The Nightingale Sings Read online

  ‘No! I told you the truth, Mattie!’ Cassie insisted. ‘I told you the truth!’

  ‘You told me the truth as you wanted to see it,’ Mattie said. ‘While what Leonora told me makes sense, besides she says she can prove it.’

  ‘Does she never give up? This is only about revenge. That’s all it’s ever been about. As far as Tyrone and you and Josephine and me are concerned, all that’s ever interested Leonora is to revenge herself on us. But don’t ask me why, because reason stepped out of the window years ago.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Mattie said, shaking his head. ‘Leonora was genuinely upset when she told me.’

  ‘Go on. Surprise me.’

  ‘She knew the story you had told me about who my parents were because Tyrone had told her.’

  ‘Really? And when would that have been?’ Cassie demanded to know. ‘He couldn’t have told her. We never even discussed when we should tell you, let alone what. So why should your father have told Leonora, for God’s sake? Your father hated Leonora.’

  ‘Not according to Leonora. But you’re right about one thing. He was my father.’

  ‘He was your adoptive father,’ Cassie countered. ‘You know who your father was. I told you. He was a man called Gerald Secker, the man you met in the bar the day The Nightingale won the Derby.’

  ‘I thought he was called Anthony Wilton.’

  ‘His real name was Gerald Secker. He changed it to Anthony Wilton after an almighty row with his father, when he found out Gerald had got someone pregnant.’

  ‘Antoinette Brookes. I know the story. How those two were my real parents and you and Dad adopted me from birth. With the agreement of my real mother.’

  ‘It isn’t a story, Mattie. That is the way it was. It’s the truth,’ Cassie replied.

  Mattie took another puff on his spinhaler before putting it back in his pocket and clearing his throat.

  ‘According to Leonora, Dad really was my dad.’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake, she tried to pull this stunt once before, Mattie. On the eve of the Derby. She wanted me to pull The Nightingale out of the race because she was convinced her horse would walk it if The Nightingale didn’t run. So she tried to make out she had these letters—’

  ‘She does have letters!’ Mattie interrupted, putting his glass down on the table. ‘She has letters from Dad which according to her prove he’s my father. I asked to see them but she said I couldn’t until after she’s dead because she doesn’t want any more trouble over them. But she said they prove quite categorically that Dad really was my father – and that Leonora—’

  ‘Yes?’ Cassie wondered.

  ‘That Leonora is my mother.’

  On her lonely drive back to Claremore Cassie replayed the end of their conversation over and over in her head as if it was on tape. She had done her best to convince Mattie not only of the monstrosity of Leonora’s lie but of the impossibility of it, but to no avail. In Mattie’s mind it was now une idée fixe and nothing short of his father coming back to life and shaking the truth into him would apparently suffice.

  None the less, as the road into the Wicklow Hills unwound before her, Cassie played their end game over one more time.

  ‘One of your greatest problems is that you never really knew Tyrone,’ she had said. ‘If you had known him never for one second could you have believed what Leonora told you. Tyrone was many things. He was hot-headed, but he was incapable of deceit, and his integrity perhaps more than anything was what infuriated Leonora most. He never lied or cheated as she has. She’s done all the lying and cheating for him, and because he’s dead she thinks she’s safe since he can’t answer for himself. But I can, and so can the facts. And the facts are exactly as I told you. Gerald Secker had an affair with a girl called Antoinette Brookes whom he then abandoned. Antoinette wanted to have the baby but didn’t want to keep it and when Dad heard about it since I couldn’t have any more babies and we so very much wanted to have a boy as well as a girl we arranged to adopt you. Leonora tried to make me believe that your father really was the father because you looked so alike – finally even I believed her and I made it not matter one bit. If it was true that Tyrone really was your father, then in you I still would have some part of him to keep. I really made it not matter, I promise you, I would not let it wreck my life and yours, and because there was no way of disproving what Leonora had told me—’

  ‘What about Antoinette Brookes? What about my real mother? Why couldn’t you ask her?’

