To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Tomas didn’t tell me everything.’

  ‘One of my owners took all her horses away. Owners do that. Noel Collins once lost his whole yard in a fortnight.’

  ‘I was at school with Leonora Von Wagner. I’ve known her since I was fourteen.’

  ‘Now there’s a thing,’ Tyrone said, still not turning round.

  ‘How long have you known Leonora’s mother?’ Cassie persisted, determined not to let him off the hook.

  ‘Sybille Von Wagner and I were finished the moment I saw you that afternoon.’

  Tyrone now turned back to her and stood in front of the fire, still in his riding breeches and old but highly polished leather boots.

  ‘Actually, Cassie McGann, that’s not strictly true.’

  He looked down at her, and Cassie bit her lip. Of course it wasn’t. He’d gone back to her house, hadn’t he? And made love to her in her new lingerie.

  ‘It had been over as far as I was concerned for months,’ Tyrone continued. ‘But she was my most important owner, so it was a question of gently, gently.’

  ‘You were buying her lingerie.’

  ‘It was the lady’s birthday.’

  ‘Do you always buy ladies you’re no longer sleeping with lingerie for their birthdays?’

  ‘Usually,’ Tyrone replied with a smile. ‘I think it’s rather nice, don’t you? I’m sure you’d find it very difficult to keep on nursing those hard feelings towards somebody who gave you silk underwear for your birthday.’

  Cassie looked up at him and into his eyes. Then she held out her hands to him, and he took them, pulling her up in front of him.

  Cassie remembered how much she’d hated him during the night, and for a moment despised herself for her apparent calm. Then Tyrone kissed her, and as always reason fled and hid its head in the passion of his embrace.

  Cassie woke for the second time that morning, but this time Tyrone was still asleep in the bed beside her. Cassie kissed his shoulder, then grabbed her wrap and went and ran a bath. Since the first day, and the misery of the cold water, Mrs Muldoon had been forbidden ever to turn the boiler off again. Not even in high summer.

  Cassie lay in the tub and thought of lots of things. She thought of the way Tyrone had made love to her that morning, as if he hadn’t made love to anyone in a year. She thought about how when she had whispered in his ear how incredible he was and the way he had whispered back that he was always good on a hangover, particularly when topped up with champagne. Then she thought about his courage and resilience. No one would have known from his laughter and his lovemaking what he was really feeling. Even Cassie could only guess.

  Over lunch he told her that Sybille Von Wagner’s removal of her horses would only prove to be damaging in the very short run. Villa Maria was with what Tyrone considered the unrecognised best trainer in England, and provided the filly had travelled well, she should win her race. If and when she did, God willing, then in no time at all his own yard would fill up again, because as everyone knew, and as Dick Longmann who was a friend of his would also vouchsafe, he, Tyrone Rosse, had done all the donkey work.

  And so they set off in apparently excellent spirits for Dublin airport the day before the race. Cassie had been pressganged by Tyrone into buying a brand new spring outfit, of hat, dress, coat and shoes, in very smart contrasting red and white. They stayed overnight in London, with some of Tyrone’s racing friends, who took them out to dinner at a French restaurant called Chez Solange, and then on to see the hit satirical revue Beyond The Fringe, which Cassie thought was hilarious. What little she saw of London, she loved, and as she lay in Tyrone’s arms back at their hotel, even though she knew that back home the yard was half empty, Cassie couldn’t see one cloud on the horizon.

  There were plenty in the night sky however, and when they drove up to Newmarket with Ryan and Cath, two more of Tyrone’s many friends, it was pouring down with rain.

  ‘Does she like the wet?’ Ryan asked Tyrone who was sitting up front beside him.

  ‘If anything it’ll increase her chances,’ Tyrone replied. ‘Her mother liked it up to her hocks.’

  It didn’t stop raining until half an hour before the big race, by which time the official going had been changed from good to soft. The mud-spattered jockeys who returned after the first race reportedly announced it to be on the heavy side of soft, and as a consequence even more money poured on Villa Maria, now the clear favourite since the overnight withdrawal of Arthur Marshall’s Time To Remember.

