The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘You may not be being serious, Matt, but I sure as hell am,’ Dexter said. ‘It’s a fact that most racecourses do have their vulnerable areas. But I wasn’t just thinking racecourses. What about out there on the gallops, on the roads, in the foothills, you know what I mean? There’s simply no way you can have round the clock vigilance.’

  ‘Ah, come on, Dex, will yous?’ Liam said. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting the enemy’s going to lie in wait with blowpipes and poisoned darts, are yous?’

  The rest of the lads round the huge scrubbed table where they all breakfasted every morning after work roared with laughter and began fantasizing about how best to blow a poisoned dart into the right horse in a string of a dozen trotting or cantering animals.

  ‘OK.’ Dexter grinned and then shook his head wryly. ‘But the state of the art as far as stopping horses goes has been out of the darts and blowpipe stage for quite some time.’

  ‘So what is the state of the art, Dexter?’ Cassie asked. ‘Do you have any particular gadget in mind?’

  ‘You could try lasers,’ Dexter suggested.

  The whole table fell silent for a moment with all eyes on the American jock. Then Liam stubbed out his cigarette in a large cut glass ashtray, the very first racing trophy ever won by his late guv’nor Tyrone.

  ‘Lasers, Dex,’ Liam said. ‘Like as in science fiction. Like as on the teevee?’

  ‘No, Liam,’ Dex replied with a shake of his head. ‘Lasers like as in fact. Like as in real life.’

  ‘Lasers would leave a mark, wouldn’t they, Dex?’ Cassie wondered, putting down her cup of coffee to stare thoughtfully at her stable jockey. ‘They’d leave scar tissue, surely? And wouldn’t you have to be at pretty close range to make sure of sufficient accuracy?’

  ‘I really don’t know the details, guv’nor,’ Dex replied. ‘What I do know is that rumour has it that if you hit the right target on a horse the scar tissue is so small you’d only find it if you were looking for it and then if you were very lucky. Same thing goes for range. The state of the art is pretty well advanced now, as I gathered when I was back home at Christmas. My dad told me about a couple of cases where these horses had mysteriously gone real sick just before their races. One of them was later found to have serious liver damage although all the regulation function tests they’d run up to the time of him getting sick had been a hundred per cent good, and the other horse had some sort of brainstorm it seems. Went berserk when they were walking him back to the barn, ran full steam into the side of the fodder lorry and broke his neck. When they cut him open they found he had this massive scarring of the brain.’

  ‘And nothing else?’ Liam asked in wonder. ‘No other marks on him at all?’

  ‘A scorch mark the size of one of those freckles of yours, Liam,’ Dex replied, pointing to the back of Liam’s hand. ‘Right between the horse’s ears in the middle of his forehead. That was the extent of the visible damage.’

  ‘I don’t see why such a thing shouldn’t be possible,’ Cassie said, in response to the nonplussed looks on her lads’ faces. ‘For the life of me I don’t understand the technicalities but from what I’ve read in the papers and seen on the television it seems that tomorrow’s world is already with us.’

  ‘You don’t really have to understand the technicalities,’ Mattie said suddenly, looking up at his mother. ‘Even if there’s only the slightest truth in what Dex says, then what we have to do is pull our fingers out and double our security.’

  ‘I wonder what your father would have done in these circumstances,’ Cassie said the next morning as she and Mattie sat on their hacks watching the third string come towards them up the gallops.

  ‘I wish you’d stop forever wondering that,’ Mattie replied. ‘He’s not here any more, so he can’t tell us.’

  Cassie looked round at her son in surprise. Mattie was usually so patient and sympathetic whenever Cassie fell to wondering about Tyrone.

  ‘I don’t think you should have said that, Mattie. You know perfectly well that thinking about what your father would have done is just a way I have of working things out.’

  ‘Yes I do,’ Mattie agreed, without changing his tone. ‘But maybe now it’s time to find some other way of working things out. You can’t keep relying on Dad. Not now he’s dead and gone.’

