The three of them, Cassie, Dex and Mattie, ran the race in their heads a thousand times. They examined every eventuality, and at the end of each session, they always came to the same conclusion.
‘Given you don’t get hopelessly boxed in, Dex,’ Cassie recapped, ‘which if that happens on a horse like Nightie will be your own goddam fault, because he has the speed and dexterity to get you out of anything, then the only way you get beat is if Millstone Grit poaches too big a lead. Now he’s an out and out galloper. He’s going to make it all from the moment those stalls fly open, till the moment he passes the winning post. He’s going to try and gallop your speed out of you – blunt you, psyche you out of it. And remember – a horse like that can easily break the spirit of his rivals. If he comes into the home-straight eight, ten lengths clear, my money will be on him to beat us. That horse doesn’t stop galloping. You watch that video of Ascot. He’s easing up. Joe Peters drops his hands two hundred yards from home.’
‘Your friend’s running Millstone’s stable companion as well,’ Dex said. ‘Now why’s that? He’s a no-hoper, and he sure can’t be in it to make the pace.’
‘No,’ Cassie answered thoughtfully. ‘He’s running to stop us winning.’
But that was Leonora’s last resort. Her next move was intended to have a far greater and a more immediate effect.
It started with a telephone call.
‘Hi,’ she said to Cassie one week before the Derby. ‘I’m real sorry about your horse.’
Cassie took a deep breath and kept her voice as calm as she could. ‘There’s nothing the matter with my horse, Leonora,’ she replied.
‘Not according to you there isn’t, darling,’ Leonora drawled back. ‘But there is to me.’
‘What?’ Cassie asked.
‘Oh,’ Leonora replied lightly. ‘Just the fact that he’s running in the Derby. That’s what I’m sorry about.’
‘Sure,’ Cassie said, about to hang up, ‘but I guess this is just one of the cases where we’ll have to let the best horse win.’
‘Not my thinking at all, sweetheart,’ Leonora purred. ‘So why don’t I pop on over to see you and we can have a little chat?’
‘You’re banned from here, Leonora. My staff have been given explicit instructions to stop you entering Claremore.’
There was a short silence, during which Cassie could hear the click of a lighter, and the inhalation of a cigarette.
‘Too bad,’ said Cassie. ‘Started smoking again, Leonora?’
‘Listen, Cassie Rosse,’ Leonora replied, in a complete change of mood. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get your ass over here. Because it concerns your goddam horse. And that spoilt little brat of an adopted son.’
The telephone went dead. And so momentarily did Cassie’s feelings. Then she walked slowly to the door and called Mattie.
He answered immediately, coming out of the study where he’d been watching the video.
Cassie looked at him and smiled, before collecting her car keys from the hall table.
‘I have to go out, Mattie,’ she told him. ‘Don’t wait up.’
Leonora was by herself in the drawing room, drinking. She glanced at Cassie, then poured herself another brandy.
‘At least you had the good sense to come,’ she said.
‘You have something to say to me about my horse,’ Cassie replied, ‘and apparently about my son.’
‘Sit down,’ Leonora snapped.
‘No thanks,’ Cassie answered.
‘Do as you like,’ said Leonora, crossing to a large deeply cushioned sofa and collapsing on to it, still clasping her drink. ‘Do cartwheels.’
She shook back her long blonde hair and sighed, staring up at the ceiling.
‘Well?’ Cassie said.
‘That’s what Tyrone always used to say,’ Leonora remembered, still staring at the ceiling. ‘Well.’
Cassie bristled with rage at the impertinence of Leonora reminding her of what her husband used to say. But she knew that to show one moment of anger was to lose the initiative in whatever game it was Leonora was now playing.
‘I haven’t got all evening, Leonora.’
‘Jesus Christ, Cassie. You’re one great long boring cliché.’
‘Just get to the point, Leonora. What about my horse?’
‘He’s not going to win the Derby.’
‘We’ll see about that come next Wednesday.’
