Reading her thoughts, Martin returned to the attack:
‘Rupert can only have bankrolled your court case because he’s expecting you to sell Mrs Wilkinson to him.’
‘What about Chisolm?’ quavered Etta.
‘Oh, she’d lead a far more worthwhile life sustaining a family in Africa,’ said Romy. ‘Shoo, shoo, out of here.’
In answer, Chisolm raised a cloven hoof and scattered currants over the kitchen floor.
After they’d gone, a despairing Etta rang Alan, who suggested she leased Mrs Wilkinson to a syndicate. ‘They’d pay her training fees and insurance and share out any winnings.’
But if Martin and Carrie stopped her tiny allowance, she’d have only her state pension to live on and couldn’t pay anyone back.
It was a stiflingly hot evening. She could hear the roar of Farmer Fred’s tedder as he tossed and turned the newly cut hay, baling it into shining silver cotton reels. The shaven fields gleamed like a platinum blonde in a nightclub, the air was heavy with the voluptuous scent of honeysuckle, elder and wild rose. Such a night to be in love, thought Etta, but not with a horse that was going to be taken away.
She sought comfort in the orchard, where Chisolm and Mrs Wilkinson ransacked her pockets for Polos. She must find a way to keep them. As her eyes strayed to the dark house nearby, still spiky with scaffolding, her thoughts turned to Valent. She put her hand on the shoulder he had touched in court, pressing her cheek against the hand, feeling weak with longing for him to take care of her, Wilkie and Chisolm.
But he had Bonny Richards and had done enough. To comfort her mistress, Mrs Wilkinson hooked her head over Etta’s shoulder and drew her against her warm grey breastbone.
‘Something will turn up.’
After a sleepless night, when she had tossed like Farmer Fred’s hay, Etta was interrupted at seven thirty in the morning by a call from Alan.
‘Let’s have a meeting in the Fox to see if the village is prepared to form a syndicate.’
‘Might they?’
‘We can only try. I’ll get on the telephone.’
41
To Etta’s amazement, twelve hours later she was in the garden of the Fox, breathing in a heady scent of pink rambler roses and damp earth from a recent shower. With a large jug of pre-ordered Pimm’s, she filled up the glasses of the Major, Debbie, Pocock, Painswick, Alban, Jase, Joey, Woody, very brown from working stripped to the waist at Badger’s Court, Shagger, Tilda, Dora, Trixie, who’d bunked off from school and was keeping shtum because she didn’t want her father to see her new tongue stud, Niall the vicar, and Chris and Chrissie, who’d left Jenny the barmaid manning the shop because most of the drinkers were in the garden. Araminta and Cadbury panted under the walnut tree.
Etta had bought the first round. She wanted to, and Alan had suggested it was a good idea to look rich.
He was just kicking off, asking everyone to drink a toast to Etta winning the court case, when Phoebe and Toby, who were gripped with pre-Wimbledon fervour, scuttled in in tennis gear.
‘Sorry sorry sorry, just been finishing a needle match,’ cried Phoebe. ‘Ooh, Pimm’s, how refreshing, yes please, just what we need.’
Alan, whose irritation was only betrayed by a hiss through the teeth and drumming fingers on the table, waited until they were sorted and seated to announce: ‘Etta and I have invited you here this evening to discuss the possibility of forming a syndicate to put Mrs Wilkinson into training.’
He looked round the garden at his daughter texting, at Tilda marking SATS papers, at Phoebe whispering to Shagger, at Dora beaming in approval.
‘What we need,’ he continued, ‘is ten people each to take a three thousand pound share. That’s assuming Mrs Wilkinson is worth thirty thousand – in fact she’s worth a great deal more, bearing in mind her pedigree and her astonishing performance at the point-to-point, so you’d be getting a fantastic bargain. But we want to make this not beyond people’s pockets, so we can keep Mrs Wilkinson in Willowwood.’
At the prospect of forking out so much, everyone was doing sums. Alban, who’d been in the pub since six, was confidently looking forward to confirmation of a £250,000-a-year role heading a quango. Debbie was wondering whether having the most colourful garden in Willowwood was quite enough. She and the Major had enjoyed the court case and the point-to-point so much, it had given them something to talk about at mealtimes. Tilda yawned. She’d been up