Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [26]
Cassidy, always bone-weary after creative sessions, slept in the limousine going home with her head on Oliver’s shoulder. Oliver spent the time making tentative plans that he supposed Mona might not have approved of. When, once the limousine had departed and Cassidy had yawned off to rest, the old nagsman (no longer quite so temporary) told Oliver that he’d heard Mona was to be cremated in two days’ time, on Wednesday, Oliver’s intentions firmed to rock.
‘Wednesday!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you sure?’
‘They said so, down the pub.’
Oliver called three undertakers before finding the one dealing with Mona.
‘Mrs Watkins? Yes, Wednesday.’
Oliver asked questions. The answers were ‘a basic cheap package funeral’, and ‘Yes, most any other day would have been possible as the short form of committal took little time, but the next of kin had specifically wanted Wednesday.’
Oliver’s slow burning plan caught inner fire.
Joanie was depriving her dead mother of one last dignity, the honour of having the celebrities she’d worked for attend her coffin.
Oliver and Cassidy sent a big wreath of lilies. Mona’s next door neighbour told them later that Joanie had left it to one side, ignored. Joanie had announced to the few mourners present that the Bolingbrokes simply hadn’t bothered to come.
Mona’s ashes had been scattered on a rose-bed in the crematorium gardens, with no memorial plaque. Joanie, privately exulting in liberation, could now re-invent her awkward parent and bestow posthumous respectability on ‘a charming horsewoman of the old school’, as Peregrine unctuously put it.
*
Although Oliver and Cassidy might choose to live a mostly private life, both of them were of course aware that to the public they were stars. Both had indeed worked hard to reach star status and each intended to keep it as long as possible. Oliver, after Mona’s parsimonious funeral, decided to use his formidable power to the limit, whether Mona would have wanted him to, or not.
With Cassidy’s agreement, Oliver went to see the committee organising the great annual horse spectacular, the five-day Christmas Show at Olympia, with five performances in the afternoon and five more in the evening.
Aside from the top jumping contests, in which he would anyway be taking part, he, Oliver Bolingbroke, as European Equus Grand Prix winner and Sportstar of the Year, would also be leading the finale of each of the ten performances in the prestigious Ride of Champions. The parade indeed could barely take place satisfactorily without him. Oliver Bolingbroke, in short, was a force to whom the committee was bound to listen. He proposed an extra dimension to the end of all ten performances.
They listened.
Their eyes widened. Eventually they nodded.
Oliver shook their hands. Then he went home and patiently taught his intelligent old grey a whole load of new tricks.
Cassidy’s manager wrote contracts by the dozen. Her musicians distilled sparkling sounds. Factories pressed hot tracks. Cassidy’s new song of love and loss and longing slid into the recognition cortex of the nation.
Oliver invited Joanie Vine to take part in a televised tribute to her mother. Joanie’s hysterics nearly choked her. Peregrine tried for an injunction to stop Oliver’s project but could offer no credible grounds. ‘The Life of Mona’ filled the glossy magazine that reprinted Joanie’s ball-gowns and put them alongside views of the dingy two-up two-down. Peregrine suffered sniggers, albeit hidden behind hands.
Every seat of the great Olympia stadium was filled for the first of the five afternoon performances. People sat illegally in the aisles. News had got around. All ten shows were sold out.
Oliver’s voice in silent darkness announced that this performance, given free, was dedicated to the memory of his top-flight groom, Mona Watkins, a homespun Welshwoman from the valleys. Her care and understanding of what it took to prepare a European-class horse had been without