‘You didn’t hear what I said, Cassie sweetheart. I said your horse isn’t going to win the Derby. And do you know why he isn’t going to win it? Because he isn’t going to run in it.’
Leonora slowly pulled the edge of her blonde fringe aside with the third finger of one hand and regarded Cassie from under half-shut eyelids.
‘There’s nothing wrong with The Nightingale.’
‘No, darling. But there’s going to be.’
‘Who says?’
‘I do.’
Cassie held Leonora’s gaze, and herself together, although inside she was sickened near death with fear.
‘If you do anything to The Nightingale—’ Cassie began.
‘I’m not going to do a thing, sweetheart,’ Leonora sighed. ‘You are.’
‘And what am I going to do?’
‘You’re going to withdraw him.’
Leonora threw her cigarette away into the empty fireplace, and got up to pour herself another drink.
Cassie stood in silence as she tried to work out why Leonora should imagine Cassie would withdraw the ante-post favourite. It was such an absurd and ridiculous contention that Cassie knew Leonora must have good reason.
‘OK,’ she said, sitting as casually as she could on the arm of a chair, ‘let’s hear it, Leonora.’
‘Well,’ Leonora replied, coming back to the sofa where she was sitting. ‘It’s all very simple. If it wasn’t for you, for your horse rather, this would be my Derby. It probably will be anyway, but I want to make quite sure. And the only way I can make quite, quite sure, is to remove the only horse capable of beating mine. Which is yours.’
Leonora smiled, a pretend sweet-little-thing smile, and lit up another cigarette.
‘There are fourteen other runners in the field, Leonora. Anything can happen in a horse race.’
‘Sure, honey. I’m just trying to minimise the risks. And all things being equal, as they say, without The Nightingale, I win. Pillar to post.’
‘So what if you do?’ Cassie said, rising. ‘The Nightingale runs.’
‘In that case, you poor thing, you’ll never know.’
Turning back, Cassie found Leonora watching her with an almost idle curiosity.
‘What won’t I know?’ Cassie asked, dreading and half anticipating the answer.
‘You’ll never know who was the brat’s father,’ Leonora replied. ‘And you’ll never know the truth about your husband and me.’
‘Which of course if I pull my horse out of the Derby, you’ll volunteer – quite truthfully – just like that.’
Leonora threw back her head and gave her famous hoot of laughter.
‘Sometimes you’re such a silly bitch, Cassie. You don’t think I have proof? You think I’d expect you to take your horse out on an idle promise from someone like me? Jesus.’
Leonora stretched and once more got up from her sofa, strolling across to a bureau with a deliberate insolence. She unlocked the desk.
Cassie remembered another desk unlocking, and another secret being revealed.
Leonora took out from the bureau what Cassie knew she must take out. A letter. Cassie remained standing where she was, refusing to plead for information. Leonora laughed and flapped the letter at her, all but half a dozen paces from where Cassie stood. Still Cassie said nothing. Leonora squared the letter up in her hands and turned it so that Cassie could see the writing. The writing was unmistakably Tyrone’s.
Cassie could have snatched it easily. She could have taken it from Leonora’s hands in a second. She was fit and fast, and Leonora
was drunk and slow. But she didn’t move, because she knew the letter wasn’t in the envelope.
‘I’m disappointed,’ Leonora told her.‘I really thought you’d try to grab it. I guess I should have credited you with a little more intelligence. Because of course you’re right. The letter isn’t in the envelope. The letter is with my lawyer. Along with all darling Ty’s other letters.’
‘I’d like a drink please, if I may,’ Cassie said, more to buy time than anything.
‘Sure you do,’ Leonora said, pouring her one. ‘If I were in your shoes, I’d want half a dozen.’
Leonora handed Cassie a brandy, and then walked away from her back to her seat. Cassie stood and drank the brandy, then put down the empty glass.
‘You propose that I should take my horse out of the Derby in return for some letters my husband wrote you.’
‘You got it? Full marks, McGann!’
‘Who’s to say there’s anything of import in them?’