  ‘Dead but not gone,’ Cassie replied. ‘Your father will never be gone.’

  ‘Fine.’ Mattie sighed impatiently. ‘So he’ll never be gone, fine. Not from your memory, of course he won’t. I realize that. But he can’t actually help you at times like this. And to my way of thinking—’

  ‘You can think what you like, Mattie Rosse,’ Cassie cut in. ‘But it has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘It has everything to do with me.’ Mattie swung round in his saddle to face her. ‘I’m your assistant trainer. I have to help make decisions – and what I decide has to be based on how things are now. Not on what someone who’s long since dead and buried might or might not have thought or done.’

  ‘You don’t set much store by past experience, then?’

  ‘Not really, Ma. I prefer experience to be hands on.’

  Cassie eyed her son steadily, then, gathering up her reins, kicked her hack on straight into a canter.

  ‘In that case you should be watching what’s happening on the gallops!’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘Rather than giving me uncalled for and what is more totally unqualified advice!’

  Mattie sighed as he watched his mother ride off to where the string of horses was now pulling up. He knew what he had said had been out of line, but then, as he and his sister had agreed before Josephine had left to return to London, something had to be said, it had to be said soon, and someone had to say it.

  Josephine had made one half-hearted attempt, on her last evening at Claremore, but after her mother had quickly and pointedly changed the subject she had chickened out, leaving her reluctant brother to do the dirty work. Mattie had protested, feeling with some justification that the advice that their mother should start trying to live her own life might come better from someone of the same sex, namely his sister, but he had lost the argument as brothers usually do when confronted by older sisters, Josephine managing to force a promise from him to say what they had both agreed should be said. Even so, as he sat miserably watching his mother pull up her horse alongside the string of horses who were now walking off the exertions of their gallops in a large circle a hundred yards below him, he knew he could have timed the giving of his advice a lot better. But then, as his sister was forever reminding him, timing and tact were not his greatest strengths.

  With a deep inward groan he gathered his reins up, but just as he was preparing to ride down and join the string, the mare he was riding decided for some reason best known to herself to take a turn before setting off. As she did so, Mattie suddenly caught the glint of sunshine on something metallic in the line of hawthorn bushes which divided this particular section of the gallops off from the road. At first he thought it was just a newspaper scout stealing a quiet look through his binoculars at the line of horses working, but then as he watched he saw the sun was catching something considerably smaller than the lens of a pair of race glasses.

  He was a good furlong if not more from the line of bushes but even so he thought he might still have just enough time to catch the trespasser provided whoever it was had not left his car close by. Unluckily, that was precisely what the unknown visitors had done. By the time Mattie had galloped his horse hard up to the bushes he heard the slamming of two car doors and an engine being started. Standing up in his irons to look over the hedge, he just had time to see a small mud-covered black Peugeot GTi shoot past him with two men on board, one of them he could swear holding what looked very much like a high-velocity rifle.

  Carefully Cassie picked the still fresh white and buttercup yellow daffodils out of the perforated flower holder on the grave and laid them on the grass beside her before replacing them with a bunch of even fresher flowers
.

  ‘These are the first of the tulips,’ she said as she began to arrange the pastel pink and pale yellow blooms. ‘Remember how much you used to look forward to them flowering? While I was forever telling you that I thought they were town flowers and that I much preferred daffodils. But I know what you mean now, about your “unofficial roses” as you called them. As long as they’re planted out as if they’re wild, such as under the box hedges and among the trees, you’re right – they look wonderful. And they look particularly wonderful this year. I planted this new variety last fall. They’re called black but in fact they’re more a sort of very dark crimson, and although they look great down at Claremore I thought they might be a bit sombre up here. These colours, these pale yellows and pinks, are wonderful. They’re so delicate and so full of spring. And that’s something else you loved so much. Coming out of winter into spring. Not that you were ever sad, Ty, not for one moment. I don’t ever remember you being really sad, even when things were tough. Like when we lost the baby. I know how you hurt, but you were so strong then. However much you hurt inside you never really let it show, and I’m sure that if you had we’d never have got through it. But now the sun’s shining again, my darling, the spring sun is shining through, the earth is warm again and all the horses are through their winter coats.