  ‘I tried to, Mattie. I finally tracked her down and went to see her. But she’d had a terrible riding accident and – well. She no longer had her senses. The only way you can prove paternity, you see, is by disproving it. Tyrone and you were the same blood type.’

  ‘AB rhesus positive.’

  ‘AB rhesus positive, exactly. But even if we knew what your real mother’s blood group was it doesn’t prove anything. As they say, you can’t get a positive ID from blood groups the way you can from fingerprints. Which is what I meant by disproving it. Proof is only conclusive if the blood samples differ.’

  ‘Meaning all you can really do is prove whoever it is isn’t the child of two people.’

  ‘You got it. That’s why I went looking for Antoinette, but of course the way things were when I found her there was no way I could ask her to submit to a blood test.’

  ‘You could have got it from her doctor.’

  ‘Her own mother, who was all she had left in her family, knew nothing of her daughter’s pregnancy. And as a total stranger I could hardly just walk into her doctor’s surgery and demand to know the blood group of one of his patients. Anyway, I didn’t have to, because your real father confirmed the whole story. That he’d got your mother pregnant and then abandoned her, taking off for India for ten years. He actually volunteered the information.’

  ‘But you don’t know that I was the baby of that particular pregnancy, do you? Antoinette – my mother – she might have had a miscarriage, or she might not even have been pregnant after all. And then really got pregnant by my father.’

  ‘You want Tyrone to be your father. And believe me, he is, he was in every way. You don’t want some no-good ex-hippie. It’s understandable.’

  ‘It’s not that. Knowing I was adopted – I mean, it’s never been a problem, really it hasn’t. Until now.’

  ‘But it doesn’t have to be. There’s no reason why it should be any problem now because nothing’s altered. Everything’s the same. All that happened was that Leonora tried yet again to put a bomb under us—’

  ‘But that’s the whole point!’ At this point Mattie had got to his feet and walked to the kitchen window where he stood facing out. ‘That’s the whole point, don’t you see, for God’s sake? You don’t know, and I don’t know, do we? Neither of us really knows that Antoinette Brookes was my mother. Because we can’t prove it!’

  ‘I was there when she told me who the father was. I said to her why don’t you marry this boy? And she said because I don’t love him. I was there when she said it, and so was your father.’

  ‘But she could have been lying, don’t you see? She could have been making the whole thing up!’

  ‘But why? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know why! Maybe because Tyrone really was the father! Or because someone entirely different was and she had to go along with the story she’d already invented! How do I know? How should I know! I wasn’t there at the time, remember? So you could be making all this up for my benefit, right? God knows I’ve looked at the pictures of Dad often enough to wonder why I look so much like him – yet here you are still telling me this guy Gerald Secker’s really my father! And that some poor woman who’s now a vegetable is my mother! Which is easy, isn’t it? Because there’s no way I can ever check it all out!’

  ‘Yes there is. There is a perfectly good way you can check it out. Blood tests. They may not be conclusive but they can tell you something.’

  Twenty-Seven

  Cassie was wrong, of course,
as Theodore explained to her that evening when she invited him across for dinner. It appeared techniques of blood typing had advanced to such an extent that with extensive tests parentage could actually be proved as well as disproved by the use of what was known as genetic fingerprinting. He patiently explained how it worked, how by taking blood samples from the mother, child and father in any given case as well as some DNA from each, the DNA was then studied for banding patterns.

  ‘DNA’s hereditary material,’ Theodore revealed. ‘It’s actually called deoxyribonucleic acid and it’s the principal molecule carrying genetic information in almost all organisms, containing these unique what they call bandings we all have, bandings which are readable by X-ray after they’ve come back from Boots after processing.’

