The Nightingale Sings Read online

‘That remains to be seen. A lot of horses actually improve when they’re gelded. I’m not saying Nightie will improve because that would be all but impossible, but there’s every chance he will not dramatically disimprove. That’s what I meant. You could well still have a racehorse on your hands. Not the horse he was perhaps, not the greatest racehorse that in my opinion ever graced a racecourse certainly, but one still good enough to earn his living.’

  ‘Nightie’s earned his living, Niall. He’s earned his living ten million times over. What remains to be seen is whether he’s changed. Whether he’s still his wonderful old benign self and I doubt that he is. My impression is that he no longer likes anyone near him. Except me. And Bridie. You saw for yourself. We were the ones who had to hold him for you to get anywhere near him. And you couldn’t get anywhere near him till you’d tranked him.’

  ‘It’s early days, Cassie,’ Niall tried to reassure her, although he had seen for himself the difference in the big horse’s behaviour. As soon as the vet had entered his box the animal had bared his teeth and started to wheel round and plunge at him. It had taken all his, Bridie’s and Cassie’s considerable skills to get a needle into him in order to sedate him and even when the drug had started to work in his enfeebled state the big horse had still tried to have a go. ‘I’m sure once he’s settled into the old routine he’ll be back to himself,’ Niall continued. ‘Listen – there was never a bad bone in that horse’s body, and whatever terrible time he’s had I can’t for the life of me see him changing character completely.’

  ‘I can,’ Cassie said, and said it again to Joel and Mattie when they sat in Cassie’s study having an early drink. ‘I think his character’s changed. He never took fright before because he never knew fright.’

  ‘Give him time, like your vet says,’ Joel replied, taking out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘You can hardly expect an animal who’s just been through such an ordeal to come back as if he’d just been having a pick of grass,’ Mattie argued, refusing the offer of a Gauloise.

  ‘I’ll kill her,’ Cassie said suddenly. ‘I’ll tear the bitch’s evil heart out.’

  Joel looked at her. ‘The bitch being Mrs Lovett Andrew, I suppose?’

  ‘Who else?’ Mattie asked.

  ‘But you don’t know it was her,’ Joel said, with a deep frown. ‘You don’t have a single shred of evidence.’

  ‘Who else could it have been, Joel?’ Cassie retorted. ‘Who else would have gone to that particular extreme to get back at me? Don’t look at me like that. I’m not mad. Leonora thought she could buy into the horse, on the money-can’t-buy-love-but-it-sure-as-hell-can-buy-everything-else principle. She couldn’t beat us so she thought she’d join us, and when I told her no way, you should have seen the look in her eyes. You don’t say no to the Von Wagners. Nobody has ever said no to the Von Wagners.’

  ‘Except you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cassie looked back at Joel. ‘I know you think I’m crazy,’ she said, ‘but think about it. Anyone else with a grudge, or rather a liability as the bookies call it, would just have kidnapped the horse and shot him. Terrorists would have made demands. And it’s not going to be anyone else because nobody else would have had the savvy. Or the muscle, or whatever. It was either money, terror or revenge, and I’ll take revenge. Look – even if Nightie hadn’t made it through the season unbeaten, which is a possibility—’

  ‘A very small one.’

  ‘It’s still a possibility. So even if he had got beaten in the Arc, say, he would still have been worth just as much as he was before the race. So short of simply killing the horse—’

  ‘And leaving you to claim the insurance,’ Joel interposed.

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie slowly agreed, with another look at him. ‘So short of simply killing Nightie, much the best revenge would be to geld him, right? With that one simple operation there goes every penny that he’s worth.’

  ‘You can still claim the insurance,’ Joel replied. ‘I remember from our horse insurances at home there’s some clause or other about wilful castration on behalf of those responsible for the theft. So since there can be no doubt about the theft or about what happened to the horse, they’ll have to pay out.’

  Cassie got up and walked to the window to look out at the hills far beyond. ‘How much would you have said Nightie was worth before he was taken?’ she asked.