  As she climbed to take her place in the stands, Cassie was glad she had bought an outfit with a coat, and that the outfit was made of wool, because even though the rain had stopped, a sharp wind was blowing straight up the course and into the grandstand. Cassie thought it was peculiarly British to have the main stand facing down the straight mile, so that the spectator only got a headlong view of the horses, and trained her race glasses on the big dark filly that used to be at Claremore as she cantered easily down to the start.

  She had looked for Leonora’s mother in the parade ring before the race, but Mrs Von Wagner was notable by her absence. Dick Longmann came over and spoke to Tyrone after the horses had left to go down to the start, and after commiserating with him, and grumbling about the fickleness of owners, assured Tyrone that the filly was spot on and would take all the beating.

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Tyrone said. ‘We’ve had a good touch.’

  Cassie wasn’t quite sure of all her racing terminology yet, but she suspected from the boyish smile on her husband’s face that he had wagered a little more than a week’s housekeeping.

  Only one thing had really worried Tyrone, he told Cassie, as he legged it up to the owners’ and trainers’ part of the grandstand. Dermot Pryce had been jocked off Villa Maria, apparently on Mrs Von Wagner’s express orders, and a young whizz kid jockey called Frankie West, the up and coming star of the English racing scene, had been booked for her instead at the last moment, once Time To Remember, whom he had been due to ride, wasn’t declared to run.

  ‘He’s never been on the horse,’ Tyrone grumbled, ‘and I don’t give a damn what they say. A horse you know is a horse you win on. I can’t abide this blasted modern fashion of meeting your mount for the first time in the paddock. It’s sheer nonsense.’

  ‘She looks very well though,’ Ryan said as he and his wife joined them. ‘I reckon even I could win on her.’

  ‘You couldn’t win on her, Ryan,’ Tyrone told him, ‘if all the others fell down.’

  The course suddenly went silent as the commentator called that they were under starter’s orders. And what seemed an interminable time later, after several fillies had whipped round at the start, that they were off.

  Cassie tracked Villa Maria. The jockey, riding very short and perched high on the filly’s withers, or standing on her bloody head according to a mutter from Tyrone, had dropped her to the back of the field, hugging the rails. The field, which was a large one of over twenty runners, had all made their way to what was purported to be the best ground, on the stand side of the straight mile. Cassie learned all this from Tyrone’s muttered running commentary.

  Then Tyrone suddenly dropped his glasses and stared down the course.

  ‘Jesus,’ he announced, ‘the idiot’s hopelessly boxed.’

  ‘There’s another four furlongs yet,’ Ryan replied. ‘Christ but you’re a pessimist.’

  But Tyrone never raised his glasses again, because he knew he was right.

  Coming to the bushes, Frankie West still had Villa Maria on the rails, four from last, and cruising, while he waited for the opening he felt sure would appear. Then suddenly, as they hit the rising ground, with a wall of tired horses coming back at him, West knew there was nowhere to go – except to pull out round the outside and go.

  Which he did, but too late. Miracle, the much fancied French filly, had been kicked for home and was flying. West, having brought Villa Maria wide on the outside, set about the horse desperately with his whip, and despit
e showing her distaste for such unnecessary punishment by angrily swishing her tail, Villa Maria also showed her genuiness by finding top gear and fairly flying after the leader. But the post came too soon, and Villa Maria was beaten by a neck, while still catching Miracle hand over fist.

  Tyrone was the first to commiserate with Dick Longmann, and to buy him a drink. Cassie didn’t hear him recriminate once. Dick Longmann acidly remarked that Dermot Pryce would never have ridden such a cocky race.

  That’s racing, Dick,’ Tyrone replied. ‘Drink up.’

  On the flight back home, Tyrone said nothing. He held Cassie’s hand and looked out of the window. It was then that Cassie knew he was ruined.

  Chapter Eleven

  By the end of May, a week before the English Derby, when the yard at Claremore should have been at its busiest, out of the forty horses Cassie had so admired on her first sight of the stables, there were only four left in training.

