The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘They’ve done a bolt?’ Cassie echoed. ‘Does this bury any chance we have of getting the money?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Gareth said glumly, having his eye caught by Josephine at the window who mouthed him an exotic kiss. ‘The firm has declared itself bankrupt and the underwriters have, it seems, taken to the hills.’

  ‘In that case,’ Cassie said grimly, ‘it’s time to take the gloves off.’

  ‘How much?’ Mattie almost howled with disbelief when he heard. ‘You hope to take out how much?’

  ‘Keep your voice down, for God’s sake,’ Cassie warned him, going once again to make sure the drawing room doors were well and truly closed and that there was no one eavesdropping out in the corridor. ‘If anyone gets the slightest wind of this—’ she began as she turned to make her way back to the drinks table.

  But Mattie held up both his hands to signal his interruption and shook his head.

  ‘Now come on, get real,’ he said. ‘He’s not going to let you get that sort of money down. Nobody is.’

  ‘Suppose they don’t know it’s me,’ Cassie said as she poured them both another glass of wine. ‘Suppose it looks as though it’s coming from several sources? I don’t intend to walk into one of his shops, produce a couple of plastic shopping bags and put it on just like that.’

  ‘So how do you intend doing it? On the telephone?’

  ‘Yes. At the beginning,’ Cassie agreed, coming to sit down on the faded pink damask sofa opposite her son. ‘I organized two new accounts with Mike Gold a couple of months ago so that they could be run in as it were. Established if you like. One was opened by Theodore, and the other in the name of Joel’s brother Frank.’

  Mattie put his drink down and frowned. ‘I thought this was meant to be strictly between you, me and Josephine.’

  ‘It is and it isn’t. I’ve thought a lot about this and initially we must keep any attention away from Claremore. It’s no good you having an account, or even Josephine for that matter. We can’t have anyone who could be connected with us.’

  ‘OK – but Joel’s brother?’

  ‘He doesn’t know a thing. Neither does Joel yet. At least, no details. I simply told him I was going to have to run an account in someone else’s name but that I’d finance it and that was that. No-one’s going to make that connection, not until way past post time.’

  ‘And the same applies to Theodore, I suppose,’ Mattie wondered.

  ‘Exactly. You couldn’t find anyone more trustworthy than Theodore,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘If the account’s in someone else’s name, they could run off with the take.’

  ‘With that portion of the take,’ Cassie corrected him. ‘Yes, that’s true, but I don’t think either of them will. Certainly not Theodore.’

  ‘There’s nothing to stop Joel’s brother from absconding.’

  ‘Yes there is. There’s Joel.’

  ‘OK.’ Mattie balanced his glass on the arm of his chair. ‘So what are your openers?’

  ‘You are, Mattie,’ Cassie said simply. ‘You and your string. The first thing we have to do – but not quite yet. Where are we? Yes. Around about the end of November, but not until then, our very first move will be to get a price about you.’

  Extracted from:

  The monthly Claremore newsletter

  to

  THE NIGHTINGALE FAN CLUB

  from

  Cassie Rosse.

  As I told you in the August bulletin Nightie has taken to jumping with enormous enthusiasm and skill. During the summer he was schooled over some purpose built fences of about four foot in height to see if he was a natural ‘lepper’ or just a horse who got over fences because they were in his way. Happily he jumped the line of obstacles correctly and with true precision, leading us all to believe that instead of having to spend the rest of his days as a trainer’s hack (and what a hack!) he might have another career after all.

  Of course there’s a great deal more to eventing than just jumping fences. The discipline of dressage plays a vital part in the correct presentation of the event horse and so with this in mind Nightie was sent to an expert instructor to have his paces properly adjudged. His report came back with 10/10.

  So since the horse continues to thrive, apparently none the worse for his dreadful ordeal, I have decided to gift him to Josephine, my daughter. When she was a teenager Jo was a successful junior event rider, winning many good trials on her flying grey, Gracie Allen, on whom she represented her country as a junior international, helping to win the team a Gold medal. She then went on to race ride as an amateur and as many of you no doubt will know, Jo won this year’s running of the Diamond Stakes at Ascot, having been narrowly beaten into third place the year before. Jo is now back at home permanently, having given up a very successful acting career in order to concentrate on her riding.

