Jumping to Conclusions

by Christina Jones

  He nudged Charlie. 'He's well-ribbed.'

  'Yeah, and plenty of bone below the knee.'

  'Very sound. Fetlocks and pasterns all look A-okay from here. Let's go for it, then?'

  'Oh, yes.' Gillian clasped her hands. 'He's such a lovely colour.'

  The auction ring was as spectacular as any theatre. With its sloping tiers of tip-up seats, its discreet spotlighting in the gleaming rafters, and its multicoloured banks of tumbling flowers, it looked very like the new Globe. The wood panelling was rich and golden, the roped-off parade ring sanitised with sawdust, and the air was filled with hardly-suppressed excitement. With a third of the sales for the day already completed, Drew followed Charlie and Gillian into their seats.

  'You feel like you should have popcorn and a choc-ice, don't you?' Gillian said, squeezing herself very close to Charlie. 'Ooh look!'

  Drew looked. A man with rainbow dreadlocks and a Versace suit, accompanied by what looked like the Blues Brothers, had just wandered in. He'd noticed them in the upper sales paddock. 'I think he's interested in Bonnie Nuts.'

  'Don't you know who he is?'

  Drew didn't. He shrugged at Gillian. 'Why? Do you?'

  'Fizz Flanagan. He's a rapper. The twins adore him. They've got all his CDs.'

  'He's into horses,' Charlie said. 'Big time. Jenny Pitman's got most of them.'

  There was no time for any more speculation. Bonnie Nuts was led into the ring. Led round, he was unfazed by the lights or the hum of expectancy.

  'Number 96, a chestnut gelding by Bonnie Prince out of Goodnight Sweetheart. Excellent record. Sire and dam both winners. Who'll start me at twelve thousand guineas?'

  Drew, floundering, knew you didn't go in on the first bid. The auctioneer rapidly reduced his opening gambit to eight thousand. Gillian nodded. Fizz Flanagan's minders nodded again. Drew went in immediately, raising his hand. So did they. The majority of the crowd held their breath.

  'At fifteen thousand to you,' the auctioneer nodded at Drew. 'And sixteen. Seventeen – oh, and twenty –'

  'Don't let him have it,' Gillian hissed wildly through the wisps of her hair. 'Go straight up to twenty-five.'

  Drew did. Charlie coughed. Fizz Flanagan's minders got it up to thirty. Drew was sweating.

  'Thirty five – and forty. Are we all done at forty-five thousand? The bid is with you.' The auctioneer turned towards the Blues Brothers.

  'Fifty!' Gillian yelled, waving her catalogue. 'Fifty thousand for Bonnie Nuts!'

  'Can you afford that?' Drew blinked. He was pretty sure the horse wasn't worth it.

  'Double it,' Gillian said smugly.

  'Fifty thousand!' The auctioneer roared. The Blues Brothers didn't move.

  Charlie looked as though he was going to faint as Fizz Flanagan shook his head, leapt over several rows of seats and headed towards them. The crowd fell apart like the Red Sea.

  'Hit him first,' Charlie advised, sliding towards Gillian. 'If that fails, I'll pull his hair.'

  Fizz Flanagan, who probably topped six foot five, towered over them. His grin was like a sliced melon. He gathered Gillian against the Versace and kissed her. Drew noticed that she put up very little resistance.

  'Good luck with him, darling. I like a lady with balls.'

  'Sold to Drew Fitzgerald! Lot number 96. And madam,' the auctioneer leaned forward, 'may I put you straight? The horse is not called Bonnie Nuts. A swift history lesson. Bonnie Prince Charlie – as in the sire – left his sanctuary on Jersey to sail to safety in France under cover of darkness. As he left he said "Goodnight" to the island – as in Goodnight Sweetheart, the dam. With me so far?'

  Charlie and Gillian nodded. Drew was laughing. He was way ahead of them.

  'The horse is called Bonne Nuit, madam. Good night from the Bonnie Prince.'

  'Thank you.' Still pressed comfortably against the Versace, Gillian squinted at Drew. 'What's so funny?'

  'My house in Jersey –' Drew thought he was going to cry. This horse was going to be his salvation. 'My parents' farm – it's in Bonne Nuit Bay.'

  'Spooky!' Fizz Flanagan whistled. 'Shall we all go and have a drink?'

