Marius, who’d come back unexpectedly because Uttoxeter had been rained off, went ballistic. How dare Amber risk a valuable horse and her own life again? Secretly he was delighted he’d whipped another fantastic horse from Harvey-Holden.
With Bonny on tour or filming, Valent took to ringing Etta when he was in England. They spent happy evenings gossiping, discussing progress at Throstledown, grandchildren and poems they’d read, listening to music and the nightingales singing and making plans for the garden.
On one occasion they even sloped off to Larkminster and bought Valent a lovely dull-yellow jacket checked with red to wear to the races. It was so nice, they reflected individually, not to be mocked, put down and corrected.
Etta was shopping in Tesco’s one morning at the end of April. She was desperately broke and dickering whether to run to another bottle of white, when the money ought to be spent on getting her shoes mended and some more deodorant.
To stink or drink, sighed Etta.
‘Do you want a packer, Mrs Bancroft?’ asked the checkout girl, glancing at Etta’s pathetic pile of goods.
‘She’s already got one, I mean “wow”,’ said a voice, and a shoulder of lamb, a packet of mint, a bag of new potatoes, asparagus, frozen peas and a chocolate tart landed in her basket, followed by a lot of bottles. ‘Let’s have this for supper at my place,’ said Valent, getting a card out of his wallet. ‘I saw your Polo outside, nearly all Green now, Ione would be pleased.’
How lovely to be able to wash her hair and shower so the lack of deodorant didn’t matter, put on her pretty lilac linen dress, and take time over her face.
She found Valent in the kitchen at Badger’s Court, which, under Bonny’s influence, was so like a laboratory, Etta expected to open cupboards and find poor little monkeys being
experimented on. Valent, however, was playing Mahler’s First Symphony, which Etta had told him she adored. There was a wonderful smell of mint, rosemary and garlic coming from the oven and a huge glass of Sancerre was thrust into her hand.
‘You look smashing, Etta.’
She then brought him up to date on yard gossip. Rafiq had clocked up another win on Mrs Wilkinson, ‘And there was a big piece in the
Express
about racing’s new pin-up. Rafiq’s terribly embarrassed but so pleased, he asked for five copies in the village shop to send home to Pakistan. Tommy’s so excited for him. Amber’s still a bit beady, understandably, poor child.’
Valent, who kept tabs, knew all this but he liked hearing Etta’s version as he tested the lamb and the new potatoes.
She was now telling him about Amber sneaking out and illicitly riding Bullydozer over the new Gold Cup fences.
‘Marius is so clever at recognizing a horse’s potential. Bully’s sweet, like a great puppy, and really responding to TLC.’
Valent just managed not to point out that he’d paid for all the fences and bought Bully, after Tommy’s tip-off. As he turned the new potatoes, however, he couldn’t resist telling Etta he’d got a lovely present that day, ‘in that box over there’.
Inside was the most beautiful decanter shaped like a ship.
‘Oh,’ gasped Etta, ‘how ravishing. What does it say on the prow? “God speed to a great boss.” Who gave you that?’
‘The card’s tucked in the side.’
On it were hundreds of signatures, all over the inside and even on the back of the card, accompanying the words, ‘With admiration from all your friends at Goldstein Phillipson’.
‘Oh, how wonderful. That was the American bank you felt guilty about abandoning. What an amazing compliment.’
She listened and remembered, thought Valent.
But as Etta took the glass ship out of its box to examine it, it slipped from her hands and smashed into a hundred pieces on the floor.
‘Oh God, oh God, oh God, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, so, so sorry,’ wailed a distraught, disconsolate Etta.
‘It doesn’t matter, pet.’ Leaving the new potatoes, Valent put his arms round her. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s only glass, not a heart, that’s broken, please, please don’t cry. Stay there on the window seat, Priceless luv, you don’t want to cut your paws. Now let’s find a doostpan and broosh.’ Then, when Etta couldn’t stop crying as she seized them from him and began sweeping frantically: ‘It’s all right, luv, I’ve got the names on the card, I was so tooched by that, that’s what matters.’
Sampson would never have forgiven her, thought Etta.
