To Hear a Nightingale

by Charlotte Bingham

‘Great,’ said Dex, ruffling the horse’s mane. ‘I’d say this young fellah’s about ready to race.’

  ‘OK,’ Cassie replied. ‘And I don’t think he’s the only one.’

  Erin went into labour the evening before Dexter’s first scheduled ride in public. As she sat comforting her, and waiting for the midwife, Cassie wondered once again what Tomas had whispered to his daughter just before he had died. Naturally she had never asked, since it was something between father and daughter, and Erin had never volunteered the information. But remembering the tears that had fallen, Cassie was sure that they had finally been reunited.

  By nine o’clock, the baby was fully engaged, and the midwife had still not turned up. So Cassie prepared to deliver the child. Erin, contrary to her normally tearful and timid character, was a model of courage and fortitude, never complaining as her birth pains grew worse and worse. But by the time the midwife did finally arrive, full of apologies for her wretched car breaking down, Erin had bitten practically clean through her bottom lip.

  Just before she was delivered, as the top of her baby’s head became visible, Erin clutched Cassie’s hand and gave one loud scream, so that for a moment Cassie thought Erin was going to die.

  And then a few moments later, with one good slap from the midwife, another heart began to beat independently, and another brand new life was born.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ Cassie said to Erin, as the midwife cut and knotted the cord. ‘It’s a little baby boy.’

  Then Erin started to weep, but for once they were tears of pure joy, as her baby was placed gently in her arms.

  ‘Ah God so it is, Mrs Rosse,’ Erin cried. ‘Will you look at the little devil? A little baby boy.’

  Cassie looked at the tiny child in Erin’s arms, its eyes tightly shut and its little body swathed in a blanket, and knew that the baby would never leave its mother’s side.

  ‘Have you thought what to call him, Erin?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘God help us,’ Erin replied, without taking her eyes off her baby. ‘Wasn’t that one of the last things my father asked me? He said if the babba was a little boy, would I ever call him Padraig Tomas Tyrone? Savin’ your presence of course, Mrs Rosse.’

  The future of the baby was debated by Cassie and Mrs Muldoon long into the night. At first Erin’s mother would not hear of the baby remaining at Claremore.

  ‘Perhaps among other things,’ Cassie suggested, ‘Tomas also requested that Erin might keep the child if she so wished.’

  ‘He was a sick man, Mrs Rosse,’ Mrs Muldoon answered. ‘Sure he’d have said anything to make his peace with his Maker.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s strictly true,’ Cassie argued. ‘You know better than I how much he loved his daughter. Maybe we ought to ask her.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, Mrs Rosse,’ Erin’s mother replied, ‘with the greatest respect, of course. I’m her mother, and as far as this matter is concerned, what I say goes.’

  ‘Mrs Muldoon,’ Cassie sighed, beginning to lose patience, ‘Erin is over forty, and the mother now of a child herself.’

  ‘Of a bastard child,’ Mrs Muldoon answered, defiantly.

  ‘And she’s still not saying who the father is,’ Cassie continued, ignoring the challenge.

  ‘Sure the child swears she’ll never betray the father. At one time I thought she was all for claiming it as a virgin birth.’

  ‘OK,’ said Cassie, ‘then here’s what I suggest. I suggest that I adopt the baby, which will give it the respectability you want. I don’t know who knows or who doesn’t know Erin’s “guilty secret”, but all we simply have to say is that I’m adopting another child. And Erin can bring it up as her own. Which won’t be any great problem because your dear daughter has brought up both my children as her own anyway.’

  Cassie smiled at Mrs Muldoon, as she remembered Erin’s fierce possessiveness. She particularly remembered the almost physical tug of war they’d had when Josephine first went away to school.

  ‘And maybe, who knows?’ Cassie continued. ‘Rather than give the baby away, this way perhaps you’ll get to love your first grandchild.’

  Mrs Muldoon looked up at Cassie, startled. It was fairly obvious from her expression that this was the very first time she had viewed Erin’s baby as being related to her.

