And now he was coming home, and the plan was for just the three of them – Cassie, Josephine and Mattie – to spend the central days of Christmas happily together once more as a family.
And so they would have done had it not been for Leonora.
Cassie had all but lost touch with Leonora. When last read of, she was divorced and back on the international circuit. She knew that Leonora was still buying blood-stock however, since she had seen pictures of her at the Newmarket Highflyer Sales, and heard that Peter Carroll, a top bloodstock agent, had been commissioned to buy her some yearlings. At dinner one night, someone tried to bring Cassie up to date with the latest news of Leonora’s marital adventures, but Cassie showed no interest whatsoever and immediately changed the subject to matters of more immediate concern.
Had she not been quite so resolute, she would have learned that Leonora was back in Ireland, and that her latest marriage would greatly affect Cassie’s personal future and the closely guarded security of her family.
On 20 December, Cassie and Josephine drove out to the airport to meet Mattie. Looking for someone casually dressed and crumpled, which was Mattie’s normal appearance, they both missed the tall and elegant young man who walked nonchalantly through customs and ambled up behind them.
‘You waiting for someone, girls?’ said a broad mock-Australian accent behind them.
Cassie and Josephine wheeled round startled, only to be confronted by Mattie’s bronzed and smiling face.
‘Good God!’ Josephine laughed as she hugged him. ‘I thought you’d come back with corks on your hat!’
Mattie grinned, kissed his sister and then turned to his mother.
Cassie smiled and did her best, but for one of the very few occasions in her life, her tears got the better of her as she embraced her handsome son.
‘Oh Christ,’ Mattie sighed. ‘Don’t start going all wet, Mum. I’ve only been away two years.’
‘I know,’ Cassie said, ‘but it seems like ten.’
They drove straight back to Claremore, where Cassie had arranged a small drinks party in honour of her son’s return, and then dinner for just the three of them.
When they arrived at the house, it looked as though one of the guests had got the time wrong and arrived early, because there was a metallic-black BMW coupe already parked at the bottom of the steps.
‘I don’t recognise it,’ Cassie said, going on into the house ahead of her children who were being playfully assaulted by Bunbury. ‘I wonder who it is?’
Dick hurtled too late towards the front doors to open them, but Cassie as usual just beat him to it.
‘I see we have a visitor, Dick,’ Cassie said, taking off her hat and coat.
‘We have that, ma’am, so we do,’ Dick replied, sliding finally to a standstill on the polished floor. ‘Isn’t she waiting for you this half hour in the drawing room?’
‘I don’t recognise the car,’ Cassie told him.
‘You’ll recognise your guest,’ Dick answered, fishing in his pocket and producing a visiting card.
Cassie looked at the card and frowned, momentarily as unfamiliar with her guest’s name as she was with her mode of transport.
Then just as Dick closed the drawing-room door behind her, she made the connection.
Leonora.
She was standing with her back to Cassie, examining a new painting over the fireplace as Dick held the door open for Cassie. Even from Leonora’s rear view, Cassie could see the improvement. She had lost a lot of weight since they last met, and her blonde hair, grown long again, fell in shining coils around her shoulders. Then she turned round and waved one hand at Cassie, a hand free of the eternal cigarette.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hello, Leonora,’ Cassie replied, quietly astounded at the physical change which had come over her adversary. She looked ten years younger. Gone were the beginnings of the bags under the eyes, and the flesh under the chin; gone too the crow’s feet and the pouching of the cheeks. The only tell-sale sign of her age and her former habits were the tiny perpendicular creases above her upper lip.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve given up smoking?’ Cassie asked.
‘How did you know?’
‘This has to be the first time since we were kids I’ve seen you without a cigarette, that’s why.’
‘I have given up smoking,’ Leonora replied, putting a hand on Cassie’s shoulder and kissing the air near Cassie’s face, ‘I have given up drinking, I have given up snorting, and now with my latest marriage, it appears I’ve also given up sex.’
She stood back and smiled at Cassie, then slowly tossed back her mane of blonde hair, perfectly aware of the astonishment and, she hoped, envy her appearance was causing Cassie.
