To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘How do I know what you say is true?’ she asked.

  ‘Easy,’ Tyrone replied. ‘Because I’ve told you so.’

  ‘What about Paris?’

  ‘Paris was just as I said. Leonora came for the Arc, and we had dinner at her hotel afterwards. She was as determined as always to get me into her bed, and I was as determined as always not to let her.’

  ‘You mean you had to make a conscious effort not to sleep with her?’

  Her eyes suddenly flashed dangerously as Cassie turned to look at Tyrone.

  ‘Cassie McGann,’ Tyrone laughed. ‘Show me a man worth the name who doesn’t have to make a conscious effort not to go to bed with a beautiful woman when she asks him? It doesn’t mean he wants to go to bed with the woman. But it does mean he has to make a conscious decision between saying yes or no.’

  ‘And you’ve always said no.’

  ‘You know I can’t stand the woman.’

  ‘Then why do you let her treat you like – like . . .’

  ‘Cassie. She has sixteen horses in training with me. Sixteen. Nearly half my yard. The least I can do is smile at her. Laugh at her jokes. Dance with her.’

  Cassie spread her hands out in front of her on the bed, and looked down at them. She adjusted her wedding band and looked at the light dancing in the diamond of her engagement ring.

  ‘Have you ever kissed Leonora?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’ she asked, looking up at him. ‘And how often?’

  ‘On her yacht. Rather she kissed me. The night of the second party. We were dancing, and I was pretty drunk. And she kissed me.’

  ‘And you let her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tyrone stroked the side of his face, and Cassie could hear stubble rasp against his fingers.

  ‘Some people say that kissing is more intimate than actually going to bed with someone.’

  ‘It isn’t. Not with Leonora. She kisses you as if she’s been very well coached.’

  Cassie suddenly smiled. That’s exactly the way Leonora would kiss you. As if a kissing coach had taught her the best and most effective way. Just like her tennis game.

  ‘But you didn’t go to bed with her,’ she puzzled.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Even though I was a couple of thousand miles away. Lying here and pretty crazy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I didn’t bloody want to, Cassie McGann! It’s you I love, dammit!

  ‘But yet you kissed her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Jesus, why do you think! Because I was pretty damn crazy too!’

  Cassie put both her hands up to his face and kept them there. Tyrone looked down into her eyes, then bent over and kissed her. Cassie wrapped her arms round his neck and gently pulled him down on to the bed, where they lay for what seemed like hours wrapped in each other’s arms.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Cassie said to Tyrone over lunch the next day, ‘is why Franco, as they say, fingered you.’

  Tyrone stopped eating and glanced across the table. He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think you’d want to know, really.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Franco doesn’t like me.’

  ‘Sure. But why?’

  Tyrone took a long time before answering, then, putting down his knife and fork, he pushed his plate to one side and lit a cigar.

  ‘You remember Tony?’ he asked Cassie. ‘The good-looking Cork lad who was in the stables a few seasons ago? A very nice and talented youngster. Could have gone right to the top.’

  ‘He wasn’t here very long,’ Cassie recalled.

  ‘No. Franco saw to that.’

  Cassie frowned and stopped peeling her apple. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Franco took a fancy to him. Set him up in a very nice flat in Baggot Street. Bought him some expensive clothes, took him abroad, introduced him to a lot of very rich people. But while Franco could have lots of – how shall we say – lots of friendships, Tony had to wait in for Franco. One day, he didn’t. A man he’d met on Franco’s and Leonora’s yacht was in Dublin and started taking Tony around. Franco came back from abroad, heard about it, and that was that.’

  ‘What was what, Tyrone?’

  ‘I was in Jammet’s one night. Tony came out of the back bar. I didn’t recognise him at first. But he saw me and made a dive for the door. I caught him outside, and we went and had a quiet jar in Davy Byrnes. He looked as if he’d been in a road accident. But he hadn’t.’

  ‘Franco?’

  ‘Friends of Franco. They beat him up, taking particular care to break both his hands. So even if he’d wanted to get back with horses—’

  Tyrone paused and blew some cigar smoke to the ceiling.

