The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I don’t get drunk,’ Joel said. ‘I just tell it like it is.’

  ‘Isn’t that every drinker’s epitaph?’

  ‘You won’t face the facts, Mrs Rosse,’ Joel persisted. ‘You have got over your husband’s death but your problem is you don’t want to get over it. You think that getting over the fact that he’s dead would be like saying you don’t love him any more. I have news for you. It isn’t.’

  ‘How in hell would you know?’ Cassie said, stopping by the sofa to round on him again. ‘You haven’t ever lost anyone.’

  ‘You don’t have to be a baby to cry,’ Joel said. ‘You don’t have to see an execution to be anti-hanging. You don’t have to—’

  ‘OK, I take your point,’ Cassie interrupted. ‘And now I really am going to bed – and I suggest you do too. Good night.’

  ‘The king is dead,’ Joel muttered as she crossed the room. ‘The king is dead – long live the king.’

  If there had been something worthless to hand, Cassie would have thrown it at him.

  Cassie spent most of the following morning trying to restore her newly returned horse’s confidence. But despite all her efforts The Nightingale would still allow only Bridie and herself near him, showing his teeth and lunging at anyone else who tried to cross the threshold of his stable.

  ‘God knows what they did to him, guv’nor,’ Liam said after he had finally given the horse best and retired the other side of the box door. ‘The Lord alone knows what they did to him and why. Why anyone should lift a hand against a horse as Christian as Himself is beyond my comprehension. For he hasn’t a bad thought in his head nor a bad bone in his body.’

  ‘Ah sure horses get the oddest things into their heads, Liam,’ Bridie said as she and Cassie stood stroking the horse’s neck and trying to get him reinterested in his favourite peppermints. ‘An uncle of mine was attacked by a mare after he’d broken one of her yearlings. He was always rough on horses and he must have gone too far on this occasion and when he’d put the youngster away and gone to tack up the mare she went for him and bit off one of his ears.’

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be any one particular bad cut or lump on him, Bridie,’ Cassie said, having run a hand yet again all over her horse. ‘And there doesn’t seem to be anything about his head at all.’

  ‘It’ll be in his old head, that’s where it’ll be, won’t it, old lad?’ Bridie said, pulling at the horse’s ears. ‘That’s where it’ll be, guv’nor. Locked somewhere inside this wise and wonderful old head of his.’

  When Cassie went to the feed room to make up a feed for the invalid, she found Joel sitting on the corn bin drinking a beer straight from the bottle while Mattie and Liam supervised the distribution of the horses’ midday meal.

  ‘Haven’t you anything better to do?’ she wondered as she passed Joel on her way to collect her horse’s feed.

  ‘Mattie here says the horse seems to let only women near him,’ Joel mused, hopping down off the bin and ambling out after Cassie as she made her way back to The Nightingale’s box with a bucket of food. ‘That he’s gone right off men.’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame him,’ Cassie retorted, turning back the bar at the foot of the stable door with her foot. ‘Seeing what they did to him.’

  ‘They,’ Joel mused. ‘I thought you were convinced your chum was behind it. Leonora Von Whatsit.’

  ‘If she was I hardly imagine she wielded the emasculator,’ Cassie replied. ‘And if I were you, I wouldn’t come any further. He very nearly caught Liam this morning.’

  Joel shut the door and waited while Cassie gave her horse his specially prepared lunch. Once he had his head in the manger, Cassie came quietly out of the stable and headed for her office. Joel strolled across the yard behind her.

  ‘Good day, Mr Benson,’ Rosemany Corcoran said as Joel wandered into the office behind Cassie.

  ‘Miss Corcoran,’ Joel said, pushing his hair out of his eyes with one hand as he surveyed the cluttered room. ‘You’re like me, I see. You believe in the theory of chaos.’

  ‘Only way I can work, Mr Benson,’ the tall dark-haired young woman replied. ‘If I know where anything is I can never find it. Here.’ She picked up some sheets of paper stapled together at the corner and held it out to him. ‘As you requested, a copy of all the owners and trainers with horses at Ascot for the King George meeting. Same as we gave the police.’