‘Who’s to say why he wrote to me?’ Leonora smiled again, her smile fast becoming a leer. ‘You’re after the truth, Cassie sweetheart. The truth about Mattie. And the truth about your husband and me. You’re in a gambler’s profession. So I guess you’re just going to have trust to old Lady Luck. Like all those poor saps do who bet on your nags.’
Cassie picked up her handbag. ‘No deal,’ she said, turning for the door.
‘What do you mean!’ came a scream from behind her. ‘No deal!’
‘Exactly that. The Nightingale runs.’
Leonora ran round in front of Cassie and got to the door first. ‘I’ll see you in hell!’
‘Do that. But I’m not taking my horse out.’
‘Surely to Christ you’re not worrying about the stupid punters, are you!’
‘I’m just thinking about one person, Leonora. One person only. And that’s why the horse runs.’
‘I’ll let the newspapers have the letters!’
‘OK.’
‘They’re all about our affair! And Ty’s affair with Antoinette! And how unknown to you he’s the father of your adopted child! Jesus – they’re so sensational they’ll have to print extra editions!’
‘I really have to go, Leonora. Now get out of my way, before I throw you out of it.’
‘See sense, you stupid bitch! Take your goddam horse out of the race! Or I’ll make your family a laughing stock!’
Cassie looked at her, at the desperation on Leonora’s face, at the hate in her eyes.
‘It’s too late, Leonora,’ she said. ‘Tyrone’s dead.’
‘And what in hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘It means you couldn’t get him to love you when he was alive, and you’re certainly not going to get him to love you now he’s dead. Not even in make-believe. Tyrone loved me. Sure, you loved him, and I guess he was most probably the only man you ever really have loved. But he’d never have fallen for you. Or for your tricks. He thought you were ridiculous. He thought you were pathetic. He used to laugh about you.’
‘You’re lying!’ Leonora screamed. ‘You’re a filthy, lying, stupid bitch!’
‘Sure I am,’ Cassie said. ‘But the horse still runs.’
‘He’ll lose! I’ll see to it that he loses! My horse will knock the shit out of him!’
‘On the contrary.’
‘You want a bet?’ Leonora was staring at Cassie with mad, drink-reddened eyes. ‘I said, you want a bet!’
‘I heard you the first time, Leonora.’
‘My horse will beat yours any day of the week!’
Cassie looked at her a little longer, then shrugged.
‘In that case, why all the fuss to make me withdraw him?’
‘For Christ’s sake, I told you! To make mine a certainty!’
Cassie looked at Leonora, spread-eagled absurdly across the door, then walked back into the room.
‘I’ll make you a bet, Leonora. And you know what that is? I’ll bet you anything you like to name there’s nothing incriminating in these letters you say you have.’
‘You’ll only get to find that out if you ever get to read them!’ Leonora hissed.
‘That’s true,’ Cassie agreed. ‘But if you want to make a bet, then that’s mine.’
Leonora remained leaning against the door for a moment, then came back over to the drinks table.
‘You fancy betting the letters on the result of the Derby?’ she asked.
‘OK,’ Cassie shrugged. ‘If that’s how you want it. The Nightingale wins, I get the letters.’
‘And if Millstone Grit wins? What do I get?’
‘You get to win the Derby.’
‘Come on, Cassie McGann. I’m not kidding. I don’t want prize money. I’m a millionairess ten times over. I want a side stake.’
‘You want something more than winning the Derby?’
‘You bet I do. You said you’d bet me anything I liked.’
Cassie looked at Leonora, who was standing with her back to Cassie, drinking another large brandy.
‘Did I?’
‘You said – your words – “I’ll bet you anything you like there’s nothing incriminating in these letters.” You going to stand by that? You’re that confident?’
‘Sure I am,’ Cassie replied. ‘Why? What do you have in mind?’
Leonora turned round and slowly smiled.
‘Claremore.’
