The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Mattie replied, widening his eyes.

  ‘Meaning there’s something wrong with me.’

  ‘You’re just a bit stressed out.’

  ‘Don’t you dare patronize me, Mattie.’

  ‘I am not patronizing you. I just said you’re a bit stressed out, that’s all. We all are. Jose will have to sort her own life out. You can’t do it for her. She’s an old married woman.’ Mattie grinned, hoping the remark would lighten his mother’s mood, but Cassie just stared grimly ahead of her. ‘Guv’nor,’ he chided her gently. ‘You have a business to run.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that, for God’s sake!’ Cassie retorted. ‘I know what I have to do without you telling me, thank you!’

  ‘OK,’ Mattie agreed. ‘Then tell me what horses we’re running tomorrow. And where.’

  Again Cassie glared at him but this time she refused to give him an answer, instead tipping forward in her saddle and kicking her horse on into a steady canter up the grass gallop ahead.

  For a moment Mattie held his own now prancing horse back, shaking his head as he watched his mother take off.

  ‘You’ve never given it a thought, have you?’ he said to himself. ‘I might have been in a wheelchair now because of you and Nightie.’

  Then he kicked on and cantered after the pair ahead.

  Cassie thought long and hard about her life as she drove into Dublin, most of all of how as far as her children were concerned she had been building it on assumptions, too wrapped up in her own past to be properly concerned with their futures. She had presumed that because she had been determined to rebuild her own life and ensure her family’s security her son and daughter would be content to go along with her plans and accept the life she was mapping out for them. It had all seemed to be so trouble free. Josephine had never shown the slightest signs of any overt rebellion and even when she had decided to become an actress Cassie had been only too happy to encourage her.

  Except, Cassie suddenly remembered, it hadn’t been Josephine who had decided to become an actress, it had been Cassie who had decided it for her. Josephine had set her heart on becoming an event rider but after she had sustained a particularly crashing fall going cross country and had lain so still on the ground that everyone concerned thought she must have done herself serious injury, Cassie decided there and then she could not possibly stand the strain of Josephine’s eventing full time and so before her daughter’s nerve had returned Cassie had strongly recommended a career in the theatre instead. It was only logical. Josephine was a beautiful girl who had already shown considerable talent in several of her school’s theatrical productions, and the suggestion that she could well become as brilliant an actress as she was a horsewoman had proved a perfectly valid one since once Josephine had finished at drama school her career appeared to take off.

  But it was Cassie’s choice of life, not Josephine’s.

  Nor had they ever talked about Josephine’s career, not in any depth. Doing her best not to be the interfering mother Cassie had confined her enquiries simply to what her daughter might be doing next, although she had religiously attended every production Josephine had been in from the moment she started at RADA. After she had graduated, because Josephine had rarely been out of work Cassie had naturally assumed her daughter must be fulfilled and happy. Yet she had never once asked her any such question.

  Neither had she cross-examined Mattie as to his real state of mind. There had always been a very strong bond between Cassie and him since she had nursed him through all the major asthma attacks of his youth, when he was small always taking him into her bed whenever he had a nocturnal attack and then, when he grew too big for such a comfort, sleeping on the floor of his own bedroom to make sure she would always be right there at hand should he need her. So it was hardly surprising that even once Mattie had grown into a young man Cassie would still subconsciously assume he was dependent on her, although the more she thought about it as she headed for Dublin the more she realized that it could well be the other way round, that without a husband Cassie had become dependent on her son. Meanwhile both Mattie and Josephine had developed along their own lines, lines which Cassie hoped it was not too late for her to understand. By the time she was crossing O’Connell Bridge she had determined that as from that moment she would find out exactly what both her son and daughter wanted to do with their own lives, and let them act accordingly. Once she had reached that decision she felt an immediate sense of release, as if she too was stepping out of the shadows.

