cassie said when she had got her breath back. ‘Don’t you really want to do this? Because if you don’t—’
‘I think you’re mad. Quite quite mad. And of course I want to do this, because I’m your daughter. I’m mad as well. Now come on – last home has to do twenty extra sit downs!’ Cassie smiled to herself and gave her daughter a headstart. None the less she made sure she caught her just in time before they collapsed against the back door of the house, because as she well knew Josephine’s need to do the twenty extra sit downs was even greater than her own.
At the end of the week Cassie got a long-awaited letter from Joel. It arrived second post, brought to her by Dick in his usual slip-sliding fashion.
‘One day Erin will polish those floors even more than ever and you’ll end up sliding all the way down the corridor and into the cellars, Dick,’ Josephine said with a grin as the shoeless Dick shuffled back out of the drawing room where Josephine, Mattie and their mother had met to have tea and an update on Cassie’s stratagem.
While Cassie drew her legs up and tucked them under her on the sofa to read her letter, Mattie and Josephine played a game of Fish at the table. ‘I see,’ said Cassie after she’d finished reading the letter and was tucking it away back in the envelope.
‘Something the matter?’ Josephine wondered.
‘I was meant to visit Joel this week,’ Cassie replied. ‘But now he says he doesn’t want to see me. He says he thinks it’s probably better if we don’t see each other until his release.’
‘Maybe he’s thinking of you,’ Mattie ventured, tapping the deck of cards into shape on the table. ‘It is a hell of a way to go for an hour’s chat, particularly with the sort of life you lead.’
‘I shall miss not seeing him for another nine months.’
‘Maybe that’s also part of the reason,’ Josephine suggested. ‘The absence makes the heart grow fonder routine?’
‘Or the reverse,’ Cassie said gloomily. ‘It could be the I get along without you very well number.’
‘Doesn’t he say anything as to why?’ Josephine wondered. ‘He must give some sort of reason.’
‘That’s not Joel’s style, Jo,’ Cassie replied. ‘By his own admission he’s not the world’s greatest letter writer. He’s inclined to leave the all-important bits unsaid.’
‘Maybe it’s there in the you know – subtext.’
‘Sure.’ Cassie shrugged and passed her daughter Joel’s letter to Josephine. ‘There’s nothing in it that’s unsuitable for anyone of a nervous disposition, I guess.’ She sat sipping her tea and Mattie layed out a game of patience for himself as Josephine sat on the floor by her mother’s feet reading the letter.
‘How’s Joel as gumshoe getting on?’
‘It’s hard to say, Mattie,’ Cassie replied. ‘He’s only had the whole file a week or so, although he does hint he’s made a couple of connections.’
‘I’ve always reckoned it was someone with a serious grudge. I go along with the theory that whoever was behind taking the horse was talking through his pocket, in which case it has to be a bookmaker. One of the big boys, too, because Honest Joe Finnegan in the village could hardly have afforded the heavy mob, could he?’
‘No. But then I’ve been right through Tyrone’s betting books, and although he had some pretty good coups over the years like all gamblers he also had some pretty heavy losses.’
‘But Dad’s records don’t show exactly who he hit,’ Mattie stated, carefully watching the cards he was slowly dealing out for himself. ‘We don’t know if any one bookie took a hammering or whether Dad spread his bets around. He could have once done some serious damage to a small bookie and put him out of business.’
‘OK – but then by your reckoning if it was only a small bookmaker who’d got hurt he couldn’t afford such an expensive revenge. Because let’s face it, kidnapping The Nightingale was no bargain basement job.’
‘Maybe the bookmaker popped up through another hole, some time later,’ Mattie surmised. ‘He could have made money some other way and decided he’d finally get his own back. It’s only an idea, but – you know –’ Mattie shrugged and began to pick up the cards from his aborted game. ‘Half the time you have no idea which way people are coming from. That’s wh
at makes making sense of it so difficult.’
‘You could well have something. Write and tell Joel that. You never know, it might just trigger something off.’
‘You should write to Joel as well,’ Josephine said, handing the letter back to her mother. ‘And ask him directly what he means, because you can forget any subtext. That’s like a letter from a friend, rather than – well, you know.’