  ‘Mary, Mother of God,’ she whispered, fumbling for a handkerchief in the pockets of her pinny, ‘sure I’ve nothin’ against the baby. He’s the sweetest little child and I’ve nothin’ against him at all. It’s just – it’s just the shame, Mrs Rosse. The shame.’

  ‘There’s no shame in a baby being born,’ Cassie told her. ‘The pity would be if you remained ashamed.’

  Dexter had his first public ride for Claremore later that day, riding the Peter Sankey two-year-old he had galloped so successfully. It was a big field, of twenty-one runners, and the horse finished third, beaten two lengths and half a length, after running very green.

  The punters clapped him into the unsaddling enclosure as if he’d ridden the winner.

  ‘He’s a good sort,’ Dexter told Cassie, as he pulled the saddle off the horse, ‘but I think he’ll appreciate a longer trip.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Cassie replied, ‘and well done.’

  When she got home, Father Patrick was waiting in the drawing room to see her.

  ‘I stopped by to see Erin,’ he explained. ‘I rang her mother to see how she was, and I heard she’d been delivered.’

  ‘Erin’s fine,’ Cassie told him, ‘She was very brave, and she’s delighted with her little boy.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ the priest agreed, ‘I went to see her, and the baby. And yes indeed. They both seem to be doing very well.’

  Cassie took a quiet look at Father Patrick. He was normally so energetic and forthright, yet this evening he was sitting on the edge of his chair, nursing his whisky and staring immovably at the carpet.

  ‘Is something the matter, Father?’ she finally asked him.

  ‘Well not really, no, Cassie,’ he replied. ‘I can hardly in all honesty say there’s anything the matter. I’ve been very lucky to have been the PP here for so long. I always think that the powers that be must have overlooked me, because really I should have been moved on long ago.’

  ‘They’re moving you on?’

  ‘Yes, I’m to go to South America next month.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Next month. As you say. Just like that.’

  He took a drink of his whisky, then carefully put his glass down, still averting his eyes from Cassie.

  ‘To come to the point, Cassie,’ he said after a silence, ‘Erin’s mother explained your plan for the child, and I would like to compliment you on its excellence.’

  ‘Thank you, Father Patrick,’ Cassie replied, smiling at the formality of the praise.

  ‘Indeed while you were at your business this afternoon, I understand that Mrs Muldoon explained your offer to Erin, and subject to your confirmation of it, I have a feeling the young woman in question will be only too delighted to avail herself of your very great kindness.’

  ‘I like children, Father. And with both of mine now all but grown up, I shall enjoy having a baby around the house again.’

  ‘Even with your full life?’

  ‘There’s always room for a baby.’

  Father Patrick finished his whisky, but declined the offer of another, preferring instead to get up and pace the room in silence for a while. Then he sat down again, and asked if he could after all perhaps have that second whisky.

  Pouring his drink for him, Cassie could only put the priest’s restlessness down to his sudden foreign posting. She gave him his whisky and then sat back down opposite him.

  ‘This is going to sound ridiculous, coming from me,’ Cassie said to break the silence. ‘But is there something particular you want to talk to me about, Father?’

  The priest rubbed one hand wearily across his eyes, frowning as he did so; then he looked directly at Cassie for the f
irst time that evening.

  ‘I’m the father of Erin’s child, Cassie,’ he said.

  Oddly enough, Cassie thought, as she tried to remain composed and not look as thunderstruck as she felt, oddly enough she had put Father Patrick on her mental list of suspects, only to strike him off as an utterly ridiculous notion. Firstly, he was a man above suspicion, free from the usual tattle-tales which apparently follow most priests in Ireland from parish to parish; and secondly, he was such an utterly handsome and virile man that Cassie couldn’t help thinking somewhat uncharitably that if he was indeed to fall from grace, then the object of his temptation would hardly be the timid and bashful Erin Muldoon – even though in the last two years, as Cassie had noticed, Erin had grown quite extraordinarily religious, going to church on practically every conceivable occasion. But still Cassie had rejected as absurd the idea of Father Patrick as a real-life father.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Cassie,’ Father Patrick said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘You’re wondering why poor quiet little Erin Muldoon? Well there’s your reason. Poor quiet Erin. I felt sorry for her, and she felt sorry for me. She was never out of the church. Always there with a helping hand, or a ready ear. And odd as I’m quite sure it will seem to you, we fell in love. It wasn’t just a sexual encounter, you understand. The irony is we only made love the once. Which perhaps is a little unfair of the Fates. But then, if you sup with the devil . . .’