  Agreeing to meet them in the bar, Drew whizzed off to make the arrangements for transporting Bonne Nuit back to Peapods, sign all the necessary documents and hand over Gillian's banker's draft. He couldn't wait to tell Maddy. Everything – absolutely everything – was going to be all right now.

  Half an hour later, Bonne Nuit sorted out, Drew found Gillian and Charlie sharing tequila slammers with Fizz Flanagan and the Blues Brothers.

  'I'm not going to stop. I want to get home. I've registered myself as the owner until we decide what we're doing. We'll sort out all the arrangements tomorrow, okay?'

  Okay, they agreed.

  'Of course,' Gillian said happily. 'I suppose, under the circs, we couldn't expect Jemima to let us use her name, could we?'

  'Why not?' Not that he really cared. He wanted to get home. He needed to be with Maddy. He wanted to share this with her. He wanted to cuddle her and tell her how unbelievable she was.

  'Goodness, Drew! It's obvious. This Grand National showdown is going to be Kath Seaward versus you. Lancing Grange versus Peapods. Dragon Slayer versus Bonnie Nuts. Matt versus Charlie. Now Jemima's involved with Matt, it's obvious whose side she's going to be on, isn't it?'

  Drew drove home as if the hounds of hell were chasing him. He doubted if Charlie could have topped it. It was going to be fantastic now. Bonne Nuit. Bonne Nuit. The words were his mantra. ...

  He screamed the Mercedes over Peapods' cobbles. Practically falling out of the door, he greeted the dogs briefly and belted into the sitting room. Holly looked up from the sofa, shifted the cats from her lap, and flicked off the TV's remote control.

  Drew was buzzing. 'Hi. Where's Maddy? Is she getting ready? Did she get my message?'

  'Doubtful,' Holly said, uncurling her legs from the cushions and placing the sleeping Poppy in his arms. 'She hasn't been in for ages. She and Fran thought they'd treat themselves to a girls' night out. She said to tell you not to wait up.'

  July

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jemima Carlisle. Vincent stood on the curve of gravel and looked up at the dark green fascia and the ornate gold lettering. Jemima Carlisle. She'd made it.

  'Dad! Where have you got to?'

  'Just coming. Don't be such a slave-driver!'

  Jemima appeared in the doorway. She looked gorgeous, he thought, in a long black skirt and a black vest, with her hair caught up with a clip, and a million watts of happiness shining from her eyes.

  'I open tomorrow. I'm hours behind schedule. We've only got this evening and I want everything to be perfect.'

  He looked at her. 'Just give me a few more minutes to stand and stare and bathe in reflected glory.'

  'Two minutes.' She pulled a face. 'Any more and you're sacked!'

  Vincent poked out his tongue and they laughed together. This was all that he'd wanted. Well, nearly all. It was all that he'd wanted for Jemima, then. He watched her skip back into the shop – her shop – and heaved a sigh of contentment.

  It was a greyish evening, chilly for mid-July. It didn't matter. The rain had stopped again, and the pink-tinged clouds on the horizon heralded a fine day tomorrow. He'd learned that bit of folklore from Maureen. Not so much the red sky at night part, as the position of the clouds at dusk and the smell of the air from the Downs. If he wasn't careful he'd be emitting sporadic 'ooh-ars' along with the octogenarians in the Cat and Fiddle's Snug Bar.

  Vincent walked back into the shop. Whatever Jemima might say – and she was a perfectionist, his daughter – it looked pretty damned good to him. The shelves were lined with books, all the packaging had been dumped in the skips in the yard, publishers' posters adorned the walls, the chairs and tables were set out in the browsers' corner, and there were beanbags for the kiddies. He couldn't see that there was much left to do. Jemima, obviously felt differently.

  She dropped the pile o
f paperwork she was carrying and hugged him. 'Sorry to sound like a nag. You're lovely to offer to help. I know you've been working all day.'

  He was delighted that she'd asked him. And work was becoming a pleasure, although he was a bit worried about Maddy. Since the débâcle with the walled garden, he'd studied books, magazines and television programmes. He'd managed to introduce a child-safe waterfall to Maddy's pond, and successfully pruned a few small fruit trees. The sit-on mowing machine was a breeze and satisfied his Formula One fantasies, and he now had commissions for his special brand of low-maintenance Japanese garden from three other trainers in the village.