  Her buoyant mood was soon deflated when she reached the Rotunda and found Josephine in the depths of despair. Realizing that this was not the time to review her daughter’s life or dispense bromides about the after-effects of losing a baby, instead Cassie indulged in small talk, chatting to her monosyllabic daughter about the steady progress The Nightingale was making and what a wonderful job Liam had performed on him.

  ‘That’s great,’ Josephine said finally, her face turned away from Cassie.

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Cassie agreed. ‘Liam thinks we’ll be able to start turning him out for an hour or so soon, the way the old horse is doing.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Josephine said, still staring out of the window. ‘I mean that you seem more interested in your horse than you are in me.’

  ‘I was only telling you about Nightie because—’

  ‘Because that’s all you ever really want to talk about,’ Josephine interrupted. ‘He’s only a horse, you know, Mum. He’s not your husband. Or Mattie’s and my father.’

  ‘I don’t really think we should talk about this now,’ Cassie said.

  ‘Meaning you’d rather not talk about it now. You never really want to talk about anything that concerns me. All I ever hear is Claremore, Claremore, Claremore, and The Nightingale, naturally. Oh and if I’m really lucky how brilliantly my brother is doing. But that’s all I hear about. It’s as if now I’m married I don’t exist any more.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense, Josephine. But it’s understandable. I don’t know what drugs they’re giving you—’

  ‘This has nothing to do with drugs! Or with what I’ve been through! Or rather it has got something to do with what I’ve been through – because of all people I thought at least you’d understand a little bit of that!’

  Josephine began to cry. Cassie reached for the box of tissues beside the bed and pulled a handful out, leaning across to wipe away the stream of silent and seemingly endless tears. At once Josephine moved her face away, as far out of Cassie’s range as she could, taking the tissues from her to wipe her face for herself.

  ‘I didn’t think now was the time to discuss such things, Josephine, that’s all,’ Cassie said, as stoically as she could manage. ‘I thought once you were feeling a little stronger – perhaps even when I get you back home—’

  ‘Home?’ Josephine wondered through her tears. ‘Whatever makes you think I’m coming back home?’

  ‘I thought as soon as Mr Pilkington gave the word, I’d take you back to Claremore so that you could get yourself back in shape before – before doing whatever it is you want to do next. That’s what made me think you might be coming back home, Josephine.’

  ‘Home is in London, Mum, remember? Home is married to Mark, and that’s where I’m going as soon as they let me out of this place. I spoke to him this morning.’

  ‘You spoke to Mark this morning?’

  ‘That’s right. I spoke to Mark this morning. And told him I was coming home.’

  ‘Fine,’ Cassie said. ‘But all I’d like to know – and I think I have a right to know – is why you came back to Claremore in the first place. I mean if all the time you intended to go home to your husband. I was under the impression—’

  ‘Exactly,’ Josephine suddenly hissed, her tears now stopping as abruptly as they had begun. ‘You were under the impression. And shall I tell you why you were under an impression? Because you never bloody well bothered to ask!�
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  ‘No, I’m sorry, Jo darling,’ Cassie said, standing up and picking up her belongings. ‘I don’t think that’s fair. I asked all right. I asked plenty, but you didn’t really tell. And you still haven’t. I can only assume you’re talking like this because you’re not yourself.’

  ‘You can assume till you’re blue in the face, Mum, because that’s all you ever do. You assume I’m OK but you don’t bother to ask. You assume my marriage is over and that I won’t be going back to Mark, but you don’t ask. Just the way you assumed because I’d temporarily lost my nerve that I wanted to give up riding and do something else.’

  Cassie ignored the last remark, having already admitted her mistake to herself on the drive into Dublin.

  ‘So now you intend to go back to Mark?’ she asked instead. ‘After all he’s put you through?’

  ‘You don’t have to understand,’ Josephine said, looking at her steadily. ‘What I do or don’t do is my business.’

