The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  Once they’d all settled into the kitchen Erin filled the kettle and put it on while Cassie fetched a fresh bottle of whisky.

  ‘Good,’ Niall said as he sat wearily down at the table. ‘So are we all met?’

  It was not until the question was asked that Cassie realized they were not all met, and that one of their number had gone missing.

  ‘Erin?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Erin replied. ‘All I know is that Rosemary had an important message for him and after that I haven’t seen sight nor sound of Mr Benson. Not since I saw him hurrying away off down in the direction of the cottage.’

  Thirteen

  ‘That was this afternoon,’ Erin told Cassie. ‘While you was all seeing the horse into the theatre.’

  ‘Did Rosemary say what the message was?’

  ‘Just that Mr Benson had a number to call in England, that was all.’

  ‘And he left without saying anything?’

  ‘There’s a note on your desk.’

  It was one of Joel’s business cards, pushed inside a large envelope. It just said: Please let me know how he is.

  She rang him at both the numbers on the card, one his studio in Barnes and the other the club in Covent Garden. She got no reply to her first call and an answer machine on her second, on which after reflection she left a brief message saying that the horse had pulled through the operation but that nothing certain would be known for at least twenty-four hours. That was all she said.

  ‘He’s probably jealous of the amount of attention you give to The Nightingale,’ Mattie volunteered.

  ‘He probably had something important to get back to doing,’ Cassie replied, with a look at her son as if she wondered whether perhaps he was accusing Joel of being afflicted with something he himself suffered from. ‘I thought you liked Joel.’

  ‘I do,’ Mattie said, picking up the telephone. ‘Up to a point.’

  Before Cassie could draw breath and find what that point was Mattie had dialled the number of one of their owners with whom he then had a long and involved discussion about possible entries for his horses. In response to the deliberate truncation of their conversation Cassie immediately took herself off to the yard.

  She was too proud to return the call she gathered Joel made while she was out doing evening stables. She pretended there was no need since according to Mattie all Joel had done was to leave a message saying he was glad to hear The Nightingale had survived his operation.

  ‘I thought you liked Joel,’ Mattie remarked with a straight face as he poured himself a drink.

  ‘I do. Up to a point.’

  ‘The point being?’

  ‘That is really none of your business.’

  ‘It will be, if you stop only liking him up to a point.’

  Cassie tried to ignore the provocation, but there was something in Mattie’s tone of voice as well as the way he was watching her that made her realize he would not let it rest until he had made her confront him.

  ‘OK,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Let’s have it. You’ve obviously got something on your mind.’

  Mattie drank half his whisky in one draught then looked down into his glass. ‘You’ve already said it was none of my business.’

  ‘And I meant it. But you seemed determined that it is.’

  ‘I’m only thinking of you.’ Mattie looked up from his glass straight at Cassie.

  Cassie waited, refusing to prompt any further.

  ‘It’s just that I was speaking to Jo,’ Mattie continued a moment later. ‘She rang earlier.’ He paused, looking directly at his mother as if to make her challenge him into telling her what he had discovered. Again Cassie refused to be drawn, busying herself instead with arranging the bowl of flowers on her desk. ‘Don’t you want to know what she had to say?’ Mattie asked with a sigh.

  ‘I’m sure if it was anything that concerns me she’ll call back.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that,’ Mattie said, finishing his drink and at once pouring himself another.

  ‘Obviously not, judging from the amount of Dutch courage required.’

  ‘Jo heard something. About Joel. Quite a lot of things as it happens.’

  Cassie’s heart missed a beat but still she said nothing.

  ‘Come on, Ma,’ Mattie said with sudden impatience. ‘You’re not making this very easy. Jo and I worry about you. We don’t want to see you taken for a ride, which apparently is something at which Mr Joel Benson excels. He’s famous for his rich and lonely ladies, it seems.’

  ‘I am not lonely,’ Cassie said almost too quickly before Mattie could continue.