  He drank some more whisky, then carefully brushed some invisible hairs from his jacket.

  ‘I thought of leaving the priesthood,’ he continued, ‘and of marrying Erin. But I’m a man of a certain faith, Cassie, and I still really do believe that the love I have for Christ is greater than the love I could have for anyone else. And I think Erin is mindful of this fact. So I requested a posting in South America.’

  Cassie looked up at him, surprised for the second time that evening.

  ‘That’s right, Cassie, I requested the posting. Now of course, by telling you all this, I’m throwing myself entirely on your mercy. You could well think me a despicable sort of fellow, and see that I was defrocked. Or you could tell Erin that I asked to be sent abroad, rather than as she sees it, as an act of God. And I offer no defence except the love that I have for God, and in mitigation of my sins, that by knowing my child, my son – is in your safekeeping, I can devote the rest of my life to the propagation of Christ’s word.’

  Father Patrick stared at Cassie unblinkingly, not challenging her to make a decision, but simply and honestly just awaiting her verdict. Cassie knew the man well enough to realise that if she gave him the thumbs down, he would merely accept her finding and abide by it without further argument. But Cassie also knew that she was in no position to judge a fellow human being’s behaviour, besides considering that Father Patrick’s one slip from the path of righteousness was not going to turn one of the most passionately devout men she had ever known into a heinous sinner.

  ‘I hope you keep safe and well in South America, Father,’ she said, rising and extending her hand in farewell. ‘We shall all miss you greatly.’

  ‘I shall miss you all greatly as well,’ he replied, gripping Cassie’s hand firmly in his own, strong hand. ‘I know my son will grow well in this house, because you’re a very exceptional person, Cassie Rosse, and a wonderful mother. All I ask is that you say nothing of this to Erin.’

  ‘If you’ll absolve me in advance,’ Cassie replied with a smile, ‘I haven’t seen you since Sunday.’

  ‘I think God would forgive you most things, Cassie,’ Father Patrick said, collecting his hat. ‘Thank you. And may God bless all here.’

  Cassie watched him as he got on his bicycle and rode off down the drive and out of her life. She guessed that he would never come back from South America, which was why he had chosen to go there; somewhere where there was still very real danger for a Catholic priest to live and work, somewhere where he might easily die for his faith and atone for his one surrender to temptation. And as she closed the front doors on him, she recalled the days when she was new at Claremore and how she and Father Patrick would argue hammer and tongs about the Church’s teachings as far as babies and a woman’s role in the world went, and how shocked the young and freckle-faced Erin had been that Cassie should argue with a priest.

  And now she was to be the adoptive mother of his child. She smiled to herself as she went back into the drawing room, at the thought of how much Tomas would be enjoying the irony.

  By late summer, both Cassie’s new offspring were growing apace. Padraig Tomas Tyrone was the bonniest boy baby, as handsome as his father and as open-faced as his mother. Erin was as proud as anything of him, although she had to reserve her most outward displays of emotion towards her child for when she was at home behind the closed doors of Claremore, because it was made known very quickly that Mrs Rosse was in the process of adopting another child.

  The Nightingale, however, was growing a little too quickly for Cassie’s and Sheila Meath’s liking.

  ‘I’d be tearing my hair out, wouldn’t you, Sheila?’ Cassie asked her friend one day as they stood looking at the colt chasing round the home paddock. ‘I’d be at my wits’ end if I was trying to get him ready for the yearling sales. Look at him. He’s such a lanky brute.’

  ‘And more than a little lop-sided,’ Sheila added. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still a maiden at three.’

  ‘By the look of him,’ Cassie added, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still a maiden at five. I just wish he’d stop growing so goddam fast.’

