To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  He had once telephoned her from America, in the middle of her afternoon, and at the break of his day.

  ‘I can see you,’ he’d said. ‘I suddenly saw you in my mind. You’re sitting in our bed, in that peach silk nightshirt. And you’re reading a book of poems, thinking of me.’

  She had been. And she hadn’t been surprised by his call.

  At dinner, Tyrone had reseated her between Dan Kelly, a painter and set designer whom Tyrone knew Cassie adored for his droll humour, and his sudden mad streak; and, on the other side, Seamus O’Connor, an old friend of Tyrone’s who had started life as a sports commentator and was now one of the biggest and most popular figures on British television. Cassie loved Seamus as well, because, contrary to his public image as a man of straw, he was in fact a very kind and deeply concerned man.

  As they ate their first two courses in the magnificent candle-lit dining room, with over a hundred guests dining at five large round tables, Cassie spent her time delightfully between the two men, as they gossiped and joked, and teased one another. Then as they were eating pudding, and Dan turned to his right to flirt outrageously with the wife of the Irish Ambassador, Seamus asked Cassie how she was.

  ‘Do you mean am I over it?’ she enquired lightly.

  ‘I do not,’ Seamus told her. ‘It’s not something you’ll ever get “over”. But we have a responsibility to life itself, you know. To our own lives. To live them fully, whatever tragedies may befall us. Otherwise I’d say we’re wasting that precious gift of life itself. We have to learn to live with what happens to us. To pass through the experience and live with it. It mustn’t overshadow the rest of our lives.’

  ‘I think Tyrone and I have come to terms with it now,’ Cassie answered carefully. ‘We haven’t buried it away. We talk about it now and then, and the more we do, the less it seems to hurt.’

  Seamus nodded and drank some wine.

  ‘What about more children?’

  ‘Well now,’ Cassie replied, putting down her fork, ‘that’s not so good. Something went wrong somewhere along the line during the Caesarian, at least that’s the theory. Scar tissue in the womb maybe. Anyway, I don’t seem to be able to conceive.’

  ‘Have you thought of adopting?’

  ‘No. I mean, yes, of course we have, but no. We really want to go on trying to have a child of our own.’

  ‘That’s perfectly understandable, Cassie, but if I may make so bold. First, supposing you can’t conceive? You’re wasting all the time you could be giving some child a wonderful home and family. And second, as is often the case, people adopt a child, and something happens. God knows what. Anyway, whatever it is, once they’ve adopted, they find they can conceive again. It’s happened to three friends of ours.’

  Seeing the look in her eyes, Seamus tactfully changed the subject. ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s going to win tomorrow.’

  The conversation opened out to the chances of various fancied horses in the big race the next day, but Cassie gradually slid out of her involvement in it and looked around the vast room instead. She wanted to remember it all, exactly as it was at that moment, because although it didn’t seem possible, one day in the not so distant future everything here could be gone. The sense of permanence which seemed to pervade the rooms and the inhabitants could well vanish overnight, leaving future visitors to wander through the once magnificent house and wonder how it had all actually been on nights such as this.

  But they would never be able to imagine it, because they would have nothing in their minds with which to compare such splendour. They wouldn’t be able to see how the flickering candles in the vast silver candlebra sent waves of warm light scudding across the table to reflect themselves in the women’s jewels; and how their colour in turn seemed to reflect in the heavy crystal glasses, until the whole room seemed to be a cavern alight, permanently aglow.

  Nor would they be able to imagine the stiffness of the liveried footmen’s backs, and the white and gold of the porcelain off which the hundred guests dined; nor hear the strains of music from an orchestra playing unseen in another room throughout the dinner; nor see the waves of tail-coated gentlemen rising and sitting as the ladies left the room, the formality of their evening dress giving distinction to even the most ordinary of the faces.