  ‘What did you do? You must have done something to Franco for Franco to hate you.’

  Tyrone grinned. ‘You remember how pretty Franco was?’

  ‘Well – right. Until he broke his nose.’

  ‘No,’ Tyrone replied. ‘Until I broke his nose.’

  After that, Cassie never gave Franco’s accusations another thought. She had known Tyrone was telling the truth from the first moment he had come into the bedroom and stood at the bottom of the bed to protest his innocence. He was so utterly honest that Cassie suddenly knew he was incapable of deception. When Tyrone announced he was telling the truth, that truth literally shone from his eyes.

  And as events proved, it was as well that Cassie trusted and believed so much in Tyrone, as it emerged that Franco, about to be sued for divorce by Leonora, was calling up all Leonora’s girlfriends and insinuating that their husbands or lovers had been having affairs with his wife. In some cases it was probably true, but his accusations were so indiscriminate that it became a running joke in Dublin society. Anyone who was anyone was rumoured to have been found at some time or other in Leonora’s bed, and even anyone who wasn’t anyone. Bishops and cardinals were reported to have been seen joining the queue outside Leonora’s bedroom door; and certain of the racing fraternity, when asked to dinner at Derry Na Loch, would turn up with their pyjama jackets on under their dinner jackets, with a razor and toothbrush clearly visible in their breast pocket.

  Franco, realising he had become a laughing stock, fled back to Mamma in Italy, as Leonora prepared her divorce case. She, on the other hand, had a mountain of very real evidence, as she was at pains to tell Cassie and Tyrone.

  ‘OK,’ she sighed. ‘The waiters, the actors, fine. Those I could turn a blind eye to. Even the hairdressers and the stable boys. But when I came back early from the States once, and found this but I mean enormous bricklayer sleeping in my bed, in my best satin sheets, I reckoned enough was enough.’

  She had hooted with that derisive laugh of hers and made as light of these incidents as she could. But Cassie noticed that she was beginning to drink more heavily, and despite her ritualistic self-induced vomiting after every meal, was also beginning to gain weight. Tyrone later expressed the opinion that he felt sorry for her, and Cassie concurred. It was terrible, they agreed, that someone who had been given everything should be quite so utterly miserable.

  But then Leonora disappeared out of their lives, as she did every winter, taking herself off to St Moritz, Rome and finally New York before returning to Ireland in the spring. Tyrone was usually vociferous in his relief once Leonora was gone and the telephone stopped ringing at all the wrong hours, but this year Cassie and he were so busy and enthralled with the new addition to their family, and with making all the preparations necessary for his legal adoption, that neither of them really noticed Leonora’s annual departure from their shores.

  The adoption procedures were made more complicated by the fact that Antoinette had British nationality, Tyrone had Irish, and Cassie American, although she had applied to become a naturalised Irish citizen. They could only therefore apply in the English courts for the grant of a provisional adoption order, which would ena
ble them to keep Mattie in Ireland while they then applied to the Irish courts for a full adoption order. Luckily, Seamus O’Connor was familiar both with the Irish legal system as far as non-native adoptions went and with several of the top lawyers who advised in such cases, so with his and his lawyers’ help and direction Cassie and Tyrone’s path was made considerably smoother. At the end of March they flew to London to attend a High Court hearing, which, as is the custom, was held in camera, with only the Rosses’ solicitor and the social worker, who had been detailed to make sure that Claremore was a suitable home for an adoption, present in front of the judge. Antoinette was absent, as was perfectly permissible, but had granted her full consent in writing. Gerald Secker’s consent, since he was not legally regarded as a parent, was not needed. The judge read the social worker’s report on Tyrone and Cassie as potential parents, and Claremore as a potentially good adoptive home. He then asked the prospective parents to give their own accounts of their reason for wanting to adopt Mattie, carefully considering their answers before turning to Cassie’s medical report. Seamus O’Connor had warned them that there was a possibility that Cassie’s breakdown after losing her second child could work in their disfavour, and had advised an independent psychiatrist’s report, which happily declared Cassie to be 100 per cent mentally stable and an ideal adoptive parent. Under the circumstances, the judge declared that he had no hesitation whatsoever in granting them a provisional order.

