To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Oh Dex,’ Cassie said sadly. ‘Isn’t it odd how people always find lies easier to believe than the truth? Why didn’t you just come round the next day and ask me? Instead of throwing the race. And ruining your career.’

  Dexter breathed in deeply, and with visibly shaking hands lit another cigarette.

  ‘Christ, I’ve never wished for anything harder in all my life, Cassie,’ he said. ‘But I was infatuated. Really. And it happened just like that! You have no idea what that woman is like, believe me.’

  ‘I think I do,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Not in bed you don’t,’ Dex answered shortly.

  It was as simple as that. The secret of the world was knowing a few tricks. And if the few tricks you knew were the right tricks, men would forfeit empires.

  Or deliberately take the wrong course in a vital horserace.

  It wasn’t anything to do with who wrote the note or who didn’t, Cassie decided. Dexter Bryant had tasted of the lotus.

  ‘That offer of help still valid?’ he asked sarcastically. Looking up, Cassie found him staring at her, reading her mind. ‘Or has it suddenly been rescinded?’

  ‘It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’ Cassie said. ‘Life, I mean. I should have let you make love to me. God knows I wanted you to, but I’d been warned off. Told not to cross the line. Because I was told if I did, you wouldn’t listen any more to what I had to say to you as your guv’nor. And what happens? I do the right thing, supposedly, I don’t go to bed with you, and you pull my best horse in his finest hour. You throw a race which would have put the name of the little horse on the Goodwood Cup forever. All because I did the “right thing”. Dear heavens, talk about the famous road to hell.’

  Availing himself of the ensuing thoughtful silence, Dex got to his feet and brushed the ash off his new coat.

  ‘For the record,’ he said going to the door, ‘what was on offer in the offer?’

  ‘The chance to ride as first jockey for Claremore,’ Cassie replied.

  Dexter didn’t even get as far as turning the door handle this time.

  ‘You’re crazy, Cassie,’ he said, wheeling round. ‘Jesus Christ – look at me. Look. I’m all washed up.’

  ‘What you are, and what you want to be, Dexter Bryant,’ Cassie told him evenly, ‘is entirely up to you.’

  It took three months to dry Dex out, four weeks of cold turkey and eight weeks of recuperation. But the patient, left in Frank’s care in a clinic in New York, never wavered in his determination, nor weakened in his ambition to succeed. By March, he was off cigarettes as well as alcohol, and Frank had him pounding the pavements and working out daily in the gym. The plan was that if there were no setbacks, as soon as Dex was three parts fit, he was to fly over to Ireland and take up residency in the stable-lads’ hostel, to ride work for two months only, after which a decision would be made as to if and when he could again ride in public.

  Dex’s only quarrel with the plan was that it was too conservative.

  ‘Listen,’ he told Cassie when she came to say goodbye at the clinic. ‘You save all the mid-season horses for me. I’ll be fit for Royal Ascot.’

  Because she had stayed on until Dex was through the worst part of his rehabilitation programme, as the clinic euphemistically called it, this was the longest Cassie had been away from Claremore for years. However, with a fit and strong Mattie away working and finding his feet in Australia, and Josephine showing all the signs of becoming a successful actress in London, she was now able to stay away longer when necessary, without the dreadful feelings of guilt she had always suffered whenever she had been forced to leave her children while they were still growing up.

  Even so, she still missed Claremore.

  Dick Slattery, a tall serious lad from the village, who acted as Cassie’s manservant, chauffeur and handyman, was hovering on the top of the steps, waiting for sight of the car as Cassie swept up the now smoothly tarmacked drive.

  ‘Quick now, Mrs Rosse,’ he said, taking her luggage from the car, ‘sure isn’t Tomas waiting to see you in the study?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with any of the horses, I hope?’ Cassie asked, hurrying up the stairs.

  ‘I’ll say not,’ Dick replied, holding the front door open with one of his huge feet, ‘the horses is all fine, thank God.’

  Tomas was on his feet when Cassie came into the study, anxiously pacing the room.

  ‘It’s Erin,’ Tomas told her, his baby face suddenly looking old and lined with worry. ‘The girl’s disappeared.’