‘As I said, Jo, Mr Benson does not write great letters.’
‘He writes very honest ones. But his idea of you not seeing each other until he’s released, maybe it’s not so daft. Of course it’s great for him to have you visit, but as Mattie just said it is one hell of a long way to go to see him. It’s not as if you can just drive up from London, say, or hop on a train from Birmingham down to Oxford. You have to drive into Dublin, take a plane—’
‘I know what I have to do, thanks, Jo.’
‘All I’m trying to say, Mums, is you might start resenting the journey. You’re just really getting into the Flat racing season, you’ve got a yard full of good horses, you have to be here all the time – and then if you have to miss a couple of visits because a horse is lame, or one starts to cough or something, then Joel might feel bad about you not making it. You see, maybe what he’s trying to say is that in the circumstances there’s less danger in you not seeing each other for nine months than there is in you trying to make regular visits.’
‘Besides the expense,’ Mattie mumbled. ‘As Jo said, it’s not exactly a short drive.’
‘Jo’s right,’ Cassie replied with a sigh, knowing full well she had to keep a tight rein on her expenses. ‘You’re both right. And maybe so is Joel. Perhaps we should both just get on with what we have to do, and then before you know it, he’ll be released and we can just carry on where we left off. Maybe in the long run that is the best thing to do.’
Sensing that neither Mattie nor Josephine had any further interest in discussing Joel she put away her memories of him, filing them away mentally under ‘pending’, just as she had filed away Tyrone’s death for so many long years, the years until she met Joel.
‘OK,’ Mattie said, snapping Cassie out of her reverie. ‘So now let’s hear about the main plan. How’s everything panning out?’
‘So far so good,’ Cassie replied. ‘But it’ll only stay that way as long as everyone’s lip stays buttoned.’
‘It’s not in anyone’s interest to talk,’ Mattie said. ‘Least of all any of us three.’
Cassie nodded her agreement and then began to go over her stratagem down to the very last detail. For the next three hours, over drinks and then dinner, the three of them took the whole plan to pieces to examine it for flaws and then rebuilt it, nut and bolt by nut and bolt. By the time they got up from table they imagined they had covered every possible exigency which of course as Fate would have it they had not. But then they could hardly be blamed for not foreseeing the events on the horizon which come the following January were going to make them face a seemingly insoluble crisis.
Any thoughts of failure, however, were far from Cassie’s mind that evening when she finally reached her bedroom. She could not afford to think of failure, because if the plan foundered then Claremore would be lost. She knew that now she had to watch every penny, for although all the yards were full of horses, a complement which included some very promising two and three year olds, she would need to produce at least one winning Group One horse in order to generate any real profit on the season’s racing, because for the Grand Plan to be successful she must not be seen as trying to supplement her income by gambling. Come what may Cassie Rosse must keep being seen as a non-betting trainer, and because she had to watch every penny, she knew Joel’s suggestion that she should not continue visiting him was an eminently practical one. Even to fly over and visit him only twice a month would still prove to be a costly enterprise, so not to do so would represent quite a considerable saving over the next nine months. As far as her feelings were concerned she harboured no great fears as to their survival. The span of time they were not going to be able to see each other was by no means a long one and with a busy racing season ahead of her Cassie was hardly going to have either the opportunity or the inclination for any involvements other than those she already had. As for Joel, even if he did have the inclination he certainly was not going to be afforded the opportunity.
Besides, the couple of visits Cassie had made so far had not been altogether successful. Both Joel and she were agreed on that fact, Joel comparing it to one of his most dreaded routines, namely being seen off by someone at a railway station, for despite herself Cassie had found that she kept watching the clock, dreading the moment when they would have to say goodbye while at the same time realizing that any delay in leaving might mean a missed connection back to Ireland.
So by the time Cassie at last put out her light to go to sleep she had quite made up her mind about two things. She would follow Joel’s suggestion about not visiting, and only an act of God could stop her pulling off her coup.