  So all in all if we choose to follow this path eventing would seem to be the ideal future for Nightie, particularly ridden by Josephine with whom he seems to have a special empathy. He still won’t let a man near him, not even his old favourite Liam, my head lad, not in his stable and most certainly not on his back, having got rid of every top race rider who has tried to sit on him. Whereas women, and Jo in particular, can do anything they like with him.

  And Nightie’s not a horse to argue with!

  So if everything goes according to plan, Nightie will be trained on through the winter and aimed at Novice Event classes as soon as the new season opens in early spring.

  Thirty-One

  ‘What did you get?’ Cassie asked Theodore as soon as she had him safely closed away in the library.

  ‘I think they thought I was mad,’ Theodore sighed, taking his spectacles off and holding them up to the light to check the lenses.

  ‘I don’t mind what they thought you were, Theodore,’ Cassie urged. ‘Just tell me what you got.’

  ‘Stony silence at first,’ Theodore replied, now carefully wiping his lenses on an immaculate white handkerchief. ‘And then a request to hold until they spoke to Head Office.’

  ‘Spare me the details, please,’ Cassie said, barely able to contain her impatience. ‘Just cut to the chase, will you?’

  ‘Cut to the chase?’ Theodore raised his eyebrows as far as they would go and beamed at Cassie. ‘I do like that. Wherever do you pick these things up?’

  ‘Theodore—’ Cassie said warningly. ‘You’re just winding me up.’

  ‘Cut to the chase, winding you up, you’re beginning to talk like one of your childer,’ Theodore chuckled, carefully replacing his spectacles. ‘I got a hundred and fifty to one.’

  ‘A hundred and fifty to one,’ Cassie said slowly. ‘Exactly what Mattie thought we would. A hundred and fifty to one.’

  ‘One hundred and fifty to one,’ Theodore echoed proudly, as if he had called the odds himself.

  ‘And did you get the bet on?’ Cassie asked him, standing looking at him in the looking glass above the fireplace.

  ‘I did so,’ Theodore replied. ‘One thousand to win one hundred and fifty thousand, tax paid.’

  Now Cassie turned and moved away from the fireplace to come and stand in front of her debonair guest. ‘They actually took the bet?’

  ‘They actually took the bet.’

  ‘Brilliant. Perfectly brilliant.’

  ‘I know,’ Theodore agreed. ‘You can kiss me all over if you like. I won’t mind.’

  Cassie gave a peal of delighted laughter before throwing her arms around Theodore. ‘I’ll just hug you to death instead. One thousand to win one hundred and fifty. And that’s just for starters.’

  Theodore put his own arms around Cassie’s shoulders and gently hugged her to him. ‘I hope this is too,’ he murmured. ‘This is a most excellent hors d’oeuvre.’

  Cassie said nothing but neither did she try to move from his embrace. Instead she just rested one cheek on Theodore’s chest.

  ‘Just think. If this comes off won’t that be something?’

  ‘It
will, it will,’ Theodore replied carefully, lifting one hand gently to stroke the back of Cassie’s head. ‘But then suppose it does not. Cassie Rosse? What then, may I ask? What then?’

  ‘If I don’t pull this off, Theodore,’ Cassie replied, moving her head so that she could look up into his eyes, ‘I have no business here any more. There would be nothing to keep me. But then if I fail to avenge what they did to The Nightingale, I really have no right to be here any more either.’

  Theodore looked back down at her, his hands now both back around her slim waist. ‘You are without any shadow of a doubt, Cassie Rosse, the most remarkable person it has ever been my privilege to know.’

  And he kissed her.

  ‘I think you could have done better,’ Mattie said as Cassie and he cantered their horses down to the start of the gallop away from the other work riders.

  ‘You would,’ Cassie retorted. ‘And next time you’re short of a work rider, remember I have horses of my own to exercise.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ Mattie said. ‘It was you that said not to use the phone in case anyone picked up an extension.’