  ‘Come on, this is serious, Mr Pilkington.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Theodore sighed, sipping his dessert wine. ‘So to continue, the child’s DNA bands, d’you see, they come from both biological parents. So first we take the bands from the mother and identify them, then we compare them with the father’s or the suspected father’s bands. If they match – hey presto! Paternity proved. If they don’t, if the other bands in the child besides the ones identified as coming from the mother do not match, then it’s no match. Neat, yes?’

  ‘Very. But surely you need all three people for the tests? Father, mother and child. We only have mother and child. Without Tyrone’s blood and DNA we can’t prove a thing.’

  ‘Well, yes, we can.’ Theodore raised his eyes from the napkin he was busy making into a rabbit. ‘We could – if we can get hold of a blood sample from the woman who says she’s the mother – we could at least begin by finding her type but also we could see if it contains any banding which matches up to banding in your son’s DNA. You see.’

  ‘So how do we go about it? How on earth do we get a sample of Leonora’s blood for starters?’

  ‘Obviously this is where I come in.’ Theodore had finished making a rabbit of his napkin which he now placed carefully in front of him on the table. ‘You say Mrs Lovett Andrew is ill, Cassie. Yes?’

  ‘Apparently. She’s been attending the Farm Street Clinic, Mattie tells me, for examination and tests. She gave Mattie the impression that she was seriously ill – but then as I’ve already explained, Leonora is more than a little liberal with the truth.’

  ‘We can soon find out, because we are in luck,’ Theodore replied. ‘I know that particular clinic well, as it happens, although it’s news to me that they have an oncology unit. And the luck is that it is administered at the moment by an old chum and fellow graduate of mine, so there really should be very little difficulty in getting the details we require concerning Mrs Lovett Andrew, nor indeed a sample of her blood. Now you haven’t heard anything I’ve said, you understand—’

  ‘I’ve heard every word you’ve said,’ Cassie protested innocently.

  ‘No you have not, Cassie Rosse,’ Theodore contradicted. ‘Tonight we have talked only in the most general terms, d’you see. For higher medical matters are way above that pretty head of yours. Yes?’

  ‘You mean this is against medical ethics, don’t you?’

  ‘Only if someone finds out. But don’t worry – they won’t. This sort of thing goes on all the time, you mark my words. Even so, you haven’t heard one word of what I’ve just said. Have you?’

  ‘Not one,’ Cassie replied.

  A week later Theodore telephoned Cassie from his home to say that everything was organized and that a sample of Mrs Charles Lovett Andrew’s blood would be with them shortly, processed and banded as requested.

  ‘That’s the good news,’ he said. ‘Now I have some other news for you, but I don’t know whether you, would describe it as good or bad.’

  ‘Come on, Theodore,’ Cassie said, recognizing the tease in his voice. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘Again, you haven’t heard this, you understand – but Mrs Charles Lovett Andrew has indeed been attending the clinic as a patient,’ he replied. ‘Quite obviously, or otherwise we would not have been able to obtain a blood sample. However . . .’ Theodore paused, giving Cassie the distinct impression he was trying to control his laughter.

  ‘Yes?’ she prompted.

  ‘However,’ Theodore continued after a deep inhalation of breath, ‘all is not as bad as it might have first seemed. It seems Mrs Lovett Andrew has been suffering from certain symptoms which led her to believe there might be something seriously wrong, and so she was admitted for routine tests which included a proctoscopy and a colonoscopy. Are you with me so far?’

  ‘I may well be ahead of you,’ Cassie replied. ‘Go on.’

  ‘The patient was suffering quite severe anaemia which would account for her ashen appearance as described by your son, as well as high anxiety caused by the nature of her other symptoms. However, the results of the test which were not known until after she had paid her infamous visit to your son—’

  ‘Which would explain her mental state—’

  ‘Precisely,’ Theodore agreed. ‘Since she had herself totally convinced she was no longer for this earth—’

  ‘And so was going to cause as much chaos as she could before leaving it—’

  ‘Obviously – but thankfully the results of all the internal examinations revealed that far from suffering from cancer, Mrs Charles C. Lovett Andrew was merely suffering a more severe case of a condition which notoriously plagues one in three people. The self-same condition which they say caused Napoleon to lose the Battle of Waterloo since on the vital day in question he was unable to leave his tent.’