  ‘And I need your help.’

  Having now finished arranging the fresh flowers Cassie sat back on her heels and for a moment looked up at the blue sky above her.

  ‘I had an argument with Mattie this morning,’ she said. ‘He thinks I should stop calling on you for help, or at least I should stop wondering what you would do in certain circumstances. In other words I should start living my own life. But then he doesn’t understand about you and me. How could he? He’s barely out of his teens, so how could he even begin to understand what you and I meant to each other? And why I still turn to you. And why you are always with me and always will be. But even so, I suppose it must be a bit upsetting for Mattie – and for Josephine, for that matter, when she’s home – to hear me always going on about you in front of them, because it means they can’t get on with living their own lives. Not if I’m always referring and deferring to you. So perhaps if I stop doing it in front of them. If I try not to mention you except to myself it might be best. If I just keep you to myself. To my own thoughts only.’ Still looking up at the sky, she closed her eyes tight. ‘Will you forgive me, Ty?’ she wondered in a whisper. ‘Will you understand if I just talk to you in my head? When I’m not up here by your graveside, I mean. You’ll understand, won’t you? Because you’ll know I’m not forgetting you. You know I’ll never forget you. Because you know I promised you I would never forget you, not even for one second. I promised you that on the day you died. Like I promised that there will never be anyone else in my life, ever. Besides our family, I mean. Because there is no-one who could ever, ever take your place.’

  Above her the first lark of spring hovered and sang, just as another lark had sung above them both one day long ago when in the very same churchyard, a few feet away from where Tyrone himself now lay, together they had buried their stillborn baby son.

  It was the driest spring in Ireland for as long as anyone could remember. Not only was it dry but it was also unseasonably hot, so that by the second week in May the advance going for the spring meeting at the Curragh racecourse was announced as good to firm, although the on dit was that it was more firm than good.

  ‘Sure ’twill not worry him an inch,’ Liam kept saying every time the subject of the ground was brought up. ‘Himself has won on the good and the good to firm, and with that well-rounded action of his he isn’t the sort of horse who won’t put down because it’s a touch firmer than good to firm. Anyway, just look at the entries. Sure there’s only the six entered including Himself, and two of those I know for certain are non-runners. If the others run, won’t it only be for the place money.’

  Even so Cassie worried. She had never raced The Nightingale on firm ground and had always vowed that she never would. But when it came to deciding whether or not she should run him she was outvoted from the start not only by Liam whose opinion she greatly respected but also by Mattie, who was also certain that due to the lack of any serious opposition the race would only be an exercise canter.

  ‘If you’re thinking of sending him to Epsom for the Coronation Cup, then he’s going to need this race,’ he argued. ‘There isn’t another suitable race for him before that, and even if there was, who’s to say the ground will be right then? The forecast is that this warm weather’s going to continue for another two weeks, and if that’s the case we’ll be looking at firm going everywhere.’

  Finally, having learned from racing’s bush telegraph that of the five other entries only the two least-considered horses were going to stand their ground, rather than disappoint his legion of fans Cassie decided to run The Nightingale. He looked a picture of health in the paddock, went to post as if he was in love, and duly won without ever coming out of a canter.

  ‘He’d have won if he’d run backwards,’ Dexter told the Claremore entourage as he hopped off the horse’s back in the winner’s enclosure. ‘He hasn’t just trained on, guv’nor, I’d say if anything this season he might even be half a stone better.’

  ‘If that’s the case, Dex,’ Liam said as he threw the paddock sheet over the horse, ‘then there isn’t a horse born who can beat him, even if they start the day before.’