  ‘The pol-eece,’ Joel echoed thoughtfully. ‘I love the way you say that. The pol-eece. Like the way you say the fill-ums.’

  Cassie stared first at her secretary and then at Joel. ‘Wait a minute –’ she began, only to be ignored by Joel.

  ‘None of these names rang any bells?’ he asked Rosemary, studying the papers in his hand.

  ‘Not as far as I know, Mr Benson,’ Rosemary replied. ‘The pleece – is that better?’ Joel smiled at her, then resumed reading through the list of names. ‘The police have had it a good few weeks now and we haven’t heard of any arrests.’

  ‘What exactly are you after?’ Cassie asked him, trying her best to keep her temper.

  ‘Looking at who owned what on the fateful day,’ Joel replied. ‘Which owners were running which horses on the day of the kidnap. Your friend Jack Madigan, isn’t it? Your friend Mr Madigan’s line of reasoning. Mattie told me.’

  ‘As my secretary’s already told you, the police have already got that list—’

  ‘The police don’t know what to look for. See here—’ He held the papers out. ‘Two or three European entries in the first,’ Joel mused. ‘Then none in any other race except the big one.’

  ‘Is that significant?’

  ‘It might be,’ Joel replied, shoving the papers in his pocket. ‘It’s certainly worth thinking about.’

  When he found out Cassie was going into Dublin to talk to the detective inspector in charge of the case Joel cadged a lift in with her on the pretext of having to do some shopping.

  ‘Fancy car,’ he remarked as he climbed in the Aston Martin.

  ‘It was my husband’s,’ Cassie told him. ‘Mine’s away being serviced today and anyway I like driving it.’

  ‘You drive pretty well,’ Joel remarked after a few miles which had been passed in silence.

  ‘For a woman, you mean?’ Cassie returned.

  ‘The police should be coming out to see you,’ Joel said, watching a hawk hovering over the verge. ‘Rather than you going to see them.’

  ‘I have some business to do, so I volunteered. Any objections?’ Joel didn’t reply, fishing in his pocket instead for the packet of cigarettes he’d taken from the desk the night before.

  ‘Not in the car if you don’t mind,’ Cassie requested.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Joel grunted, staring at the pack of Cassie’s Silk Cut. ‘You’d hardly notice one of these damn’ things.’

  ‘I’d notice.’

  They drove on for another four or five miles with neither of them speaking, Joel half whistling to himself now and then while turning the pack of cigarettes around and around in his hand.

  ‘If I said anything last night—’ he said, breaking the silence.

  ‘You said plenty,’ Cassie cut in. ‘And if I were you I wouldn’t compound the felony.’

  ‘’Twas a woman who drove me to drink and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it,’ Joel said in a very bad imitation of W. C. Fields.

  ‘As I said, you drink too much.’

  ‘No more than the average sponge.’

  Cassie changed gear and swung the car round a sharp righthander.

  ‘You don’t smile easy, I’ll say that for you,’ Joel said.

  ‘I don’t think there’s a lot to smile about at the moment, that’s why probably.’

  ‘Will you have dinner with me this evening? We could stay in town and have dinner.’

  ‘No thanks. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You just don’t want to have dinner.’

  ‘No.’


  Joel thought for a moment, then breathed in deeply to show he was starting again. ‘No you don’t want to have dinner, or no you don’t want to have dinner with me?’ he asked.

  ‘No I don’t want to have dinner with you,’ she replied. She then turned and looked at him briefly, as if wondering what he was doing there.

  ‘Obviously I goofed,’ Joel said.

  ‘Maybe if you laid off the drink—’

  ‘Most people drink because they have a skin too few,’ he mused, tapping his fingers against the cigarette packet. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘Is that why you drink?’

  ‘I drink to make other people more interesting.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Cassie gave him another brief look only to find he was looking away from her, staring out of his window.

  ‘Not in your case,’ he said after a moment. ‘I don’t need to drink to make you interesting. In fact with you I don’t feel I have to drink at all.’

  They were on the main road into Dublin now, so Cassie put her foot down even harder and flew past a line of traffic.

  ‘Did you have anywhere in mind for dinner?’ she asked.

