To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Ach, she’ll not be doin’ it again, don’t you worry,’ Tomas replied, draining his glass. ‘Her son has a poteen still over in the valley, and as I said to Rosie on leaving, she’ll not want the police getting to hear of it, now will she?’

  Tomas grabbed his old cap and was gone. Gone too, was Leonora’s information service. Cassie smiled and finished her drink.

  As soon as she’d found that Willie Moore was not running his best three-year-old against Moviola the following Saturday at Gowran Park, with Dermot Pryce sidelined after an accident in the starting stalls, Cassie rang Dexter Bryant and offered him the ride. As luck had it, she beat Henry FitzGerald to it and Dexter accepted, albeit somewhat cautiously.

  ‘Why not come over and ride him tomorrow morning at work?’ Cassie asked. ‘I’m a great believer in jockeys getting the feel of their horse before the race.’

  ‘OK, ma’am,’ Dexter replied. ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘You can ride him second string,’ Cassie said. ‘Then maybe you’d like to stay on and have some breakfast.’

  Moviola pleased Dexter on the gallops, and the jockey expressed himself happy to have been offered the ride. But, his eye, he confessed, was really more taken with the way The Donk worked.

  Over breakfast of fresh orange juice and lightly scrambled eggs, Cassie told him the story of the little horse and Dexter made it plain that he’d be more than interested in riding him. If Pryce was still on the injury list, Cassie told him, he could have first refusal.

  But although Dexter showed great interest in riding the few good horses Claremore had, he still remained very polite and reserved in Cassie’s company.

  ‘I thought perhaps you wouldn’t be speaking to me,’ Cassie suddenly said, deciding to take the bull by the horns.

  Dexter looked up at her in genuine surprise.

  ‘On the contrary, ma’am,’ he replied. ‘I thought the shoe would be on the other foot. After the trouble I got you in.’

  ‘After the trouble I got you in.’

  ‘You didn’t write the note, ma’am.’

  ‘You’ve been riding for the person who wrote that note, Dex,’ Cassie told him. Dexter regarded her blankly. ‘You didn’t know Kutchikoo belonged to Leonora Von Wagner?’

  ‘That wasn’t the name on the race card, ma’am,’ Dexter replied.

  ‘It wouldn’t be, Dex. Of course, she’s been married and divorced twice since you knew her as Miss Von Wagner.’

  ‘Mr FitzGerald rang up and offered me a spare ride.’

  ‘You can bet your life it wasn’t Mr FitzGerald who thought of offering the ride to you.’

  Cassie grinned and poured them both some more black coffee.

  ‘So we’re still friends, then, Dex?’ she asked, genuinely hopeful.

  ‘Sure we are,’ Dex smiled in return. ‘You bet.’

  ‘OK. So now maybe, please God, you’ll stop calling me ma’am.’

  Rosie ‘Red-Ears’ was then persuaded to pass on to Leonora, for a modest sum of money, the contents of Cassie’s transatlantic telephone call to Townshend Warner that night, when he was informed where Moviola was running and what his chances were. Cassie didn’t tell him whom she’d booked to ride, following Tomas’ slightly unethical suggestion of not declaring Moviola’s jockey until she reached the course. Leonora took the bait, however, and left Kutchikoo in the same race in the hope of rubbing Cassie’s nose in it. She wasn’t at the meeting, but Cassie could tell from Henry FitzGerald’s expression when he saw Dexter Bryant’s name given out as Moviola’s jockey in the announcement of runners and riders for the fourth race that the news had flapped the normally unflappable young man.

  There was no doubt at all as the race progressed that Dexter’s riding was improving Moviola immeasurably. Normally a strong-pulling horse, Dex got him settled nicely in the middle of the field, but on the outside of the pack where the horse liked to be. Then while the other riders were all busy jockeying for position three furlongs from home, he simply shook the horse up and rode him out with just hands and heels. Kutchikoo was produced with a flourish verging on the violent by Tommy Dwyer, a seasoned campaigner known for his hard driving finishes. But Moviola had flown, and won easing up by four lengths, with Kutchikoo going nowhere fast back in sixth.

  ‘He’s a nice horse, sir,’ Dex said to Tomas, as he dismounted. ‘Too smart for this company I’d say. And certainly good enough to pick up a nice race cross the Channel.’

  Then with a touch of his cap and a smile to Cassie, he went to weigh in.

