To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘So what’s the prognosis?’ Cassie enquired.

  ‘Do you want the bad news, or the bad news?’ Brogan asked her. ‘You fire or retire.’

  Cassie didn’t believe in firing horses, considering the heat treatment archaic and painful to the horse. She also considered it only a short-term measure – an opinion gleaned from Tyrone, who considered a fired horse afterwards to be at least a stone inferior to what it was before the operation.

  ‘I don’t understand what a stone inferior means, Ty,’ Cassie had asked him when Tyrone had first explained.

  ‘I don’t mean in the animal’s bodyweight, Cassie,’ he’d told her. ‘I mean in his ability. Say if he’d been running off the eight-stone mark in a handicap, a “fired” horse afterwards you can safely call a seven-stone horse still running under eight.’

  Tyrone had firmly believed in nature’s cure: rest, rest and more rest. So Cassie followed suit, and turned Reverse away into the summer pastures, with the intention of standing him at stud the following season. Tootsie, however, had wintered well, and had grown into a nice sort of four-year-old, and ran a very promising third first time out. The Donk had come back into training looking like he always did, as if he should be pulling a milk cart, but within eight weeks had won a valuable mile and three-quarter cup race at York.

  ‘We’ll have to start thinking about the Gold Cup now,’ said Tomas when they’d all returned to Claremore. ‘This fellah looks an out and out stayer to me.’

  Cassie was delighted, having taken a big risk in buying The Donk back. But after his win at York, it looked as though her reinvestment in the little horse was rock solid.

  Other than that, except for a nice two-year-old she had bought cheaply for the ever-patient Joe Coughlan, Claremore had only ten others in training, and all, so it seemed, moderate animals, without a win to their names. With a complement of only fourteen horses in the yard, it promised to be a tough season.

  Particularly after Leonora returned to the scene.

  She had taken all her horses to England after Tyrone had died, where she had placed them with a fashionable Newmarket trainer, before disappearing to wherever the jet set was jetting. Every now and then Erin would read out some scandal from one of the gossip pages of the newspapers about the ex-Principessa, who had briefly re-married and then quickly divorced again, but soon she seemed to have faded from Cassie’s life – so much so that now Cassie barely gave her old adversary another thought. Her indifference was greatly helped by the fact that in the yard all talk of Leonora or her horses was forbidden.

  But then Leonora decided to return to Ireland. After her first divorce, due it was rumoured to what she knew about certain of her husband’s less salubrious ‘romances’, Leonora persuaded Franco to let her keep Derry Na Loch. This concession meant little to a man of such vast wealth, who had in all honesty looked upon the great house as a very occasional residence, despite Leonora’s perverse liking for what Franco considered to be a damp and priest-ridden little island.

  Worse, Leonora returned with a dozen horses, six of them new, and the other half dozen all useful performers, which she put in training with a very dashing and highly social young Anglo-Irishman called Henry FitzGerald, whose stables were in Kildare. When she saw the strength of Leonora’s string, Cassie wasn’t unduly fussed. Leonora had six two-year-olds, and Cassie had only one, so there was very little chance that their paths would ever cross in races for young horses; and since Cassie nursed no overly ambitious plans for any of her older animals, with the exception of The Donk, while Leonora was as always bound to want her horses to be seen in all the smart races at all the right tracks, she hoped that Ireland was going to be a big enough place for both of them that summer.

  But the more you know your enemies, the less you understand them, as Tomas was at pains to point out as, time after time, he and Cassie discovered that Leonora’s horses had been left in against theirs in minor races at second-class tracks. At first Cassie thought it merely coincidental that when she decided to give James Christiansen’s horse Moviola his first chance of winning in an insignificant race at Thurles, Cinema Short, winner already for Leonora and her new trainer of a good race at Leopards-town, was declared a runner. He duly trotted up, and Moviola, only three-quarters fit, toiled in ten lengths second, the winner making him look like a selling plater.

  One week later the same thing happened when Cassie and Tomas, having cleverly placed Tootsie in what was usually a moderately contested conditions race, found Leonora’s Phoenix Park winner Kutchicoo left in at the declarations. Leonora’s filly received weight from Cassie’s filly, being a three-year-old, as opposed to Tootsie who was four. Kutchicoo was also a very big placid sort of filly, and a front runner, whereas Tootsie was lean and nervy and had to be held up for a late run. Kutchicoo led from start to finish and Tootsie never got in a blow. To rub salt into the wound, Dexter Bryant rode the winner.