Valent was so, so kind, topping up her drink, leading her out into the dusk and turning up the sound fortissimo so Mahler’s second movement, a lovely galumphing dance, erupted down the valley. On cue, the sinking sun burst through a rain cloud to light up Etta’s blonde curls, her smudged mascara, her still falling tears.
To stop her crying, Valent swept her into a waltz and soon had her shrieking with laughter as their feet flew over the grass.
‘I’d no idea you were such a good dancer, de dum, de dum dum, de dum, de de de de dum,’ sang Etta, as Priceless gambolled after them.
Next moment, Valent caught his foot round a rustic pole on the edge of the lawn and pulled Etta over on top of him in the wild garlic.
Both stopped laughing hysterically and gazed into each other’s eyes.
‘Oh Etta,’ muttered Valent, ‘you OK, not hurt?’
‘Far from it, you make a lovely cushion.’
Their hearts stopped, but not Mahler. Then they both jumped.
‘Will you kindly turn down that din,’ roared a voice, ‘or I’ll call the police. There are kiddies trying to sleep here. Valent Edwards will not be pleased when he hears about this.’
It was the Major.
Valent was about to shout back, when Etta put a hand smelling of scent and wild garlic over his mouth. Then, clambering off him, she shot back into the kitchen.
‘He’s got his grandchildren staying,’ she explained, giggling helplessly as she tried to slow her beating heart. ‘I took Drummond and Poppy to tea there yesterday. Drummond pulled up all Debbie’s bamboos to use in a sword fight, then he peed in the Major’s rain gauge. The Major, assuming it was four inches of rain, promptly rang the Met and
The Times
– so embarrassing. I fled.’
‘How’s dear little Trixie?’ asked Valent.
‘She worries me,’ sighed Etta. ‘She’s so miserable and ratty. I can’t work out if it’s normal teenage behaviour or something more serious. Oh, I’m so sorry about the decanter.’
Tomorrow she would write to Goldstein Phillipson and ask them to engrave another ship, which she would pay for, even if she had to sell the Munnings.
Valent flew off again, coinciding his return with Bonny having a week off from her tour of
Private Lives
, which she told Valent was proving an incredible success. Seth was so supportive, the audience so warm. The director was so appreciative of how she’d impacted on the play. The designer thought she looked so enchanting in his clothes, after the run he was going to give them to her.
She and Valent were staying in his house in St John’s Wood, when one evening Bonny raised the subject of Pauline’s clothes. They were still upstairs in a boxroom, which Bonny wanted to redecorate.
‘Why don’t you send them to a charity shop, Valent, or at least give them to Etta Bancroft or Joyce Painswick? I’m sure they’d appreciate them. They might have to be let out for Painswick, but she’s so deft with her needle. You’ve got to move on, Valent, it’s the only way you’ll achieve closure.’
When he had looked mutinous, she had stripped off and begged him to make love to her on the lounge shag-pile. For the first time in their relationship, Valent had not been able to get it up. No amount of licking or sucking had worked. Bonny, saying it must be stress-related, insisted Valent consult a sex therapist.
Later, leaving a sleeping Bonny in bed, Valent had crept upstairs to the boxroom, where hung a row of dresses, crimplene and polyester, easy to iron, easy to mock. In the chest of drawers he found Pauline’s handbag, black plastic – he’d never been able to cure her frugality – which the police had returned to him after the crash, which he’d never been able to bear to open.
Inside was a jumble of pens, biros, bus tickets, pressed powder,
which had disintegrated, a mirror smashed by the impact, bright red lipstick, without which she felt naked, a purse in which he found a fiver, two pound coins, her credit card and a picture of himself, Ryan and the children. Above all, her perfume in a blue and silver spray, Rive Gauche – she had pronounced it ‘gorsh’ – was still fresh as Valent breathed it in.
The poem that had most moved him in Etta’s anthology was the sonnet in which Milton described the anguish of dreaming his dead wife was alive. It ended: ‘I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.’
Last night, Valent had dreamt of Pauline. Whatever was going to become of him?
