Dick Francis - Shattered

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But does she?” Catherine was insistent. “Does she, Gerard?”

I told her, smiling, “I now think she’s had the necklace tape almost from the beginning, and if she has, she knows I haven’t got it.” And Rose knows, I thought, that I could repeat it any day.

“But the other one?” Catherine begged. “The one stolen from the lab?”

“Yes.” I felt lighthearted. “I could make a guess. Let’s go to bed.”

I awoke first in the morning, and lay for a while watching Catherine’s calm gentle breathing. At that moment, it filled me with total contentment... but would I feel the same in ten years?... and would she? When she stirred and opened her eyes and smiled, ten years didn’t matter. One lived now, and now went along as a constant companion, present and changing minute by minute. It was now, always, that mattered.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Same as you, I dare say.”

She smiled again, and asked simply if I had plans for us both on her free Saturday. Relaxed, I offered the comfortable new chair in Logan Glass, and accepted a pillion ride to get there.

Hickory had again arrived before me and was again intent on a perfect sailing boat. He greeted me like the good friend of time gone by, tentatively asking if I could assist him, as he was finding it difficult on his own.

With uncomplicated pleasure I stripped down to a working singlet and helped Hickory, bringing a gather out of the tank when he needed it and holding the hot glass ready for his use. Hickory typically kept a running commentary for Catherine’s sake and flirted with her mildly, and seldom, I thought, had I more enjoyed a frivolous start to the morning.

Hickory this time remembered to put the finished boat in the annealing oven, and if he accepted Catherine’s unstinted praise with smugness, he had at least taken a satisfactory step forward in his training.

Irish arrived and brewed tea. Pamela Jane tidied and refilled the tubs of colored powder that we would use during that session, to restock the shelves. The rest of the regular Saturday morning unwound in work from nine to twelve o’clock.

At a few minutes past noon the shop embraced first Bon-Bon and the two boys, Daniel and Victor, for whom glassblowing had temporarily become a greater draw than e-mail.

Not long after them, Marigold swooped in, batting the eyelashes, grinning at Hickory, smothering Daniel in a bright pink gold-smocked cloud-like dress and telling Bon-Bon at the top of her voice that “Darling Trubby” would be with them right away.

“Darling Trubby,” Kenneth Trubshaw, swam through the bright pink experience and emerged with lipstick on his cheek. The trophy chairman of Cheltenham races was carrying my book of photographs, and besides being apparently unnerved by the chattering din, he eyed my half-undress with a degree of disbelief and suggested that the Wychwood Dragon might be better for a business meeting.

“Darling Trubby, what a great idea!” Marigold’s immediate enthusiasm resulted in herself, Kenneth Trubshaw, Bon-Bon, Catherine, myself, and of course Worthington (Marigold insisted) occupying a quiet corner of the dining room to listen to the opinions of that morning’s meeting of the Cheltenham Racecourse Company’s trophy committee.

Irish was dispatched down the hill to fill the two boys with hamburgers and Cokes, and Hickory and Pamela Jane were left in peace to deal with that less demanding breed, the January tourist.

When six of us were neatly seated and listening, Kenneth Trubshaw began his spiel. “First of all, dear Marigold,” he said, “everyone on the committee wants me to thank you for your splendid generosity...” He gave flattery a good name. Marigold glowed. Worthington caught my eye and winked.

“The committee voted...” the chairman came at last to the point. “We decided unanimously to ask you, Gerard Logan, to design and make a Martin Stukely memorial of a horse rearing on a crystal ball, like the one in the book. If it pleases Marigold and the committee...” His final words got temporarily lost in a bright pink Marigold hug, but came out the other side with provisos about cost. To Marigold, cost was a bore. Worthington bargained, and I telephoned a jeweler who promised enough gold.

“Can you make it today, darling Gerard?” Marigold enthused. “It’s barely three o’clock.”

“Tomorrow would be difficult,” I said. “Next week would be better. Today, I’m sorry, is impossible.” Sooner rather than later, I thought, to keep her happy.

The Marigold pout appeared, but I wasn’t going to help it. I needed time for thinking if it were to be a good job, and a good job was what I needed to do for Bon-Bon, for Marigold, for Cheltenham racecourse and for Martin himself.

“I’ll do them tomorrow,” I said. “The crystal ball and the rearing horse. I’ll do them on my own, alone except for one assistant. They will be ready on Monday for the gold to be added, and on Tuesday afternoon I’ll join them together onto a plinth. By Wednesday the trophy will be finished.”

“Not until then?” Marigold protested, and urged me to think again.

“I want to get it right for you,” I said.

And also I wanted to give my enemies time.

Marigold objected to my wanting no audience to the making of the rearing horse and the crystal ball. Kenneth Trubshaw understood, he said.

“Darling Trubby,” substantial, gray-haired and very much a businessman, mentioned to me the one quiet word, “Fees?”

“Worthington and I,” I said, “will fix a price with Marigold, then you can haggle if you like.”

He shook my hand wryly. “The Leicester Steward whose wife owns several of your things is also a Steward of Cheltenham, and he told our committee this morning that five years ago we could have bought this trophy for peanuts.”

“Five years ago,” I agreed. “Yes, you could.”

“And he said,” Trubshaw added, “five years from now works by Gerard Logan will at least cost double again.”

Uncle Ron would have loved it. Well... so did I. It was surviving the next five days that caught my attention.

By mid-afternoon everyone had collected and split apart again. Bon-Bon and Marigold left the boys in my care while they browsed the antique shops, and Worthington and Kenneth Trubshaw developed a strong mutual regard in a stroll.

In the workshop, Victor, utterly impressed, watched Hickory show off with two gathers of red-hot glass that he rolled competently in white powder and then colored powder and tweaked into a small wavy-edged one-flower vase. Pamela Jane expertly assisted in snapping the vase off the punty iron and Hickory with false modesty lifted it into an annealing oven as if it were the Holy Grail.

Daniel, for whom the workshop was a familiar stamping ground, mooned around looking at the shelves of bright little animals, pointing out to me the scarlet giraffe his father had promised him the day before he died. That story was most unlikely, I thought, remembering Martin’s absentmindedness towards all his children, but I gave Daniel the giraffe anyway, a gift that would have displeased his grandmother.

Giving to Daniel, though, always reaped a worthwhile crop. This time he wanted me to go outside with him, and, seeing the stretched size of his eyes, I went casually, but at once.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There’s a shoe shop down the road,” he said.

“Yes, I know.”

“Come and look.”

He set off, and I followed.

“Victor and I came down here with Irish, looking for hamburgers,” he said, “but we came to the shoe shop first.”

The shoe shop duly appeared on our left, a small affair mostly stocked with walking shoes for tourists. Daniel came to an abrupt halt by its uninspiring window.