  ‘Well?’ said Cassie to Tomas over the winning drink.

  ‘You’re beginning to sound the spit of his late self,’ Tomas replied. ‘Well indeed.’

  ‘He’s in for the Waterford at Ascot,’ Cassie continued. ‘The worst thing that can happen is he could lose.’

  ‘True enough,’ said Tomas, picking up his glass. ‘But first things first. Let’s drink to this afternoon, because that was a rare old race, and a rare old bit of tacticalisin’, too. So here’s to you, Guv’nor.’

  Tomas raised his glass and slid a sideways look at her. Cassie raised her glass in return, but was quite unable to form a reply. It was the first time ever Tomas had acknowledged her as the Guv’nor.

  ‘You must have had a bet,’ Cassie finally said, modestly thinking that had to be the reason.

  ‘I didn’t have a penny laid out,’ Tomas grinned in reply. ‘Not a brass farthin’.’

  ‘So when will you get your licence to train, do you reckon?’ Dexter asked her later over dinner.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Cassie. ‘This year, next year, some time, maybe never. It’s a bit, I imagine, like being a suffragette.’

  ‘Aren’t there quite a few ladies training like you?’ he asked. ‘With their head lads holding the licence?’

  ‘Sure,’ Cassie answered. ‘Trouble is, there aren’t any girls in the Turf Club.’

  They were eating in the kitchen of the house, which over the past years Cassie had managed to transform from a room which had looked like a medieval dungeon to a warm and comfortable country-house kitchen. She had stripped the old dressers of their dark green paint, removed layer after layer of grease-soaked wallpaper until the handsome stonework below was once again exposed, lifted the rotting straw matting from over the fine big flagstones, and torn out the terrible old black kitchen range, which took for ever to cook even the simplest meals. Now in their place was a handsome Aga, and the fireplace, freed from hobs and stoves and hanging kettles and pans, was now once again in use as a practical fireplace. The room was now so warm and welcoming that during the winter months the family hardly ever moved out of it.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Josephine, ‘I don’t understand what you meant when you said in America they were feeding horses on nuts.’

  ‘Ask Dex,’ Cassie said, taking away her daughter’s clean plate, ‘Dex knows all about how they feed their horses back home.’

  While Josephine moved along the bench to sit closer to her new hero, Cassie gently reprimanded Mattie for feeding Brian under cover of the table.

  ‘But he’s so hungry, Mummy!’ Mattie protested. ‘He really is hungry!’

  ‘Brian is always hungry,’ Cassie replied, pushing the enormous dog’s snout away from her son’s plate. ‘Brian is a professional scrounger.’

  Josephine was listening earnestly to Dexter as he explained that the ‘nuts’ in question were not the sort of nuts Josephine imagined – peanuts, or cashews, or walnuts even, but a different way of feeding concentrates to horses, in the shape of little pellets.

  ‘I always imagined you only fed nuts to cattle,’ Cassie said, beginning to dole out the homemade ice cream.

  ‘Not any more,’ Dex told her. ‘Most of the big studs, as well as the main yards, they’re all using ’em. They combine all the necessary proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and roughage a horse needs to get and stay fit. You’re serious when you say you don’t have ’em over here?’

  ‘I’ve heard of one or two people in
England using some sort of racehorse cubes,’ Cassie replied. ‘But no one over here, no.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Dex replied, ‘tomorrow you’ll all be feedin’ ’em.’

  Cassie was intrigued. Even with Tomas’ great skill as a feeder, she was still finding that certain of their more highly strung horses, once they were oated up, became very nervy and started picking through their feed, discarding the ingredients in their mangers they didn’t like, and leaving them at the bottom, despite the added ‘enticers’ of molasses, sugar-beet pulp and sliced carrots. If these nuts were a success, if you really could feed them to your whole yard, she thought, firstly it would eliminate any fussy eating, and secondly, it must be highly cost effective.

  ‘There’s only one problem as far as I see it,’ Dex told her. ‘They make some horses very loose. Their droppings, you understand. Which is why Mr Fines, whom I was with for ten years, when he began using them, he mixed ’em with good quality bran, and kept all his horses on Canadian hay. And that used to do the trick. They never dropped nice and firm, like they do on oats, but it did prevent any protein wasting, which as I’m sure you know, is the bane of the feeder’s life.’