‘You’ve lost a lot of weight, too,’ Cassie added.
‘And you’ve gained some,’ Leonora replied, sitting down on a sofa without being asked, ‘which is no bad thing.’
Cassie checked her own appearance briefly in a mirror on one wall, before turning back to Leonora.
‘Don’t you ever ring to say when you’re calling, Leonora?’
‘I did, but you were at the airport, darling.’
‘You could have called yesterday. Or this morning.’
‘Jesus – you’re so goddam proper, Cassie darling! Life is too blasted short! I only decided to drive to Cork at lunchtime, so I rang you from the car, and when that strange butler of yours told me you’d be back late afternoon, I thought I’d stop by. Why ever not? It’s been an age since we met.’
Cassie looked at Leonora, then pointedly looked at her watch.
‘What Dick obviously neglected to tell you was that I have guests, Leonora, so I’m afraid I can’t ask you to stay.’
‘Darling, I have to be in Cork two hours ago, so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t possibly. I just thought since you were on my way I’d stop and say Hi. And tell you we’re going to be at Derry Na Loch for Christmas, and that you simply must come across sometime for dinner.’
‘Must I?’
‘Certainly. I want you to meet my new husband before he dies.’
Leonora gave a great hoot of laughter and picked up a copy of Harper’s.
‘Christmas is all booked, Leonora,’ Cassie replied calmly. ‘So even if I wanted to, I couldn’t possibly.’
Cassie moved towards the door, hoping that Leonora would take the hint. But Leonora remained seated on the sofa, flicking through her magazine.
‘I didn’t know this was your required reading,’ she said. ‘Pacemaker, or Sporting Life, sure. But fashion and society?’
‘That’s Josephine’s,’ Cassie replied.
‘Yes? That who you were meeting at the airport? No, of course not. I saw Josie in Brown Thomas’s yesterday.’
‘I really do have to go and change,’ Cassie replied, opening the door.
‘OK, darling,’ Leonora sighed, throwing the magazine down, and getting to her feet. ‘What are you doing New Year’s Eve? I’m giving a real old-style bash – pink champagne, dance bands, fancy dress, balloons, “Auld Lang Syne”, the lot. I’d love you to come. All of you. Josie, Matt – whoever you have staying. How about it?’
The hairs on the back of Cassie’s neck started to stand up, and Cassie couldn’t understand why. She hadn’t mentioned that Mattie was home, so Leonora couldn’t possibly know. Unless Josie had told her. Yet her daughter would most certainly have mentioned seeing Leonora in Dublin if they had talked, but she hadn’t, so that ruled out that possibility. So why would she mention Mattie’s name as if she already knew he was home? Dick couldn’t have told her, otherwise Leonora wouldn’t have asked who she was meeting at the airport.
From this sudden attack of unreasonable anxiety, Cassie knew instinctively that Leonora was here for a purpose, that she was once again up to something malicious. Cassie was absolutely sure of it. But try as she may, Cassie could not for the life of her imagine what it could be.
Then Mattie walked into the drawing room, and Leonora thr
ew the match on her carefully prepared bonfire.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she drawled, opening her eyes as wide as she possibly could, as she stared at the tall and now strikingly handsome young man who stood before her. ‘Jesus Christ, Cassie, I just don’t believe it. For God’s sake will you look at Mattie? It’s Tyrone!’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘I wonder why Leonora thought I looked like Da,’ Mattie had mused later that evening when they were alone.
He had known he was adopted since he was a child, when Cassie, as she had agreed with Tyrone when they were planning his adoption, had carefully explained his parentage to him.
‘She’s crazy, that’s why,’ Josephine replied. ‘Mind you, it’s not altogether crazy, because I have actually heard that some adopted children do grow to look very much like their adoptive parents. This man who plays the lead in this series I’ve just done, for instance, David Kaye. His son’s also an actor, and he’s the image of his father. And he’s adopted.’
‘Do you think I look like Da?’ Mattie asked his mother.
‘No,’ Cassie lied. ‘Not one bit.’
‘I mean I think it would be great if I did,’ Mattie said.