  ‘You’re rich. And you’re a perfect target for someone like that. I remember you saying yourself that most artists were spongers. That they made a profession of living off people.’

  ‘I never said that,’ Cassie replied. ‘Or if I did I was only quoting your father. And he only meant it as a joke.’

  ‘Joking about things isn’t that different from saying things when you’re drunk,’ Mattie countered. ‘You’ve often ticked Jo and me off for that. For saying we were only joking after saying something provocative. And you’re right. It is just another way of telling the truth.’

  ‘I should imagine what Jo has heard falls into the category of idle gossip,’ Cassie said, ignoring the philosophical detour. ‘Straight from the badmouth brigade.’

  ‘I don’t know who told her,’ Mattie replied quickly, which made Cassie smile to herself. ‘But it must have been a reliable source because you know Jose. She wouldn’t say something like that unless she was one hundred per cent sure.’

  ‘Josephine is the same as most of us. She never knows how much of what she says is true.’ Cassie finished, rearranging the already perfectly arranged flowers and pointedly looked at her watch. ‘Now I have to go and get dressed. I’m going out to dinner.’

  By the time she got up to her room Cassie was shaking, whether from anger or despair she was not sure. All she knew was that she hurt.

  ‘They have no right!’ she said out loud as she slammed her door shut and started to undress. ‘It’s really none of their goddam business now what I do with my life!’

  Leaving her discarded clothes in a line across the bedroom and still swearing under her breath she went into her bathroom and ran herself a shower. The phone rang while she was in there but she failed to hear it.

  Mattie answered it in the drawing room. He told the caller that his mother had gone out but that he would of course give her a message.

  ‘No, there’s no further news about Nightie,’ he told the caller. ‘But then in this instance I’d say no news is good news, wouldn’t you?’

  When he had finished on the phone, Mattie poured himself another shot of whisky which he drank quickly before leaving the house. Deliberately he left no message on the pad. After Jose’s and his conversation earlier he was as determined as his sister that no fortune-hunter was going to get his hands on any part of their rightful inheritance.

  Before she left to go out to dinner Cassie sat on her bed with the telephone in her lap. Twice she began to dial Josephine’s number and twice she stopped. Finally she put the telephone back on her bedside table and getting up took a last look at herself in the cheval mirror before going out of the room. As she was halfway downstairs she heard the phone ringing but by the time she had hurried into the drawing room it had stopped.

  ‘Damn,’ she said, looking round the empty room, having half expected Mattie to be still there. ‘Mattie?’

  But he was long gone and there was no-one else in the house itself, Erin having taken herself off up to her quarters since she knew Cassie was on her way out for the evening. Again Cassie hesitated in front of the telephone, but this time she gave in to temptation, picking the instrument up and dialling her daughter’s number.

  As soon as she heard Mark’s languid tones on the taped message she replaced the receiver and went out, leaving the telephone switched to her own answering machine which in turn duly
picked up all her calls. One of them was Joel, ringing to make sure Mattie had reported his earlier call. When he realized he had got the machine, he too left no message.

  * * *

  ‘I hear you’re seeing Joel Benson,’ Leonora drawled as the guests were being served drinks before dinner.

  ‘I heard you’d gone abroad,’ Cassie replied tartly. On arrival at the party she had been appalled when the first person she caught sight of through the drawing room door had been the woman she had sworn in private never to talk to again. Leonora had no such compunction, however, and as soon as she saw Cassie she had made straight for her.

  ‘Abroad was weeks ago,’ Leonora said, blowing smoke in Cassie’s face. ‘Infernally boring it was, too. It must be age or something, but I’m beginning to discover that all one changes when one goes abroad is the climate. Now tell me all about you and Benson.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you know him as well?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ Leonora’s smile was about as appealing as an oil slick as she helped herself to a fresh glass of champagne.

  ‘Back to all the old vices, I see,’ Cassie said.