  ‘I hardly know Dublin,’ he replied. ‘You tell me.’

  * * *

  For once unable to get a table at either of the two restaurants she regularly frequented and unwilling to allow Joel to take her any place where she used to eat with Tyrone, Cassie decided they would have to take pot luck, remembering in time a new restaurant her secretary told her had just opened in a street off St Stephen’s Green. Possibly in the hope that he could persuade Cassie to dine with him Joel had come to town wearing a hand-painted tie hung loosely round the neck of one of his old cricket shirts, as well as a baggy blue linen jacket and a pair of chinos which had long since seen better days.

  ‘I don’t think that tie goes at all with that shirt,’ Cassie murmured as they waited to be shown to their table.

  ‘Then I shall remove the tie,’ Joel replied, ripping the offending article of clothing undone with one hand.

  ‘The management would rather you did not, sir,’ the head waiter put in with an unctuous smile, pointing to a notice by the door. ‘As you see there is a strict dress code, sir, that includes neck ties for the gentlemen.’

  ‘OK then,’ Joel replied reasonably. ‘As a customer I reserve the right to tell you that I don’t like the way you’ve done your hair. Centre partings are absurd.’

  ‘If you would like to come this way, madam,’ the waiter said, having finally chosen to ignore the insult.

  ‘Let’s just cut our losses and go and get some fish and chips at Baggot Street bridge,’ Cassie suggested sotto voce as they were shown into the bar area.

  ‘No way,’ Joel replied. ‘Nothing like a challenge.’

  There were two other people in the bar, overdressed and of indeterminate age, the woman sitting staring blankly into space and the man sat bent over a bowl of nuts which he was slowly but systematically devouring. After an inexcusable period of time which he had spent pouring red wine from a jug into a bottle which he then recorked and placed on the shelf the barman came across to take their order. Without consulting Cassie, Joel ordered two glasses of champagne to be told that the house only served champagne by the bottle. Since Cassie was driving she said she would rather drink Perrier so Joel ordered her the mineral water and himself a dry martini.

  ‘Sure you wouldn’t rather do fish and chips?’ Cassie asked him again.

  ‘You bet,’ Joel said. ‘This place spells fun.’

  The first bottle of wine which was presented to him when they had been shown to their table Joel returned without even tasting it.

  ‘Wrong year,’ he announced. ‘And wrong maker. Otherwise ten out of ten.’

  The waiter duly returned with the correct vintage and label, holding it out for Joel’s inspection with a sigh.

  ‘Want a glass?’ he asked with a glance at Cassie. ‘Since you’re driving you’re allowed two at least.’

  ‘Yes, I’d love a glass,’ Cassie agreed. ‘I can’t eat without wine.’

  ‘Right. Like making love on the floor,’ Joel muttered as the wine waiter poured some wine into a large glass and offered it to him to taste, an offer which earned him one of Joel’s very darkest looks. ‘No,’ he said over-patiently to the waiter, taking the glass and handing it over to Cassie for her to try. ‘Women have noses too. Often better ones.’

  Flattered, Cassie gave it a good nose and a careful taste before pronouncing it good.

  ‘It had better be,’ Joel observed. ‘I have precisely this wine in my cellar at a sixth of this price.’

  The first course was not as disastrous as the second was to be, but even so it did not go unpunished. In answer to their waiter’s standard enquiry as to whether everything was all right, Joel told him it most certainly was not, that the bread was not fresh enough, that Mrs Rosse’s warm goat’s cheese salad was cold and that his chilled watercress soup was warm. For a moment Cassie thought she was going to be embarrassed, but seeing the fleeting expression on her face Joel instructed her not to be, reminding her that they were not being given the meal for nothing.

  As if sensing an impending disaster and wishing to avert the crisis rather than prevent it, the proprietor then appeared to stand for a moment glowering at the two of them as if they were children misbehaving at a school dinner.

  ‘I gather we are not altogether happy,’ he announced, staring at them through two bloodshot eyes over a pair of dirty half moon glasses. ‘But before we start causing further anxieties among our staff I would remind you that when people drop in unannounced to establishments such as this to take what is described as pot luck, that is precisely what is to be expected.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Joel said, placing his soup spoon carefully back into his warm soup. ‘This is only your night job. During the day you’re a pall bearer.’