  ‘I have no idea exactly. An average to good Derby winner is worth at least one to two million as a stallion, so I should imagine your horse was worth maybe five times that.’

  ‘Or more,’ Mattie said. ‘As a stallion he could have been worth anything up to twenty mill.’

  ‘Now tell him the rate to insure an entire racehorse,’ Cassie said to her son. ‘While he’s racing and then afterwards as a stallion.’

  ‘Seven to ten per cent.’

  ‘Most insurers wouldn’t even offer cover on Nightie. Certainly not at that figure. Most of them wanted fifteen to twenty per cent. Who has that sort of money? Maybe the sheikhs do but I don’t. I certainly didn’t at the beginning of this year. Two million to insure ten? You’re joking.’

  ‘You could have raised it,’ Joel said. ‘You have the collateral.’

  ‘And if something had happened to the horse, which it did, and they paid out, I still have the interest to pay back on the loan, which could be anything up to three hundred and fifty grand. Just in interest. I really don’t have that sort of money lying around, Joel. I have serious cash flow problems. Every penny I make goes back into Claremore. Since the horse belongs to me and me alone and wasn’t syndicated, the only obligation to insure was to myself.’ Cassie shrugged, and then lapsed into silence.

  ‘The horse doesn’t stand insured?’ Joel asked, now up on his feet and standing beside her.

  ‘He’s insured all right,’ Cassie replied. ‘But only for what I could afford to insure him for.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘A fraction of his worth. One million.’

  * * *

  After a light lunch and a long talk Mattie went off to do some business and Cassie took Joel up for a walk in the foothills with Wilkie. At one point Joel offered Cassie his hand as they negotiated a steep path. When she no longer needed it she still held on to it and their pace slowed. They said nothing for a long while, until large clouds rolled in front of the sun casting the whole valley into shadow. Rain began to fall, heavy drops that fell into their faces blown by the stiff wind that had suddenly got up, yet on they walked at the same pace as if oblivious of the weather’s sudden change.

  ‘All right if I stay on for a while?’ Joel asked out of the blue as he helped Cassie over a stile.

  ‘If you’re worried about me, there’s no reason,’ Cassie replied. ‘I can cope. I’ve always coped before.’

  ‘In that case you won’t mind if I stay on,’ Joel grunted, following her over the stile. ‘Knowing you, the last thing you’d want would be someone around while you weren’t coping. Matt said I could shack up in the empty guest cottage. Something the matter?’ He looked round to where Cassie was still standing by the stile.

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ Cassie said. ‘There’s something I want to do.’

  Once he had gone, lost to sight in a small belt of trees which lay below by the top pond, Cassie turned and headed away in the other direction. She walked hard for ten minutes until she came to the oak tree up which Tyrone had built himself a tree house when he was a boy and where often on a summer’s night he and Cassie would sit with a bottle of wine counting the stars. Pulling the rope ladder away from the trunk she climbed up it and into the wooden house, which like everything Tyrone had turned a hand to had been built properly and to last. There were bits and pieces of their life together even up here in the tree house, an old wind-up gramophone with a pile of equally old John McCormack 78s still in their original HMV paper sleeves, some Dashiel Hammett paperbacks which were Tyrone’s staple fare, the flyleaf of every one covered in his notes recording his own secret handicap ratings f
or horses he intended to back. There too was an old crystal set in a plywood box given to him as a boy, and which he had restored to perfect working order, a wickerwork picnic hamper with most of its set of light green cups and plates still held in place with white plastic straps, a teddy bear belonging to Cassie because she had never been given one as a child, a small china horse, a leatherbound copy of Black Beauty. Even the old double sleeping bag into which they would climb on hot summer nights and make love was there in its place, rolled up in one corner.

  ‘Dammit, Tyrone,’ Cassie said out loud as an old faded photograph of her long-dead husband fell out of a book she had picked up to put back on the shelf. ‘Dammit. Tyrone, you’re everywhere. And perhaps—’ She looked again at the photograph and then shut it quickly back up in the book. ‘Perhaps it’s finally time that you weren’t,’ she added, and sat herself down in the doorway to think.