‘I don’t,’ his mother answered bluntly.
Mattie had frowned at her, knowing as he did how much his mother had loved his father. But Cassie had changed the subject to Mattie’s Australian adventures, and he soon had his sister and his mother helpless with laughter as he regaled them with accounts of his life down under. And as long as she laughed, and listened to her son talking, Cassie was able to put aside for the moment thoughts of Leonora’s quite deliberate act of provocation.
But when Mattie and Josephine had finally gone to bed, still laughing and talking all the way up the stairs, Cassie was left alone with her terrible doubt.
She had often thought Mattie looked remarkably like Tyrone, but had always dismissed the notion as fanciful. As the boy grew, friends would often remark on the extraordinary similarity between Josephine and her adopted brother, but again, Cassie had been able to explain away such comparisons as entirely whimsical, believing that people saw only what they wanted to see.
But then as she sat staring into the dying fire, she remembered things long put out of her mind. For instance, Tyrone had introduced Mattie’s mother to her: it was Tyrone who had brought Antoinette to Claremore.
He had stood with his back to her that day when he’d told her the purpose of the girl’s visit, carving some more meat from the sideboard.
‘She’s pregnant,’ he’d said.
‘Not by you,’ Cassie had replied.
No, not by Tyrone. Tyrone had denied it. And Tyrone never lied.
‘She says we can have the baby.’
Which of course would be the most natural thing in the world. Tyrone gets a pretty young girl pregnant, the girl doesn’t want to have the child, Cassie had just lost a child and couldn’t have any more children without endangering her health, so what better than to offer to adopt the child, while pretending it to be somebody else’s?
Particularly since the man whose child it was rumoured to be had gone off to find himself by smoking dope somewhere in India.
Particularly since the letter produced at the final adoption hearing, supposed to be from the alleged father and intended to discredit Cassie, was proved to be fraudulent, and was itself discredited.
So there was no proof, no real and actual proof that Gerald Secker had in fact been the father of Antoinette’s child.
‘All I need is a blood test,’ Cassie told Sheila Meath on the telephone, well after midnight.
‘What you need is your head examined,’ Sheila had growled in reply, angry not at being woken, but at Cassie’s irrational concern. ‘Of course Tyrone wasn’t the father. And besides, it’s perfectly true that adopted children grow to look like their adoptive parents. Look at Seamus O’Connor’s two youngest. They’re the spit of him, yet they’re both adopted.’
‘Fine. That makes sense, provided the adoptive parents live long enough. Tyrone died the year we adopted Mattie. Seamus is still very much alive. I could understand it if people thought Mattie looked like me. But they don’t.’
There was silence at the other end of the telephone.
‘It was just a chance remark, Cassie.’
‘Leonora doesn’t make chance remarks. Look, Mattie’s got Tyrone’s eyes, Sheila. The same long upper lip. He’s even got Tyrone’s hands.’
‘That’s just the way you see it. To me, he doesn’t look like Tyrone. And more importantly,’ Sheila added, ‘he doesn’t behave like Tyrone.’
‘But it’s all so perfectly feasible,’ Cassie persisted. ‘Everything tallies. Tyrone could easily have been the father. He did a lot of business with Alec Secker, the man Mattie’s mother was working for at the time.’
‘I remember Alec,’ Sheila said. ‘He moved over to England shortly afterwards. Somewhere in Berkshire.’
‘Ty spent a lot of time at Alec’s place.’
‘It seems to me it’s almost as though you want to believe it, Cassie,’ Sheila sighed.
‘Of course I don’t!’ Cassie replied. ‘It’s just that so much points to the possibility. But if I could just get a blood test.’
‘You must know Mattie’s blood group, surely?’ Sheila asked. ‘And what group Tyrone was.’
‘I need to know the mother’s,’ Cassie replied. ‘And even more importantly, the alleged father’s.’
‘If I were you, Cassie,’ Sheila advised, ‘this is one sleeping dog I’d leave well alone.’
‘You’re not me, Sheila,’ Cassie answered. ‘That’s the whole point.’
