His win was greeted with total silence. Cassie was the only person to be heard shouting him home. Even Tomas was grim-faced as the little horse was led into the winner’s enclosure. All around, baffled racegoers were seen to be consulting their race cards in an effort to identify the runaway winner.
‘I thought I told yous to give him an easy,’ Tomas muttered at the jockey as they unsaddled the horse together.
‘And didn’t I do just that, sir?’ the boy answered. ‘I’d him bowling along nicely fourth or fifth, then he suddenly took hold and there was no stoppin’ him. I never even asked him. If I’d asked him, sure he’d have won the race before as well!’
Then with a cheery grin, the boy disappeared to weigh in.
‘Jesus,’ was all Tomas could say over his drink. ‘Jesus.’
‘Anyone would think we’d lost instead of won,’ said a still elated Cassie. ‘Tomas, that’s a very good horse!’
‘You noticed,’ Tomas replied, draining his drink. ‘I dare say the handicapper did, too.’
It was a quiet journey home. Tomas hardly said a word, while Cassie worked out the repercussions of the win. The race had been worth barely £300 to the winner, and none of them had even had a token gamble. The handicapper was present at the races, and so having witnessed the ease of The Donk’s victory with his own bare eyes, there was precious little chance of The Donk racing off seven stone seven again in the foreseeable future.
‘There’s only one thing for it,’ Tomas finally announced. ‘If he eats up tonight, we’ll run him again Saturday, for he’s still in at Naas, and again next week, before the new weights is published.’
Still, Cassie thought as they turned into Claremore, tired and fed up with Tomas’ belly-aching, still at least the owner will be pleased.
‘Mr Brandt? This is Cassie Rosse, I have very good news for you.’
‘Yes, Mrs Rosse?’
‘Your horse won today! The Donk! Your first runner and he comes home your first winner!’
There was silence from the other end of the line.
‘Mr Brandt? Herr Brandt, are you still there?’
‘I am still here, Mrs Rosse. Yes.’
‘Then perhaps you didn’t hear me. I said—’
‘I am still here, and I heard most well what you said.’
‘Aren’t you pleased?’
‘On the contrary, Mrs Rosse. What price was this horse please?’
‘He started at 25/1.’
Another silence. Longer.
‘Mr Brandt?’
‘Mrs Rosse. When I asked you what chance this horse would have, you expressed no confidence.’
‘That’s right, Herr Brandt. Tomas said—’
‘It is of no interest what Tomas said. If this horse was not going to win, you must understand, Mrs Rosse, the horse should not then have won.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I think you do, Mrs Rosse. When you say a horse is not going to win, then that horse will not win. Not if I am not backing it.’
Silence. This time from Cassie as she realised the implications of Brandt’s remark.
‘Mrs Rosse?’
‘Herr Brandt.’
‘You will run the horse before the weights go up, and you will tell me where and when. And the chances.’
‘I can’t do that, Herr Brandt, until I know what’s declared. Who the final runners are.’
‘Once you know that, telephone me immediately.’
The line went dead. And so did a little bit of Cassie. Had Tyrone ever stopped any of his horses? She just couldn’t imagine him doing so. And yet if certain owners only wanted their horses to give their true running when they were ‘on’, how could he have escaped so doing?
She asked Tomas.
‘’Tis easy. Mr Rosse would never have owners the like of that, Mrs Rosse,’ Tomas replied. ‘Every horse which ran from here went to the races to do his job.’
‘So what do I do, Tomas?’ Cassie asked. ‘I want all my horses to run on their merit.’
‘Then that’s exactly what you do, Mrs Rosse.’
‘Herr Brandt will take his horses away.’
‘Then let him.’
‘Right,’ Cassie grinned. ‘Now go on showing me how you make up feeds.’
The Donk ate up every oat the evening they returned from Limerick, and the next morning, so it was decided to run him again at Naas on the Saturday. Even with his five-pound penalty he’d only be carrying seven stone twelve pounds, and Cassie and Tomas agreed to put the same boy up on the horse who rode him at Limerick, since he was an apprentice, and was still claiming the full seven-pound allowance. So in actual fact The Donk would only be carrying seven stone five. If he ran as he had run two days earlier, on the form book he was home and hosed.
