Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [21]
Oliver knew at once that he’d made a serious mistake when he heard Joanie superciliously call her mother ‘Mona’, and saw her frostily repel Mona’s attempt at an embrace, but with worldly civility he ignored the awkward moment and swept everyone into the drawing-room for a drink before food. Peregrine, Oliver noted with a wince, ran a practised glance over the furniture, assessing its worth.
Mona, hanging back, was firmly collected by Cassidy linking an arm through hers. Cassidy too realised the occasion to be a disaster. Mona’s reluctance had been right.
Mona, doing her best, wore clean corduroy trousers and a white blouse pinned above the top button by her ultimate in soigné dressing, a small pearl brooch. Cassidy melted with pity for her, and plunged, like Oliver, into regret.
After stilted minutes of conversation between the two men (chiefly about the difference in sales routine of commodes and colts) Cassidy grimly but with surface gaiety moved her guests into the dining-room where places at table in silver and crystal had been laid for five.
Joanie said without thinking, ‘So you’re expecting another guest?’
‘No,’ replied Cassidy puzzled, ‘just us.’
‘But surely,’ Joanie’s eyebrows rose, ‘Mona will be eating in the kitchen, as usual.’
Even Joanie saw, in the sudden frozen immobility of her hosts, that she’d committed the worst sort of social-climbing blunder. She said helplessly, ‘I mean… I mean…’ but her assumption and its expression were plain and couldn’t be undone.
Peregrine nervously cleared his throat, thinking numbly for something – anything – to say.
Oliver, by far the fastest thinker, stirred and laughed and exclaimed, ‘Cass, my dear, what a splendid suggestion of Joanie’s. Let’s all eat with Mona in the kitchen, as we usually do. Let’s all pick up our plates and napkins and glasses and carry them through to the kitchen.’
He collected together the things laid for him at the head of the table and gestured to the others to follow him. Then, cheerfully mustering his troops, he led the way, head high, through the swing door giving on to the spacious, homely room where, indeed, he and Cassidy familiarly ate with Mona.
The lunch, none the less, was an overall ordeal. No one regretted the Vines’ early departure, cheese uneaten on the side plates and coffee undrunk. Oliver apologised to Mona before the Vines’ Mercedes had cleared the front gates, but Mona, ever quick to pardon, worried about the debacle least of all.
Cassidy Lovelace Ward led a double existence, as performer and wife. At first she had indeed been powerfully sexually attracted by Oliver’s looks, bearing and skill on a horse. She knew, being no novice in life, that it was her own feelings for Oliver that had roused a similar response in him. The media, cynically observing the physical magnetics, should not have been wrong in prophesying rapid boredom and farewells but, to their mutual surprise, horseman and singer slowly became deep and trusting friends.
Cassidy, when they met, had been almost constantly on tour across her homeland, singing the Mississippi River songs of Nashville, Tennessee. She travelled by bus with manager, musicians and backing group. Props, scenery, lights, dresser and wardrobe followed along. The whole enterprise depended on her for genius, energy and pulling power, and indeed she could, like all great performers, light up from inside and take her audience flying.
The process exhausted her. Oliver had almost fallen over her one night as she sat on a wicker chest, a wardrobe skip, outside the great touring bus that would presently take her overnight to the next town, to the next rehearsal, the next hungry, roaring, applauding multitude of fans.
Oliver’s presence had been the result of someone’s bright idea that Cassidy could for that one evening’s performance ride out on stage in Western clothes, cowboy boots, white ten-gallon hat and clinking