  ‘When, Tomas?’ Cassie asked simply. ‘When and how?’

  ‘’Tis all right, Mrs Rosse, she hasn’t herself murdered yet. She left a note three days ago saying she was gone, but we’ve no idea why or where. And her mother’s half-cooked with anxiety.’

  The police found her easily enough, in a small boarding house in Wexford. Or rather they didn’t find her, so much as Erin came to their notice. After she had been gone for five days, the landlady of the boarding house into which Erin had booked herself, as a Miss Smith, slowly became suspicious of her, explaining as she did subsequently to the police that what had aroused her curiosity was the fact that the poor lady in question spent all her days shut in her room sobbing, as she chose to put it, ‘quite laudably’.

  Tomas fetched Erin home but failed to extract a reason from his daughter as to why she had run away. She had simply wept all the way from Wexford to Wicklow. Cassie went up to Erin’s room to see if she could do any better. She’d had to deal with similar emotional upsets with Erin before, notably when Mattie was sent away to Switzerland for two years because of his health, and when Josephine was first sent off to boarding school. Erin had wept and sobbed for a week each time, and Cassie had quietly but firmly had to talk her down.

  This time, however, Erin was apparently deaf to her questions. Whenever Cassie spoke to her, however quietly and gently, Erin would just raise the level of her sobbing until Cassie would have had to shout over it to make herself heard. Finally, Erin’s hysteria became so worrisome that Cassie called in the retired Doctor Gilbert’s successor, Doctor Ryan.

  ‘It’s most probably the menopause, Mrs Rosse,’ the rather earnest young doctor told her, after he’d administered a sedative.

  ‘Erin’s barely forty,’ Cassie replied. ‘Don’t you think that’s a little young for the change?’

  ‘Unmarried middle-aged girls, Mrs Rosse,’ Dr Ryan replied, tut-tutting his tongue, ‘there’s no saying what sort of arguments they get into with their bodies.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s the change,’ Cassie said, showing him to the door.

  ‘Ah well now, fair’s fair, Mrs Rosse,’ protested Doctor Ryan. ‘And I don’t tell you what’s going to win the Derby.’

  Cassie thought Erin was pregnant.

  Of course there was no way Cassie could voice her suspicions to Erin’s mother or father, although from the way Mrs Muldoon had taken to weeping into her pinny in the kitchen, Cassie thought she’d already guessed. Tomas as well, for he now went about his business in the yard with a frown on his previously unlined old forehead all the while. Erin stopped crying publicly, but from her red eyes every morning at breakfast, it was perfectly obvious how she had spent the night.

  When they were alone one evening, as Cassie was sitting in the drawing room holding one of Erin’s interminable skeins of wool while Erin sniffed and wound the wool into balls, Cassie decided to go for broke.

  ‘OK, Erin,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’ll tell me it’s none of my business, but exactly how pregnant are you?’

  Erin’s jaw literally dropped open and she stared at Cassie idiotically.

  ‘It’s going to show sooner or later, you know,’ Cassie continued, her arms out in front of her, holding Erin’s wool.

  Erin got out of her chair and snatched the wool off Cassie’s hands, stuffing it back into her knitting bag.

  ‘Erin,’ Cassie sighed. ‘You’re going to have to tell somebody sooner or later, sweetheart. And if you are pregn
ant, it’s going to be better in the long run if we deal with it now.’

  ‘God help me!’ Erin suddenly said, bursting into a flood of tears, ‘God help me but I’m three months gone already!’

  ‘So what are you going to do, Erin?’ Cassie asked patiently.

  ‘I’m goin’ to kill meself! That’s what I’m goin’ to do, Mrs Rosse!’

  ‘No you’re not, Erin. Don’t be such a foolish girl. For goodness sake stop crying and take hold of yourself.’

  Pulling an already soaking hankie back out from her sleeve, Erin blew her nose noisily and did her best to stop crying. But she found it difficult, because every now and then when she withheld a sob, her body would rock and she’d emit a sound like a giant hiccough.

  ‘I might as well kill meself, Mrs Rosse,’ Erin mumbled. ‘Because if I don’t, me father will.’