Herr Brandt was informed the horse was fit and running, but not that he was a certainty. Cassie simply said what she had always heard Tyrone say on such occasions, that the horse was thrown in at the weights, and should run a big race. Herr Brandt in return informed her that he was ‘on’. For her part Cassie did not tell him that even if he wasn’t, the horse would still be asked to win.
He would be asked seriously, too, because the race on Saturday was an altogether more competitive and valuable affair, which had attracted a big field. Word was out on the Claremore horse, however, and he started at 7/2 joint favourite with the second top weight, trained by Mick Ward, which had won its last three races. The Donk dwelt at the start, coming out of the stalls almost last, and was badly boxed in on the rails six furlongs from home. Through her glasses Cassie saw that the little horse had his ears back and was obviously hating being shut in. She wanted to scream at the boy to pull the horse out there and then so as he could get a clear run before it was too late, but instead the boy was hard at work with the whip, which only made the little horse lay his ears back even more and drop further off the pace. Then as the field swung into the straight, the horse immediately in front of him suddenly tired, dropping back so fast that The Donk’s young jockey had to snatch his horse up and swing him wide to avoid running into the tiring horse’s heels. The moment he did so, and The Donk saw daylight, the little horse got hold of his bit and started one of his what came to be famous charges. He stuck his neck out and flew past the field on the outside, catching Mick Ward’s horse at the distance, and going on to win from him by three lengths.
It was a sensational finishing burst and as the horse was being unsaddled, the racing press flocked round Tomas to find out more about the little horse. Cassie retired tactfully to the bar and set up their usual drinks: orange juice for her, and a large John Jameson for Tomas.
‘Word has it you’ve a nose for a horse,’ Sheila Meath said on finding her at the bar.
‘Word has it I’m lucky,’ Cassie grinned.
‘What on earth inspired you to buy such a dreadful-looking animal?’ Sheila asked.
‘He had the eye,’ Cassie answered. ‘Tyrone always said forget the size of bone, forget the length of pastern, forget the depth of girth. When it comes down to it, and you’re wondering yes or no, look in its eye.’
‘He was crazy, your husband, you know,’ Sheila sighed. ‘Completely crazy but as usual absolutely right.’
The Donk won one more race before the handicapper caught up with him. Rather than break the little horse’s spirit by making him carry too much weight, Cassie ran him once more and unplaced under top weight, before putting him away for the season, with the intention of moving him up in class the following year. Of Herr Brandt’s other five horses, three of them won their appointed races, one began to break blood vessels, and the other turned out to be a squib, showing all at home on the gallops then funking it on the track. Even so, Cassie and Tomas were well pleased, and the owner had obviously placed and landed some healthy wagers because there had been no further complaints from Switzerland.
In fact very little had been heard from Switzerland at all. Now whenever Cassie rang up to give Herr Brandt the required info
rmation, she always got his secretary, and Herr Brandt was always away on business. At first Cassie hadn’t given his absences a second thought, but when Mrs Byrne informed her that not one of Herr Brandt’s training bills had yet been paid, Cassie became anxious.
‘I’m sure I’m quite probably worrying unduly,’ she told Tomas. ‘But it all seems so contradictory – a man who’s prepared to hand you more or less a blank cheque to buy horses, and then doesn’t pay his training bills.
Tomas shook his head and continued to weigh out the feeds. ‘Didn’t I tell you he wasn’t to be trusted?’ he said. ‘Them Germans. Sure they’re either at your feet or your throat.’
‘He is not a German, Tomas,’ Cassie contradicted. ‘He is a Swiss national.’
‘And sure I’m a Dutchman,’ Tomas muttered inconsequentially.
Cassie rang Switzerland, but now got no answer at all from Herr Brandt’s number. When she tried again the following week, the telephone had been disconnected.