  As she danced with Tyrone after dinner, Cassie remembered too for all time the tune of the Strauss waltz and the rustle of her golden dress as Tyrone danced her across the ballroom. She remembered that the windows were open on to the gardens, and the terrace outside looked cream-coloured in the bright clear moonlight. She knew as they danced that for most of the people circling around her this night was a night like many others; like last night, or tomorrow night, an everyday night, part of the social routine. They wouldn’t be looking round them, trying to capture and hold the moment fast. Some of them were probably bored tonight; some were probably bored every night. But for Cassie, dancing featherlight in Tyrone’s strong arms, every scent and sound was etched on her mind, to be remembered at will. A place from long ago. A place filled with everything you know.

  As they drove back in Tyrone’s month-old Aston Martin, it was almost dawn, and the Derby runners would already be awake in their boxes, kicking the doors for food or stamping the ground for attention.

  ‘I think we should adopt a baby,’ Cassie said as they turned up the drive to Claremore.

  ‘Great,’ answered Tyrone. ‘Just what I was thinking.’

  Sodium won the Derby, and the following Monday Tyrone and Cassie went to see the Adoption Society. It was decided that their cause was a proper one and a worthy one, and if Cassie’s medical reports confirmed her history, they would be placed on the list of suitable parents. On the way home, Tyrone was very silent and thoughtful, so much so that Cassie was afraid he might have changed his mind.

  ‘No, Cassie McGann,’ he replied, ‘you should know me better than that by now. I’m just not sure about this process of adoption at all. No, no. No, that’s a lie. I’m an impatient man, and when I’ve made my mind up about something I don’t like being told I might well have to wait a year. Or more.’

  ‘I don’t see the alternative, Mr Rosse,’ Cassie ventured.

  ‘Neither do I,’ he agreed, scratching his head. ‘But I’ll find one.’

  He did, too. Cassie met her one evening when she came back from visiting her now three-year-old colt, who was now in training with one of Tyrone’s friendly rivals in Kildare. Tyrone had hooted with laughter when Cassie finally confessed to him what she had done a year after Celebration was foaled, but when he went and was introduced to Cassie’s foal, and saw what a strapping youngster he was, he told her at once that she must put the horse in training for the next season. Cassie was thrilled, until Tyrone announced that he would not have him in his yard, because he wished to stay married to Cassie and, if she remembered, he had refused ever to let Cassie be ‘one of his damn owners’.

  So with perfectly good grace he advised her to send her colt to Willie Moore, since he was the second-best young trainer in Ireland. Which is where Cassie had been the afternoon she returned to Claremore and met the mother of her next child.

  Antoinette was a tall, handsome English girl, possibly, so Cassie thought, not yet twenty-one. She was extremely nervous, constantly tossing back her mane of long dark hair and twisting a small white lace-edged handkerchief between her long elegant fingers. She was very well dressed in the traditional upper middle class English fashion, which flatters a pretty young woman by dressing her in slightly too severe clothes, deliberately designed to look a little too old for the wearer, who consequently looks younger. Thus Antoinette was wearing a pleated blue linen skirt, a crisp but plain white blouse, flat shoes and a dark blue cardigan draped around her shoulders. Tyrone was sitting talking to her on the window seat, a tray of tea in front of them, doing his best to put the girl at her ease. He rose and introduced Cassie to Antoinette, then poured Cassie her first cup and them a second cup of tea.r />
  ‘Antoinette’s been over here working for Alec Secker,’ Tyrone informed Cassie as she pulled up a chair. ‘You remember Alec. Head of Irish Bloodstock Incorporated.’

  ‘Actually I’ve really been working more for Mr Secker’s son Gerald,’ Antoinette volunteered. ‘He’s learning the business, and I was attached to him as a sort of dogsbody.’

  Cassie knew the son well enough, too. A dashing, devil-may-care young man, with thick curly hair, and a famous seat on a horse. They’d attended his twenty-first birthday only the summer before, where his father, to celebrate his son’s six successes in his first proper point-to-point season, had given him a retired steeplechaser which Tyrone had been instructed to find.

  The three of them had tea and indulged in small talk, Cassie having no idea at all of the purpose of the girl’s visit. Tyrone gave no clue to Cassie either, and it wasn’t until after the girl had left to drive herself back into Dublin and Cassie and Tyrone were having dinner that the mystery was solved.