  ‘Every lovely one,’ Leonora agreed. ‘But remember – the vices you jeer at in others laugh at you from inside yourself. At least, that’s what Grandpa always said. So. You were just going to tell me about you and Joel Benson. Isn’t he weird? I mean all that long black hair and dark burning eyes and stuff. He really is a little old for that, I’d have said. But there you go. Women, it appears, love it. Right?’ Leonora looked Cassie in the eye, this time without the pretence of a smile.

  ‘He was commissioned to do a bronze of The Nightingale,’ Cassie replied, looking round the room desperate for the chance of an escape route. ‘We’ve seen each other a couple of times since then, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s not what he’s saying, apparently.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Cassie said, pretending to wave at someone before beginning to ease herself away. ‘If you’ll excuse me I’ve just seen someone I have to talk to.’

  ‘Sure you have. I’ll catch you later.’

  Having made sure by consulting the placement that she was to be seated nowhere near Leonora, Cassie then did her level best to enjoy the evening but, since the sole interest of both the men sitting either side of her was the welfare of her famous horse, by the time she had finished recounting both The Nightingale’s dramatic return to Claremore and his horrific ordeal on the operating table she quite understandably felt the very opposite of entertained. In fact long before anyone else showed any signs of fatigue Cassie found herself to be exhausted, and so having discreetly said her goodbyes she did her best to slip away from the party unnoticed.

  As usual Leonora was not to be shaken off quite so easily. On the pretext of going to the ladies she followed Cassie out of the room and across the marbled entrance hall.

  ‘So, when you see Joel Benson again –’ she began as a member of the household staff fetched Cassie’s coat.

  ‘If I see Joel Benson again,’ Cassie corrected her.

  ‘When you see him again, remember me to him,’ Leonora continued, undismayed. ‘We met on a mutual friend’s yacht a couple of years back. He was doing her kids’ heads.’

  ‘Sure,’ Cassie said, slipping into the coat which was now being proffered.

  ‘He really is quite a character,’ Leonora said with one shake of her blond head. ‘You know who else he’s seeing now?’

  ‘He can see whomsoever he chooses. It really is none of my affair,’ Cassie said, unable to stop the defensive tone she had adopted, which she knew at once was a mistake, judging from Leonora’s instant Cheshire cat smile. ‘Goodnight, Leonora.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Cassie McGann,’ Leonora said with a shrug, stepping aside from the front door as Cassie walked briskly past her. ‘See you around.’

  Over the next few days Cassie had plenty of other things to think about besides Joel, most important the recuperation of her famous horse.

  ‘This has to be the most resolute creature I’ve ever had to tend,’ Niall Brogan said. ‘Since we put him together again he hasn’t taken one step backwards. To tell you the truth, Cassie, when I had that first look inside him I’d have said he had one chance not in one but ten million. And now will you look at him? Up and eating and moving about his box as if I’d pulled a wolf tooth rather than rearranged the whole of his insides.’

  ‘So what next, Niall?’ Cassie wondered as she stroked the horse’s head over the box door. ‘Obviously he’ll need box rest. But I wonder what we’ll do with him after that.’

  ‘Are you asking or just privately wondering, Cassie? Myself, I doubt if he’ll ever be quite the horse he was, but then even if he’s a stone inferior to what he was he’d still be a prodigious racehorse.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t want to go on being a racehorse.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t. But without his equipment, all that’d be left would be to retire him.’

  ‘Sure,’ Cassie said, giving one last pull to the horse’s ears. ‘But somehow I can’t see Nightie spending the rest of his days standing in a field.’

  When the subject came up for discussion at dinner, Mattie suggested the horse could go eventing if he showed no real inclination to go on racing. Cassie agreed, adding that even if the horse recovered fully she was still in two minds as to whether or not to put him back in training.

  ‘Jose could ride him,’ Mattie said. ‘She’s always wanted to event properly.’

  ‘Josephine is in England,’ Cassie reminded him. ‘With a husband, remember?’