It was Sheila Meath who spotted the paragraph in the foreign news and called Cassie.
‘Isn’t Herr Rudi Brandt that mysterious owner of yours, Cassie?’ she asked. ‘Your enigmatic Swiss?’
‘Yes,’ Cassie answered. ‘Why? Do you know something that I don’t know?’
‘Do you know he’s been arrested?’ Sheila enquired. ‘Page five in today’s Times. “Swiss financier held on currency charges.”’
Cassie found the item in the newspaper, but discovered little else. Herr Brandt was an international financier, which as Tomas laconically pointed out, covered a multitude of sins, and the implication was that he had been smuggling currency. Bail had not been granted, and he was at present languishing in a Genevan gaol awaiting trial.
‘Technically speaking,’ Tomas informed Cassie, ‘his horses are yours, in lieu – as I believe they have it – of his non payment. At least they are under the rules of racing.’
‘Horses don’t pay bills, Tomas. Owners do. And anyway, Tomas, as far as the rules of racing go, any agreement trainers have with their owners has no real standing in law. I can’t sell a defaulting owner’s horses without it being legally agreed by both parties.’
‘Ah, who’d be a trainer?’ Tomas sighed. ‘Sure only fools the likes of us.’
Herr Brandt was finally released on bail, while awaiting trial for smuggling gold and other currencies. All his assets were frozen, except for his racehorses, which were duly sent to the sales in order to realise some of the capital Herr Brandt was going to need in order to finance his defence.
Determined to buy back The Donk, Cassie sold two yearlings she had bought, and the one remaining piece of her own jewellery. Because of the improvement in the little horse’s form, she had to pay over ten times what she had paid for him only a matter of months ago, but even though Tomas thought she had now completely taken leave of her senses, Cassie believed in the little horse so much that she considered it money well invested.
Tomas had the last laugh however. He found a paragraph on the Brandt case in one of the more popular newspapers which exposed the plaintiff’s father as having been a colonel in the German SS.
Chapter Nineteen
Niall Brogan needed just ten minutes in order to confirm Cassie’s worst fears.
‘You’re right, it’s a tendon,’ he said, coming out of Reverse’s stable. ‘That’s him done till next year, I’m afraid.’
‘I pulled him up real easy today,’ Cassie told him as they walked over to the office. ‘Canter, trot, walk, just like the book says.’
‘There’s nothing to blame yourself for, Cassie,’ Brogan assured her. ‘Horses is legs and legs is racing.’
Even so, Cassie needed the shot of whisky she poured out for her vet and herself in the office. Reverse was without doubt a potential Classic horse, probably the best animal ever to have been at Claremore.
‘He was due to run in the Beresford and the Dewhurst,’ Cassie told Sheila Meath over dinner that evening.
‘That’s racing,’ Sheila replied.
‘So everyone keeps telling me,’ Cassie smiled. ‘But it doesn’t make the disappointment any easier to bear.’
‘True. But then rumour has it that the O’Brien youngster’s going to take all the beating. Oddly enough, that’s by Northern Dancer as well.’
‘You mean Nijinsky? Sure, I’ve heard he’s something other, that horse. But then the way Reverse won last time out at Leopardstown . . .’
Cassie drifted off into a reverie, while Sheila eyed her across the table.
‘I think perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise, young lady,’ she announced. ‘Because if you ask me, it’s high time you had a holiday.’
Sheila had been right as usual, Cassie recalled as the taxi sped them both into the heart of Paris. Before she had gone to bed that night she had taken a long, hard look at herself in the mirror and realised what a toll the last two years had taken on her. She had, as Tomas would have said about one of her horses, run up a little light. The reflection she saw in the mirror was no longer that of a young and softly curvaceous woman. Instead she saw a gaunt, skinny creature, with dark rings under her tired eyes.
Tyrone would not have liked her the way she was now.
‘One thing I can’t stand is a skinny woman,’ he used to tell her. ‘Women are meant to be loved and admired. You can’t cuddle up to all skin and bones.’