  ‘I’m only teasing,’ Cassie assured him, hooking up the horse she’d been given to ride, swinging his head to one side so he would stop tanking off with her. ‘This one of the horses you’re going to use in the trial? Because he doesn’t half pull.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,’ Mattie said, easing his own horse back to keep pace with his mother’s. ‘One of the things, anyway. Obviously we can only use our own horses because as you said—’

  ‘No owner is going to want any horse of his running in an unofficial race without any prize money, right,’ Cassie finished for him.

  ‘Someone wants to buy your chap, the one you’re riding,’ Mattie said as they pulled their horses up. ‘And with the way things are and the way we want things—’

  ‘Of course,’ Cassie agreed. ‘We’ll find another.’

  ‘I’m down to only two I can run against you. This one I’m riding, Bohandur, and a rather useless handicapper called Touch Paper.’

  ‘I can still field four,’ Cassie said. ‘The good thing is one of them’s Aperçu, and he’s bound for Cheltenham.’

  ‘How come?’ Mattie wanted to know.

  ‘His owner wants a touch, and is more than happy to give him his last outing before the Festival in private rather than in an official race where everyone can see the sort of shape he’s in. So as long as we organize the outing properly, we should be able to manage a pretty serious trial.’

  ‘Won’t Aperçu’s owner want to come and see his horse?’

  Cassie smiled at her son. ‘He lives in Dubai,’ she replied, swinging her horse round in the direction of where the other racehorses were getting ready to gallop some hundred yards off. ‘Now let’s see the sort of shape your fellow’s in.’

  ‘I still say we should have done better than a hundred and fifty to one,’ Mattie muttered as he picked up his reins. ‘A hundred and fifty to one for a second season trainer to land the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham? We should have got five hundred to one!’

  When she got back to Claremore at midday a fax was awaiting her on her private line. It was from Joel’s brother and it simply read:

  BEST THIS END A TON TO A SINGLETON SO INVESTED

  POINT FIVE MORE. AMENDED DIVIDEND THUS TO

  READ THE SAME.

  ‘Right on,’ Cassie said to herself as she fed the sheet of paper into her shredder. ‘The game’s afoot.’

  Thirty-Two

  The first trial was not a race proper. It was more an organized school over six flights of hurdles. Cassie had thought long and hard about it but although she knew that the longer the cards stayed close to her chest the less was the chance of being kibbutzed, she knew just as well that if she wasn’t going to give her horse a race in public over the timber, then the more he got the idea of hurdling in private the better.

  Which meant letting a bit more of the cat out of the bag.

  As he waited down at the start of Peter Nugent’s private track checking his girths Liam said nothing when he saw the last horse to join the party come out of the woods with Josephine up. He just smiled a huge broad smile before giving a great whoop of joy.

  ‘What’s up, Liam?’ Bridie said, swinging round her horse who was standing the other way round.

  ‘Prepare to fall out of your saddle, Bridie Moore,’ Liam said. ‘Will you just look at who we’ve come to work against?’

  The two of them stared with growing delight as the big black horse walked nearer and nearer. He looked a picture of health, his dark coat glowing like ebony and his eye as bright as one of Erin’s saucepans.

  ‘Now listen,’ Cassie said from the back of the horse she was riding as Mattie, Josephine, Liam and Bridie gathered around her. ‘On the principle that the less you know the better, all I’m telling you today is that we’re going to work at a strong but sensible gallop over one and a half miles jumping six flights of hurdles. I don’t want anyone doing anyone else any favours. By that I mean this is not a polite school, this is a serious piece of work and I want the best horse to win it. But conversely I don’t want any rough stuff or unnecessary scrimmaging. And none of you are to knock your horses about – all right’ – Cassie held up a placatory hand – ‘OK – I know you won’t, I’m just telling you in case some of you get your blood up and think you can take the old boy on. There are no prizes at the end of the day, not yet anyway. And there won’t be either, if one word of what we’re doing gets out. If it does, I’ll know who to come after.’

  Cassie gave them all a good long look in turn before picking up her reins. ‘OK!’ she called, kicking her horse on towards the starting line where Peter Nugent was waiting with a flag. ‘Let’s go to work!’