  ‘Well?’ said Tyrone.

  ‘Well what?’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Well, what did you think of her?’

  ‘What am I meant to think of her? What is this, Tyrone? Some sort of audition for your new mistress?’

  ‘I haven’t had an old mistress, Cassie, so I can hardly have a new one.

  ‘You had an old mistress before you met me.’

  ‘What did you think of the girl?’ Tyrone repeated emphatically, positively demanding an answer to his question.

  ‘She seemed a little nervous,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Did you think she was pretty?’

  ‘This is some sort of audition.’

  ‘All right,’ Tyrone agreed, ‘it is. But not for what you think. She’s a pretty girl and, when she’s not shaking with fright, a very nice bright one, too.’

  ‘I could understand this if this was years later and she was a possible fiancée for a son of ours,’ Cassie said. ‘But I don’t get what or why I’m meant to be approving right now.’

  Tyrone got up and cut himself some more cold meat from the sideboard.

  ‘She’s pregnant,’ he told Cassie with his back to her.

  ‘Not by you, I hope,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘I’m not joking, Cassie McGann,’ Tyrone said, sitting back down. ‘The silly young thing fell for Gerald’s charm, of course, and now she’s gone and got herself pregnant.’

  ‘Gerald must have had something to do with it,’ Cassie answered with a straight face.

  ‘Will you please take this seriously? You don’t seem to understand. The girl is nearly four months gone.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Yes. Well. She says we can have her baby.’

  Cassie looked down the table at Tyrone, who was sitting there staring back at her, his knife and fork resting on the table beside his plate. At first she didn’t know what to say, but then she thought that rather than get herself confused or excited, she’d just take it slowly and calmly.

  ‘Well?’ Tyrone was asking her again even more impatiently.

  ‘OK,’ Cassie argued. ‘So why doesn’t she want the baby?’

  ‘Cassie – you saw what age she was! She’s a slip of a thing!’

  ‘She’s older than I was when I met you.’

  ‘The point is her father will kill her. Alec told me all about it, because the girl’s been crying on Maureen’s shoulder for the last six weeks. She was practically suicidal.’

  ‘Surely her parents will find out anyway?’

  ‘Not necessarily. They’re abroad. Her father’s in the Army. And he doesn’t get posted back to England until January. Antoinette’s meant to stay over here for a year. Till March.’

  ‘How do you know once you’ve had it you won’t want to keep it?’ Cassie asked the girl quite cold-bloodedly when they took proceedings one stage further.

  ‘I can’t, Mrs Rosse,’ the girl replied. ‘I mean even if one wanted to.’

  ‘It can all be done perfectly legally,’ Tyrone said. ‘Antoinette will be twenty-one in September, and the baby’s not due till the end of November. The adoption will be legalised through an English court, and there’s very little chance of anybody even remotely connected with this young lady here ever hearing a thing about it. Besides she’ll be a major by then.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Antoinette enquired.

  ‘You’ll have achieved your majority, and can legally allow the adoption.’

  ‘She can have the baby here,’ Cassie said to Tyrone, after she’d been into Josephine’s room to read her a story and tuck her up. ‘She should have it here. If we’re to adopt it. Then we can always say to the child, when it’s grown, that it was born here. That it really is part of the fabric of Claremore.’

  ‘Great,’ Tyrone replied. ‘Very sound. In fact she’ll have to stop working soon, so she can come and stay here and help out. And old Alec, if anyone asks, can say I’m helping with her equine education.’

  ‘One thing occurs to me, Ty. One rather important thing. It’s never been discussed – least not in my presence – why she and Gerald don’t want to get married.’

  ‘We don’t love each other, Mrs Rosse,’ the girl told her. ‘And anyway, you see, there’s somebody else in England, in Hampshire.’

  Cassie stared at the girl. It was all so alien to her. The girl had slept with Gerald and got pregnant by him, although they weren’t in love, and although she had someone else whom she did love back in England.

  ‘Didn’t you take any precautions?’ Cassie enquired.