  'What do you want me to do next?'

  'The stationery.' She picked up several boxes and deposited them in his arms. 'Could you put it away, please.'

  'I thought I had. About half an hour ago.'

  'You did. In the store-cupboard. It needs to be under the desk.'

  'Yes, ma'am!'

  He balanced the boxes in a neat stack and carried them across the spotless sisal floor. He hoped Maddy was okay. From years of practice in the bedsit, he had learned to take very little notice of what other people were doing, but he couldn't help being rather concerned about the atmosphere at Peapods. He had toyed with the idea of mentioning it to Jemima, but decided against it. She might get worried that he was about to lose his job – and that would never do. Just so long as Jemima and everyone else thought that his sole income came from Drew Fitzgerald's pocket, then no awkward questions would be asked.

  Still, it didn't stop him fretting about Maddy. He'd become very fond of her. She seemed listless these days, and she wasn't quite as chipper with him – or with anyone else as far as he could see – as she had been. And Drew – well, he was almost morose. Which, as Ned said, with the new horse in the yard – and apparently owned by one of the princes from an oil-rich country – was altogether odd.

  And Vincent hadn't heard Drew and Maddy laughing for ages. And they didn't sit together in the garden any more and giggle with the baby and the animals. Knowing how painful his own marriage break-up had been, he hoped upon hope that there weren't any problems of that nature.

  He had, on the QT, mentioned it to Maureen in the Munchy Bar. He liked Maureen a lot. He thought that her Brian was a bit of a knob to be away on his long-distance lorry-driving lark, leaving her alone all the week. He and Maureen had shared one or two vodka-and-limes in the Cat and Fiddle of an evening, and very enjoyable they'd been, too.

  Maureen had definitely no-no'd the idea of any marital problems at Peapods. She would have heard, she'd said, if there was anything wrong in that department. Mark her words, duck, she'd said, Bathsheba and Bronwyn would be straight on the case. Money worries – yes, but they were, according to the grapevine, on the up now. No, Bathsheba and Bronwyn were still fighting their anti-porn campaign and worrying over Lucinda who seemed to be having a lot of sleep-overs with her girlfriends, and still had several A-level exams to take. There was not a whiff of things not being as they should be at Peapods.

  It hadn't stopped Vincent worrying, though. Secretly he looked on Maddy as a surrogate daughter, and sometimes wondered if he should ask her if everything was okay. She'd paid him at the end of the month, and thanked him for fixing the gutters, and for the waterfall, and for putting up a new security lighting system in the yard. She hadn't smiled at all.

  Vincent had pocketed the money – he'd asked for cash because he said he hadn't got his bank account sorted out yet – and thanked her effusively. Her mouth had smiled then, he'd noticed, but her eyes had remained blank.

  As well as being paid by Maddy, he had earned himself a nice little bonus. Not, of course, that the bonus came from gardening, as such. Ned Filkins certainly knew a thing or two, and now that Jemima was walking out with Matt Garside – Vincent had had to pinch himself when she'd told him – the future looked very bright indeed.

  'Dad! You're day-dreaming!' Jemima's tone was mock-severe. 'Where've you put the stationery this time?'

  'Cupboard under the desk – as instructed.' Vincent dug his hand into the pocket of his corduroys and pulled out a fistful of notes. 'But this is more important than your invoices and headed notepaper.'

  'Nothing's more important than – bloody hell! Where did you get that from?'

  'I've been paid. Now,' Vincent licked his forefinger and thumb and began peeling off fivers, 'I owe you for all the time in the bedsit, plus the twenty you loaned me, plus the cost of the magazines, plus a bit extra for being a star and not abandoning me.'

  'I can't take all that. I don't want it. I didn't expect –'

  'Take it.' Vincent pushed it into her hand. 'Please, Jem. For the first time for ages I can actually do this. Please take it. I'll be very hurt if you don't.'

  Jemima smiled, looked at him with those huge eyes behind her glasses, then threw her arms round his neck. 'You're great. Oh, I always knew you'd do it. All you needed was trust and a fresh chance and some time to gain your self-respect.' She leaned away from him. 'I'm so proud of you. And yes, okay. I'll take the money. I'll save it, just in case you ever need –'

  'I'll never need again,' Vincent said, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Why did Jemima always manage to find that one tender spot in his conscience? 'I'm getting myself straight now. I thought I might even buy myself a little car.'