  Even so, as they stood watching him cavort round the paddock, there was something rather special about the colt, something quite indefinable. So much so that the two women found it hard to drag themselves away to go and look at the other youngsters, the ones who actually were destined for the sale ring.

  ‘It’s when you look at some of these others,’ Sheila said, ‘that you can see how exceptional Nightie might be.’

  ‘He’s got a bit of presence, hasn’t he?’ Cassie agreed.

  ‘I’d almost go so far as to say he’s got star quality,’ Sheila replied.

  ‘If only he’d stop growing upwards and grow a bit more outwards,’ Cassie grumbled.

  Sheila turned and looked at her and raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever thought of changing your name to Tomas Muldoon the Second, have you?’ she asked.

  Frank came over for the Goff’s sales, and Cassie bought two yearlings on his behalf.

  ‘You’re the perfect owner,’ Cassie told him over dinner afterwards. ‘I wish there were more like you. Even with all the races your horses have won you now, you’ve never pressurised me into running them when I advised you not to, or complained when they got beat when they should have won.’

  ‘Jeeze, it’s a sport, Cassie Rosse,’ Frank laughed. ‘The day you take this gameseriously is the day you stop enjoying it.’

  ‘That was Tyrone’s philosophy totally. And when things start to go wrong, sometimes I have to remind myself not to forget it,’ Cassie replied.

  Frank stayed over for a week, and he and Cassie picked up the pieces just where they’d left them a few months earlier, just as they always did. But as the time approached for Frank to take his leave, Cassie noticed a change in his mood.

  ‘Don’t tell me you have something you want to discuss with me as well,’ she laughed over their farewell dinner à deux at Claremore. ‘It seems to have been that sort of year.’

  ‘Why yes, I guess I do, Cassie,’ he replied, looking up from his cheese. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘Frank, we go back a long way now.’

  ‘Sure, but even so. A woman’s intuition, I guess?’

  ‘Maybe. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Cassie. I want to get married.’

  ‘Frank,’ Cassie answered, looking at him through the candlelight. ‘Sometimes I’d give an arm to be your wife.’

  ‘But you won’t, Cass.’

  ‘I can’t, Frank.�
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  ‘Right. That’s why I want to get married.’

  ‘You have someone in mind?’

  ‘Cassie. There’s only one person I ever have in mind. You know that. But we’ve been through this. You’re here, in Claremore, and you’re here to stay. I’m over there, in New York, and I’m there to stay. Period.’

  ‘Maybe I should take out a licence to train over there.’

  ‘You’d hate it. This is you. This place.’

  ‘OK, Frank. So maybe you should come and work over here. Or better still, not work over here.’

  Frank came round behind her chair and eased it out for her as she rose. Cassie took his arm as they walked through to the drawing room.

  ‘I couldn’t not work, Cass,’ he said. ‘You know that. And I couldn’t work over here. Dublin isn’t New York, however charming it may be. I’d be bored by the middle of the first week.’

  ‘Why do you want to get married, Frank? It’s really not been on your agenda before.’

  Frank swilled the brandy in his glass and inhaled the aroma. ‘You’ll find this a little crazy, Cassie,’ he replied. ‘But I’m jealous. I want to have children. Seeing you with little Padraig, I get broody. Really. Obviously it’s an urge I’ve been sublimating.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you sublimating,’ Cassie smiled, resting her head on his knee. ‘You only have to see a TV commercial with a baby in it, and your chin starts to pucker.’

  ‘Go to hell,’ Frank said with a broad grin. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘I shall miss you, Frank,’ Cassie told him later when she lay in his arms. ‘This year I’ll have lost two men that I loved.’

  ‘We’ll still be friends, Cassie. Nothing can ever destroy what we have.’

  ‘What we have had, Frank,’ Cassie corrected him. ‘So I guess you’d better make love to me one more time before we kiss each other goodbye.’

  They made love more than once that last night, both of them reluctant to think this was the last time they would be in each other’s arms. Then they slept a little before dawn broke, and when the light woke them, they made love again, gently and sleepily, before falling back to sleep, Frank lying behind Cassie, his arms circled round her waist.