The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Very well,’ she sighed, putting down her champagne glass. Really the last thing she had wanted to do at this moment was get involved in a debate about her horse’s future. Christmas Eve was always a special time at Claremore, and already Erin her housekeeper had set about fulfilling their Christmas traditions, piling the fires high with logs and the kitchen table with food before propping open the double front doors, hoping as she did each Christmas that this would be the year Claremore would be the house to which the Holy Family would choose to come. It was an ancient Celtic tradition that Cassie adored and hoped would never be broken as long as the house of Claremore stood, so this did not seem to be the moment to be discussing family business. Yet she knew that if she left the argument unresolved there was a danger it would hang over them for the rest of the evening, which was why she decided it would doubtless be best to put the matter to bed once and for all before they sat down to enjoy their traditional Christmas Eve dinner.

  ‘Your future in the horse is quite secure, Mattie, as is yours, Josephine, so there is no need for you to worry,’ she said, taking up their unanswered questions. ‘As a racehorse Nightie is going to keep right on belonging to me and to me alone. I don’t think you can argue with that, either of you, because you know the reason why. The day Nightie was born I dedicated him to your father and what we’ve achieved together since then – well. You don’t need telling. You both understand it fine.’ Cassie paused and looked at the portrait of Tyrone above the fireplace painted as she had commissioned it after his death, mounted on his favourite hack Old Flurry. She loved the painting, but on grey days or black days when she looked up at it all she could see was that most terrible of all moments, just as if it had happened that morning, the moment she turned to see Tyrone lying dead in the grass with one temple of his handsome head kicked in.

  ‘Hel-lo?’ Josephine called, prompting her back to reality. ‘Anybody home?’

  ‘Where was I?’ Cassie said, taking a sip of her wine to give herself a moment more to collect herself and her thoughts.

  ‘You were talking about our future security,’ Mattie said, taking out his spinhaler and squirting a shot of Prednisone down his throat. ‘That there was no cause for us to worry. But then neither Jo nor myself said there was.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Cassie replied, trying to ignore his asthma but unable to quell her usual feelings of anxiety as she watched him inhale. ‘When Nightie retires to stud here at the end of next year I shall keep a half interest in him and I intend to divide the other half interest in equal shares between you two.’

  ‘What about Padraig?’ Josephine asked. ‘Isn’t he to get any shares?’

  ‘I’ve thought long and hard about Padraig, Josephine,’ Cassie replied. ‘As you know, adopting Padraig wasn’t the same thing at all as adopting Mattie. Your father and I adopted Mattie because after I lost my second child I couldn’t have any more children—’

  ‘Yes I know, Mums,’ Josephine interrupted. ‘And you adopted Erin’s baby in order to give him a good name. Which was great of you, absolutely. But even so, because he is technically a Rosse—’

  ‘Exactly,’ Cassie agreed. ‘Padraig is only technically a Rosse. When poor Erin found herself pregnant by Father Patrick the agreement we made was that I would adopt the child and Erin would bring it up as her own and no-one in the village would be any the wiser, seeing the way she helped bring you two up. Which is exactly how it turned out. Everyone thought Padraig was a straightforward adoption just as you were, Mattie.’

  ‘But won’t Erin still think Padraig has some sort of claim?’ Josephine wondered. ‘Not that it matters because it doesn’t. I’m just curious, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s not how Erin thinks, Josephine,’ Cassie replied. ‘She wouldn’t and doesn’t expect anything like that for Padraig. Even so, I’ve made sure he won’t go empty-handed. He’ll get a decent present when he reaches his majority.’

  ‘Seriously,’ Mattie said after a moment of silence, staring at his beautiful and still dark-haired mother in her much loved pale pink Dior suit, silk shirt and two strands of pearls at her neck. ‘I really wasn’t thinking about us when I was talking about Nightie.’

  ‘I know that, Mattie,’ Cassie replied. ‘If you were that sort of person I wouldn’t make such a settlement on you. Same goes for Jo.’

