7 Sorrow on Sunday (24 page)

It couldn’t be. It must be her daughter, Josie.

“Who is that, please?” she said.

“Who d’you think it is?” the voice said sharply, and Evelyn knew for sure that it was Mrs. M.

“Where are you, Mrs. M, and shouldn’t you be resting?”

“Never mind about resting. Answer me quickly, before that bossy nurse comes round and tucks me up again. Were they all right with you?”

Evelyn hesitated, then said, “She was. Very nice. Almost creepy. But he was foul, rude and unpleasant. I nearly said I’d not be back, not for all the tea in China. But then I thought of you, and agreed to go next week if he apologizes. He was going to the point-to-point at Beecham Cross, so let’s hope he won some money to cheer him up.”

“Tomorrow? Oh, today. Bugger it. I should be going. Still, I hope to be let out today. You did right, Evelyn, thanks. Uh oh! Here she comes. See you later.”

Evelyn hung up, and sat down, feeling quite shocked. She was sure Mrs. M shouldn’t be back in business so soon. Perhaps she should ring Mr. Meade? Or Mrs. Weedon? No, probably not. If Mrs. M was coming home today, they would make her take care.

*   *   *

L
OIS SAT ON THE EDGE OF HER BED, SIPPING A CUP OF
weak tea, and thinking. She remembered nothing about the
accident, but was assured that her memory of that would return. But she did recall that she had been intending to get Derek to take her to Beecham Cross. It was coming back to her, something that Mrs. Smith had said about the Battersbys taking Darren to a point-to-point a couple of times.

So what was their ulterior motive? Horace always had an ulterior motive. One of the last things she remembered before the accident was her intention to ask Darren if he liked point-to-point racing, and to suggest that he might like to go to one with her and Derek. She looked at her watch. After the doctor’s round, she would ring Derek to fetch her at once. They might just have time, but even she realized they could not, under the circumstances, take Darren. No, she would talk to Derek right now.

“What!” he said. “Are you mad?”

She spent the next five minutes persuading him, and then the doctor came into the ward, and she said she’d ring him back as soon as possible.

“We are very pleased with your progress, Mrs. Meade,” the doctor said kindly. “You will be able to go home this morning, if your husband can fetch you? I expect you’re anxious to get back and see what kind of a mess he’s made of the house!”

Lois shook her head and tried to smile. “No, my mother lives with us, and she keeps everything tickety-boo. They’ll have the red carpet out!”

The doctor nodded. “Jolly good,” he said. “And just take it easy for a week or two. Sometimes problems arise, small ones, and you have to be sensible.”

“Oh, I’ll be sensible,” said Lois. “And thanks very much for all you and the nurses have done for me.” She stood up, and began to collect her things together.

“Hey, slow down!” said the bossy nurse, and the doctor laughed.

“She’s right, you know. Just watch it, Mrs. Meade!”

*   *   *

D
EREK WAS IN THE WARD ABOUT AN HOUR LATER.
“What kept you?” Lois asked.

“You’ll see,” Derek said, and took her bag from her. “Take my arm, and we’ll walk slowly. And just do what you’re told,” he added as she set off at a good pace. “Do you need to thank anybody?”

“All done,” said Lois. “And what do you mean by saying I’ll see why you took so long?”

“You’ll see,” he repeated firmly.

When they emerged from the hospital and began to walk to the car park, Lois felt as if her legs had turned to jelly. “Can we stop for a minute?” she said. Derek looked anxiously at her, then he shouldered her bag and picked her up as if she was a sickly child.

“Blimey!” said Lois, snuffling into his ear. “Talk about a knight in shining armour!”

He got her safely to the van, a temporary replacement since the crash, and set her down. First he opened the rear doors, and she said she hoped he didn’t think she was travelling in the back, however comfy he had made it.

“Come and look,” he said, pointing. She peered in, and saw it. A wheelchair!

“Where the hell did you get that?”

“Borrowed it from Ivy Beasley,” he said. “She still had it from when she broke her leg. She sent you a couple of caustic messages I won’t repeat. Anyway, I’m not taking you to Beecham Cross unless you go in that.”