  To celebrate, Tyrone took Cassie to lunch at the Caprice. But they were both far too elated and excited to eat, and were only really marking time until they could board their flight back to Dublin. On their return, their Dublin lawyers informed them that, anticipating such a good result, the application was ready for submission to the Irish courts, and if all went as well here as it had across the water, they could expect finalisation by September at the latest. Tyrone protested that this was just not good enough. If the English courts had been able to grant him an adoption order in three months, then why not his native law courts? He rang Seamus O’Connor at once, and Seamus promised to see what he could do.

  Even so, because of the advice they received, Cassie and Tyrone quietly fancied their chances on being granted the final and full adoption order.

  Tyrone also quietly fancied Cassie’s horse in his second run of the new season, which was a competitive stakes to be run at Leopardstown the second week of May. Celebration had already run a copybook race first time out at Thurles, lying up with the pace until the lack of a previous outing showed in the way he tied up in the last half furlong, to finish fourth, six lengths off the winner. It was a good enough run, however, to make sure he started favourite at Leopardstown, particularly since he had pulled up completely sound after his first outing, indicating that the injury sustained in his race against Value Guide had healed totally.

  But although everything came good for the horse – his preparation and even the weather itself, with the rain easing the day before and a good drying wind making the going good to soft, just as Celebration liked it – the race itself unfortunately did not go to plan. Dermot Pryce had the horse lying second approaching the final turn into the straight and the horse in front of him was beaten. The jockey was already seriously at work and his horse was visibly tiring, rolling away from the rails and leaving Pryce just the gap he wanted. Pryce took a quick look over his right shoulder and saw that the rest of the field were also hard at work just to keep in the contest, and from the feel Celebration was giving him, he knew he had the race sewn up.

  The next thing he knew he was on the ground.

  He was on the ground and rolling himself up into a ball as the other horses galloped over and round him. One hefty kick in the back knocked all the wind out of him, and another hoof landed right on his knee. He stayed absolutely still on the ground until he was quite sure the last horse had galloped by, and then he gingerly started to try and sit up, wondering what had happened.

  Which was when he saw the horse lying dead on the other side of the broken running rails.

  From the stands Cassie and Willie could see quite clearly what had happened. As Pryce had slipped Celebration through on the rails turning into the straight, Tim McGrath’s horse Caunoge, who had been leading, but was quite obviously already beat, suddenly nosedived to the left right in front of the accelerating Celebration and crashed through the rails. Pryce had snatched Celebration up in time to miss a full-scale collision, but Celebration had braked, then swerved so violently that Pryce had no chance of staying aboard and had shot out the side door and was thrown into the path of the oncoming field. He was lucky to escape serious injury, and so too was Cassie’s horse, who galloped home with the reins tangled around his forelegs. Caunoge, on the other hand, must have been dead before he even hit the rails, killed, it later transpired, by a massive coronary.

  Celebration’s lad caught him some way past the post and led him back to his owner and trainer, who were anxiously awaiting both him and the ambulance bringing Dermot Pryce back. Pryce was despatched at once to the hospital for an X-ray; Celebration, other than being badly shaken up, was fortunately none the worse for wear.

  Willie took Cassie to the bar for a stiff drink. At a table in one corner Cassie spied Sheila Meath, who was just getting up to go to the bar to fetch more drinks for herself and the woman she was with.

  ‘That was desperately bad luck, Cassie,’ she said as they waited their turn. ‘Celebration would have trotted up.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Caunoge, Lady Meath,’ Willie said. ‘Can I buy you a drink?’

  ‘Thanks, Willie,’ Lady Meath replied, ‘but I’m looking after poor Joyce O’Sullevan. She’s devastated.’

  ‘Of course, you bred Caunoge, Sheila, didn’t you?’ Cassie remembered.

  ‘I did indeed, which is hard enough,’ came the reply. ‘But that gorgeous horse, he was the love of poor Joyce’s life.’

