To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I beat her at tennis,’ Cassie replied. ‘That’s all I ever did to her: beat her at a game of tennis.’

  After weeks of searching and negotiating, they at last found another mill. It had vacant possession, and little wonder, Cassie thought when they first saw it, because it had fallen into total disrepair. Its state did however enable them to purchase it privately for less than half the money she had been prepared to lay out for Peacock’s Mill.

  ‘There you are!’ Tomas crowed as they walked round their new property. ‘What did I tell you about setbacks?’

  ‘That they’re often blessings in disguise,’ Cassie replied wearily. ‘Except I’m not at all sure how much of a blessing this place is going to be, Tomas. We’re going to have to rebuild the whole damn thing from the ground up.’

  ‘From little acorns . . .’ Tomas said, lighting another Sweet Afton.

  ‘Boy,’ Cassie said. ‘With you around, who needs a dictionary of quotes?’

  Leonora finally added insult to injury when, shortly after Cassie had purchased her derelict property, she learned that Leonora’s husband was busy knocking down Peacock’s Mill with the intention of developing the site as a housing estate.

  ‘The next thing your father will be telling me,’ Cassie informed Erin over tea, ‘is that bad luck always comes in threes.’

  ‘And so it does, Mrs Rosse,’ Erin replied, cutting Mattie’s toast into fingers and covering them with honey. ‘Just as babies always bring good luck, so bad luck always comes in threes.’

  The third blow was a little longer in coming. Joe Coughlan’s new horse, a two-year-old flyer called Casablanca, won the valuable Athos Stakes at Phoenix Park at (12/1) against, and with the proceeds of the biggest tilt he’d ever had at the ring, Joe Coughlan ordered Cassie to buy him a decent yearling.

  ‘I was thinking I might copy Tyrone and go over to America looking,’ Cassie told Sheila Meath one day when she went over to see her young horses. ‘Combine a bit of business with pleasure. I don’t suppose you feel like another little holiday?’

  Sheila accepted with alacrity, and Cassie knew she would be glad of more than just her company, because Sheila was one of the best judges of young horses in Ireland, and everything Cassie was learning about the points of the horse she was learning from her. They arranged to fly over after the Doncaster Cup, for which The Donk stood his ground.

  He was second favourite in the pre-race betting – hardly surprising since it was considered he hadn’t exactly had much of a race at Goodwood. The horse which had won the Goodwood race was favourite, but an uneasy one, and Cassie and Tomas were in no doubt who would finally start favourite on the day.

  Particularly since Cassie, leaving nothing to chance this time, had secured the services of one of the top English jockeys. The little horse travelled well, and was full of beans on the day before the race when Cassie herself gave him a spin on the town moor. But on the morning of the race, he seemed a little uneasy, dull in the eye, and for him oddly disinterested in his food. By twelve o’clock he was down in his stable, and in great distress.

  Niall Brogan, who whenever possible travelled with Cassie for all the important races, saved his life by his prompt attention and medication. But he was in no doubt whatsoever, even before he had run tests, that the horse had been doped, and in even less doubt as to by whom.

  ‘When I see the effects of dope on a horse, Cassie,’ he said as he left The Donk’s stable, ‘that’s when I pray to God for the day of the Tote monopoly. You can count your lucky stars the little fellah’s still alive after what they’ve shot into him. But I very much doubt if you’ll ever get him to the races again.’

  Cassie sat with the little horse all day and half the night nursing him. Niall Brogan had sent their travelling head lad into the town to buy half a dozen inflatable mattresses, which between them all they managed to get under the stricken horse for support; because until he was strong enough to sit up, or even rise, there was a very real danger the horse would die, since horses cannot breathe properly when completely prostrate for long periods.

  At one o’clock in the morning he suddenly half sat up, and once he was up and kept in that position, helped by a rebuilt wall of the inflatable mattresses, Tomas took over the nightwatch and sent Cassie back to her hotel bedroom.

  By morning, the horse was on his feet and nibbling at his hay, and after a thorough examination of him, Niall Brogan told Cassie he was out of danger, and that she could leave for America as planned, and that Tomas could ship the little horse home quite safely the following day.