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Josephine said. ‘Anyway – are you sure it’s for the best? I mean taking into account what Mattie said about Nightie’s value at stud – that is a serious amount of money.’ Josephine suddenly stopped and sighed impatiently, turning around to the door behind her, which had blown open. ‘Oh, God, will you just feel the draught whistling in from the Hall?’ she asked. ‘I do wish someone would get Erin out of this crazy habit of leaving all the doors open every Christmas Eve.’

  ‘Jo darling,’ Cassie replied, getting up to close the door. ‘I do know a bit about what a lot of money can do and does to an awful lot of people. Which is why when the time does come to capitalize on the horse the money will be put into trusts for you both and will be professionally managed. So that you can’t blow it all just like that – or, even more important, so that someone else can’t get their hands on it. Anyway—’ Cassie put up her hands to prevent further discussion. ‘Anyway, that day is still some way off. But I just wanted you to know that was the arrangement. So that you didn’t think I was being entirely selfish.’ Cassie smiled at both her children and put down her empty champagne glass. ‘Heavens, will you look at the time?’ she said. ‘Erin will murder us if we’re not ready dead on the dot of half past.’

  ‘So what’s your plan, Ma?’ Mattie asked as they all got to their feet. ‘For next season, I mean. Another tilt at the King George VI, yes?’

  ‘I thought we’d open our account at the Curragh with the Royal Whip Stakes,’ Cassie replied. ‘Then take in either the Coronation Cup or the Eclipse, preferably the Eclipse, then certainly a second go at the King George. After that we’ll give the old boy a short holiday before getting him ready for Longchamps again to see if Nightie can be the first horse since Alleged to win the Arc two years running.’

  ‘You know what your trouble is, don’t you?’ Mattie sighed, shaking his handsome head in mock sadness.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You will keep thinking small.’

  As Cassie well knew while she lay soaking in her bath ten minutes later, most people would have been more than happy to retire their dual Derby winners at the end of their three-year-old career, particularly if their horses had won the listed races which her now internationally famous colt had won. What she did not know quite as surely was why she was so determined to keep The Nightingale in training as a four-year-old. The risks were there for all to see except, it would appear, herself. Yet she knew that if she had in fact over-raced her horse as a three-year-old, which was what a tiny minority of her critics were trying to imply, and that consequently The Nightingale did not train on, then her horse’s reputation could be seriously dented. There was no denying this fact, particularly since Tyrone had been in the habit of forever reminding them both how notoriously fickle the racing world was. And God, they’re never so fickle as when they’re giving off as to whose fault it is when a horse doesn’t train on, particularly a horse they’ve all been praising to the skies the previous season, he would say. You should hear them, Cassie my love. How, when it came to it, Pegasus never really beat anything worthwhile during his reign as a three-year-old. There’s little the boys in the grandstands like more than to put up something to be admired and then shoot it down in flames.

  So if Cassie’s big black homebred had indeed decided he’d had enough of racing and flopped as a four-year-old, even though he would still be able to command a very high fee at stud his fame would have been tarnished and question marks would be raised over the value of his form.

  Worse than that, however – far, far worse – would be if he injured himself.

  Only two months earlier Cassie had seen th
e very best four-year filly in training killed on the racecourse. Gunpowder Plot, George Montgomery’s lovely dark grey which had won the Oaks the previous year and had trotted up in that year’s Eclipse, broke a shoulder coming off the top bend at Goodwood and had to be destroyed. The Mont-gomerys, who were friends of Cassie’s, were inconsolable at the loss of their beautiful homebred horse, George bitterly regretting his decision to keep the horse in training. It was not her value as a brood mare over which he lamented, as he told Cassie afterwards, it was as if he had lost a member of his family. If anything similar should happen to The Nightingale Cassie knew that she would never forgive herself, and neither would her children. Nor too would the legion of The Nightingale’s fans.

