Cassidy supposed the least she could do for Mona was to distribute her ‘old bits and pieces’ as Mona would have liked, but hoped not to have to do it. Oliver came smiling back from the pub and took his wife to bed in splendid humour.
When the time came, Cassidy went on her lengthy tour in America. Oliver, though lonely, won a European Equus Grand Prix and was chosen as Sportstar of the Year. Mona, travelling with Oliver to look after the horses, thought she’d never been happier.
At the end of the first half of Cassidy’s tour, Oliver punctiliously settled Mona into the small apartment in the stables block and checked that the stand-in groom (a time-weathered nagsman even older than Mona) would arrive (on his own bike) every day to help exercise the horses. Mona with confidence sent Oliver off to join Cassidy and began to be seduced during the next few weeks by the refrigerator full of food, by the colour television, and by not having to put coins in a meter to pay for electricity to cook with, or to keep warm. Mona in her independent two-up two-down carefully paid rent for everything. She saved a little each week into a Christmas Club for ‘rainy days’. She had managed all her life on little.
Oliver, talking to Cassidy in America as they relaxed at the end of her sell-out triumphs before starting the long legs home, suggested that they should increase Mona’s wages when they got back.
‘We already pay her over the top for a groom.’
‘She’s worth more,’ Oliver said.
‘OK, then.’ Cassidy yawned. ‘And you need another horse... The brave big grey’s too old now, didn’t you say?’
Mona, half a world away, mucked out the heavy clever grey and sadly knew Oliver would sell him soon. He had reached fifteen and the spring was leaving his hocks.
Mona felt feverish and unwell as she worked on the grey, but paid no attention. Like all healthy people, she didn’t know when she was ill.
Eyeing her flushed face the next morning, the old nagsman said he would do the horses, and she was to go off on her bicycle to see the doctor. Mona felt unwell enough to do as he said, and learned with relief that what was wrong with her was ‘flu’.
‘There’s a lot of it about,’ the overworked doctor said. ‘Go to bed, drink a lot of fluids, you’ll soon feel better. ‘Flu’s a virus. I can’t give you a prescription to cure it, as antibiotics don’t work against a virus. Take aspirin. Keep warm. And drink a lot of water. Let me know if you cough a lot. You’re a healthy woman, Mrs Watkins. Go to bed, rest and drink water and you’ll be fine.’
Mona slowly cycled back to the Bolingbrokes’ yard and reported the diagnosis to her helper.
‘You go on to bed then right now,’ he insisted. ‘Leave the horses to me.’
Mona thankfully undressed into her warm nightgown and crawled between her sheets. The cycle ride had made her feel much worse. She remembered she should take aspirin, but she hadn’t any. She dozed and smilingly re-lived the faultless rounds of Oliver’s European Equus Grand Prix.
The old nagsman felt too shy and embarrassed to enter Mona’s little apartment, as her bed — in its bed-sitting room- was barely six feet from the outer door. He opened the door and spoke with her morning and evening though, through a slender crack, and when she seemed no livelier after three days he cycled to see the doctor himself.
‘Mrs Watkins? Flu takes time, you know.’ He turned pages in a meagre file. ‘I see she has a daughter, down here as ‘next of kin’, Mrs Peregrine Vine. Let’s enlist her help.’
Kind man that he was, he phoned Joanie himself to save the old nagsman’s pocket.
‘Flu!’ Joanie exclaimed. ‘I’m sure Mona’s perfectly all right, if you are looking after her.’
The doctor frowned. ‘She could do with some simple nursing. Change her sheets. Make her cups of tea. Give her orange drinks, or even beer. Things like that. It’s very important she drinks a lot. If you can—’
‘I can’t,’ Joanie interrupted. ‘I have committee meetings all day. I can’t put them off.’
‘But your mother—’
‘It’s too inconvenient,’ Joanie said positively. ‘Sorry.’
The doctor, shaking his head over his abruptly disconnected receiver, wrote Joanie’s phone number on one of his business cards and gave it to the nagsman.
On the following day the nagsman telephoned Joanie himself and told her that Mona was neither better nor worse, but needed her daughter’s company, he thought.
‘Why doesn’t Cassidy Bolingbroke look after her?’ Joanie asked. ‘She likes her well enough.’
The nagsman explained that Mrs Bolingbroke was on her way home from America, but wasn’t expected back for two more days.
‘Two days? That’s all right then,’ Joanie said, and put the phone down. She felt, in fact, relieved. The thought of nursing her mother, of having to make physical intimate contact with that old flesh, revolted her to nausea.
Mona, not unhappy, lay like a log in bed without any appetite for food or drink. She supposed vaguely that she would soon be better: meanwhile she’d sleep.
When the Bolingbrokes returned, Cassidy went into Mona’s room, which she found hot, fetid and airless, with Mona herself bloated and drifting in and out of consciousness on the bed. Cassidy did what she could for her, but in great alarm she and Oliver sent for the doctor. Anxiously he came at once and, having spent time with Mona, summoned an ambulance and repeated over and over to Cassidy and Oliver, ‘But I told her, I insisted she should drink fluids. She says she hasn’t drunk anything for a week. She hasn’t had the energy to make a cup of tea.’ There was despair in his voice. ‘I will have to alert Mrs Vine that we have a serious situation here... may I use your phone?’
Joanie, predictably, saw no reason for panic and said she was sure her mother was in good hands. The doctor raised his eyes to heaven and, despite everything that could be done, despite dialysis and drip and Cassidy’s prayers, Mona drifted quietly away altogether and died late that night in hospital from total kidney failure.
The hospital informed Joanie Vine of the death, not the Bolingbrokes. It was the doctor who told Oliver.
‘So unnecessary, poor lady. If only she’d drunk fluids. People don’t understand or realise the danger of dehydration...’
He was excusing himself, Oliver thought, but Mona had undoubtedly ignored his advice.
Oliver and Cassidy sat in the kitchen and grieved for their vital missing friend.
It was when the old nagsman told them about the doctor and himself phoning Joanie without results that the Bolingbrokes’ grief turned to fury.
‘Joanie killed her.’ Cassidy clenched her fists in outrage. ‘She literally killed her.’
Oliver more objectively thought Joanie hadn’t meant to: hadn’t known how her neglect would turn out. No court would convict her, even of involuntary manslaughter, let alone murder. No case would ever be brought.
Oliver, suddenly remembering Mona’s simple will, decided to consult her next door two-up two-down neighbour at once about what to do with Joanie’s ‘bits and pieces’, that she’d bequeathed to Cassidy. If the neighbour would welcome them, they would have found a good home. Leaving Cassidy upset in the house he drove his Range Rover into town and found a van of Peregrine’s firm — ‘Peregrine Vine and Co., Quality Auctioneers’ — parked outside Mona’s little cottage, with over-ailed workmen busily carrying out her pathetic goods and furniture, to load them for removal.
Mona’s neighbour, wearing curlers in her hair, bedroom slippers on her feet and a floral apron over her dress, stood shivering out in the November street, futile protest obvious in every muscle.