  She had no idea how long she stayed up there in the tree, nor did she hear voices calling for her from the gardens and then the grounds, but it was twilight when she finally descended and began her return to the house. She saw a vehicle coming across the fields in her direction with its headlights on, and shielding her eyes against their sudden glare she stopped as she realized it was making for her. Somebody jumped out of the passenger’s side and ran towards her while the driver swung the vehicle round.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ It was Joel. He smelt of French tobacco and wine, a smell which far from offending Cassie made her feel safe.

  ‘I’ve been up in the tree,’ Cassie replied. ‘Trying to sort a few things out.’

  Joel sighed and looped a hand up to scratch his thick head of hair. ‘Any idea of how long you’ve been gone?’

  ‘Obviously far too long,’ Cassie replied. ‘But then that’s my prerogative. I live here.’ She climbed in the jeep behind Mattie who was driving.

  ‘We’ve been over half of Wicklow looking for you,’ Mattie said with studied indifference.

  ‘Sorry,’ Cassie said, brushing her hair from her eyes. ‘But I just needed a moment or two.’

  Mattie shoved the jeep into gear and accelerated back down the hill.

  ‘Careful, Matt,’ Joel sighed, hanging on to the windscreen of the jeep. ‘There are sheep all over this field.’

  ‘I know,’ Mattie replied. ‘I can see them.’ Then he turned round for a moment to look at his mother. ‘According to Joel you said he could stay on for a while,’ he called over the noise of the engine as he changed down and swung out onto the track. ‘I said he could doss down in the guest cottage.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie said, looking at the back of Joel’s head and thinking what a nice shape it was. ‘I don’t see why not.’

  That evening when it seemed the telephone had finally stopped ringing Cassie and Joel sat alone drinking whisky by the fire until late, Mattie having taken himself off to the village to console himself with some of his friends who lived locally.

  ‘It was just as well you disappeared when you did today,’ Joel said as he threw his last Gauloise into the fire.

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘The press were all over the place.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘Some of the things they asked.’

  Cassie let the conversation hang for a moment, sipping at her drink and staring at the blazing logs. ‘You’re probably right,’ she agreed in the end. ‘I probably couldn’t have coped. Not the way I feel.’

  Joel was searching his pockets for more cigarettes, but evidently failed to find any. ‘No point in asking you for a cigarette, I suppose.’

  ‘There are some in the middle drawer of the desk. They’re not French, they’re Virginian. Extra mild.’

  ‘Any port in a storm.’ Joel pulled himself up from the floor and wandered over to the desk. ‘Closet smoker, are you?’

  ‘I have one a week, after Sunday lunch,’ Cassie said. ‘But I’ll have one now if you don’t mind.’

  Joel lit her cigarette and then his. Cassie inhaled and felt a sudden rush of nicotine that made her head spin.

  ‘If only it wasn’t so bad for you,’ she sighed. ‘I really like smoking.’

  ‘Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it,’ Joel quoted.

  ‘It satisfies no normal need. I like it.

  It makes you thin, it makes you lean.

  It takes the hair right off your bean,

  It’s the worst darn stuff I’ve ever seen.

  I like it.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Cassie asked, smiling.

  ‘Bloke called Graham Lee Hemminger. It takes the hair right off your bean, it’s the worst darn stuff I’ve ever seen, I like it.’

  Joel held up the whisky decanter which had an inch of whisky left in it. Cassie shook her head so he poured the remainder into his own glass.