  ‘Leonora had—?’ Cassie wondered wide-eyed.

  ‘Mrs Charles C. Lovett Andrew has strangulated haemorrhoids, Cassie, and while normally I’m not one to find the condition in the slightest bit amusing, I can’t help admitting that every time I think of it a huge smile spreads across my face.’

  ‘Me too, I’m afraid,’ Cassie admitted, dissolving into laughter. ‘I know I shouldn’t laugh, but in this instance I have to say that I just can’t help it.’

  ‘So there you are, Mrs Lovett Andrew is not going to die just yet. But as I said, you have to make your own mind up as to whether this is good news or bad, or perhaps neither.’

  But much as Cassie hated Leonora, she still could find no disappointment in her heart that her old adversary’s days were not yet numbered, probably, she imagined, because she was actually too concerned about her son’s welfare to give Leonora any more thought than was absolutely necessary.

  More seriously, Leonora’s mischief had awoken Cassie’s own doubts about Tyrone, doubts which she had long thought buried, but now that the case had been reopened, as it were, once again Cassie found herself constantly worrying whether the story she had been told by Tyrone and Antoinette Brookes, which she had told as the truth to Mattie, was indeed genuine. Perhaps Cassie had been duped after all, persuaded by Tyrone away from believing what she had instinctively believed in the first place, that her beloved husband had indeed had an affair with Antoinette and, since Cassie herself had been unable to bear him any more children, had been only too anxious and determined to adopt what was after all his natural son.

  ‘We really need to prove this thing beyond a shadow of a doubt, you know,’ Cassie told Theodore when he called by for a drink at Claremore on his way home that evening. ‘Mattie’s the original Doubting Thomas. We shall have to prove his paternity beyond question.’

  ‘The banding should do just that,’ Theodore replied, with an anxious glance at Cassie. ‘What is it, Cassie? You seem to have got yourself into a rare old fret since we spoke earlier.’

  ‘Have I?’ Cassie asked absently, unable to collect the thoughts still spinning in her head. ‘No I haven’t, Theodore. It’s just having to go through this all over again. I really thought this particular spook wouldn’t come back to haunt us any more.’

  ‘It hasn’t, Cassie.’ Theodore took one of her hands in both of his and smiled at her. ‘Believe me, we shall be able to lay this gho
st once and for all, so you’re to stop your worrying. We could do so quite categorically, of course, had we say a sample of your late husband’s blood, but since this is out of the question—’

  Cassie put her drink down suddenly. ‘No it isn’t,’ she said. ‘It isn’t out of the question at all, Theodore! Dear heavens, what can I have been thinking? We do have a sample of Tyrone’s blood! But I’d forgotten altogether about it!’

  Theodore regarded her steadily, then still holding her hand led her over to the sofa where he sat her down beside him and waited for her explanation.

  ‘Long before the scare started in proper about blood transfusions, Tyrone had developed a major worry that infection could be passed this way,’ Cassie explained. ‘He was convinced of it because of certain anomalies he had noticed in horses after they had been transfused and he even used to proselytize about it but because he was a horse trainer and not a doctor no-one paid him much attention, except Niall Brogan our vet. He thought Tyrone was talking sense, so much so that because Tyrone and I both rode so much and were therefore at high risk if you like, Niall suggested to Tyrone that we should all store some of our own blood. Niall was very strong on blood conditions as well, in fact he was one of the very first vets ever here to start carefully monitoring all the horses’ blood, and so when he persuaded Tyrone to bank some of our own blood it seemed perfectly sensible.’

  ‘And so it was,’ Theodore agreed. ‘It’s known as auto-logous transfusion – but then when Tyrone and Niall decided on the move, this would have been quite some time ago.’