Twenty-Nine
By the end of June, thanks to Cassie’s old-fashioned training routine, Josephine was beginning to feel fitter than she had ever felt before. The plan was for her to ride in the Diamond Stakes at Ascot, the same race she had ridden on the day of The Nightingale’s kidnap, an aim which would satisfy the curiosity of anyone who was wondering why exactly Cassie Rosse and her daughter could be seen every morning pounding along the roads and up the hills around Claremore. In fact so strong was Josephine becoming that Cassie no longer had to pretend to let her daughter beat her. It was taking all of Cassie’s fitness to keep anywhere near abreast of Josephine.
By now too news of the break-up of Josephine’s marriage to Mark was also abroad, but once the paparazzi had contented itself with picking the bones clean, life at Claremore settled back into its well-ordered routine. Cassie had sent Josephine to see her lawyers in Dublin for advice as to the best way to end the marriage, and the lawyers had assured her that since her husband had openly declared that he had no wish to have children it would be highly probable, just as Cassie had surmised, that an annulment based on this determination would be granted. Most important as far as Josephine was concerned, this would mean that as a Catholic should she ever wish to get remarried she would be fully entitled to do so in a church.
At first Mark had tried to put up some token resistance, possibly in the hope of making some sort of financial arrangement with Cassie, but as soon as it was made perfectly clear that if he stood in the way of Josephine’s getting an annulment he would find himself facing charges for grievous bodily harm and possibly even statutory rape, no more was heard from him. He was particularly silent after Jack Madigan paid him a courtesy call in London.
‘What in heaven’s name did you say to him, Jack?’ Cassie had asked after learning of the visit.
‘It’s not what I said, Cassie my love,’ Jack had assured her. ‘It’s what I didn’t say that did the trick.’
The result was that suddenly Josephine was happy again, happier than she had ever been since the day she had left Claremore to start trying to earn her living as an actress. Her contentment was due, however, not just to returning to the warmth of her family home, but also to the ever-growing attentions of Gareth Plunkett who since Josephine’s return to Claremore had barely let one day go by without seeing her. It came as no surprise to Cassie when the young man finally started to join them on Saturday mornings for their daily ten-mile run.
Mattie, meanwhile, his confidence and self-belief restored, was shaping up into a training force with which the best would have to reckon. At Naas in the second last week of May he saddled not just his first winner but his first two, pulling off a 74/1 double with the victories of a two-year-old in the first and a six-year-old handicapper in the last, backing both horses singly and in a double and thus leaving the course with his pockets metaphorically speaking stuffed full of cash. As Cassie knew, this was more than he could have dared hope for in only the second m
onth of racing in his first season as a trainer and more than Cassie could ever have dreamed of him achieving, for as they both well knew the greater Mattie’s success in his first full season, the greater would be the credibility of their intended strike.
‘Now the next bit of the jigsaw is getting you home first past the post at Ascot,’ Cassie told Josephine one morning the following week when they were alone out running. ‘We’ve got six weeks before the King George meeting at Ascot and I’m going to run your intended mount Dormie One in the big handicap at Leopardstown this coming Saturday, then if all goes well in a conditions race at the Curragh on Derby Day. Dexter will ride him on both occasions.’
‘But—’ Josephine began.
‘No buts, remember?’ Cassie cut in. ‘If you’re worried about not getting a race on him, you don’t have to.’
‘I can hardly get a race ride on him if Dex is riding both races!’ Josephine gasped as they raced up the final slope of the hill. ‘I know he’s meant to be a steering job, but it’s rather a different matter when there are twenty-odd horses either trying to bulldoze a way through or dropping back on you! Particularly at Ascot with its short straight!’
‘It’s all right, Jo! You really don’t have to worry!’ Cassie called back to her daughter over the noise of the wind that buffeted them the moment they breasted the hill. ‘You’re going to get a race on him! A private one!’
Cassie refused to be drawn any further, waiting instead to see how Dormie One performed at Leopardstown, where predictably enough for such an honest performer the horse ran precisely to his handicap mark, finishing third a neck and a fast diminishing length behind the flyweighted favourite, Crystal Diana.
‘The race’ll really have brought him on,’ Dexter told Cassie as he was unbuckling his girth in the unsaddling enclosure. ‘One more run and he’ll be spot on.’
‘I was thinking of giving him a couple,’ Cassie said discreetly. ‘But not if you think that’ll overcook him.’
The Nightingale Sings Page 48