The following day he escaped to Willowwood. There he discovered the loveliest May evening, with the cow parsley foaming up to wash the weeping tresses of the willows and hawthorn blossom exploding in white grenades all over the valley. Having taken a large whisky on to the terrace, comforted slightly by the beauty of his garden and the heady smell of pale pink clematis and pastel roses swarming over wall and yew hedge, he spent an hour on his BlackBerry checking his companies around the world.
Glancing through the twilight, he noticed Etta’s white and mossy green Polo had stopped outside his gates and hoped she might be coming to see him. Then he saw her leap out and put her arm round a passing Mrs Malmesbury.
At the same time Priceless jumped out and was romping up and down the middle of the road with Oxford the foxhound. They nearly got run over by a returning Debbie, who always made a ghastly din with her horn as she came round each of the five bends in the road on her way back to the village.
Picking up his binoculars, Valent realized Mrs Malmesbury was wiping her eyes, poor old duck – or goose. Then he saw Niall arrive, also putting an arm round Mrs Malmesbury and leading her home. He could hear her geese honking their welcome.
Curious to know what had happened, Valent rang Etta and suggested he wander down with a bottle for a quick drink.
Below huge indigo clouds, a scarlet sun on the horizon had turned the white hawthorn blossom pink as candy floss. Cow parsley caressed and soothed his arthritic hands as he walked down to the bungalow. He could hear the strains of Mahler’s First Symphony.
‘Gosh – a whole bottle of whisky,’ cried Etta. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
In fact he looked dreadfully tired. She wondered if sardines on toast would spread to two.
‘What’s oop with Mrs Malmesbury?’ asked Valent.
‘Oh, poor darling.’ Etta turned down the CD player. ‘A fox got her goose, Spotty, on Thursday. Mrs M nipped out to the bank at lunchtime and it was such a lovely day she didn’t shut up the geese. They were sunning themselves on the grass when a fox rolled up. The ganders waddled away but poor Spotty was heavy with eggs and couldn’t run. The vile fox stripped off her feathers and was sucking her blood when Mrs M got back. She rushed her to Charlie Radcliffe but it was too late.
‘The two young ganders now sit on Spotty’s feathers, which the fox scattered everywhere, and call for her. But what’s really sad,’ Etta’s voice trembled, ‘is poor, blind old Honky is utterly heart-broken. Spotty used to lead him everywhere, but because he can see slightly out of one eye, to comfort him, Mrs Malmesbury leaves him on the terrace, so he catches a glimpse of his own reflection in the kitchen window and thinks it’s Spotty.
‘Niall was so sweet to her just now, he’s so much more outgoing these days. Did you know that foxes were illegal immigrants? Henry V was so enamoured of hunting at Agincourt, he brought them back here after the battle.’
Etta suddenly realized neither she nor Valent had a drink and she was chattering into a vacuum. Turning, she gasped in dismay. Like rain trickling down the side of a grey castle wall, the tears were pouring down Valent’s cheeks. It was the poignancy of the old gander kept happy by his own reflection, an illusion that his wife was still alive. Next moment he collapsed on the sofa, narrowly missing Priceless.
‘Oh Etta, if only I could see Pauline again – even if it was only the shadow of my own reflection in a window. I was such a workaholic, whizzing round the world, I never told her how much I luved her.’
Perching on the edge of the sofa, Etta put her arms round him.
‘There, there, darling. Please don’t cry. Of course you miss her, but I’m sure she knew. Please don’t be sad.’
It was like holding a huge bison brought down by the huntsman’s spear. Etta just hugged, patted and handed him one sheet of kitchen roll after another. Gradually the sobs subsided, so she poured him a mahogany whisky.
‘I’m sorry, I’m such a bluddy wuss.’
‘You’re not, you’re the bravest, kindest person I know. What happened, what is it?’
Stumblingly he told her about Pauline’s things and Bonny wanting him to chuck them out.
‘It was her perfume that did it.’
‘You could leave her things here, if that would help.’
‘You’d have to put them on the roof,’ Valent laughed shakily.
Priceless, who didn’t like dramas, nudged Valent with his long nose. Next moment, Gwenny had jumped through the window on to his knee and started purring.