Nothing to Lose
TO LOSE
Christina Jones
CHIVERS
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available
This eBook published by AudioGO Ltd, Bath, 2012.
Published by arrangement with the Author
Epub ISBN 9781471309014
Copyright © Christina Jones 2000
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental
All rights reserved
Jacket illustration © iStockphoto.com
Biker, musician and my lifelong friend. A kind, gentle, funny, happy man who should have lived for ever. I will always miss you. I will always remember. You were simply the best.
also for Nenagh Johnson,
the most beautiful greyhound in the world. May she continue to enjoy a long and happy retirement filled with luxury and love.
Chapter One
The chorus of ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’ roared along the aisle, poured through the nave, then soared sacrilegiously up into the sixteenth-century rafters of St Edith’s. The organist, more used to wheezing out ‘The Old Rugged Cross’, gamely tried to keep pace with the toe-tapping mourners. Even the vicar, his elbows resting on the pulpit’s worn carve-work, was clapping his hands to the back beat.
Sandwiched between her fiancé, Andrew, and her parents in the front pew, Jasmine Clegg sang ‘. . . my oh my, what a wonderful day . . .’ as the tears coursed down her cheeks. Her grandfather, currently reposing in his silk-lined, oak-veneered coffin at the top of the chancel steps, would have loved every minute of it.
It was, Jasmine thought sadly, exactly what he’d wanted exactly what he’d detailed more than three years earlier while he and Jasmine had been sheltering from a coastal gale, sharing cheese and onion baps and a tomato Cup a Soup.
‘When my time comes,’ Benny Clegg had waved his crusts under her nose, ‘don’t you dare let your father go for anything mournful like “The Lord is my Shepherd” or “Abide With Me” or – God forbid! – “The Day Thou Gavest”.’
Jasmine had swallowed her mouthful of soup quickly, raising her voice above the crashing of the sea. ‘What? Oh, Grandpa – I don’t want to even think about it!’
‘Well I do. When I go, I want a damn good shindig. I want all my friends tapping their feet and smiling. No – listen, love. I want my coffin to go into St Edith’s to “Entry of the Gladiators”, come out to “In The Mood”. . . Benny had gurgled happily here. ‘Me and your gran had some right old times to Glenn Miller . . . and I want everyone to have a rip-snorting singsong in the middle. That Zippy tune would be about right . . .
He’d started to whistle it cheerfully between his teeth. Bits of bap had sprayed onto the wet shingle, and a seagull had swooped down and scooped them up with a shriek of triumph. Jasmine had looked at Benny in horror. He meant it! He was planning to die! He couldn’t! Her grandfather was the only person in the world whom she truly loved. He couldn’t die and leave her.
‘Grandpa! Stop it, please!’ She’d shaken the raindrops from her hair, and shouted against the salt-tanged screech of the wind. ‘I don’t want to hear this! I won’t listen. Anyway, you’d never get away with even a partial-humanist funeral in Ampney Crucis. Not with that new vicar.’
Benny had swigged at the soup and emerged with a vibrant orange moustache. ‘No? You don’t reckon he’d stand for it? Maybe not – he seemed a bit of a miserable sod at Harvest Festival, now I come to think about it. He never saw the funny side of the marrows and –’ he’d suddenly regarded Jasmine fiercely – ‘don’t you try to change tack, young lady. This is very important to me.’
‘And you’re the most important thing in the world to me and I don’t want you to die!’
‘Lord love you, I’m not planning on going yet awhile. I just want to get this clear. When I’m dead it’ll be too late, and if I leave the arrangements to your father he’ll go for dirges and things. You know he will, don’t you?’
Jasmine had nodded. The Clegg sense of fun seemed to have bypassed Benny’s only child with a vengeance. Her father was the least humorous person she had ever known.
The raindrops were drumming steadily on the corrugated-iron roof, which slapped and flapped above their heads. She’d sighed.
‘If you’re being serious, you’ll have to have some hymns and prayers, especially if you want the service to be at St Edith’s.’
‘OK then, I’ll have a couple of rousing hymns and some nice cheery prayers as a sop to you and the Good Lord, then you lay me to rest on the leeward side of that oak tree with your gran, so that I get the sound of the sea, the smell of the rain, and the warmth of the evening sun. You’ll see to it. Jasmine, love, won’t you?’
And Jasmine, the last remnant of cheese and onion bap stuck miserably in her throat, had nodded.
‘Good girl.’ Benny had hugged her. ‘That’s settled, then. And the rain’s easing, so how about cheering ourselves up with a pint or three in the Crumpled Horn?’
Now they were in the Crumpled Horn again – without Benny, of course, but all his wishes had been carried out to the letter, and the post-funeral party was in full swing. Jasmine, still numbed with grief, clutched half a pint of Old Ampney ale, and hunched in a window seat. The afternoon sky was pale and luminescent, more like January than early May, sweeping down to the sea. The earlier rain had left everything looking shiny and cold, like stainless steel. It was bleak and cheerless, as only an English seaside village can be on a damp spring day, and the crowded pub was empty without Benny’s throaty laughter.
His closest friends, Allan, Peg and Roger, were huddled in the inglenook, their faces woebegone, their elderly hands still clutching handkerchiefs. They’d wept copiously at the graveside, hugging Jasmine, sharing the devastation of her loss. Roger had said that she’d done a wonderful job for Benny. Allan, nodding, had added that if he had to choose a way to die then Benny’s had been just perfect: falling asleep in his favourite armchair, as he had, with a glass of beer in one hand and a plate of egg and chips just finished in front of him, and greyhound racing on the telly.
