Mount!

by Jilly Cooper

  Whereupon Gala flipped, screaming expletives: ‘Fucking bastards! How dare you, you fucking juveniles,’ slapping Cathal and Simmy’s grinning faces, before leaping into her car and storming off. Sobbing her heart out, she drove down to the churchyard. No one was inside the church, the flower arrangers had gone. Shivering violently, Gala slumped over the back of a pew, kneeling on a cross-stitched owl.

  ‘Oh Ben, oh Ben.’ If he was up there, would he ever forgive her? Was she being punished for her attempted infidelity, by being rejected by Gav whom she’d tried to get off with, so conceitedly imagining he fancied her? Old mare syndrome, mutton dressed as lamb.

  ‘Oh God, please help me, help me,’ she howled.

  Suddenly she felt a warm hand on her neck, which, as she jumped in terror, held her down.

  ‘Don’t cry.’ It was Rupert.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Came to put flowers on Billy’s grave. What’s the matter? You’re soaking!’

  ‘They threw me in the water-trough, shouting Happy Birthday. I lost it. I’d just washed my hair. I screamed back at them, behaved like a fishwife.’

  ‘Fishwives gotta swim.’ Idly Rupert stroked her drenched hair as if she were Cuthbert. ‘It’s a sort of compliment if they do it on birthdays – means they regard you as part of the yard and want you to transfer. I’ve brought you a present. Happy Birthday, Gala.’

  As he led her back into the churchyard, she noticed a big bunch of daffodils in a jam jar on Billy’s grave. And when he opened his boot, wriggling frantically on a red carpet rug was a brindle Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppy.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh,’ gasped Gala. ‘How sweet!’ As she gathered up the puppy, he melted into her arms, frantically licking away her tears. ‘He’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘For you,’ Rupert told her. ‘Look at his disc.’

  Glinting in the sunlight, it said: Milburn, Penscombe Court, Gloucestershire, with the telephone number.

  ‘It should also say, please stay here.’

  ‘Oh, I love him …’ Then Gala thrust the puppy back at Rupert. ‘But I wouldn’t be able to take him to my next job.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere. I need you, you’re going to work in the yard.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m too fat – and what about your dad?’

  ‘Well, for starters, we’ll get in a part-time carer so you can work mornings in the yard, and do ride work on Quickly and Touchy Filly. Eddie’s coming back from Palm Beach and you can work together.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ The tears were starting again.

  Handing her his blue silk handkerchief, Rupert put down the puppy, who charged around the churchyard, knocking over Billy’s daffodils then wriggling back to Gala, wagging and giving little whimpers to be picked up again.

  ‘He loves you already. I remember you telling me how broken-hearted you were to lose your Staffies,’ said Rupert smugly. ‘And no more talk about getting another job. Quickly needs you.’

  Before he left for Palm Beach, Gav left Gala a note: Sorry about last night. One day I’ll explain. Gala emailed back:

  Don’t give it another thought. I’m going to work mornings in the yard. All Rupert’s idea. To persuade me to stay, knowing I adored Staffies, he went out and especially bought me a puppy, called Gropius. He’s so adorable – not just the puppy, Rupert. You’re quite right, people do misjudge him.

  Fuck Rupert, thought Gav.

  Meanwhile, Marketa and Lou-easy were distraught about Lark leaving The Shaggery which they had all shared, and going off to Australia. Who would clean the place, and cook them supper now?

  Lark had finished packing, and was putting labels on her luggage, when Dora came in to say goodbye.

  ‘I can’t bear it that you’re going. You’re easily the best stable girl in the yard, and the nicest. It’s so sad I won’t have you to gossip to any more. I’ll send you lots of emails. You know Gav’s gone to Palm Beach to stay with Young Eddie’s parents? Once Eddie’s settled Gav in, he’s coming back to Penscombe, so fun and games are here again.’

  ‘What?’ whispered Lark. ‘Rupert’s letting him back?’

  ‘I imagine Rupert did a trade-off for Luke and Perdita taking Gav. Gav’ll probably get hooked on polo and stay there – he’s such a brilliant rider.’

  Oh my God, thought Lark. I’m going to the end of the world, and Eddie’s coming back. It was too late to ask Rupert if she could stay; the labels were on her suitcase and poor Dave needed her.