  Yet here she was prepared to take that very risk, she reminded herself as she ran some more hot water into her bath, flying in the face of all the advices she had been given, financial and equine, because that was what she wanted, not for herself but for Tyrone. But why? she asked herself as she lay back in the soft foam of her bath and stared at the ceiling above her. Why should she be risking it all? If she retired The Nightingale now she would be rich for life. If the horse lived for another ten to fifteen years, which it was perfectly reasonable to suppose he would, given the table of average lifespans for stallions, then capitalizing now on the forecast of the horse’s covering a book of twenty-five mares a season at £100,000 a throw The Nightingale would be worth £25 million. Neither she nor her children nor even their children nor their children’s children would ever want again. Claremore would be safe, as would the jobs of all who worked there. Of course there was no guarantee that The Nightingale would turn out to be as brilliant a sire as he was a racehorse, but with his astonishing record as a three-year-old it was a gilt-edged certainty he would have a full book of the best mares in the world for at the very least the next five or six seasons, even if every single one of his progeny turned out to be squibs.

  So why am I not heeding the good advice I’m getting? Cassie wondered to herself. I should be thinking of me and my children and my future grandchildren, and of the future of everyone connected with Claremore, surely not of a man who lies dead and buried in the village graveyard, however wildly and madly I loved him. I have to be crazy. It just doesn’t make any sense. Nightie won one of the greatest Derbies ever seen on Epsom Downs in the joint fastest time ever recorded, and then for the rest of the season he simply brushed aside any further opposition, winning all his subsequent races without ever being asked a serious question. And only a little over two months ago at Longchamps he did it again, producing that murderous turn of foot of his to accelerate past a really high-class field of international horses to win Europe’s most valuable race, so what else do we both have to prove? Tell me, Tyrone, please, please tell me why. Your family’s future is secure. I’m richer than either of us ever imagined I would be, even in our very wildest dreams. I am as happy as I could possibly be without you, my love, so will you please just tell me what in heaven’s name I am thinking of doing this for?

  Because, Cassie McGann, of how you are, an inner voice returned. Because you want to show them, that’s why.

  Closing her eyes in peace now that she understood herself the better, Cassie lay back in the bath, sinking down in the soft hot suds until the water lapped under her chin. Almost immediately the telephone on the chair beside her rang.

  ‘Hello, this is Claremore. Cassie Rosse speaking,’ she said mechanically, her mind still on her great decision, which she felt she was now about to reverse. There was a long silence, such a long silence that she finally heard herself asking who was calling.

  ‘Don’t worry who this is, Mrs Rosse,’ an unrecognizable voice said in her ear. ‘This is simply a warning not to run The Nightingale again.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Cassie asked after a moment.

  ‘You heard me, Mrs Rosse.’

  ‘You bet I did,’ Cassie replied, ‘and the answer is go to hell.’

  ‘You’re thinking you’ve had these calls before and so what. The so what is this one is different,’ the voice continued, forcing Cassie to go on listening. ‘The difference being that if you insist on running the horse next season you will regret that decision for the rest of your life.’

  Then the phone went dead. For a moment Cassie sat in her bath just staring at the humming receiver before slowly replacing it in its cradle. Sure, you bet I’ve had calls like that before from scum like you, plenty of ’em, she thought. And I’ve ignored every one of them, which is just what I intend to do with this one. I shall simply change my personal number yet again and do precisely what I see and think fit.

  Along with her personal number she would also change her mind, she decided as she lay back once more in her bath smiling grimly to herself at the irony, because if her antagonists had delayed making that call until after Christmas they would not have had to bother making it at all. For the simple reason that prior to the call Cassie had decided to do exactly what they wanted her to do, namely not to keep The Nightingale in training as a four-year-old, and for all the right reasons. He was too valuable to be risked, she had concluded. Family and expert opinion was perfectly correct. To keep the horse in training could well prove to be a Pyrrhic gesture which if it backfired might jeopardize the security of both her business and, more important, her family.