  For the first time for as long as she could recall Cassie suddenly felt anger directed against her daughter welling up inside her. She knew that given the circumstances it was wrong of her yet she knew the emotion was fully justifiable. She was trying her hardest to do her best by her daughter, yet ever since she had met Mark Josephine had responded to Cassie with indifference, sarcasm or just plain hostility. Cassie was sure this was because Josephine was both afraid of her husband and guilty about the choice she had made, yet she also knew that this awareness would make precious little difference to the present standing of their relationship.

  About to try to open the debate fully Cassie turned when someone knocked on the door and came into the private room.

  ‘Mrs Rosse,’ she heard Theodore Pilkington’s voice saying. ‘The very person I had hoped to see. Josephine – will you forgive me if I remove your mother for just a few moments? I need a small word.’

  Once again he walked Cassie up and down the long highly polished corridor outside Josephine’s room while he talked to her.

  ‘Not making the very best of progress so far, at least not up here.’ The surgeon tapped his temple and sighed. ‘Still, ’tis early days, Mrs Rosse, it’s early days – but even so, your daughter has not got what they call now, as I believe, a good attitude. She’s very hard on herself it would seem, and for what reason I ask myself? No doubt as her mother you will be able to answer such a question far better than I, but then answering the question provides an answer to a question but it does not provide a cure. Tell me about the husband, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  Cassie glanced up at the tall man beside her, who smiled politely back at her with an inclination of his head.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he repeated.

  ‘Not at all,’ Cassie assured him. ‘He’s been unfaithful to my daughter since he met her. I can’t stand him and I don’t think Josephine should have married him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Theodore Pilkington replied, falling into step alongside Cassie. ‘Husband’s a bad egg then. That would make perfect sense. And in case you think I am going off at a tangent, I am not. All these things are interlinked, d’you see? Yes, of course you do, because you are a woman and a mother, so you understand that old bromide mens sana in corpore sano. The mind and body are so very interlinked, and in my own specialty I have always considered that a certain amount of infertility can be put down to the patient’s mental state of mind.’

  The surgeon stopped in front of Cassie and turned, blocking her way. He stood a good eight inches taller than her, every inch the ex-international rugby player, the winner of twelve caps on the right wing.

  ‘Do you know we’re near neighbours? I’m quite sure you did not,’ he said, removing his half moons, snapping them shut and folding them into his pocket. ‘I’m only the other side of the hill from you due west, hardly ten miles as the crow likes to have it.’

  Unsure how to take this information Cassie just smiled politely, waiting for anything else Theodore Pilkington might have to say. And as she waited she found the anger that had been troubling her began to evaporate, vanquished it would seem by the kindness in his dark hazel eyes.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. So my idea is that since you yourself look in need of a little time out you cross the middle mountain which separates us and come and have dinner with me tonight. The only thing that need stop you is if you have a previous engagement and if that’s the case – why, we can make it tomorrow night or the night after that, the night after that and so ad infinitum.’

  ‘Won’t you have to clear it with Mrs Pilkington first?’ Cassie wondered.

  ‘No, no, Mrs Rosse,’ Theodore replied, ‘for there is no Mrs Pilkington.’

  ‘In that case, thank you,’ Cassie replied without quite understanding why but imagining it might have something to do with those remarkable eyes.

  ‘Does that mean tonight or are we into the infinite here?’

  ‘Tonight would be just fine.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Theodore Pilkington said, before inclining himself slightly forward. ‘I’m sure I won’t regret it,’ he said, and then disappeared inside the door immediately behind him to attend to his patient before Cassie had time for any second thoughts.

  Theodore Pilkington lived in a large square white Georgian house set in half a dozen acres of Italianate gardens. Even though it was now early winter, because of the formality of the planting of the hedges and shrubbery and the perfect positioning of the various ponds and water features the grounds were still a feast to the eye, particularly set as they were in a small sheltered valley near the foot of the mountains, although Cassie was aware of little of this, arriving as she did well after dark and illuminating only the very edges of the gardens with the headlights of her car.