  ‘I wonder what’s going to happen,’ Cassie said, carefully drawing on her cigarette. Joel didn’t prompt her, he just let her go on thinking out loud. ‘I mean, I wonder what I’m going to do?’ Cassie threw her half-finished cigarette onto the fire and folded her hands round the front of her knees. ‘It feels – it feels as if I’d been floating on a wonderful warm sea for all this time and now it’s suddenly turned to ice, that’s exactly how it feels,’ she continued. ‘I’m trapped under the ice and it’s all so unreal. You see, I’d hoped and prayed all the time that somehow I’d get him back, that by some miracle he’d be found and we’d get him home, and I never gave up. Even when everyone said there was no hope, I never relinquished mine. It was the only thing that got me through, that one day they’d find him, that he’d still be alive and I’d get him home. And now that I have, now that he’s back, it seems as if there’s no point any more. None at all. All this way that we’ve come, ever since Tyrone was killed, ever since Nightie was foaled. I know what he’s done has been incredible – more than incredible, I guess – just as I know nothing can ever diminish his achievement, just nothing. Not ever. But now there’s nothing to pass on.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ Joel said, but more by way of punctuation than from conviction.

  ‘OK,’ Cassie continued. ‘So there was a chance he might not have turned out to be the greatest stallion in the world, but there was more of a chance he would. And even if he’d just turned out to have average fertility that would have been quite good enough. Everyone who loves breeding horses and racing them would have got a bit of him, and if he’d turned out to be as potent as say Northern Dancer think what that would have done for bloodlines. If he’d just passed on a quarter of his ability he’d have produced classic winners, you bet. Just like Northern Dancer, all over the globe. That way he’d have been truly immortal. Long after the people who saw him race are gone racegoers would still be seeing him reproduced in his offspring and I tell you – I tell you that’s only what he deserved. But now –’ Cassie stopped and stared into the fire, unable to continue. Joel just drank some whisky and also kept quiet. ‘Do you see now why I mean it might have been more bearable if they’d killed him? Rather than mutilated him and sent him on back home.’

  ‘Yes,’ Joel said slowly. ‘I think it’s a bit like a divorce. Sometimes you hear people say – women usually – you hear them say they wish they were widows because at least then they’d have something positive to remember. Painful maybe, but if the marriage had been good up to the point when one of the partners dies, then as you get over the pain you only remember the good times, not the bad. But with divorce, it’s acrimony. Misery. Hatred often, finally. But above everything you have this sense of failure. So yes. Yes, I think I get what you’re saying.’

  ‘Is that how it was for you?’ Cassie asked, still staring into the fire. ‘Or don’t you want to talk about it?’

  ‘More or less.’ Joel put down his glass and leaned his back against the side of the fireplace. ‘Not that I’d have wished Julia dead – but talking in the abstract I reckon I’d have found it easier to rebuild my life if she had dropped dead rather than run off with somebody e
lse, and after only a few years. Besides hurting somewhat, it sort of looks as if it is very much your fault. You have to live with your failure, you can’t get away from it.’

  ‘I don’t see that.’

  ‘You haven’t been divorced.’

  ‘I’ve lost a husband.’

  ‘Better than being divorced from him. No, think about it, before you go off the deep end. You think you’d have got over being divorced from someone you loved as much as him? Having the life you’d spent together derided? You bet you wouldn’t. Look – if you’d suddenly found out your old man had been cheating – you’d still be licking your wounds, believe me.’

  ‘So what do you think I’m doing now?’ Cassie looked at him, quietly furious.

  ‘You wouldn’t want me to tell you,’ Joel said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Go right ahead.’

  Joel picked up his glass to check that it was empty and then put it down again. ‘Any more whisky?’ he wondered.

  ‘You’ve had enough to drink,’ Cassie replied. ‘You’ve been drinking all day.’

  ‘And I intend to go on drinking all night.’

  ‘You drink too much.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why do you drink so much?’

  ‘Is that any of your business?’ Joel enquired, closing his eyes wearily.

  ‘Is how I feel any of yours?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  Cassie stared at him in amazement, and Joel stared right back before leaning against the corner of the fireplace and closing his eyes.

  ‘You really have had too much to drink,’ she announced. ‘Far too much.’

  ‘Want to know something else?’ Joel opened one eye to look briefly at Cassie, then closed it again. ‘I think—’

  ‘I’m not interested in what you think,’ Cassie interrupted, trying to stop him from saying what she knew he was going to say.

  ‘I think you were over the death of your husband a very long time ago.’

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ Cassie said, getting to her feet. ‘You really are drunk.’