  ‘Yes. But – well. You know what Ireland’s like. I don’t think I can have had enough left of the sort of . . . well, of the cream really.’

  Cassie suddenly felt old. And out of touch. Being tucked away in Ireland, in the folds of its luxuriant countryside, it was easy to forget that they were now living in an age the papers had christened the Swinging Sixties, and that promiscuity was all the rage. This was the age of the Rolling Stones and cannabis, of Hair and the mini-skirt; of the Trial of Lady Chatterley, of Unisex clothing, of Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler – an end to censorship and a time when people had never had it so good. As a result, there were a lot of excited but bewildered people who wanted to jump on the bandwagon, even though they were unsure as to whether they genuinely liked the music the band was playing.

  And here was one result sitting on the sofa in front of her, still pulling and twisting at that same small lace handkerchief, pregnant with an unwanted and unintended child, the result of an act carelessly undertaken quite possibly because everyone else she knew was carelessly undertaking the self-same act with exactly the same lack of good reason.

  ‘What would you have done had Mr Rosse not found out and offered to take your child?’ Cassie asked her.

  ‘I don’t know, Mrs Rosse,’ the girl replied truthfully. ‘But I’d have had to do something.’

  Cassie felt sorry for her, yet at the same time was irritated by her reply. Why, when there were so many people who wanted to have babies but couldn’t, people like herself who would love them and give them good homes, and bring the children up properly, why was life so unfair that the most unsuitable people got pregnant? Girls who didn’t want children, girls who didn’t mean to have children, girls who would rather abort them, girls who would rather give their children away, girls who didn’t know, who hadn’t thought.

  Nevertheless, the mother of Tyrone and Cassie’s child-to-be moved into Claremore for the final weeks of her pregnancy and helped Mrs Byrne in the racing office efficiently and with quiet good humour.

  Cassie was in the office one Monday morning, looking at the week’s entries, when she noticed that Value Guide, a potentially useful three-year-old of Leonora’s, was entered in three races, one of them the same maiden for which she and Willie Moore had been preparing Celebration. Celebration had finally not run at all as a two-year-old, because Willie, though thinking highly of the young horse, considered him too big for his own strength, so had put him away until he
was three. He was still backward at the beginning of the current season, so they hadn’t given him his first race until July, when he ran very encouragingly at Phoenix Park, finishing a close-up sixth of fourteen. He ran again a month later and improved two places, and Willie declared he was at last coming to hand, and if they could find the right race, he should win.

  They’d finally settled for what looked like being a moderately contested maiden at Gowran Park, only to find that Leonora’s impeccably bred Value Guide was still in at the four day declarations.

  As Cassie was looking at the other races for which Leonora’s horse had been entered that week, to try and guess the likelihood of them both chasing the same prize, Tyrone came in from the yard. Cassie asked him what the chances were of Value Guide running against Celebration, and Tyrone said he didn’t even know that the horse had been entered at Gowran.

  ‘He’s much more likely to run at Navan on Wednesday,’ he told Cassie. ‘Least that’s where I’ve been aiming him.’

  But it rained north of Dublin from midday: so much so that the going was reported heavy on Tuesday by the Clerk of the Course when Tyrone rang. He had no alternative but to take Value Guide, who didn’t act on the heavy, out of the race, and leave him in at Gowran and Leopardstown. The race on Saturday at Leopardstown, however, was very hot, too hot for the novice Value Guide who was still a maiden. And so it was that Cassie’s Celebration came to take on Leonora’s much fancied horse in a £352 maiden race down at Gowran Park.

  ‘If he were mine,’ Tyrone said to Cassie as they drove south to the races, ‘I’d have taken him out and waited till the Curragh next week. And if it had been any other owner, they’d have listened and done as I advised. But Leonora wasn’t having any. She insisted on the horse running. And I wonder why.’

  Tyrone grinned at her, then flicked the Aston up through the gears as they hit a straight stretch of road to see if he could, as he was wont to say, get her off the clock. They’d reached 125mph before Cassie cried enough.