  ‘Of course he won’t, Erin,’ Cassie reassured her. ‘Your father’s one of the kindest men I know.’

  ‘Not when it comes to illegitimate babbas he’s not.’

  Erin knew her father better than Cassie did. Cassie found this out when she sat Tomas and his wife down in the drawing room to explain their daughter’s predicament. Tomas listened in silence throughout, while his wife buried her face once more in her apron. When she was finished, Tomas nodded his thanks and rose to his feet.

  ‘Come along, woman,’ he said to his wife. ‘And stop bawling like a banshee.’

  Cassie didn’t like the look on Tomas’ face at all.

  ‘What are you going to do, Tomas?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s no concern of yours, Mrs Rosse,’ he answered very formally. ‘’Tis a matter between a father and his daughter.’

  ‘What are you going to do, Tomas?’ Cassie repeated.

  ‘He’s going to larrap her!’ Mrs Muldoon screamed, ‘that’s what he’s going to do! He’s going to larrap the hide off her!’

  ‘Oh no you’re not, Tomas Muldoon!’ Cassie warned him, putting herself between him and the door.

  ‘Indeed he is!’ Mrs Muldoon cried. ‘And a good thing too, the hussy!’

  Tomas stood looking at Cassie patiently, while she barred his way out of the room.

  ‘Tomas,’ Cassie said, ‘you raise one hand against that girl – what am I talking about! She’s not a girl! She’s a forty-year-old woman!’

  ‘She’s still my daughter,’ Tomas answered.

  ‘And this is not the Middle Ages any more!’ Cassie shouted. ‘Your daughter is not a little girl to be put over your knee and – and larapped! She’s a grown woman, Tomas! She’s forty years old! And she needs your love! And your understanding!’

  ‘Her mother said it for me, Mrs Rosse,’ Tomas replied calmly. ‘She’s a hussy. And she’s having a bastard child.’

  Cassie looked at Tomas, but this time it was Cassie’s eyes that were dancing in flames.

  ‘Sit down, Tomas,’ she ordered. ‘And you, Mrs Muldoon. Sit down both of you. While I tell you what life can be like when a parent rejects you, and how it is to be what you call a bastard child.’

  The dialogue had its required effect. Erin, while not exactly welcomed back unconditionally into the bosom of her family, was at least spared the threatened ‘larapping’ from her father, although Cassie had been more than inclined to believe that the lashing would have been from Tomas’ tongue rather than his belt. And Erin was to be allowed to remain at home, on the condition that she kept her ‘shame’ hidden from the village.

  ‘But I’ll have to go to Mass!’ Erin had protested. ‘I can’t miss going to church so I can’t!’

  But her mother apparently was insistent. If necessary Father Patrick could come to the house and hear Erin’s confession, and most likely administer the sacrament as well. But otherwise Erin was to remain confined until her child was born. Anyone asking after her would simply be informed that Erin was unwell.

  ‘I’m not altogether sure that’s the best plan, you know,’ Cassie advised Tomas. ‘People are bound to discover the facts later.’

  ‘Let them,’ Tomas replied. ‘They’ll have no proof.’

  ‘There’ll be a baby, Tomas! For everyone to see!’ Cassie argued. ‘Isn’t that proof enough?’

  ‘There will not be a baby,’ Tomas told her. ‘For the moment it’s born, she’s to have it adopted.’

  Cassie knew that was a forlorn hope. Erin was far too maternal a woman to give away the only child she was likely to have. Also, from the conversations Cassie had already had with her, it was obvious that Erin loved the father of her baby, although even the threat of death itself would not have dragged his name from her.

  But Cassie also knew it was an equally forlorn hope to argue with Tomas once his mind was set. So instead she determined to let the storm abate, which it already was showing signs of so doing, and to adopt what Tomas himself would have called ‘the long view’.

  Besides which, Tomas’ health had suddenly started to cause considerable concern. Tomas was a strong man, even in his early seventies, who thrived on hard work. Stress was an unknown word to him, for whenever he had a doubt or a worry he would always talk it out, and he religiously maintained that the day he stopped working with his beloved horses would be the day he died.