“What, all the way? I’ll not make the last race.”

“Ha ha. No, I’ll push you around, and you can do whatever it is that makes it so important to disobey everything that’s been said.”

“I do love you, Derek,” Lois said. “In spite of what might seem to the contrary.”

He laughed, and helped her into the passenger seat. “Gran put some stuff together for a picnic, so we can go straight there,” he said. “I might say she nearly went on strike at the thought, but I said that you’d probably get there somehow, so it might as well be with me. So relax, me duck, and enjoy the show.”

*   *   *

T
HE SUN HAD COME OUT FROM BEHIND DARK CLOUDS,
and Lois took several deep breaths. She had been told she was lucky to be alive, and looked with new eyes at the green and pleasant landscape as they drove along at a circumspect speed. If only she could remember what happened. But she had been told not to worry about it. She settled back in the seat, and tried to recall the last time she had been to a point-to-point. That was easy. Her father had taken her, when she was about fifteen. She had been reluctant to go, but he’d said it would be fun. She’d be surprised. And there’d be plenty of young farmers about, whooping it up.

Dad had been right. It had been fun, and the horses and hounds had been wonderful, exciting, dangerous creatures. They didn’t see many horses on the Churchill Estate in Tresham. Plenty of dogs there, but not all matching, and some that were quite difficult to love. They were not ones that obeyed a man on a horse.

Beecham Cross was in the heart of Buckinghamshire, and enclosed in a great curving stretch of wooded hills. In the other direction, the fertile Aylesbury Vale stretched out to the horizon, quintessentially English, with its small fields and hedges, dignified beech trees and farms nestling among modern farm buildings. The Meades could see rows of parked cars in a field on the right, and the race course with a clutch of marquees and other cars on the left. Through Derek’s open window they could hear the public address system making blurred announcements, impossible to understand as always.

They were there in good time, and looked at the parking charges. “Twenty pounds to be near the course, twelve pounds for the field,” read Derek out loud. He turned into the left gateway.

“Hey, that’s the wrong turning,” Lois said. “Twelve pounds is over there.”

“I’m not pushing a wheelchair over a hayfield,” said Derek. “In any case, there’ll be special parking for the disabled.”

He was right, and Lois felt a complete fraud. They sat for
a while, eating Gran’s picnic. She discovered she was hungry, and set to work on ham sandwiches in new bread with plenty of mustard, homemade sausage rolls and bananas. They shared the big flask of coffee, and then Derek got out and repacked the basket. He opened up the back and assembled the wheelchair, and then put out a hand to help her out. She did her best to look frail, and sat down with a thump in the wheelchair. Derek put a small rug over her knees, and she began to push it off. “More convincing,” he whispered in her ear, and pulled it up again. The grass had been well-flattened by feet beating a path from the ring to the bookies, and they joined the crowd.

Standing in a queue by the row of bookies with unlikely names like Tim Fruit, Joe Winalott, and Reg Champion, Lois saw a tall, slim young chap in cavalry twill trousers and tweed jacket. His field glasses were slung over his shoulder, his tobacco-brown felt hat, a little battered, was pulled forward over his eyes. “Young farmer,” she said to herself.

“What did you say, me duck?” Derek said, leaning over her. She would have to get used to turning her head round so that he could hear. “I said there’s a young farmer. I met one once. They all look the same. Mind you, I fancied him. My dad introduced me.”

“Your dad wasn’t a farmer,” Derek said.

“Oh, never mind,” said Lois. “Will you wheel me along up to the ring? I want to hear what people are saying.”

“I expect there’s a special place reserved for wheelchairs,” Derek said.

“Not for me,” said Lois. “I want to be among the crowd.”

The horses were pacing round the ring, led by an assortment of lads and girls, one of them having difficulty controlling an excitable horse. Lois thought again of how she felt that time with Dad. Here was power—shiny, rippling muscle power—and she had a sudden wish to be up on that dark bay, knees gripping its sides, hands holding reins that controlled the bit in its mouth and kept it steady. Moving up and down with the powerful creature beneath her.