  By the end of May, Cassie had become well aware that a campaign was being fought. Wherever Claremore went, so did Leonora. Even when they went racing as far west as Galway and Listowel, it was odds-on that Leonora would not only have a runner, but a runner in the same race. Cassie never saw her at the races, only her trainer Henry FitzGerald, who always greeted Tomas and her politely, wishing them good luck and a sporting contest. Invariably his representative had all the luck and won the usually one-sided contest.

  Even when Leonora’s horses didn’t come in first, they still beat Cassie’s, so much so that not only the humans but the horses themselves started to become dispirited. In desperation, Cassie devised a plan where she would enter the Claremore runners all over the place, and keep it a total secret between Tomas and herself and her owners as to where the horses were actually going to run until the last minute, eleven o’clock on the day before the race. But still Leonora couldn’t be shaken off. By some miracle, she and Henry FitzGerald always chose the same races as Cassie and Tomas.

  ‘Miracle my backside,’ snorted Tomas, ‘savin’ your presence. We’re being spied on.’

  ‘How?’ Cassie challenged. ‘Even if Liam, or Tony, or the new lad Derek, or even Mrs Byrne wanted to inform on us, they couldn’t, Tomas, because they don’t know we’re running until we actually declare the horses. And by then it’s too late. So either it’s you that’s telling Leonora, or it’s me.’

  ‘Sure you know dam’ well ’tis neither of us,’ Tomas growled, lighting up another of his interminable Sweet Aftons.

  ‘So who in hell can it be, Tomas?’ Cassie asked helplessly. ‘We’re being well and truly taken apart here!’

  ‘I’ve a very good idea,’ Tomas replied calmly, ‘you just leave this to me.’

  Cassie would have done well to have stood by Tomas’ advice, but for some reason best known to herself – probably sheer rage, she decided afterwards – Cassie determined on bearding the lion in its den. Or in this case, the tigress.

  She called uninvited on Leonora at Derry Na Loch.

  The butler, a different man from before, younger and openly arrogant, kept Cassie waiting in the large marble hall. By the time Leonora wandered downstairs, yawning, some thirty minutes later, Cassie’s temper was almost at breaking point.

  ‘I’m not used to being kept waiting this long,’ she found herself saying.

  ‘And I’m not used to people calling uninvited,’ Leonora replied, as she walked on past her and into the drawing room.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you’d see me,’ Cassie said to Leonora’s back.

  ‘Why’s that, Cassie?’ Leonora asked, turning to her and closing the doors. ‘Do you have something catching?’

  She smiled and stubbed out her cigarette, immediately lighting another.

  ‘Anyway,’ Leonora continued. ‘How are you? You’ve got awful thin. Drink?’

  She unstopped a decanter and looked quizzically at Cassie who shook her head.

  ‘Of course not,’ Leonora answered for her. ‘Far too early for Miss Goody-Two-Shoes.’

  She po
ured herself what looked from the dark amber colour like a very large brandy, yawned once more, then stretched herself out on the sofa.

  ‘For God’s sake do sit down, Cassie,’ she said. ‘You look as though you’ve come to deliver an ultimatum.’

  ‘I’ve come to ask you what in hell you think you’re playing at,’ Cassie replied, refusing to sit.

  Leonora screwed her mouth to one side and looked up at Cassie.

  ‘You really should put on some more weight, you know,’ she countered. ‘Men don’t like skinny women. Tyrone couldn’t stand them.’

  ‘There was only one woman Tyrone couldn’t stand, Leonora. And that was you.’

  As soon as she’d said it, Cassie wanted to bite her tongue. This was just the sort of cat fight she did not want to get into. But Leonora chose to ignore the remark, preferring to smile at Cassie enigmatically, before lighting yet another cigarette from her barely half-smoked one.

  ‘So you want to know what I’m playing at, do you? My, but you must have seen an awful lot of B-pictures when you were a kid.’

  ‘You’re making a fool of yourself, Leonora. Chasing us round all the second-and third-class racetracks with your first-class horses.’