  ‘Racing’s a fickle auld business,’ Tomas had told Cassie one morning when she walked the dog across by herself. ‘Sure it’s a world where words speak louder than actions.’

  Which was something Tyrone in his optimism had not taken into consideration. Even after Villa Maria had lost her race, he had soon recovered his confidence and believed that no one could blame him even indirectly for the filly’s defeat.

  But they did.

  The gossipmongers, and a certain section of the English racing press who loved gunning the Irish, hinted that the Rosse stable at Claremore was rife with dissension, that Mrs Von Wagner wasn’t going to be the only owner to leave and that there were grave financial problems. These rumours had their required effect. The majority of Tyrone’s remaining owners took fright and pulled their horses out, all except Tim Coughlan, the local butcher, who was having none of it and not only kept his three horses with Tyrone, but even went out and bought a fourth. The only trouble was that none of his horses were, according to Tyrone, any damn good.

  There was truth in the rumour about financial difficulties however, as Cassie soon found out. The builders who had started work on the house in April, were summarily dismissed in May. And Cassie found a pile of recently delivered but unopened bills stuffed down the side of one of her rescued antique chairs when she was about to send it off to be re-covered. For days she dallied as to whether or not she should approach Tyrone on the matter of their finances, because she had already found out that he considered certain elements of his business nothing to do with a woman.

  Then she opened the bills, and found out exactly how much they owed.

  ‘They’re my debts too, Tyrone!’ she told him defiantly, as Tyrone stood glowering at her from in front of the drawing-room fire after dinner one night. ‘It’s my job to run this house, and I can’t possibly be expected to do so on credit which seems to be drying up real fast!’

  ‘Stop blathering away like a blasted accountant,’ Tyrone told her, ‘And leave the business side of things to the businessman.’

  ‘I can’t!’ Cassie continued, ‘and I won’t! I can’t be expected to try and run a place like this without knowing exactly how much I have or haven’t got to run it on!’

  Tyrone stared at her for a long time, in silence, which used to disconcert Cassie. But not any more. She stared back at him, good and hard.

  ‘I’m owed a great deal of money,’ he said finally. ‘Your friend’s mother didn’t pay her training bills.’

  ‘You mean for last month?’

  ‘I mean for six months.’

  ‘Tyrone – she had twenty horses with you!’

  ‘That’s why I’m owed a great deal of money.’

  ‘You’re going to have to sue her.’

  ‘Oh, of course I am, Cassie McGann. But you know the old saying; possession is ninety-nine per cent of the law. And Sybille Von Wagner has all her twenty horses.’

  Tyrone finished his coffee and walked over to the french windows. He stood looking out over Claremore, while Cassie racked her brains for what to do.

  ‘You see, normally,’ Tyrone continued, ‘when owners owe you your fees, you hold their horses as collateral. That is standard and proper practice. Then if they still don’t pay you, the horses become yours in lieu.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have let the horses go.’

  ‘I know, Cassie McGann. I’m quite well aware. Come on, let’s take Brian for his walk.’

  They walked for miles, through the woods, across the fields, and out beyond the boundaries of Claremore. They walked along the lanes which led up into the hills, and then up into the hills themselves. All the time they made plans and talked of what they were going to do. By the time they had reached the highest of the hills, and stood where Cassie had never stood before, looking down at Claremore and the wonderful patchwork of the countryside which lay beneath them, Tyrone had convinced her he’d be back on his feet and in business, with a full yard, by the start of the following season, while Cassie had vowed she would undertake the restoration of the house personally, until such times as the builders could be recalled.

  As they strolled back arm in arm, with the big wolfhound loping contentedly beside them, Cassie had only one remaining doubt.

  ‘What’ll you do for money until you’re back on your feet, Tyrone?’ she asked.’

  ‘What I always do when I’m stitched,’ he replied. ‘Go and see old Flann at the bank.’

  ‘It’s best not to look at the whole room when you’re painting it,’ Erin volunteered to Cassie. ‘Least that’s what me Mam says. What she says is just to look at one bit at a time. Otherwise you’ll go bonkers.’