  Mattie looked at her but said nothing.

  ‘What’s that look supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Mattie finished his wine and made to get up from the table. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to call some of our owners.’

  ‘Mattie—’ Cassie said, calling him back. ‘I need to know what you meant by that.’

  ‘Ask Jo,’ Mattie said. ‘I was right. Mark’s a bastard. Sorry. But you know what I mean.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘Ask Jo.’

  After Mattie had gone, Cassie remained behind at the table where she sat staring up at the portrait of Josephine she had commissioned when her daughter was eighteen, wearing a blue sprigged muslin dress and looking every inch a Rosse. She had hoped so fervently that the girl would make as wonderful a marriage as she herself had done with Tyrone, yet ever since she was a teenager Josephine had mysteriously failed to attract anyone of whom either Erin or Cassie felt they could approve. She’s storing up trouble for herself, Mrs Rosse, Erin had warned. The way she’s going she won’t be able to recognize a dacent young man if ever she meets one, and now it seemed as though Erin’s prognostications were fully realized and that Josephine had married a wrong one.

  Moreover if what Mattie had just intimated was true, namely that Josephine might be in a position to ride The Nightingale should the horse recover fully and be turned into an eventer, it must mean that her daughter’s brief marriage was effectively over.

  Yet why? Cassie wondered as she rose from the table to go in search of Mattie, hoping to continue their discussion. But when she made her way through, the room was empty except for her dogs who were stretched out asleep in front of the log fire. Looking then in both the study and the library, she still could find no sign of him, so assuming that he had taken himself either off to the office or up to his own quarters to do his telephoning Cassie sat down in front of the fire for a long time before finally picking up the telephone herself to try to get through to her daughter in the hope of finding out first hand what the truth might be. But as usual she got the answerphone, so with a deep sigh of frustration she replaced the receiver without leaving a message and picking up the latest copy of Pacemaker started to flick through it without reading one word.

  Besides trying to discover what might be going wrong with her daughter’s marriage there were a hundred and one other things she should be doing, yet Cassie felt lik
e doing none of them because what she really wanted was company, and most of all the company of one person in particular. The telephone was still there right beside her on the sofa and all she had to do was pick it up and ring his number. If he wasn’t there she could leave a short message on his answering machine – nothing too personal. All she had to do was call him and that would be that. If he did not want to continue with their relationship then either he wouldn’t return her call or she would know by the tone of his voice if he was there and spoke to her personally. If she didn’t call all she would do would be to sit and wonder, just as she was doing now.

  She even got as far as putting the telephone on her knee and picking up the receiver before once again her all too fierce pride intervened.

  ‘Dammit,’ she said to herself. ‘I know this sort of thing doesn’t matter any more, but why the hell should I be ringing him? He was the one who disappeared. If anyone’s due to offer an explanation it should be him, not me, so why in hell should I ring him?’

  She slammed the phone back down again and clattered it back onto the table beside her, before going to pour herself a drink. As she was doing so, the phone rang. Forgetting her pride she almost ran to answer it. ‘Hello?’ she said, in a low voice. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s me.’ Josephine’s voice down the line. ‘Can I come home?’

  ‘Of course you can.’ Cassie said, her heart sinking, ‘Do you want to tell me why?’

  ‘When I get home.’

  ‘He’s been cheating on me,’ Josephine told her mother and brother. ‘It seems he even had someone on honeymoon.’

  ‘Not possible,’ Mattie said grimly. ‘You’re putting us on.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ Josephine assured him. ‘He boasted about it. Someone he picked up in the hotel bar, apparently.’

  ‘I’ll murder him.’

  ‘There’s no need to Mattie,’ Josephine said quietly. ‘It’s over now. The whole thing.’

  ‘Meaning I hope that you’re going to divorce him.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that, is it?’ Josephine returned, glaring at her brother. ‘You seem to forget I’m pregnant.’