  ‘These aren’t my first-class horses, honey,’ Leonora smiled. ‘The horses I keep on this godforsaken island are my second-class horses.’

  Cassie was bested. She stared at Leonora, not knowing what to say. Leonora kept smiling for a moment, then she clicked her tongue.

  ‘Say. Don’t tell me you’ve become a bad loser, Cassie McGann?’ she asked mockingly.

  Cassie sat down and stared for a long time at the painting over the fireplace without having the slightest idea of what it looked like.

  ‘You don’t have to do this, Leonora,’ she said finally and quietly. ‘This isn’t your living. You don’t know what it’s like, hanging in there by your fingernails, trying to survive and keep hold of everything you have left. Which in my case is just my family and my way of life. It’s a game to you. Sending your horses out against mine to win a few hundred pounds in prize money. It’s like you standing on the corner of O’Connell Street, dressed in your silks and your furs, playing a fiddle and trying to fill your mink hat with pennies. It’s just a game to you, that’s all. Because nothing depends on it.’

  ‘Oh but you’re wrong, sweetie, it does,’ Leonora replied. ‘An awful lot depends on it. What depends on it is beating you.’

  ‘So you’re not going to call it a day?’ Cassie said.

  ‘A day?’ Leonora frowned in reply. ‘A day? Why, Cassie McGann, as far as I’m concerned, it’s barely dawn.’

  She eyed Cassie, then finishing her brandy in one large gulp, got up to help herself to another.

  ‘OK,’ said Cassie, standing up. ‘If it’s war you want, suits me. But let me just tell you one thing before I go, Leonora. You’re going to live to regret this. Your bloody-mindedness – you’ll live to regret it. I’ll make sure of that.’

  Something in Cassie’s tone wiped the smile off Leonora’s pudgy face. She paused by the drinks table for a moment, then darted in between Cassie and the door.

  ‘I’ve been drinking, honey,’ she said, with a far too obvious change of tone. ‘You’ve really got to pay no attention at all to old Leonora when she’s been drinking. In fact I haven’t just been drinking, sweetheart, I’m smashed.’

  Gripping one of Cassie’s arms with a heavily bejewelled hand, Leonora tried to steer her reluctant guest back to her chair.

  ‘Listen,’ she continued. ‘This is just terrible. Do you know that? At each other like this after all the great times we’ve had together. Stay to dinner. Why don’t you stay to dinner? You stay to dinner and we can talk over all those great times we’ve had together. I’m so bloody bored, Cassie McGann. So bloody bored. Jesus – besides you, there’s no one in Ireland that I like any more!’

  Cassie, staring at her vaguely smudged lipstick, the whiteness of her skin, and the nicotine which was fast beginning to stain her teeth and her fingers, thought it was probably nearer the truth that there was no one in Ireland who liked her any more.

  ‘Come on,’ Leonora pleaded, tightening her grip. ‘Stay for dinner. It’d be fun.’

  ‘I don’t have the time, Leonora,’ Cassie said, shaking herself free of Leonora’s grasp. ‘I have work to do.’

  ‘You look as though you could use a square meal.’

  ‘We eat just fine at Claremore, thanks all the same.’

  ‘What you mean,’ Leonora said, her mood once more on the turn, ‘is you look after yourself.’

  ‘I ride out every morning, Leonora. Even if I wanted to, I can’t afford to get fat.’

  Leonora looked at her with unconcealed dislike then did her best to hide it with a smile.

  ‘I’ve got an even better idea, Cassie,’ she said, once more getting herself between Cassie and the door. ‘Listen. Suppose I came back to you. Suppose I left Henry FitzGerald and brought my horses back to you. How about that? I come back to you and you’d be top of the pile again! Just like that! OK? I’d really like that.’

  The bejewelled hand was on her arm again, as Cassie stopped to consider what she was saying. More than anything in the world she needed good horses and rich owners in her yard, and Leonora would be the perfect answer. She was greedy enough to want to go on buying horses until she won a Classic, and she was quite rich enough to do so. If Cassie played her part right, she could even buy the horses for Leonora, with a book full of blank cheques. And what did she have to do in return? Nothing, except train her horses. Train her horses and sit and be bored by a tiresome drunk; there was no Tyrone any more, and no marriage to be endangered by a beautiful, voluptuous and unscrupulous blonde.