  When she arrived back at Claremore that evening, to pack for America and say goodbye to her children, Cassie found a telegram awaiting her, informing her that Mary-Jo Christiansen’s great-uncle James, Cassie’s favourite owner, had, aged eighty-one, died peacefully in his sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mary-Jo’s mother met Cassie at Pittsburg airport. She was late, and arrived in a more modern but just as ramshackle version of the never-to-be-forgotten family station wagon. Cassie was waiting for her as the Oldsmobile drew up, and Mrs Christiansen, apparently barely a day older, peered out of the driver’s window, looking for her guest.

  ‘I’d have recognised you any day, Cassie,’ she said as they stood embracing in the heavy rain. ‘You’re just as cute as you always were.’

  ‘How are you, Mrs Christiansen?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Helen,’ came the reply. ‘I guess you’re old enough and big enough to call me Helen now. And come on. Let’s get in the car before we drown like rats.’

  On the long drive back through the incessant rainstorm, Cassie caught up with all the family news. Mary-Jo was in Africa, safe and well when last heard of; her two youngest brothers were both married with two children each and fine jobs; while Frank, the eldest, now in his early thirties, was something of a financial prodigy, as he had already been made a full partner in the firm of stockbrokers where he had worked since leaving Yale. He too had got married, to the daughter of a Texan millionaire, but his beautiful bride of only eighteen months had been tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident in New York.

  ‘Sometimes I think he won’t ever get over it,’ Helen Christiansen said as she turned off the main highway. ‘It’s over eight years ago now and, like I said, his life’s one great big success – as far as his career goes. But it all goes into his work. That’s where all his purpose goes. He never goes out and enjoys himself. He just comes home weekends, eats and rests up, then back to the money market.’

  Cassie looked at the blur of rain-drenched landscape, and was reminded of her own solitary existence. But she at least had the wonderful consolation of her children.

  ‘I’m sorry, Cassie,’ Helen Christiansen said suddenly out of the silence. ‘I did’t know what I was saying. That was hardly very tactful of me.’

  ‘On the contrary, Helen,’ Cassie replied, ‘you’ve got to talk to somebody about these things. And who better than someone who knows about it first-hand?’

  She said this without bitterness, or without the slightest hint of recrimination. Helen Christiansen turned to her and smiled gratefully as they stopped at an intersection.

  ‘How is it with you now, Cassie?’ she asked. ‘Is it any easier?’

  ‘A little,’ Cassie told her. ‘I guess one day, like they say, I’ll wake up and say, OK, life has to go on. But at the moment—’

  She fell silent, turning to her window again and wiping the mist away with the back of a gloved hand.

  ‘If I hadn’t got the kids,’ she added finally, ‘I don’t think I’d have made it.’

  ‘James said you were the bravest girl he’d ever known,’ Helen said.

  ‘I was very lucky to have known James,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Sure,’ said Helen. ‘I guess we all were.’

  Back at the farm after the funeral, Cassie remet all Mary-Jo’s brothers, and their wives and children. The years seemed to have done nothing to the Christiansen boys. They were all fr
eckle-faced and wide-eyed, and full of positively tangible energy. Pete, the youngest, who still looked as though he’d put a frog in your bed, had married a suitably mischievous professional violinist; while Bill, always mad for the girls, had captured the prettiest girl in the whole of West Virginia – according to Bill – for his bride.

  ‘You look great, Cassie,’ Bill said to her. ‘But really. Then I always did say you were far and away the prettiest of Mary-Jo’s friends.’

  ‘I’ll bet you said that about all Mary-Jo’s friends,’ Cassie replied with a smile.

  ‘You must be kidding! Have you forgotten Holly Arnold?’ Bill laughed. ‘Even with her braces on, she still looked like a horse!’

  ‘You want to take it easy there, brother,’ Pete advised him. ‘Horses are Cassie’s great love, remember?’

  ‘She sure brought a lot of fun into Great-Uncle James’s last years through the horses he had with her and her husband,’ said a gentle voice from behind her.

  Cassie turned, and there was Frank, the eldest of the boys, as serious and as freckle-faced as ever.

