Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,20

by himself when we returned and put everything in the right places in the storeroom, which I had arranged with much more method since his arrival. Mrs Palissey had taken two more orders on the telephone, and I spent some time making up those and the ones from earlier in the day, collecting all the various items together into boxes for Brian to carry out to the van. Being a wine merchant, I often thought, was not a gentle artistic occupation, but thoroughly backbreakingly physical.

The telephone rang yet again while I was sitting in the office writing the bills to go out with the orders and I stretched out one hand for the receiver with my eyes on my work.

‘Tony?’ a woman’s voice said tentatively. ‘It’s Flora.’

‘Dear Flora,’ I said. ‘How are you? How’s Jack? How’s everything?’

‘Oh…’ She seemed tired beyond bearing. ‘Everything’s so awful. I know I shouldn’t say that… but… oh dear.’

‘I’ll come and fetch the glasses,’ I said, hearing the appeal she hadn’t uttered. ‘I’ll come practically at once.’

‘There… there aren’t many left whole… but yes, do come.’

‘Half an hour,’ I said.

She said, ‘Thank you,’ faintly and disconnected.

I looked at my watch. Four-thirty. Most often at about that time on Mondays Mrs Palissey and Brian set off in the van to do any deliveries which lay roughly on their way home, finishing the round the following morning. Mrs Palissey’s ability to drive had been the chief reason I’d originally hired her, and she on her part had been pleased to be given the use of the shop’s second string, an elderly capacious Rover estate. We swopped the two vehicles around as required, so I said I would do the deliveries that day, if she would stay until five to close the shop, and go home again in the car.

‘By all means, Mr Beach.’ She was graciously obliging. ‘And I’ll be here at nine-thirty, then, in the morning.’

I nodded my thanks and took the bills, the orders, van and myself off up the hill to Jack Hawthorn’s stables, where not a great deal had changed since the day before.

I saw, as I came over the hill, that the great green horsebox still stood on the lawn, with, beyond it, the heaped canvas remains of the marquee. The Sheik had gone, and his bodyguards. The mute bloodstained expanse of fawn matting was scattered with trestle tables and sections of tent pole, and glittering here and there in the rays of late afternoon sunshine lay a million pieces of glass.

I parked as before outside the kitchen entrance and locked the van with a sigh. Flora came slowly out of the house to greet me, dressed in a grey skirt and a green cardigan, dark smudges under exhausted eyes.

I gave her a small hug and a kiss on the cheek. We had never before been on those sort of terms, but disasters could work wonders in that area.

‘How’s Jack? ‘I said.

‘They’ve just now set his leg… pinned it, they say. He’s still unconscious… but I saw him this morning… before.’ Her voice was quavery, as it had been on the telephone. ‘He was very down. So depressed. It made me so miserable.’ The last word came out in a gasp as her face crumpled into tears. ‘Oh dear… Oh dear…’

I put my arm round her shaking shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘He’ll be all right. Truly.’

She nodded mutely, sniffing and fumbling in a pocket for a handkerchief, and after a while, through gulps, said, ‘He’s alive, and I should be grateful for that, and they say he’ll be home quite soon. It’s just… everything… everything…’

I nodded. ‘Just too much.’

She nodded also and dried her eyes with a re-emergence of spirit, and I asked whether any of her children might not come to help her through this patch.

‘They’re all so busy… I told them not to. And Jack, you know, he’s jealous of them really, he wouldn’t want them here when he’s away, though I shouldn’t say that, only I do seem to tell you things, Tony dear, and I don’t know why.’

‘Like telling the wallpaper,’ I said.

She smiled very faintly, a considerable advance.

‘How’s Jimmy?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t see him. He’s conscious, they say, and no worse. I don’t know what we’ll do if he isn’t well soon… he runs everything, you know… and without them both… I feel so lost. I can’t help it.’

‘Anything I can do?’ I said.

‘Oh yes,’ she said instantly. ‘I was so hoping… I mean, when you