Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [23]
‘And now,’ the lawyer said lightheartedly, ‘now, Mrs Watkins, how about some arrangements for you, too?’
Mona, bewildered, asked about what.
‘A will?’ the lawyer suggested. ‘If you haven’t made a will, let’s do it now.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ urged Oliver, who had wanted to reward Mona for her signature without insulting her. ‘Everyone should make a will.’
‘I did talk about it once,’ Mona said. ‘Peregrine wanted me to leave everything to Joanie.’
The lawyer smoothly brought a printed basic will form from out of his loaded briefcase and smilingly entered on it, to her dictation, Mona’s name and address.
Then ball-point poised, he asked her for her beneficiaries.
‘What?’ Mona asked.
‘The people you want to inherit your individual things after your death.’
‘Like my bicycle,’ Mona nodded. ‘Well…’ She paused. ‘… well, Joanie wouldn’t want my old bike. I’d just ask Cass or Oliver to give my old bike to someone as needs it. What if I just ask them to do as they like with my old bits and pieces?’
The lawyer wrote, ‘Cassidy Lovelace Ward’ in the slot for ‘sole beneficiary’ and he and Oliver accompanied Mona on her bicycle down to the local pub on her way home and got two strangers there to witness Mona’s signature, thanked by pints of beer.
Cassidy supposed the least she could do for Mona was to distribute her ‘old bits and pieces’ as Mona would have liked, but hoped not to have to do it. Oliver came smiling back from the pub and took his wife to bed in splendid humour.
When the time came, Cassidy went on her lengthy tour in America. Oliver, though lonely, won a European Equus Grand Prix and was chosen as Sportstar of the Year. Mona, travelling with Oliver to look after the horses, thought she’d never been happier.
At the end of the first half of Cassidy’s tour, Oliver punctiliously settled Mona into the small apartment in the stables block and checked that the stand-in groom (a time-weathered nagsman even older than Mona) would arrive (on his own bike) every day to help exercise the horses. Mona with confidence sent Oliver off to join Cassidy and began to be seduced during the next few weeks by the refrigerator full of food, by the colour television, and by not having to put coins in a meter to pay for electricity to cook with, or to keep warm. Mona in her independent two-up two-down carefully paid rent for everything. She saved a little each week into a Christmas Club for ‘rainy days’. She had managed all her life on little.
Oliver, talking to Cassidy in America as they relaxed at the end of her sell-out triumphs before starting the long legs home, suggested that they should increase Mona’s wages when they got back.
‘We already pay her over the top for a groom.’
‘She’s worth more,’ Oliver said.
‘OK, then.’ Cassidy yawned. ‘And you need another horse…. The brave big grey’s too old now, didn’t you say?’
Mona, half a world away, mucked out the heavy clever grey and sadly knew Oliver would sell him soon. He had reached fifteen and the spring was leaving his hocks.
Mona felt feverish and unwell as she worked on the grey, but paid no attention. Like all healthy people, she didn’t know when she was ill.
Eyeing her flushed face the next morning, the old nagsman said he would do the horses, and she was to go off on her bicycle to see the doctor. Mona felt unwell enough to do as he said, and learned with relief that what was wrong with her was ‘flu’.
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ the overworked doctor said. ‘Go to bed, drink a lot of fluids, you’ll soon feel better. ‘Flu’s a virus. I can’t give you a prescription to cure it, as antibiotics don’t work against a virus. Take aspirin. Keep warm. And drink a lot of water. Let me know if you cough a lot. You’re a healthy woman, Mrs Watkins. Go to bed, rest and drink water and you’ll be fine.’
Mona slowly cycled back to the Bolingbrokes’ yard and reported the diagnosis to her helper.
‘You go on to bed then right now,’ he insisted. ‘Leave the horses to me.’
Mona thankfully undressed into her warm nightgown