  Dexter’s all-round stable knowledge greatly impressed Cassie, and since she was always in the market for ideas, she sat questioning him and listening to him in front of the drawing room fire until long into the evening.

  ‘Mr Fines must be some trainer, I guess,’ she said, pouring them both some more coffee.

  ‘He taught me everything I know, Mrs Rosse,’ Dexter replied. ‘I really owe it all to him.’

  ‘How was it starting out?’ Cassie enquired, settling herself back down on the floor by the fire.

  ‘You mean after I left the Von Wagners?’

  ‘Yes. I guess I do.’

  ‘Tough. I guess I pushed brooms and muck barrows in about half a dozen yards before I finally got taken on by Mr Fines. It was tough there at first, too. I mean you really had to earn your rides, and the failure rate – boy, that was some failure rate.’

  ‘You made it,’ Cassie smiled.

  ‘I was never not going to make it,’ Dex answered.

  ‘Sure,’ Cassie agreed. ‘You were the most determined person I’d ever met.’

  ‘I was only as determined as you were, Mrs Rosse.’

  ‘You still are, I’d say. And whatever happened to Cassie?’

  After that, Dexter rode for her whenever Willie Moore didn’t claim him. Since Willie and Cassie were such close friends, Willie would ring her well in advance and tell her his plans, and when Dex would be free. Leonora’s horses, even though on paper so vastly superior, were a very distant third best. Dex even managed to coax a couple of firsts from Claremore’s no-hopers, one of them winning a good handicap at Naas and attracting the eye of a bloodstock agent who was looking for potential hurdlers. An offer was made for the horse via Tomas, and a good four-figure deal was concluded soon after, to the delight of the owner who had paid only £300 for the animal. Claremore made its percentage, and the horse went on to win three of his six novice hurdles.

  Before that, Dexter rode Moviola into a close-up fourth place in the Waterford at Royal Ascot, and finally got Tootsie’s nose in front in a nice race at the Curragh. The Donk unfortunately coughed the week before Ascot and had to miss the Gold Cup, for which he’d been quietly fancied, but was aimed instead for the Goodwood Cup. Best of all, as far as Cassie was concerned, Joe Coughlan’s undying loyalty was at last rewarded when Dex brought home Casablanca, Joe’s expensive new two-year-old, the easy winner of a very good nursery at Navan.

  But even with these victories, there were just not enough horses at Claremore to make ends meet comfortably. With costs rising almost daily, Cassie needed more like thirty horses in training to keep the books out of the red. And she needed more winners: not that she was ever going to get rich on a trainer’s winning percentage, but because winners attracted more winners, like bees to the honeyjar. She was determined moreover to keep her yard ‘straight’ and not have to rely on gambling on her own horses’ chances.

  ‘You’re probably too honest for this game, Cassie,’ Dex laughed over their now weekly kitchen dinner. ‘That’s probably why they’ve kept you ladies out for so long.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re a stopper,’ Cassie retorted.

  ‘I just ride to orders,’ Dex answered, still smiling, but intending his answer seriously. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though. I don’t bet.’

  Cassie excused herself and got up from the table. ‘Time for the children’s story,’ she said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Dex, finishing his coffee. ‘Mind if I come and listen?’

  They both sat on Josephine’s bed while Josephine read Mattie ‘The Quangle Wangle’. Then just as Cassie was about to read ‘The Open Road’ from Wind in the Willows to her daughter, Josephine came up with a better suggestion.

  ‘Could Dex read to us tonight please, Mummy?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s up to Dex, Josie,’ Cassie replied. ‘Maybe if you ask nicely—’

  ‘She’s already done that, Cassie,’ Dex said, picking up the book. ‘Do you want this? Or shall I tell you one of my very own stories?’

  It was no contest. A Dexter Bryant original won hands down. As he sat on Mattie’s bed with Josephine sitting listening on his knee, one arm round his neck, and the thumb of her other hand stuck firmly in her mouth, Cassie pretended to busy herself tidying up the nursery. Now and then she would sneak a look at the expressions on her children’s faces, as they listened in total enchantment to Dex’s story about a flying horse, and remembered how Tyrone would sit just like that on Josephine’s bed, holding her in just the same way, while he told her stories of Snaggletooth the wicked old witch and Balmy Barney from Ballydehob.

  Dex finished his story and both the children put their arms round his neck and hugged him goodnight.

