The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Yes. But I really had forgotten all about it, and by that I mean that after he died I never issued any instructions to the blood bank to dispose of Tyrone’s deposit. They still have mine, of course, and I take it they still have his – but even better than that –’ Cassie suddenly got to her feet in the excitement. ‘We still have some here!’

  Together they hurried out to the veterinary block down in the stable yard, Cassie explaining as they went that besides the blood Tyrone had assigned to the blood bank, he had also kept a supply carefully and properly stored under the correct conditions on the premises.

  ‘This was long before I built this veterinary block, of course,’ Cassie explained, hurrying into the building ahead of Theodore. ‘But even so Niall knew how to store blood correctly, so when this was all built every sample was simply transferred into this new banking unit.’

  Cassie threw open the doors of what looked like a super refrigerator to reveal a vast store of pints of banked blood.

  ‘Most of this belongs to horses, of course,’ Cassie said, consulting a list on the unit door. ‘But there should be a smaller section somewhere containing the samples we want – and here it is.’

  Cassie tapped a category on the list which read: Batch 0001 Tyrone Rosse/May 1966.

  ‘Excellent,’ Theodore said with quiet delight. ‘All we have to do now is have a sample processed and banded and Bob will be your famous uncle.’

  Cassie was so relieved and delighted that she threw her arms around Theodore and kissed him.

  Thanks to Theodore’s connections the second sample arrived even more quickly than had Leonora’s, so that by the end of that week all that remained was to await the report of the genetic engineer Theodore had commissioned to interpret the data on their behalf.

  ‘You understand exactly what this will mean?’ Cassie asked Mattie once again as they waited for Theodore to arrive at Claremore with the findings.

  ‘I do,’ Mattie replied. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie said. ‘I think so.’

  She had found it impossible to watch as Theodore had gone through the samples to find the batch number belonging to Tyrone, once the delight at being able to prove Mattie’s paternity beyond any shadow of a doubt had been replaced by the realization that if she had stayed where she was she would have to witness a sample of Tyrone’s life force being removed from its cold storage.

  I’m not too good with blood at the best of times, she had said, excusing herself as Theodore began his search. If you don’t mind terribly, I’ll leave you to it.

  So yes, she thought to herself as she checked her hair in the glass of a picture hanging on one wall. Yes, I’d say I know exactly what this will mean.

  Theodore arrived bearing a buff folder. In keeping with the importance of the moment Cassie thought that he looked if anything even more distinguished than ever, in his immaculately tailored dark suit and hand-made shirt and shoes.

  ‘Really all you need read are the findings of the expert,’ Theodore told Mattie, handing him a single sheet of paper. ‘They prove without a doubt that Mrs Charles C. Lovett Andrew is not your mother.’

  Mattie took the sheet but glanced at Theodore before reading it. ‘Beyond any doubt?’ he asked.

  ‘Backed up by the findings of genetic fingerprinting the chances of Mrs Charles C. Lovett Andrew née Leonora Von Wagner being your mother are precisely one in thirty thousand million,’ Theodore informed him.

  ‘One in thirty thousand million?’ Mattie echoed. ‘I’ll take the odds on offer.’

  ‘That’s how categorical genetic fingerprinting is,’ Theodore replied.

  Mattie read the single sheet of paper, sitting down at the desk to do so, while Cassie looked at Theodore. In response, Theodore held up one index finger behind the folder he had clasped against him as if to indicate that what Mattie had in front of him was not all. Cassie frowned, but again Theodore said nothing, raising instead the same index finger to his lips to indicate silence.

  ‘Well?’ Theodore enquired when he saw that Mattie had finished reading the document.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Pilkington,’ was Mattie’s polite response. ‘Yes, that certainly seems to be it as far as Mrs Lovett Andrew’s claim goes.’

  ‘Might I see that?’ Cassie wondered, picking up the document. ‘Not that I need any such proof.’

  ‘You’d have done the same if you’d been me,’ Mattie, said.