  'God – I'm impressed.' Jemima had returned to the book-shelves just inside the door with the banner proclaiming 'New Publications!'.

  'Maddy and Drew must be paying you megabucks.'

  Vincent back-pedalled. 'Well, I won't be buying anything straight away. I just meant that I should be able to afford something sooner rather than later, you know.'

  Jemima nodded, and fiddled again with the rainbow rows of new books. Whoops, Vincent thought, not very clever of him. He'd promised Ned Filkins that he wouldn't throw his money around.

  'Best not draw attention to anything, Vince, mate,' Ned had said. 'Keep the bunce under your mattress and sleep on it, eh?'

  In the four weeks since the race meeting at Windsor, when he and Ned had met up in the deserted Cat and Fiddle and then driven into the wilds of Berkshire in Ned's Cortina, Vincent had made more money than he would have believed possible. That first night, his stake had – by necessity – been very small, and Ned had trebled it for him. Since then, the stakes and the earnings had grown.

  'Best not get involved with anything in the village yet awhile,' Ned had advised, that first night in the tiniest pub Vincent had ever seen. 'Keep the shit off your doorstep, so to speak. There's a lot of money to be made on the network.'

  The network, it appeared, threaded itself through every stable in the downland area. Lads who were underpaid, lads with a grievance, lads who had been sacked from yards, lads who had all manner of pressing financial problems – they were all there with information available for a price.

  'Listen and learn,' Ned had said, as they'd sat in a very dark and grimy corner. 'I knows them and they knows me. You're new. They won't trust you for a bit. We'll just go halvers. Okay?'

  Vincent had said okay, and felt dubious. But not for long. There were things he'd heard that night that made his hair stand on end. Good God – how was any honest punter ever expected to make a profit? Was everyone on the fiddle?

  Not everyone, unfortunately, Ned had said. If they were it'd have made his game a lot easier. Most yards were dead straight and had watertight security, and the racecourses were red-hot on dope-testing, so any betting coups had to be pretty clever to beat the Nanny State. Vincent, fiddling with his pint, had stated categorically that he had no wish to become involved in anything at all which would lead to injury of either horse or jockey.

  Ned had looked at him with disdain. 'What we do don't hurt no one – except in their pocket.' He'd thrown back his Guinness with alacrity. 'Don't you worry about it, Vince, mate. Just get ready to count the lucre.'

  And Vincent had. The first few tips he and Ned had shared had been for last races on cards at far-flung meetings
. Hot favourites had proved to be lukewarm, and nicely-priced outsiders had romped home. Luck of the draw, Ned had told him, deftly stripping off the outside layer of a roll of banknotes. Nothing iffy about it at all. Information available to anyone with a pair of eyes what could see and a set of ears what worked.

  They weren't always successful, of course. But for the first time since Vincent had started gambling in his teens, he was winning far more than he was losing. And the buzz was back. The sheer surge of excitement when he tuned into the racing results, or looked at the evening paper. The adrenalin-rush high that simply couldn't be beaten when he saw his selection at the top of the list.

  Ned always placed the bets, and at first he'd assumed they were with one of the local betting shops. Vincent, whose mind could work out odds quicker than a calculator, was always surprised at how much return he'd got for his money. Had Ned, he'd enquired, got special rates at Ladbrokes?

  Ned had guffawed loudly at such innocence. The winnings, it transpired, passed down a fairly long chain. From the course and through several pairs of hands. No tax to pay, no one any the wiser. Ned had tapped the side of his nose several times to indicate that there was no more to be said. Vincent, who had a thousand pounds now under his mattress in the Peapods cottage, was delighted to remain dumb.

  Small beer, mate, Ned had said. Now we trust each other, we're going to move up into the big time.

  'Dad!' Jemima said again. 'Dad? What do you reckon?'

  On the corners of the counters she'd just arranged big vases of golden flowers – despite his heavy horticultural reading Vincent couldn't have told you their name for a king's ransom – with trailing dark green leaves. They looked very swish.

  Rosemary had always had a good eye for colour, and even when they'd been living without any money, she'd managed to pull all their bits and pieces together to look stylish. Jemima had inherited her flair. He blinked.