  However, she could see from the paintings and the photographs of the house and its grounds which hung in the comfortable but still elegant drawing room how fine an achievement the creation of Bnooghara, as the house was called, had indeed been.

  ‘It had all but been burned to the ground when first bought,’ Theodore said, handing Cassie a glass of the palest pink champagne. ‘Or does one mean it had been all but burned to the ground? The latter, I think, the latter most probably – not that it matters one whit – the point being that more or less all one bought with the place were a few doorways, some windows, and the odd roof beam. Quite fun, really.’

  As her host poured himself a glass of wine, Cassie perused the photographs on the Blüthner boudoir grand, the Georgian military chest and the highly polished mahogany tables. They were mostly of the house and gardens, often with disparate groups of what Cassie assumed were friends gathered in some part of the grounds or the interior of the house. A few were of horses in the winning enclosure, or jumping steeplechase fences, but there were no single photographs of women or children, or indeed of Theodore Pilkington himself except for an amateurish portrait of him as a young man taken on the side of a lakeside hill somewhere, just a head and shoulders shot of him smiling unaffectedly into camera.

  ‘Now tell me,’ he said, coming to her side and leading her by the arm gently away from the array of photographs to offer her a seat by the fire. ‘This wonderful horse of yours. How is he now? What a quite terrible affair altogether.’

  Cassie brought him up to date with The Nightingale’s apparently seamless recovery while Theodore listened to her intently, neither prompting her not interrupting her. Instead he just watched her, the smile gone from his eyes to be replaced by a look of studious and genuine concern. Cassie looked back at him and into his dark eyes for as long as she could but found she had to keep breaking the contact, using the picking up of her drink as a pretext, or the straightening of the skirt on her perfectly uncreased black cashmere dress.

  ‘Good,’ was all he said when she had finished. ‘All I will say to that is ’tis a wonder you’re in the apparently good shape you are after all that. I most certainly would not presume either to offer a theory based on no judgement whatsoever as to who could have been responsible
for such a heinous crime, or to ask you to conjecture what the horse may or may not be capable of doing in the future. You must, I feel sure, be quite sick of speculation and hypothesis, so instead I shall offer you another glass of wine before we go in to dinner. There were some others coming this evening, but when you accepted I cancelled them so that I could have you all to myself.’

  Cassie did her best not to look surprised and followed him into the dining room where they were served by a near-silent Filipino maid in a room whose walls were lined with faded red silk and hung with a series of vibrant contemporary Irish landscapes apparently executed by a friend of Theodore’s called Michael Forster. The food was light and exquisite, the wines memorable, and the conversation unceasing. Cassie found they had much in common besides horses, although Theodore said his winners had been few, very far between, and extremely lucky. They also shared passions for Rossini, Bonnard and Chekhov, the Russian playwright entering the conversation because it emerged that Theodore had seen Josephine in London in a particularly good production of Three Sisters.

  ‘Willy Wet-Legs, as Hilaire Belloc called the poor man,’ Theodore remarked. ‘At least I seem to think it was Belloc. Are you an admirer of Belloc? I am an ardent fan, having always admired people who are masters of the insult since I am so utterly hopeless in that department. Belloc perfected the art. D’you know a total stranger came up to him once and said You don’t know me. Oh yes I do, Belloc replied, turned on his heel and walked off. Ah now how many times hasn’t one longed to do just that with certain people? Countless. Countless. And you knew Belloc was an ardent Catholic, of course – and that he once stood for parliament? Around 1906 it was, so to seek election as a Catholic took some doing. But Belloc being Belloc, when he first appeared at the hustings to address his possible constituents, in Salford of all places – he took his rosary from his pocket and said that he was a devout Catholic, who went to Mass every day, and told his beads every day. If the people rejected him on account of his religion, he told them, then he would go down on his knees and thank God for sparing him the indignity of being their member of parliament. He was of course duly elected.’