  ‘No I wouldn’t and I’m not you,’ Cassie said, remembering her own mother’s long term deception. ‘My mother brought me up to believe what she told me. I don’t think I would ever have dared do otherwise. But that doesn’t mean I think you were wrong. You’ve been brought up very differently from the way I was brought up, believe me.’

  ‘It’s not that I doubted you,’ Mattie said. ‘It’s just that the whole thing has never quite made sense.’

  ‘Because you look like Dad.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that’s been laid to rest now, Mattie. You don’t have to pursue that one any more.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Mattie replied, looking at her with big dark eyes. ‘This piece of paper only proves Leonora wasn’t my mother. It doesn’t prove Dad wasn’t my real father.’

  Cassie stared back at him, unable to believe her ears. As far as she had been concerned once Leonora’s claim had been so absolutely disproved the case was closed. She certainly had not anticipated this particular twist.

  It seemed Theodore, however, had. ‘Meaning,’ he began, reopening the folder once again. ‘Meaning that in spite of what your adoptive mother here has told you still believe that your adoptive father was actually responsible for getting Miss Antoinette Brookes pregnant.’

  ‘It’s still perfectly possible is all I’m saying,’ Mattie replied.

  ‘Even though Mr Gerald Secker otherwise known as Anthony Wilton has admitted paternity.’

  ‘He disappeared to India after he thought he’d got her pregnant,’ Mattie said. ‘That’s as far as he knew. We don’t have any sort of time scale on this.’

  ‘Oh, but we do, we do,’ Theodore contradicted him. ‘Being a surgeon is a bit like being a detective. You have to anticipate, if one is to be any good as a surgeon that is, naturally. And having gathered from your adoptive mother here just what a Doubting Thomas you are, young man, I did a little detective work on all our behalfs. Here.’

  He handed Mattie two more sheets of typed paper from the folder which Mattie took from him and again sat down to read.

  ‘That is your time scale on the events in question,’ Theodore said with a quiet smile at Cassie who was staring at him. ‘I got in touch with Mr Secker stroke Wilton who was only too pleased to co-operate with me, being a thoroughly decent sort of chap, as well as an ardent fan of your adoptive mother’s. It took him a little while to reconstruct the exact chain of events with their precise chronology, but happily he kept a journal at the time because such was his habit. I understand in fact he still does, since he has always nursed an as yet unfulfilled ambition to be a writer, so as you will see if you read on his claim to have got the young lady in question pregnant in March 1966 when she was living in Dublin and working for Gerald and his father Alec, who was then head of Irish Bloodstock Incorporated, has to be exact. He even annotates the date he thinks you were conceived because for a moment he did apparently contemplate marrying Antoinette Brookes, but then thought better of it. They also discussed an abortion – but happily for you, young man, and your adoptive parents, your real mother would not contemplate the idea. More to the point, much much more to the point is the fact that at the time both of them were out of the country. Alec Secker had sent his son abroad for three months to learn the ropes on a friend’s stud farm in Kentucky at the beginning of that year, which was actually where he met Antoinette Brookes. And where in fact you, Mattie, were conceived. Read on and you will see that you were born precisely nine months later on the seventeenth of November that very year. It simply would not have been possible
for Miss Brookes still to meet your adoptive father and become pregnant by him because by then she was quite definitely pregnant by Mr Secker stroke Wilton. It’s all down in his journals, including a note from Miss Brookes about the result of a pregnancy test run in May of that year, and the fact of the matter is your adoptive father did not actually meet Miss Brookes until the Irish Derby meeting at the Curragh on June the 29th, which after all is only five months before you were born. That too is recorded in Mr Secker stroke Wilton’s journal, because that too was the first time he had met the famous Tyrone Rosse in person, fresh back from America the Brave as both he and Miss Brookes indeed were. Lastly – at the foot of the second of the pages you have in your hand you will see the results of two other DNA processes, one taken from your late adoptive father from an emergency supply of his blood kept in a blood bank and the other from a blood sample belonging to your real father Gerald Secker, who understanding your concern readily agreed to a test. So there it is, young man. You will find from your readings that there is no chance whatsoever that your adoptive father could possibly have been your real one.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter that Tyrone wasn’t your real father,’ Cassie said to her son after Theodore had tactfully left them alone and returned to his home.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mattie said, the edge back in his voice.