  ‘You haven’t got the horses, Cassie,’ Leonora was saying. ‘You need good horses, and plenty of cash. I’ve got both those things. And in spades.’

  There Cassie stood, high on the hill, with the racing world spread out before her, and Lucifer at her elbow.

  Once again she shook herself free of a devil’s grasp.

  ‘Thanks for the offer, Leonora,’ she said finally, ‘but the answer’s no. I wouldn’t accept a horse from you if you were the Queen of England herself. But if you want a contest, boy, you’re on.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Cassie!’ Leonora laughed. ‘You’ve got a stable of mules, baby!’

  ‘I may well have, Leonora,’ Cassie answered, ‘but what I’ve also got is time. And a long, strong suit in patience. I don’t care if it takes till the end of the century. I’ll beat you where and when it matters. Because that’s what’s great about racing, Leonora. What’s great about it is that for people like you, with all your rotten millions, first past the post is the one thing you just can’t guarantee buying.’

  ‘Christ – you were always horse-mad,’ Leonora said, turning back once more to refill her glass. ‘Horse bloody mad. But Jesus look at you! Look at you, you’re falling apart at the seams! You’re crazy. You know that? Completely crazy. I mean, Christ. Who’d ever have thought you’d end up as you have?’

  ‘I haven’t ended up, Leonora,’ Cassie replied, pausing by the door. ‘On the contrary, I’m only just starting out.’

  Cassie left, and as she crossed the large marble hall, she heard the crash of a brandy glass breaking against the door she’d closed behind her.

  Tomas was waiting impatiently for her when she returned to Claremore.

  ‘We’re home and hosed, Mrs Rosse,’ he said, wiping his hands down the front of his trousers as Cassie poured them drinks. ‘Didn’t I tell yous to leave it all to me?’

  ‘I only wish I’d listened, Tomas,’ she answered, handing him his whisky.

  Tomas ignored her, and took a deep draught of his John Jameson.

  ‘I found our spy,’ he announced.

  Cassie looked up, hoping against hope it wasn’t anyone in their yard. Her greatest fear was that it might be Mrs Byrne, who she knew needed the money.

  ‘’Tis a woman,’ Tomas
said, ‘and wouldn’t you know it?’

  So it was Mrs Byrne, Tyrone’s and now her own trusted secretary, the only other person privy to their confidential information. Cassie groaned inwardly and sat down.

  ‘Shall I tell you how I knew?’ Tomas said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘Be her shoes. Dear Christ, she’s always had a weakness for new shoes, to the despair of her husband, and you should have seen the pair she had on her today! They must have come from Brown Thomas’s themselves!’

  ‘I never noticed Mrs Byrne was wearing new shoes,’ a bewildered Cassie replied.

  ‘Mrs Byrne?’ Tomas spluttered into his glass. ‘Mrs Byrne? Have yous taken leave of all your senses? Mrs Byrne indeed. Sure I’m talking of old Rosie McGinty in the Post Office!’

  Cassie stared at Tomas, then got up in silence and refilled their glasses, while Tomas sat quietly chuckling in his chair behind her.

  ‘Of course,’ Cassie said, getting there. ‘Rosie Red-Ear, as Tyrone always used to call her. The listener-in.’

  ‘And wasn’t the Guv’nor right? That old biddy hasn’t missed a word anyone’s said on the phone round here since I don’t know when!’

  Tomas went on to tell Cassie that it wouldn’t have taken a lot of money to persuade Rosie to reveal which horses Claremore intended to declare and on what courses, gleaning this information whenever Cassie had telephoned the respective owners to discuss the matter. The content of all these conversations would be invaluable, because Cassie always took great trouble to keep her owners fully informed of the plans she had for their horses, and exactly how good their chances were.

  ‘And all for the price of a few pairs of shoes,’ Cassie commented wryly.

  ‘It’d be for a lot more than just shoes,’ Tomas replied, ‘you mark my words. Because her husband’s a terrible weakness for the bottle.’

  ‘So how are we going to stop her, Tomas?’ Cassie asked, ‘short of moving house.’