  But he had been a lifelong heavy smoker, a habit which Cassie had tried without success to get him to break when they first started working together. And now, with the additional worry about Erin, he was smoking more than ever and Cassie would regularly hear him coughing desperately, early in the morning when he started work.

  So now she found herself nagging him to go and see a specialist in Dublin. After all, he could afford the best advice, because thanks to Claremore Concentrates, he was now a rich man.

  ‘Ach – doctors,’ Tomas would reply disparagingly. ‘Sure if we’re goin’ to get better, ’tis the good Lord who’ll see to it. So why should the doctor take me money? Anyway, if I had to see someone, which I don’t, I’d rather see Niall Brogan. A vet can’t ask his patient what’s wrong with him like doctors do, now can he? Ah no. No, a vet – he’s got to know.’

  Mrs Muldoon was predictably defeatist in her attitude when Cassie counselled her.

  ‘You might as well try teach an elephant the piano as get Tomas Muldoon near a doctor,’ she’d sighed. ‘And like as not yous can’t get an old dog to learn new tricks, neither can yous get him stop his old ones. Besides, he’s had his three-score years and ten now, Mrs Rosse. So what harm’s a few more old cigarettes goin’ to do him?’

  They certainly didn’t improve his health, Cassie noticed with even more concern, as she saw throughout the cold of January and February how much more difficult Tomas was finding it to catch his breath. But he would neither ease up in his work, nor go and see any doctor – not even the local GP, Doctor Ryan. Cassie often teased him about how his wealth hadn’t affected his life-style one iota, and that he was still the same Tomas Muldoon who had greeted her on the steps of Claremore twenty-five years ago.

  ‘I hope to God I am, Guv’nor,’ he’d reply. ‘For sure ’tis only money.’

  Then sooner than they both knew it, it was the foaling season. Claremore now boasted several useful brood mares, all the producers of winners, but the best line was still from Cassie’s original foundation mare, Graceful Lady, who had eventually died eight years earlier, aged twenty-five. Her first-born, Celebration, had proved a successful sire without ever quite achieving the top rank; but, when mated with the daughter of the mare Sheila and Cassie had returned with from Kentucky fifteen years earlier, had produced a very good colt whom Cassie had named Compassion. She liked the young horse so much that she kept him for herself. The gamble paid off: the horse won ten races for her, from distances of six furlongs to a mile and a half, victories which included a major Derby Trial and the Prix Ridgway at Deauville. He proved to be ultra-consistent and so easy to train that Compassion had been kept racing until he was six, when he was retired to stud. Cassie and Sheila then managed to buy a Northern Dancer mare privately before the S
aratoga sales one year, and brought her back to Claremore to be covered by Compassion. The first foal the mare threw was a filly born with deformed hocks, but second time around she foaled normally and produced a strapping dark bay colt which was immediately christened Commitment, to complete the trio.

  Commitment went on to win six high-class races, before topping off his brief and brilliant career with a runaway victory in the Irish St Leger. He then took up stud duties at Claremore, remaining in Cassie’s ownership despite several huge offers, most notably from the Arabs. One of the first mares he covered in his first season was a bay six-year-old called Summer Visitor, who was a daughter of the late James Christiansen’s useful horse Moviola, which he had left Cassie in his will. Summer Visitor had also proved herself no slouch, winning three times, including the Yorkshire Oaks, when a three-year-old, and the Prix du Cadran at Longchamps when five.

  And now her time had come round to foal. Despite the hi-tech state of Claremore, with its resident vet and fully trained staff, Cassie still insisted on foaling each and every one of her mares personally. The only thing that had become easier about the process was that all the foaling boxes were now covered by a highly sophisticated close-circuit television system, so that at least when Cassie and Tomas were waiting for the mares to start they could do so in the comfort of their own homes.

  Summer Visitor started showing the usual signs of discomfort which precede giving birth about half past seven one cold February night; and by ten past twelve she had thrown a rather lanky bay colt who seemed to start growing the moment he struggled to his feet.

  Tomas sat back on his haunches as the colt found out where the milk supply was, and watched while Cassie tidied up the mare, and put down some fresh, dry bedding.

  ‘Jesus,’ he sighed, ‘I don’t know why I bother to get out of me bed.’