  The barman set Sheila Meath’s drinks on the bar before her, for which Willie insisted on paying. Cassie glanced at the woman in the corner who was sitting white-faced and very upright, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘He was a lovely horse, too,’ Willie told Cassie. ‘Though Tim told me he’d a dodgy ticker. Apparently he’d been spun by two vets before Mrs O’Sullevan bought him.’

  ‘But he’d won a fair amount of races, Willie,’ Cassie argued. ‘Besides running fourth in last year’s Irish Derby.’

  ‘’Tis a funny thing about thoroughbreds, Cassie,’ Willie replied, after downing his whisky. ‘You’d be amazed how many of them have something wrong with their hearts. Ailments which’d have you or me six feet under. Yet it often makes them a better horse for it. That is,’ he added, ‘until the day they drop stone dead under you.’

  Tyrone had missed the race, as one of Leonora’s two-year-old hot-shots had bolted on the gallops and broken a leg trying to jump a ditch. Tyrone had stayed for two hours with the young horse until Niall Brogan arrived to shoot it, so by the time Cassie returned and told him her news, they were both in fairly reflective moods.

  ‘You’ll still win next time out, don’t worry, Cass,’ Tyrone assured her as he poured them another drink. ‘That was a good field he had strung out behind him, make no mistake.’

  ‘Sure,’ Cassie replied. ‘It’s not him getting beat that’s bringing me down. I just can’t get the look on Joyce O’Sullevan’s face out of my mind.’

  ‘No,’ Tyrone said, coming back to sit down next to her. ‘I just wish I’d a few owners like her. She’s the stuff of racing. Here’s to her. There are few like her. And most of those that are, are dead.’

  They drank a silent toast. And then Tyrone, having glanced at the clock, suddenly jumped to his feet.

  ‘My God, Cassie McGann!’ he announced. ‘We’re missing the children’s bath time!’

  Claremore was planning its biggest raid ever on Royal Ascot. Altogether Tyrone was intent on sending eight runners. He had a double handful in the Cork and Orrery, with Stagmount, one of Leonora’s new purchases, an
d Annagh Bridge, whom Tyrone had bought on behalf of Townshend Warner. It seemed, from the price on offer in the pre-race betting, that Annagh Bridge was home and hosed. Claremore’s other two hotly fancied raiders were a horse called Turnispigody owned in partnership by four doctors and well fancied for the Ribblesdale, and Value Guide, which had been trained and entered especially for the Hardwicke Stakes.

  Value Guide had done nothing wrong since he first set foot on a race-course that season, winning all his three races in a manner which suggested he had improved out of all proportion over the winter. Tyrone had adopted a new winter routine for his outstanding horses, sending them over to the more temperate climate of middle Italy, rather than turning them out for a few hours daily to stand in the Wicklow rains. It had certainly worked wonders with Value Guide, who returned looking well and contented, and came to hand much more readily than he had the previous season.

  Willie Moore had just the one runner entered at the hugely prestigious meeting, namely Celebration, who, none the worse for wear after his near-accident at Leopardstown, was popping out of his skin and ready to run a big race. Tyrone made no apologies to Cassie for taking her on again with Leonora’s champion, and Cassie in return looked for none. She was eager to do battle once more, to prove that Value Guide’s victory over her beloved bay at Gowran Park had not been a true result. Dermot Pryce had recovered completely from his fall; except oddly enough he was found now to be deaf in one ear, although there was no sign of him having been kicked on the head in the accident. Dermot put it down to years of being ear-wigged by ‘the Guv’nor’.

  By the last day of the Royal Ascot meeting, the Friday, when the Hardwicke Stakes is run, Tyrone had notched up four winners and was carrying all before him. Both Annagh Bridge and Turnispigody had duly obliged, the former at 4/7 and the latter at 6/1. Townshend Warner’s other runner at the meeting, who was not greatly fancied either by the stable or the owner, won the Coventry Stakes in a photo-finish at 25/1, and Leonora won the Waterford with Easy Does It, a very expensive horse Tyrone had thought he had paid far too much for on her behalf at Keeneland.