  ‘Marcel tells me you are not happy with your soup, sir,’ the proprietor returned, after heaving a theatrical sigh. Joel then took the menu out of the proprietor’s hand, directing him to read the description of the soup. ‘Chilled fresh watercress, I believe,’ the proprietor answered.

  ‘Good. So tell me what this is,’ Joel returned, taking the man’s hand and sticking one of his fingers in the soup.

  ‘We are short of staff this evening, sir,’ mine host replied, removing his finger and also the plate of warm soup. ‘Perhaps you would be content if I offered you another helping of soup?’

  ‘Chilled this time,’ Joel said. ‘And a warm goat’s cheese salad for Mrs Rosse.’

  Joel’s main course arrived first and was wrong, Joel having ordered a wing of skate cooked in black butter, soy and ginger only to be served instead with duck in a pineapple sauce. While the mistake was being rectified, Cassie’s spicy pork meat in filo parcels arrived which despite Joel’s exhortations for her to start she allowed to go cold while waiting the twenty minutes it took for Joel’s correct main course to be produced.

  ‘Mrs Rosse’s food has gone cold,’ Joel informed the proprietor having summoned him over.

  ‘That is hardly my fault, sir,’ was the reply.

  ‘It is,’ Joel assured him. ‘When people come out to eat together, they like to eat together. We have not been afforded that opportunity. On top of that our first courses were not presented properly. That’s bad service and an infringement of our rights as customers.’

  ‘I knew you were trouble the moment you walked in the door,’ the proprietor replied. ‘Now I’m going to ask for your bill to be drawn up, and when I have done so I advise you to pay up and leave. You know, I have people like you coming in here the whole time and all they do is complain.’

  ‘I am not surprised,’ Joel said, handing him Cassie’s full plate of food and then his own. ‘It’s a wonder they haven’t burnt the place down.’ He got up, nodding at Cassie to follow him.

  ‘If you try to leave here without paying I shall call the police,’ the proprietor said, breathing in deeply an
d sticking out his pigeon chest.

  ‘If you come on with any more of that, I shall sue,’ Joel said sweetly, handing him a dogeared business card. ‘My name and address. If you look, you’ll see I’m in the same business.’

  ‘Remind me to go out to dinner with you more often,’ Cassie remarked as they made their way to the car.

  ‘None of that was my fault. And I didn’t choose the restaurant.’

  Cassie unlocked the car door and Joel got in.

  ‘When only the rich had watches,’ Joel began as Cassie let herself in her side, ‘only a few were made but they were all good watches. Now everybody’s got a watch and they’re mostly all made in Taiwan.’

  ‘Sometimes I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Cassie said, firing the engine. ‘Correction, make that most of the time. Not that you were exactly that talkative over dinner, mind.’

  ‘When you make love you don’t read a book, do you? Or listen to music?’ Joel asked. ‘Or do you?’

  ‘Meaning when you go out to eat you go out to eat.’

  ‘Primarily.’

  ‘I go out to enjoy myself.’

  ‘You can’t enjoy yourself if everything’s wrong.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. Just as you were to make a fuss,’ Cassie said.

  ‘I didn’t make a fuss,’ Joel replied. ‘I complained. If you made a bet and the bookie shortchanged you?’

  ‘I’d complain. And by the way, I don’t either read or listen to music when I make love.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘I knit.’

  Joel laughed. Not a lot, but he definitely laughed, it seemed for the very first time since Cassie had met him. To Joel it seemed for the very first time for as long as he could remember.

  ‘Do you know where Blaneys is?’ he asked.

  ‘Why?’ Cassie asked, knowing full well since it was one of Tyrone’s and her old haunts.

  ‘I read about it in a magazine in the cottage,’ Joel said. ‘Take us there.’

  ‘Why?’ Cassie asked again, playing for time.

  ‘Because when at first you don’t succeed,’ Joel replied. ‘I’m serious. I’m also half starved.’

  ‘I used to go there all the time with my husband,’ Cassie said cautiously.