She laughed out loud. Of course, that was what it was all about. Power, the excitement of danger . . . and sex.

“Can you see all right, duckie?” An elderly man, short and bent, with a silver-topped stick, looked down at her. “Is hubby going for a race card? Here, borrow mine while he goes. Over there,” he added to Derek, pointing to a trestle table with cardboard boxes full of booklets.

“Thanks,” Lois said, smiling up at the man. “Is this the first race?”

He nodded. “D’you want a tip from me? I’m a dab hand at this, y’know. Been going to all the races for years. Not much else to do at my time o’ life. Now, let me show you.” He pointed out the lists of horses, showed her the names of owners and trainers and, on the right-hand side, the jockeys. He pointed to the tiny print at the end of each entry. “That’s its form,” he said. “Won ten points at Hunter chase; beat Hot Socks at Fakenham. That’s what the horse has done.”

“Is that good?” Lois asked, twinkling at him. He had very blue eyes, and a kindly face. He reminded her of someone.

“Not bad,” he said. “Hubby’s in a long queue, I’m afraid. Would you like me to put a bet on that one for you?”

“How much?” said Lois.

“Five pounds. Don’t go mad!” said the man, taking her money. He limped away, chuckling.

Derek returned with the race card and handed it her. “I hope you can find your way around it,” he said. “Looks like double Dutch to me.”

Lois smiled a superior smile. “I’ll explain it,” she said. “I’ve got a bet on already. Nice old man has gone to do it. Says the horse is a dead cert.”

“Did you give him money?” said Derek, looking alarmed.

“Yep, a fiver. Kind of him, wasn’t it.”

“You’ll not see that fiver again, even if the horse wins,” Derek said gloomily.

B
Y THE SECOND RACE,
D
EREK WAS BEGINNING TO FIND HIS
way about. He had been wrong about the helpful old man. He had returned with Lois’s winnings—“Got you four to one,” he’d said proudly—and continued to show them around. There were small marquees for ice-creams and strong-smelling burgers, a large marquee where the jockeys went in and out, an enclosure labelled “Owners, Riders and Officials Only,” and a mysterious betting agency that inexplicably announced it did not take bets for point-to-points. “Betting on other races in other places,” explained the old man, adding, “Hey! I’m a poet and don’t know it!”

“My dad used to say that,” said Lois. Funny, she thought, how her dad kept surfacing today. Must be the bang on the head. Derek asked her about every five minutes if she was feeling all right, and of course she said she was fine. But she had to admit to herself she had a strange floating feeling, as if she was a couple of feet above the ground. Well, come to that, she was! Sitting in a wheelchair was exactly that. She settled for this, but knew it wasn’t the whole reason.

“Push me up to the bookies, will you?” she said to Derek. “I want to have a look.”

It was while they were waiting in the queue that she saw them. Joe Horsley and Horace Battersby, in close conversation with the bookie right at the end of the line. Lois peered through people’s legs. She could just see the bookie’s name for a second, in firmly chalked letters: Trusty Clarkham. He was shaking his head and waving them away. They moved on to the next, and this time money changed hands, and they received tickets. Then they walked away, grim-faced.

“Did you see them, Derek?” she said, remembering to turn around to face him.

“See who?”

“Battersby and Horsley,” she said.

“Sounds like a gents’ outfitters,” said Derek with a chuckle. “Oh yeah, I can see them over there now. Standing by the ring, watching the jockeys mount. Miserable-looking pair.”

“Can we keep an eye on them?” Lois said. “Watch to see if they go to collect winnings after the race?”

“Sure,” said Derek. “At your service, Mrs. M.”

Lois wanted desperately to stand up. She couldn’t see much once the race started, except horses’ legs flashing by. She and Derek had both bet on the same horse, Good Start, number four. The old man had said it did well at Cottenham, and had a chance. The odds weren’t very good, and just before the race started, it was favourite to win.