  ‘I may only be your adoptive mother, Mattie, but I’m still your mother,’ Cassie said, patting the sofa for him to come and sit beside her. ‘I’ve known you since you were a baby, I’ve known all your moods, your joys, your woes—’

  ‘My highs, my lows,’ Mattie sighed, doing as bidden and sitting down beside Cassie.

  ‘And one of your lows was and still is the fact that Tyrone was not your proper father,’ Cassie reiterated. ‘Although he was a father to you in every sense of the word in every other way.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Mattie said, not without rancour. ‘It’s just so weird. And always has been. I mean, look at my hands—’ He held out both his hands to her. ‘Everyone says they’re just like Dad’s. You can even see it in photographs of him.’

  ‘My mother was always telling me I had hands just like Joyce Hart, who was a well-known American concert pianist when I was a child. But I can’t play a note. And I’m absolutely certain she never knew my father.’

  ‘Even so, you have to admit that it’s weird.’ Mattie lay back on the sofa, putting both his hands on top of his head.

  ‘Maybe all these things, the things you think are like Dad’s,’ Cassie ventured, ‘maybe it’s because you want to be like him, and so taking it to its logical conclusion you made yourself want nothing more than that he should actually be your father.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Mattie said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, maybe. Who wouldn’t want to be like Dad?’

  At that moment there was nothing Cassie wanted more than to put her arms round her son and hold him, but she resisted the urge because she knew how much it would embarrass him. So instead she just smiled, more to herself than to Mattie, and pretended to brush some of Wilkie’s hairs off her skirt. ‘So,’ she said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me then?’ Mattie asked with a deep frown. ‘I mean when I met my real father at Epsom. Why didn’t you tell me afterwards who he was?’

  ‘I suppose because I was waiting to see if one day you would ask,’ Cassie replied. ‘Some adopted children do, and some don’t. You didn’t say, at least not until now, so I didn’t volunteer. Why? Would you like to see him again? Your real father?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think so. We certainly got on pretty well when we did meet. In fact I liked him a lot. So yes – yes, I suppose I would like to see him. If it’s all right with you.’

  ‘Of course it’s all right with me,’ Cassie assured him. ‘It won’t change anything, at least not anything that’s gone before. But it might change things in the future and for the better even, who knows? We’ll ask Theodore where he is right now. Apparently he spends most of his time in America.’

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ Mattie said. ‘Maybe I’ll write to him first. See if he wants to see me. He might not want to.’

  ‘Of course he will,’ Cassie smiled. ‘Now he knows who you are.’

  ‘You mean he didn’t before?’

  ‘Of course not. We adopted you straight from your mother. Gerald was the other side of the world if you remember, and when he met you at Epsom he had no idea he was your real father. That’s why it was so nice you two hit it off straight away.’

  ‘Even so, I still think I’ll write to him first,’ Mattie said, looking away. ‘It’ll give him an out, just in case he needs one.’

  ‘He won’t, don’t you worry,’ Cassie replied, smoothing out her skirt once more. ‘Now – I have some more news for you, or rather I have a deal I’d like to propose. I want you to have Nightie.’

  Slowly Mattie turned and looked at her in wonder, tipping his handsome head to one side. ‘Nightie as in The Nightingale?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Why? Has something happened to him?’

  ‘No, nothing’s happened to him—’

  ‘I mean, not that I mind if something has – no I don’t mean that. Of course I’d mind if something’s happened to him, I’d mind like hell. What I meant was that if you’ve decided to retire him and you want to give him to me—’

  Cassie patted Wilkie a couple of times on his head and shook her own. ‘Nothing’s happened to him, I’m not retiring him and I’m not giving him to you,’ she said. ‘I want you to have him as in to train him – and don’t say one word until you’ve heard me out. Understand?’