  One telephone call had changed all that.

  It was not simply that Cassie was not a person to be bullied. However stubborn she might be she was not so obdurate that just because someone warned her not to do something she would go right ahead and do it out of sheer defiance. What changed her mind was the principle that lay behind the threat, namely that unless the honest people involved in racing resisted the forces of darkness which whatever their size were ever present in the sport, then racing would fester. Like everyone else who made their living honestly from the Turf she knew all too well that while corruption was not exactly epidemic it most certainly was endemic, so by refusing to be frightened off and making it known she had resisted the threat Cassie could at least set an example for others, however token it might seem to some.

  Most of all it is important not just for racing itself but for its public, Cassie. The public must always be shown that those in racing who genuinely love their sport are in no circumstances whatever to be frightened into submission.

  Thank you, Mr Rosse, she said to herself as she got out of her bath to wrap her slender frame in a thick, soft white towelling dressing gown. As usual you came through at exactly the right time.

  Two

  The news that The Nightingale was to stay in training was greeted with universal delight, even more so once Cassie elaborated on the reasons behind her decision. When everyone learned the full details even the professional knockers had nothing to say because they found themselves disarmed. The horse returned from his winter holiday in Italy sound, well and in high spirits and once back in work the early indications were that he seemed to have lost none of his old zest and enthusiasm, particularly after Liam, Cassie’s head lad, had finished his six weeks’ roadwork on the horse in the foothills of the mountains which rose behind Claremore and Dexter Bryant, Cassie’s regular and fully retained jockey, had ridden him in his first serious piece of work. When Dexter jumped off the horse, having completed a good breeze-up over six furlongs, he announced delightedly to Cassie that if anything the big horse felt even stronger than ever.

  ‘Not only that, guv’nor, but he’s coming good early,’ the American said over breakfast in the kitchen back at Claremore. ‘We’ll need to go a tad easy on him to make sure he doesn’t peak too early. His first race is six weeks off yet, and the way Nightie worked this morning he’ll be ready for action in less than a month.’

  Having seen from the ground how easily the horse had worked and how swiftly he had quickened when Dexter had asked him to do so for no more than a dozen or so strides at the end of the canter, Cassie agreed with her jockey’s suggestion that they should put the horse’s first proper ga
llop back for at least a week and just keep him sweet until then by letting him stretch out over long, easy canters.

  ‘As a matter of academic interest, Dex, tell me what you’d do if you were going to get at a horse nowadays,’ Cassie asked from nowhere, getting up to brew some fresh coffee.

  ‘You had some more not so idle threats, is that it, Cassie?’ Dexter wondered.

  ‘I don’t know what I get or don’t get, Dex. I tell Rosemary to censor the mail every day. What the eye doesn’t see, you know? Not that I take much notice of that sort of thing anyway. Even so, now and then you begin to wonder at all the hate there is around.’

  ‘Don’t you bother with it, boss,’ Liam piped up. ‘Sure if people like yourself listened to all the crackpots who write to yous or ring you up you’d never get a horse to the races.’

  ‘The point is, Liam, that whatever I may or may not think of the threats, finally you can’t stop someone who wants to stop a horse, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Come on – we have the best stable security system in Ireland, boss,’ her head lad protested. ‘Besides which there’s not a person in the yard who wouldn’t lay down their lives for the horse so there isn’t. And for you too of course.’

  ‘I know that, Liam, and I’m not doubting anyone’s integrity or their devotion. But the point is horses get stopped, and it’s not only horses from the little stables. You know as well as I do that certain Derby favourites have been got at even in recent times in spite of the most massive security precautions.’

  ‘You wanted to know what I would do if I was going to stop a horse,’ Dexter said. ‘Well, I guess if I was up against a security system like the one we have here I’d try to get at him somewhere that isn’t quite so well protected.’

  ‘You mean like on the way down to the start on the course,’ Mattie said, looking up briefly from his bacon and egg.