  ‘Those are a great couple of kids, Cassie,’ he told her as they returned downstairs. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are.’

  ‘Yes I do, Dex,’ Cassie replied. ‘That’s the one thing I don’t need reminding of.’

  Tomas, for all his apparent irascibility, was also a good listener, and attended Cassie long and hard while she sat him in the yard office and propounded her theories about feeding concentrates.

  ‘You mean we should change our ways, Guv’nor,’ he said evenly. ‘Throw away the knowledge of centuries, and take up with some new-fangled and practically untried and tested method.’

  ‘It’s not so new fangled, Tomas,’ Cassie reasoned. ‘They’ve been on the market for some time now. And there’s no reason why a properly balanced nut—’

  ‘Nuts is about the size of it,’ Tomas muttered, pulling out his battered packet of Sweet Aftons.

  ‘OK – cubes, if you’d rather,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Oats is what I’d rather,’ said Tomas.

  ‘Come on, Tomas, bear with me. A properly balanced cube or concentrate could contain everything the horse needs. In one form of food.’

  ‘Ach,’ said Tomas dismissively, waving out his match, ‘there’s nothing wrong with the way we’re doing it.’

  ‘Look. I’m not trying to revolutionise feeding methods, Tomas. Feeding methods are being improved all the time. Why – you’re always working on some magic new formula yourself! And that’s my point. Because I’m not suggesting we start feeding cubes to our horses. What I’m suggesting is we make our own cubes. Or rather concentrates. And since everyone says you’re the best feeder in Ireland, I’m suggesting we make them from your feed recipes.’

  That effectively silenced Tomas. He took a draw on his cigarette, removed a piece of tobacco from the end of his tongue, and then after a moment started to nod his head.

  ‘We need money, Tomas,’ Cassie continued. ‘If we’re going to make Claremore into one of Ireland’s top training establishments, which we are, make no mistake, we need capital. Because we have to modernise.’

  ‘Modernise what?’ Tomas asked, raisi
ng his bushy white eyebrows. ‘Sure didn’t himself see to all that? With all them brand new boxes? And the indoor school? And the covered gallops? What else needs modernising?’

  ‘The gallops need re-laying. And we need an all-weather gallop, too. We need heat lamps in the boxes, we need one of these mechanised horse walkers, electric groomers, yard vacuums, better transport, foaling boxes, some sort of security system, and –’ here Cassie held her breath and said a silent prayer – ‘I want to put in an equine swimming pool.’

  Tomas nearly swallowed the stub of his cigarette. Then he stared up at Cassie as if she was certifiable.

  ‘An equine swimming pool indeed,’ he repeated.

  ‘An equine swimming pool,’ Cassie reaffirmed.

  ‘What about an equine snooker table, Mrs Rosse?’ Tomas asked. ‘And an equine tennis court?’

  ‘I’m serious, Tomas,’ Cassie assured him.

  ‘Sure I know you are,’ Tomas answered. ‘That’s what worries me.’

  ‘OK, you can think what you like. But believe me, this is the way racing’s going. I’ve listened to Dexter Bryant, and it’s like everything else. What we have back home in America, you have over here tomorrow. And if we’re going to climb to the top of the pile, Tomas Muldoon, we’re going to have to be first in a lot of other fields before we are going to be first past the only post that matters.’

  ‘And which post might that be, Mrs Rosse?’ Tomas enquired.

  ‘The one that lies at the end of one and a half miles of undulations on Epsom Downs, in Surrey. The Epsom Derby.’

  ‘How much will you be requiring, my dear Mrs Rosse?’ Mr Flannery asked her, leaning as far across his desk as he decently could to catch the pungent aroma of Cassie’s scent.

  ‘As much as you’ll lend me, kind sir,’ Cassie smiled, carefully crossing her legs, and allowing her skirt to hitch up some more.

  It was a last desperate effort by Cassie to obtain full capitalisation from one source. She had tried some of Tyrone’s old connections, including Townshend Warner. But he, her likeliest bet, had just suffered a heart attack, and was in intensive care in a Houston hospital. Joe Coughlan had been willing to mortgage his house, his business and his one good racehorse in order to help her, but Cassie would have none of it. She wanted a clean loan, with a reasonable rate of interest. The last thing she wanted was her most loyal owner risking his all for a scheme which could well fail completely.