  Cassie, taking a hard-earned coffee break with Erin, whom she’d roped in to help her with the decorating, could see the sense. Three days earlier, when they’d cleared the furniture out of the drawing room, she had been so excited at the prospect of repainting the lovely room. Now it had become just sweated labour and Cassie couldn’t wait for it all to be done.

  She looked around her at the half-painted walls. At least they’d had the sense to do the worst job first, namely the ceiling, although when they’d finished Cassie had seriously wondered how Michelangelo had painted the Sistine Chapel without losing his reason.

  And this was only the first of her undertakings. After this she had vowed to do the hall, the dining room, their bedroom, Tyrone’s study, the landings and the corridors. Now, halfway through only the first room, Cassie suddenly could see herself painting Claremore for the rest of her life.

  By the time she got to bed at night, she was exhausted, too tired even to make love. Tyrone was exhausted too, tired from traipsing round racecourses all over the country, buying drinks for and trying to chat up potential owners. So far he had managed just the one, a rather sharp and self-satisfied Dublin insurance broker, whom they had to entertain to dinner and feign intense interest in for the best part of four and a half hours while he told them in fine detail how he had succeeded in business.

  Tyrone’s lack of success in attracting new owners was demoralising. For a while he hoped for better things when the English Oaks were in prospect, for which Villa Maria was once again one of the favourites. If she won the race, he told Cassie, that surely would vindicate him, even though she’d been out of his yard for a month. Dick Longmann had persuaded Sybille Von Wagner to reengage Dermot Pryce, but even though he rode her beautifully and produced the filly right at the prime moment, having tracked the leaders down round Tattenham Corner, all the time holding his place on the rails, Villa Maria didn’t get the extra four furlongs, and dropped right out of contention in the last furlong to finish a well-beaten seventh.

  So there was no great rush on behalf of owners to send their horses to Claremore. Consequently, by the end of July Tyrone had just eight horses in full training.

  But by the end of July Cassie and Erin had finished painting all the main rooms in the house. Fortunately, before the builders were dismissed, they had managed to mend the roof, and replaster the worst of the walls and ceilings. So now, with the draw
ing room a soft yellow, the dining room a deep red, Tyrone’s study a dark green, and their bedroom a warm, fashionable maroon, at least things no longer looked as bad as they quite obviously were. The bank had granted Tyrone an extension on his overdraft, but Flann had warned Tyrone that he would have to call it in after a year if things had not improved dramatically. There was a long exchange of letters between Tyrone’s and Sybille Von Wagner’s solicitors, which resulted in no financial satisfaction for the innocent party, but yet another expense in the shape of legal fees. The only ray of sunshine throughout an otherwise bleak and rain-swept summer was the runaway victory of Tim Coughlan’s ‘no hopers’ in a selling plate at Galway. Typical of Tyrone, even though he publicly considered the horse a joke, he had quietly sold his E-type Jaguar and put the proceeds of the sale on the nose at 6/1. The win allowed him breathing space, and meant that he only had to lay off half his staff. It also allowed him to take Cassie on a belated honeymoon.

  He took her to Kerry. On the first night away they stayed in a small hotel just outside the town of Glenbeigh, run by a wonderful woman who fussed over Tyrone as if he was her son. From their bedroom window, they could see the long white stretch of Rossbeigh Sand, while underneath them in the lush garden exotic plants and palm trees bloomed in the sub-tropical climate.

  Cassie couldn’t believe the landscape.

  ‘It’s more like the South Seas than how you’d imagine Ireland,’ Cassie told Tyrone with wonder.

  ‘That’s because it’s on the end of the Gulf Stream,’ Tyrone replied, ‘which accounts for all this extraordinary vegetation’.

  ‘And as for that countryside we drove through – I’ve never seen so many lakes. And those mountains!’

  Tyrone looked out of the window with her, his arm round her waist.

  ‘I always forget Kerry,’ he said, ‘the better to remember it.’

  They went walking along the miles of white sand and saw only two people, a man throwing a ball for his dog, and a priest strolling by the water’s edge, his head in the air, and his hands clasped firmly behind his back.