  ‘Hello, Frank,’ Cassie said, suddenly feeling rather shy in front of a man with whom she shared unspoken sorrow. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, Cassie,’ he replied, ‘and you look just terrific.’

  ‘I’ve just told her that,’ Bill informed him with a grin, and at once Cassie was right back where they’d always been, right from the moment they’d all tumbled out of the family wagon after that first trip back from Locksfield station.

  ‘You go flirt with your own wife,’ Frank said good naturedly, ‘while I take care of our guest.’

  They picked up the pieces so easily that it seemed as if it was just last week when they had last seen each other, not over twelve years ago. Frank knew all about Cassie’s business affairs, as he had helped run the financial side of his great-uncle’s racing interests in the last years of his life.

  ‘He was real sorry he never made it over to Ireland to see you both,’ Frank told her. ‘He was just crazy about your husband. When he first met him here, they sat up all night with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and kept the whole house awake with their laughter. I was just devastated when I heard what had happened to Tyrone.’

  ‘I’d quite forgotten you’d met him, Frank,’ Cassie said, finding herself so much at ease in the warmth of Frank’s candour.

  ‘Sure I did,’ Frank replied. ‘I was home the weekend Tyrone was here. He seduced us all so much, I nearly got back on the goddam plane to Ireland with him.’

  ‘I’m afraid that was Tyrone all over,’ Cassie agreed. ‘Can you imagine what it was like being courted by him?’

  ‘Crazy, I guess,’ Frank said. ‘Come on, let’s go walk round the farm.’

  They walked, and as they walked, they talked. And the more they walked, the more Cassie found herself able to discuss her life with Tyrone in a way she had not discussed it, not even with her closest friend Sheila Meath, since the day Tyrone had died. She told Frank stories about their life together, their joys and their triumphs and their disasters.

  ‘This is great, you know,’ Frank said at one point. ‘I mean you were so lucky. You seem to have had a marriage in a million.’

  ‘I know it, Frank,’ Cassie replied. ‘If that doesn’t sound smug.’

  ‘’Course it doesn’t, Cassie. Marriages like yours are made in heaven. So it’s nothing you can pride yourself on. I guess we’d have had a marriage like that as well, Susanna and I, if she too hadn’t gotten killed. She was a wonderful girl. You’d really have loved her, Cassie. Just everyone did.’

  They were standing leaning on the paddock rail, over-looking the field where Cassie had so often stood with Mary-Jo, watching Prince growing up. She fell silent, and stared at the unknown horses which now grazed in front of her, swishing their tails at the last of the flies, and occasionally stamping a hindleg in anger as one of them managed a bite.

  But Cassie wasn’t silent because she was sad at her memories, but because for the first time since she had lost Tyrone she had talked about him with joy, and a new kind of love, a love which was based on the exhilaration of having loved and been loved by such a wonderful person. It was as if the door behind her had finally closed, and another door had opened ahead. Tyrone was still beyond that door, which now swung open in front of her, but now she saw him quite clearly in sunshine, and no longer in a vale of tears, as a strange sense of euphoria settled over and within her.

  She turned to Frank, who was chewing a long blade of grass, and staring into the far distance of his own memories.

  ‘Frank,’ Cassie said. ‘I’m not sure how to say this. I’m not sure if it will even make sense.’

  ‘Listen,’ Frank interposed. ‘You don’t have to bother saying it, Cassie. Not if you’re feeling the same as I’m feeling right now.’

  ‘It’s as if I’ve just turned a very big corner, Frank,’ Cassie ventured. ‘That’s the only way I can describe it.’

  ‘Me too,’ Frank nodded, and then turned to smile at her. ‘My feelings exactly.’

  They flew back to New York together, easy in each other’s company like the old friends they now were.

  ‘Some day soon,’ Frank said, somewhere over Pennsylvania, ‘I’m going to have a couple of racehorses, and you’re going to train them for me.’

  ‘That’s fine by me, Frank,’ Cassie answered. ‘But wouldn’t you rather have them race over here?’

  ‘Then what excuse would I have to come and see you?’ he smiled. ‘Problem is, I don’t have that sort of money personally. And it’s not exactly the sort of venture I feel I could persuade my somewhat model-T partners to invest in.’