Then she’d got into bed and considered Sheila’s proposal that they left Tomas in charge and took themselves off to Paris for the week of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Why not? she thought, as she settled her weary body into Tyrone’s side of the double bed. Why not? Sheila was right. If she tried to keep going like she was, there was really every chance of her cracking up. She knew that was true, and was beginning to face up to the fact. Now that Mattie was so much better under Doctor FitzStanton’s care, it would be perfectly possible to leave him for a short while. He hadn’t had a single wheeze since his last course of powders, and every time Cassie looked at Josephine, she seemed to have sprouted another inch, she was growing so fast. She just loved her pony, and was out of doors in all weathers riding him.
‘It really would be much the best thing,’ Sheila Meath had advised her over dinner.
‘I’m quite sure, Sheila,’ Cassie had answered. ‘But so far there’s just been so much to attend to.’
‘So much you’ve wanted to attend to,’ Sheila had corrected her. ‘You can be brave for too long, you know. And you really have been. Everyone is quite in awe of your fortitude.’
‘Really?’ Cassie had smiled in return. ‘Oh boy. They should see me at lights out.’
Paris was exhilarating. Tyrone had always promised Cassie a second honeymoon in Paris, but it had inevitably been deferred because of the horses. Cassie hadn’t minded. It seemed they had so many years ahead of them still, Paris could wait till it was mutually convenient. Fate had sadly decreed otherwise.
Instead she was seeing it for the first time with her great friend Sheila Meath, who was far more than an adequate substitute. Sheila knew the beautiful city from when she was a child, and had subsequently lived there for five years when she was first married, her late husband having been in the Diplomatic Corps.
‘Which means you can show me the real Paris? I wouldn’t want you to show me the real New York if I came to America! I’d want to see the most famous and beautiful bits of your capital. Not the parts which are like every other major city in the world: the endless suburbs, the ghettos, the slums, the ugly new houses and flats. Paris is just the same, you know. It isn’t all the Champs Elysée and the Bois de Boulogne.’
So Sheila showed her all the things Paris had to offer, and Cassie fell head over heels in love with the most beautiful city she had ever seen.
‘I can understand now why they say when good Americans die they go to Paris,’ Cassie commented.
‘Absolutely. It’s a place you can never forget,’ Sheila agreed. ‘Wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you. Hem
ingway rightly calls it a movable feast.’
By the end of the week, on the eve of the big race when they dined with some of Sheila’s old friends who lived in a large apartment in the 16e Arrondissement, Cassie, according to Sheila, was at last beginning to look her old self. Not that she felt it. Inside she was still awkward in the company of married people, awkward and lonely, still a bit one-legged, as she thought of herself. Certain questions had to be deftly side-stepped, so that her widowhood was not shown to have made her one of life’s walking wounded. Instead she tried to be lively, interested and interesting, the way she had always been when Tyrone had been around.
The only moments when Cassie felt exposed were when men would compliment her on her looks, which due to the happy time she was having in Paris, were rapidly returning. At moments like this, Cassie would suddenly drop her eyes and become tongue tied, feeling that any response she made would be an infidelity against Tyrone’s memory. Unfortunately, her silence would be misconstrued as simple demureness, and instead of discouraging attention, it invariably had the very opposite effect.
But she was learning to cope. And at the pre-race dinner, Cassie discovered that it was actually possible to enjoy herself quite wholeheartedly in civilised and elegant company without any untoward feelings of remorse.
The company was also good the following day at Longchamps, where there were many Irish gathered to vociferously support their country’s representative in the most valuable race run in Europe. To their immense delight, after a thrilling contest the Irish horse Levmoss won, beating the gallant English mare Park Top, with Lester Piggott up. A typical Celtic roar greeted the McGrath horse as he returned to be unsaddled, and it wasn’t long after that the champagne was flowing in the bars.
Cassie and Sheila Meath had met up with some old friends from home, including Willie Moore, who had invited them to a celebratory party in their box.
To Hear a Nightingale Page 52