‘You’re not going to change anything now, Cassie. And even if Tyrone had been the father, is it really so terrible? It just means you’ve got him in both your children.’
‘It means more than that, Sheila. It means if it’s true, Tyrone did something he had sworn he had never done ever in our whole life together. It means he lied to me.’
‘He wasn’t George Washington, my dear.’
‘He was my husband, Sheila. And he swore by the truth. And if he told me a lie about Antoinette, what other lies mightn’t he have told?’
What other lies indeed? Had he in fact told Cassie the truth about Leonora and himself in the south of France?
Sheila did her best to dissuade her, on the telephone that night and in person the next day. But Cassie was not to be deterred. She explained that in the clear light of day it wasn’t so much that she was determined to prove Tyrone a liar, but the very opposite. She was determined to show Leonora to be the deceiver. And so obsessed was she with achieving her ambition that she quite failed to see the real motive for her adversary’s malefice.
Alec Secker had no idea where his son was, and cared even less. He informed Cassie of this perfectly pleasantly when she visited him in his beautiful manor house outside Wantage, explaining how he and his son had always failed to get on since the boy was kicked out of Eton, and once Gerald had started this drugging nonsense, as he called it, he had washed his hands of him completely.
‘God knows what his mother would have made of all this,’ he sighed. ‘But of course as you know, Liz-Anne died giving birth to Gerald’s sister.’
‘And you really have no idea at all of where your son might be?’ Cassie reiterated.
‘If he’s still alive,’ Secker replied evenly, ‘I should imagine the Far East somewhere. But frankly, I should think he’s long since dead.’
‘I’m sorry.
‘Yes. Well. That’s how these things are.’
Alec Secker got up to pour them some more drinks, more as a punctuation, than from a necessity.
‘But you remember the girl all right?’
‘That Antonia girl, you mean?’
‘Antoinette actually, Alec. Antoinette Brookes.’
Yes, he remembered the girl all right. A tall, very pretty girl, but somewhat remote.
‘At one time, I had hopes for her and Gerald,�
�� he recalled. ‘Seemed to be just the right sort of girl for him.’
‘Gerald was pretty keen on her too, right?’ Cassie asked hopefully.
‘I don’t know so much about that,’ Alec replied. ‘What I do know is that she wouldn’t give him a second glance. Hadn’t a moment in time for him.’
‘Are you sure? After all they moved in the same sort of set. Went to the same parties.’
‘Not as far as I knew they didn’t. No, they moved in two entirely different worlds. Gerald’s was the fast Dublin young. But Antoinette – that wasn’t her scene at all. Much too unsophisticated. No, no, no. Besides that, she was far too busy knocking off some wretched woman’s husband.’
Cassie called Sheila from her hotel room, if only just to hear her say that she had told her so.
‘Well I did, Cassie,’ Sheila grumbled, ‘you’re just going to ruin all those years of happiness and for what? You’re not going to be able to prove one damn thing. Now get on the next plane home, and forget all about it.’
‘I’m not coming back until I’ve found Antoinette,’ Cassie replied. ‘We were friends. She’ll tell me the truth.’
‘How do you know?’ Sheila asked in desperation. ‘How do you know she’ll tell you the truth? And if she does tell you anything, how will you know that what she tells you is the truth? If she was having an affair with Tyrone, why should she tell you now? And if she tells you she wasn’t, will you believe her?’
Cassie sidestepped the question and took a sip of her brandy. ‘Alec Secker didn’t know his son’s blood type.’
‘What’s Mattie’s?’
‘AB, rhesus positive.’
‘And Tyrone’s?’
‘AB, rhesus positive.’
‘You’re halfway home.’
‘To prove paternity, Sheila, or the opposite – non-paternity, I guess you’d call it – you have to have samples from the child and both the living parents, in order to identify in detail what the experts call the agglutinogens. It’s not binding anyway. You can’t get a positive ID like fingerprints give you from blood groups. Proof’s only conclusive if the samples differ. That’s to say you can prove that someone isn’t the child of particular parents. Rather than that they are. That’s why I’m going to have someone find Antoinette.’
To Hear a Nightingale Page 67