  As soon as Peter Nugent dropped the flag Mattie set off to make the pace on Bohandur. Coming to the first flight of hurdles the five horses had settled into a sensible gallop, more than a married man’s pace but a couple of notches down from a racing one. Even so already Bridie who was riding Touch Paper was a good four lengths adrift with Josephine lobbing The Nightingale whom she had nicely settled a couple of lengths in front of her, tucked in behind Liam on Aperçu and Cassie on Call To Arms, a good hurdler of hers which had won six good races over the timber. The three leading horses pinged the first flight, getting away well, and now that Mattie’s horse had come back to them settling into a keen arrowheaded trio, with Bohandur still striding out half a length up.

  Cassie took a quick look round at The Nightingale and to her surprise saw he had jumped so big at the first he was now only a length down on her own horse, racing along as always when he was enjoying himself with his head tucked into his chest. Over the next two flights of hurdles there was no change in the order but at the fourth Cassie heard a loud crash and a cry from behind her as someone took the flight by the roots.

  ‘It’s OK!’ Josephine called. ‘It was Bridie! But she’s OK! Sounds as if the horse just missed it out completely!’

  That really left only four of them working seriously, since the mistake had made Touch Paper drop a good dozen lengths behind The Nightingale who as far as Cassie could make out when she took another quick look was still lobbing along as if he was taking a hack along the sands.

  The second last hurdle had been erected on the top of the turn leading to the home bend and here Bohandur ran very wide, leaving Liam on Aperçu and Cassie on Call To Arms with the lead. Liam was still sitting with plenty in hand as indeed was Cassie on her own mount, both of them a good three lengths clear of The Nightingale as they began their run to the last.

  They both met the final flight perfectly, landing neck and neck and kicking away for the winning post some hundred and twenty yards distant. For a moment Cassie had a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as it seemed as if Aperçu, whom if they were to get serious looked to have Call To Arms well beaten on the run in, was going to come home as he liked, and then the f
eeling of despair gave way to one of jubilation as she heard Josephine’s cheeky cry of ‘On your inside, thank you!’ barely fifty yards from the line.

  Looking over her left shoulder Cassie saw The Nightingale flash by, still on the bridle, still with his head well in his chest. As horse and rider flew past Josephine raised one hand in the air and waved.

  ‘Handstands,’ Josephine said for the fifteenth time. ‘Cartwheels. Blindfold. Backwards. Have it how you will. Nightie could have done that doing all of those things.’

  ‘It was only a racecourse gallop,’ Cassie said, also for what seemed the umpteenth time. ‘And only two of the horses have any real ability.’

  ‘Mums –’ Josephine sighed, leaning back in her seat as they sped across the Wicklow Hills. ‘Mums, we were still hardly cantering.’

  ‘And Cheltenham is still three months away, Jo,’ Cassie reminded her. ‘There’s a long way to go yet, and even if we do get there he’ll be facing a dozen or so of the very best hurdlers in the world.’

  ‘They might as well all stay at home,’ Josephine said happily. ‘They might as well all stay at home. I mean, what is that horse?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Cassie said, and that was all. She knew well enough who she thought The Nightingale was, but she wasn’t telling that to anyone. Not even to her daughter.

  Under the Rules of Racing horses are not required to be in the yards of their licensed trainers until three weeks before they run their first race for the yard, so The Nightingale did not have to go into training formally with Mattie until after the entries for the Champion Hurdle closed on 1 February. This meant that even when the list of the horses entered was published on that day the horse would not yet be listed as being trained by Mattie Rosse and so the bets on his stable winning the big race should not necessarily make alarm bells ring in the big bookmakers’ offices.

  Bells would sound none the less. Cassie and her team knew that well enough, but since the horse would not have been seen out over hurdles by that time, it could only be sheer speculation on the bookmakers’ and the punters’ part as to what sort of chance the horse might have. He had, after all, been subjected to a terrible ordeal when he had been kidnapped and wilfully gelded and on his return home he had subsequently undergone an operation which most certainly would have accounted for a less resolute animal to save him from dying from a twisted gut.