They looked at her now and smiled sadly. Jasmine smiled back, without using her lips, just stretching her face slightly. She’d probably never smile properly again.
Across the crowded bar she could see her mother, looking even more pointed than usual, dressed in stark black, pecking at a sandwich, mentally working out the calorie content. She looked, Jasmine thought, like a hard-eyed, glossy crow raking at a piece of carrion. Her father, dark lounge suit, black tie and too many whiskies, was back-slapping with his council cronies. Andrew, her fiancé, was, as always, networking. Jasmine wondered how many cars he’d managed to sell to the funeral director. Andrew never missed an opportunity to do business.
Neither her mother nor Andrew would miss Benny at all, and her father would soon recover. They’d found Benny an embarrassment to their social standing, and had avoided even mentioning him if at all possible. To them he’d been an eccentric, scruffy old man with little money. There had been times, Jasmine knew, when her parents had denied that Benny was even part of their family. He’d known it too, and been bitterly hurt by the denial. And now it was far too late for anyone to make amends. She wiped away a solitary tear. She’d never felt more lonely.
‘Jasmine – may I join you?’
She shrugged. ‘Yes, of course. But I’m not good company.’
John Bestley, Ampney Crucis’s sole solicitor, nodded as he sat down. ‘No, I understand, my dear. A very sad day. Especially for you.’
Jasmine sniffed back further tears. They hurt her throat. She always cried more when people were kind.
John Bestley played with the stem of his sherry glass. ‘You are aware that Benny left his will with me? And that he’d asked for the contents to be divulged here after the funeral?’
‘Yes.’ She bit her lower lip and exhaled. ‘He also told me that you’d said that public will reading was practically a dead art. That it rarely happens these days – except in films.’
‘Very true. But your grandfather always had a sense of the dramatic.’ John Bestley’s eyes crinkled. ‘He fancied that this would be a rather theatrical finale to the day.’
Jasmine chased a beer mat round the table. ‘He didn’t have anything much to leave though, did he? He didn’t even own his house. He was always broke. And Dad’s his only son, so there doesn’t seem to be a lot of point.’ She picked up the beer mat and tapped its edge fiercely against her glass. ‘I mean, John, that if people are going to
laugh
–’
‘No one will make a fool of your grandfather, my dear. Certainly not me.’
‘OK. Sorry. I just didn’t want it to be embarrassing for him. Mum was always so condescending to him about it, you know . . . The little bits and pieces he had were priceless to him, but probably . . . probably . . . just, well, tat to other people . . . Oh, I’m sorry . . .’
John Bestley hurriedly handed her a very stiffly starched handkerchief from his breast pocket. ‘There, there, my dear . . . It’ll be fine. Trust me. Shall we get it over with, then?’
Jasmine wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and nodded.
John stood up, clapping his hands. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! If I could just command a few minutes of your time!’
The hubbub died slowly. Heads turned. Jasmine’s parents move closer together, as if to shield each other from the coming humiliation.
Andrew slid into the seat that John had just vacated and squeezed Jasmine’s shoulder. ‘Cheer up. This won’t take long, will it? After all, Benny had nothing to leave.’
Jasmine narrowed her eyes. Through the blur of her tears, Andrew’s regular features and neatly cropped fair hair all shifted sideways a fraction. ‘He had
everything
to leave! Everything!’
‘Yes, well,’ Andrew fumbled his words, ‘of course he did. I just meant that in terms of material possessions, and, well, hard cash, it’s hardly going to amount to the legacy of a lifetime, is it?’
Benny had never liked Andrew; couldn’t see why Jasmine had agreed to marry him. She was beginning to think the same – but she was far too emotional to face any further life-changes at the moment. She needed all the constants she could get.
John, having covered the preliminaries, had started on the bequests in solicitous tones.
‘
To my son, Philip Clegg –
’
Several of her father’s councillor chums immediately looked slightly askance and Jasmine bit back a smile. Nice one, Grandpa! Her father, believing that Clegg was a dead giveaway of his humble origins, had changed his and her mother’s surname to Clayton several years earlier. Jasmine, who had always been proud to be a Clegg, had torn up her deed poll forms.
‘Excuse me,’ John peered over his half-moon glasses, ‘could we have silence, please? Thank you. T
o my son, Philip Clegg, I leave my good wishes for his future, my sorrow that he had no interest in the family business, and my binoculars to enable him to see what is happening under his nose.
’
The Crumpled Horn erupted in hoots of laughter. Jasmine, watching her father’s face pucker in noncomprehension, sighed. Benny’s jokes had always been wasted on Philip.
‘The old sod,’ Andrew hissed. ‘There was no need for that!’
John tapped on the table. ‘Please! Let’s get on!
To my daughter-in-law, Yvonne Clegg, I leave my chip pan in the hope that she will use it daily and put some flesh on that scrawny frame. While this may broaden her hips, unfortunately I am not in a position to leave her anything which might broaden her mind.
’
Yvonne clutched at her husband with a shriek. Philip patted her hand. Jasmine wished that she could rush across and comfort her parents. She wished that she wanted to. Sadly, she reckoned, considering the way they’d treated her grandfather, Benny had let them off very lightly indeed.
‘That’s totally uncalled for!’ Andrew hissed. ‘Your mother has got a wonderful figure. All the blokes at the dealership think she’s top totty.’
What? Jasmine wrinkled her nose. ‘My mother? That’s disgusting . . .’
‘Of course it isn’t. Any woman with an ounce of self-respect would take care of herself, just as Yvonne has done. I bet she’s still a size ten, and with that fabulous hair . . .’ He trailed off.