As Cassie drove home, with the roof down on her BMW 325 convertible, she felt oddly calm about her decision. If, or rather when, The Nightingale won, then she would have achieved her heart’s ambition, and fulfilled her posthumous promise to Tyrone that she would win the Derby for him. She would also get custody of the letters, although she now firmly believed there was nothing incriminating in them whatsoever. Leonora’s desperation had made her sure of that. And if her horse lost, and there was always that possibility, however remote, she would also lose Claremore. But then if The Nightingale lost, she would have lost everything anyway, everything she had built on the result. So there would be no more point in staying on at Claremore. She would have failed in her task. She would have failed herself. Worst of all, she would have failed Tyrone.
But then The Nightingale was not going to lose.
She stopped her car on the top of a hill high above Claremore and looked down at the estate below her, at the beautiful house, its stone glowing in the warmth of the evening sun, at the immaculate stable yard, the gallops stretching across the fields, and at the blue mountains rising far in the distance. It was a dream come true. Almost. But without. The Nightingale being called first past the post that following Wednesday, it would all have been in vain. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Then she remembered two other things; the brilliance of her horse; and the strength of Tyrone’s credo.
‘To my mind there’s only one way to achieve immortality on the turf,’ Tyrone had maintained. ‘And that’s by winning the Derby. Not a derby, small “d” derby. But the Derby. The Epsom Derby. The daddy of them all. You can forget all the other Classic and Group I races. The horses people remember are the ones that win at the Epsom Derby.’
For a moment though, as Cassie looked down again at the beautiful house below her, and remembered all the work which had gone into its restoration, and the establishment of Claremore as one of Europe’s top racing yards, she thought she must have taken complete leave of her senses, to risk it all on the result of a horserace, albeit the Epsom Derby. Had she done it in a do-or-die attempt to escape finally from Leonora’s thrall? She had seen in Leonora’s eyes when she had turned round how much she meant it, how much she wanted Claremore. And she had realised as she was driving home why it was. Because Leonora wanted to be her, to be Cassie. Why, she had no idea. But that was how it had been, since they first met at the Academy. She had pursued and persecuted Cassie remorselessly, because even with her great wealth and her stunning beauty, Leonora, the girl who had everything when they first crossed paths, was jealous even then of Cassie, the girl w
ho had nothing.
Which was why Cassie knew deep in her heart there was nothing incriminating in those letters, nothing which would prove Leonora’s allegations of an affair. And if there was something in them which established Tyrone as Mattie’s father, then that was something with which Cassie would have to learn to live. She had already in her heart forgiven Tyrone any trespass, and with God’s help she knew she could eventually forgive any possible deception.
Even so she wished he was there by her side, to put his strong arm around her, to cheer her and make her laugh, and give her the strength to hold out. It was all very well, she thought wryly, being a woman in a man’s world. But you were still a woman.
And then she heard it. From the quiet of the still dark green woodland far below her, rose a bird song of such immeasurable richness, of such variety and vigour, that the world and time stood quite and utterly still, and the clouds fell away from the face of the rising moon, as the air was filled with the deep and unforgettable throbbing of a nightingale’s song. Then the note changed to a long-drawn-out and wonderfully plaintive piping note; and as it did so, Cassie looked up to the darkening blue of the night skies above her, and thanked God for making sense of her madness.
Interim Three
High on the Epsom Downs, the camera has stopped rolling, and the crew are packing their equipment away into various cars, busy talking about the merits and demerits of their present modes of transport. But the interviewer is far more interested in the pluses and minuses of the contenders for the following day’s big race.
‘Off the record,’ he asks the pretty woman by his side as they stroll back down Tattenham Hill, ‘is Millstone Grit your only real worry?’
‘I hear Never Mind has improved several pounds since we beat him at Newmarket,’ the woman replies. ‘And I don’t know a great deal about Paul Lestoque’s horse, En Vas, except he doesn’t appear to be bred to get the trip.’
‘Strictly speaking, on a line through Russian Defector,’ the interviewer points out, ‘who beat En Vas at Chantilly, but who finished out the back door himself at Chester behind Daringdoo, the French challenge looks held.’
To Hear a Nightingale Page 70