  ‘They’d be wrong, you know,’ Cassie told him. ‘Any moment now bloodstock is going to take right off.’

  ‘Maybe you got something there, Cassie,’ Frank nodded thoughtfully. ‘There are always new markets for growth. Anyhow, till the time I can nudge the old fogeys into investing in equine equity, I guess I’ll have to keep dreaming.’

  ‘Do you invest in small businesses at all?’ Cassie asked him, quite directly.

  ‘Sure we do,’ Frank said. ‘All the time. If they have the right sort of growth potential.’

  ‘Then how would you like to invest in me?’ she enquired.

  Frank turned and looked at her. ‘I can’t think of anything that would give me greater pleasure.’

  For the rest of the journey, Cassie explained about her and Tomas’ plan for food concentrates, and about the various aspects of marketing them. Frank listened attentively and asked some probing questions. Luckily, Cassie had employed a go-ahead firm in Dublin to do the market research, and their findings had been highly encouraging.

  On the taxi ride into Manhattan, Frank told Cassie he would give the matter his maximum attention, and promised her an answer before she left America.

  In New York, before flying down to Kentucky where Sheila Meath was already taking a preliminary look at some young bloodstock, Cassie called Gina and got her answering service, which informed her that Gina’s name was now Meryl Hope, and that she was busy working on Danny Browne’s latest film I Know Where It’s At I Just Don’t Know When, but if Mrs Rosse would like to leave a message, the answering service would make doubly sure Miss Hope got it. Cassie left the number of her hotel, and a message to say that she’d be in New York until tomorrow only, and could they meet.

  When she returned from a shopping spree and lunch with Frank Christiansen, Gina had returned Cassie’s message, inviting her to dinner that evening at her new apartment on East 50th Street. Cassie arrived dead on seven o’clock, only to find, according to the Philippino maid who opened the door, that Gina had been delayed on the shoot. The maid took Cassie’s coat, and showed her into the vast living room of the expensive apartment, where sitting incongruously on a black leather sofa, amongst all the mirror and chrome, was Mrs Roebuck.

  Cassie could hardly believe her eyes. She had intended to visit Westboro Falls before leaving fo
r home if time allowed, but here was all that mattered in Westboro Falls come to New York.

  ‘I told Gina to say nothing,’ Mrs Roebuck said, as she got slowly to her feet. ‘I thought we could surprise each other. My, but you look pretty!’

  Cassie kissed her gently, before leading her back to the enormous sofa where they both sat down. She had already noticed from Mrs Roebuck’s hands and gait the strangle-hold her arthritis had taken on her. In fact, despite her expensive new clothes, and her beautifully coiffured hair, Mrs Roebuck was no longer the twinkling-eyed and spry little lady from Cassie’s childhood. Her face still shone with goodness, but it had grown fat and puffy from, Cassie guessed, the drugs the doctors were pumping into her to try and ease the pain.

  ‘It’s a wretched thing, sure,’ Mrs Roebuck told her without complaints. ‘They gave me these steroids, but I didn’t like ’em. OK, the relief from the pain was great. But I got all fat – look! And started to grow hairs like a gooseberry! So now they’re treating me with the steroids I make myself. But personally speaking, Cassie, I’d rather they just left me alone.’

  Mrs Roebuck carefully folded her swollen hands and smiled round at Cassie. In the old days, she’d have patted her on the knee, or maybe pinched her cheek, but now all she could do was smile. Even so, when she did, the old twinkle came back in her eyes.

  ‘How’s Westboro?’ Cassie asked. ‘I was going to come and visit you on my way back from Kentucky.’

  ‘Well I’m just glad I saved you the journey,’ Mrs Roebuck replied. ‘You wouldn’t recognise the place.’

  She went on to tell Cassie how the town had changed beyond all recognition, particularly over the past five years, since the military had arrived.

  ‘Something to do with our defences,’ Mrs Roebuck explained. ‘All top-secret, but we could all see the huge holes they were digging in the ground.’

  Then as her arthritis worsened, and she could do less and less for herself, Gina insisted that her grandmother should move in with her at her New York apartment, and saw to it that she got the best treatment available for her condition. Mrs Roebuck had dallied, but the choice was either that or a retirement home.