  ‘Understood.’ By now Mattie had dropped his hands and sunk them in his trouser pockets, turning to give his mother his full attention. ‘Shoot.’

  ‘I’ve thought this through to the last detail,’ she told him. ‘And when you hear what I have to tell you, you’ll see exactly what I mean. I want you to have The Nightingale in your yard and I want you to train him.’

  Mattie shook his head. ‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘I thought you really had retired him.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Then how can I train him?’

  ‘If you listen, I shall tell you.’

  ‘If you build it, he will come.’

  ‘Right. In fact this isn’t altogether unlike Field of Dreams, Cassie agreed, picking up the film reference. ‘Because when you and I have done our work, you wait and see. The roads everywhere for miles around will once again be choked by people coming to see him once again, come to see the magic of Himself.’

  But when Cassie had finished outlining her plans to Mattie, before they could indulge themselves fully in their daydreams, the telephone suddenly rang.

  ‘Hello?’ a familiar voice whispered in her ear. ‘This is Josephine.’

  ‘Josephine?’ Cassie sat bolt upright, knowing at once something was wrong. ‘What is it? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ her daughter replied, again barely audibly. ‘But I’m in hospital. I’m in the Charing Cross, and I’d give anything, Mums, anything, I promise, if I could just see you. Just anything.’

  Cassie caught the very next flight over.

  Twenty-Eight

  ‘How and when did this happen?’ she asked, for want of something to do fruitlessly rearranging the flowers she had bought Josephine at the airport, anything rather than look again on the sight that had first greeted her.

  ‘It doesn’t really matter, Mums,’ Josephine replied through bruised and swollen lips. ‘What matters is as I said – you were right and man was I wrong.’

  ‘The moment I’m out of here, I’ll have my lawyers on him,’ Cassie said, once more removing all the roses from the vase and beginning again. ‘When I think what this man has done to you, while poor Joel is marking out time in gaol for an act of clemency – I mean, what sort of world is this that we’re living in anyway?’

  ‘You’re not making any sense, Mums,’ Josephine said, with a crooked smile. ‘And for heaven’s sake l
eave those poor flowers alone. They were perfectly all right till you got your hands on them.’

  Cassie glanced at her daughter, then immediately closed her eyes, holding on to the back of a chair on which she then finally sat herself down. ‘Anyway, thank God you called me.’

  ‘I hardly dared to, Mums,’ Josephine whispered, turning a black-eyed face towards her. ‘I’ve been so ashamed.’

  ‘There was no reason to be ashamed.’

  ‘Of course there was. I’ve been so ashamed of the way I’ve behaved towards you.’

  ‘You really don’t have any reason to be, darling.’

  ‘I must have been completely mad. Or as Mattie said, possessed.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Cassie muttered. ‘I don’t care what you say, Jo. Whether you like it or not I’ll see that sonofabitch in court.’

  ‘The only court we’ll see him in, Mums, is the divorce one,’ Josephine answered. ‘I should have known better.’

  ‘Don’t you go blaming yourself again.’ Cassie’s eyes flashed a fierce warning. ‘I won’t hear any more excuses on behalf of Mr Mark Carter-James, do you hear?’

  ‘I’m not making excuses,’ Josephine replied. ‘I’m just thinking aloud. I knew the moment I came into the house he had someone upstairs in the bedroom. And I should have just turned on my heel, walked out, and got the first plane back home. But no, no, I had to go and have it out with him—’

  ‘And that of course gave him a perfectly justifiable reason to beat you up,’ Cassie interrupted. ‘Mr Mark Carter-James can count himself lucky your brother was finally persuaded to stay home or he might well be lying in a morgue by now.’

  ‘I am going to divorce him, you know,’ Josephine said, shifting her broken arm into a more comfortable position. ‘So it’s just as well we weren’t married in a church.’

  ‘No you’re not going to divorce him,’ Cassie said. ‘What you are going to get is an annulment, and what I am going to do is make sure the mud that flies sticks to him. You just leave this to me and my lawyers. I mean it.’