  Yet instead of allaying Cassie’s worries the result of the race and the very visible proof that The Nightingale had trained on into his fourth year had precisely the opposite effect.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Mattie wondered as he drove his mother back to Claremore. ‘How can it possibly make you even more anxious? I thought your only worry was whether or not Nightie would train on. But you saw for yourself today that he has, so what’s the big problem?’

  ‘What I also saw were the crowds, Mattie,’ Cassie replied. ‘There was nearly as big a crowd to see him today at the Curragh as there was last year on Derby day. And after he had won they were all slapping him and patting him and trying to pull hairs out of his tail and mane. And what about that lunatic woman who rushed into the parade ring and tried to kiss him? That’s what my problem is, Mattie. They couldn’t contain the crowds.’

  ‘I see,’ Mattie said, turning off into a side road to take a short cut away from the long queues of race traffic. ‘You mean if some nutter like that woman can get to him in the parade ring—’

  The sentence hung in the air for a moment as they both considered the possibilities.

  ‘It was you who said that Nightie would be at his most vulnerable on the racecourse,’ Cassie said, turning to look at her handsome son and thinking as always how amazingly alike his adoptive father he had become. With his dark tightly curled hair and the insouciant set of his mouth with its long upper lip he would have little difficulty passing for the young Tyrone Rosse. ‘There was a crowd around the saddling box,’ she continued. ‘There was a crowd round him coming into the parade ring, there was that lunatic woman in the ring itself, they practically mobbed him on his way out onto the course, and as for after the race—’

  Cassie gave a great sigh and lapsed into another silence.

  ‘Yes,’ Mattie said thoughtfully after a moment. ‘It’s a bit of a problem all right.’

  ‘A bit of one?’ Cassie echoed. ‘It’s a king-size one, Mattie. We’re talking mania here. The press have been writing Nightie up as if he’s some sort of god come back to earth in equine form and he’s totally captured the public’s imagination. Not just the racing public, but people in general. You saw them today – people who I’ll swear have never been on a racecourse before let alone ever seen a thoroughbred in the flesh. Fathers were perching their kids up on their shoulders to catch sight of him, little girls were screaming when they saw him the way they used to scream for the Beatles, and did you see those nuns after the race? They’d lined up all these poor sick and infirm people just
outside the winner’s enclosure in the hope that even just a sight of the horse would somehow alleviate the despair and the suffering. I never imagined for one moment it would be like this. Not for a moment.’

  ‘No, neither did I,’ Mattie replied carefully. ‘But then the media have been winding the public up all winter about the horse, and let’s face it, they have a lot to go on. There simply hasn’t been a horse that’s captured everyone’s imagination the way Nightie has since Arkle, and I dare say there hasn’t ever been a Flat racehorse – at least certainly not in living memory – to attract such a following. Following? Good God, what am I saying?’ Mattie laughed and banged the steering wheel with both hands. ‘Devotion is what I mean,’ he said. ‘From what I saw with my own eyes today – well. It was as if they worshipped the horse.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ Cassie pondered. ‘Worshipped’s about the size of it, Mattie. And I’m not sure I can cope with worship.’

  ‘Do you have any choice?’ Mattie glanced round at his mother as he slowed down to turn into the lane which led to Claremore’s back gates. ‘It’s not something you can duck. It’s not something any of us can. But heck – listen – you have a great team here. Everyone pulls their weight. Everyone knows what Nightie is—’

  ‘No they don’t,’ Cassie interrupted. ‘No-one knows. They can’t even begin to know. It’s hard enough to fathom out the so-called ordinary horses we all have in our yards. Because horses are something else. They always have been. Horses are something else altogether. But then when you get to horses like Nightie—’

  Hearing the distant tone in his mother’s voice, Mattie pulled the car onto the verge and cut the engine. For a moment they both sat looking out of the side window across the view that was Claremore, down into the valley of lush green fields, beyond to the gallops and then finally to the house itself silhouetted against the late afternoon sun.

  ‘Did you ever read any Swift at school?’ Cassie turned back to look at Mattie. ‘Your father was forever reading Swift. He was a mad fan.’