  ‘And have you heard,’ went on Dora, ‘Gala’s going to transfer to the yard. It’s a compliment to you. Rupert doesn’t want Quickers and your other horses to go into a decline without you, so she’s coming in mornings to do them, and ride out. Rupert will leave no stonewall unturned, until he’s cracked Leading Sire and annihilated Cosmo.’

  Over at Valhalla, as night fell, an unidentified guest was ushered into Cosmo’s study, and shook hands with him and Isa.

  ‘No one must know we have spoken,’ said Cosmo. ‘But if the BRA are incapable of annihilating Campbell-Black, we’ll have to do it ourselves.’

  ‘I have more reason to bring him down than either of you,’ said the stranger, jumping at the gunshot pop of a cork.

  ‘Granted,’ agreed Cosmo, pouring champagne into three glasses. ‘We’re going to bring him down, destroy his business and break up his marriage.’

  ‘No marriage is rock solid,’ said Isa. ‘My father took Rupert’s first wife off him.’

  ‘So it can’t be too difficult to take the second,’ said the stranger.

  ‘What a divine prospect,’ sighed Cosmo, raising his glass. ‘Vengeance is ours. We will repay.’

  39

  Taggie had never been a grumbler. But listening to Gala going on and on about Gropius, the Staffie puppy, that Rupert had given her, and how flattered she was that he wanted her to transfer to the yard, and how she’d misjudged him, and how, underneath, he was a really sweet man … wistfully Taggie was reminded of the time before she was married. Her family had all forgotten her birthday and an enraged Rupert had rolled up and presented her with a Springer Spaniel puppy. This, her father Declan O’Hara had named Claudius, after the King in Hamlet whose Queen was called Gertrude, the name of Taggie’s adored little mongrel. Gertrude, who’d died when Cosmo’s evil father Rannaldini had hurled her against a filing cabinet because she’d attempted to defend Rupert’s daughter Tabitha, when Rannaldini tried to rape her.

  Learning Rupert was briefly back from Dubai, having notched up a £100,000 victory there, Declan dropped in at Penscombe. Once the BBC’s hottest property, Declan’s interviews of the great and very famous had gone out in prime time and been avidly discussed by the entire nation. Declan, however, had never got above himself because his beautiful, feckless wife Maud had taken no interest in his career, and constantly put him down.

  To the huge regret of his millions of fans, Declan had given up television and, having finally completed a brilliant, glowingly reviewed biography of Yeats, was now wrestling with a big book on Irish literature, which he very much regretted taking on.

  The roaring boy was seventy now; his thick black hair had turned completely grey. Worry, work and heavy drinking had dug deeper lines on each side of his mouth and round eyes as dark and sombre as a starless night. Two pairs of spectacles clattered from his neck, and his famous gap-toothed schoolboy grin, because of a dread of dentists, more resembled a Halloween pumpkin – but, tall and huge-shouldered, he was still heroic.

  In the stud, the covering season was about to start. The lorry park was once again jammed with swearing foreign drivers trying to unload whinnying mares to be mated with stallions revved up to a height of fitness. Taggie was no doubt putting flowers in their boxes, reflected Declan, stopping to chat to Pat Inglis and admire Blood River, the gleaming new dark-brown stallion from South Africa, who’d fallen in love with Charlie Radcliffe, the vet, and very expensively liked to have him in attendance during every cover. Pa
t was also sorting out the dark grey Dardanius, a first season sire who, despite numerous goes on Dorothy, the practice mare, kept mounting her from the side.

  ‘Oh, Lord O’Hara.’ Clover, the youngest stable girl, sidled up. ‘I’ve ordered your book on Yeats for my dad’s birthday. He’s mad about racing and Yeats is his favourite horse – fancy winning four Gold Cups! When it arrives, can I bring it over for you to sign?’

  ‘I hadn’t the heart to tell her it was the wrong Yeats,’ sighed Declan in his world-famous, husky smoker’s voice. ‘I’d probably have done better if I had written about horses.’

  He’d have to work to the day he dropped to support his extravagant wife and children, and to stop them tapping Taggie, who hated squandering Rupert’s money.

  Now in Rupert’s office, his vast hand curled round a dark glass of whisky, studying his son-in-law’s bleak, handsome face as he scoured the monitors for worldwide wins by Love Rat’s progeny, Declan was reminded of Yeats’ poem to Maud Gonne:

  With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

  That is not natural in an age like this

  Being high and solitary and most stern,

  Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

  Was there another Troy for her to burn?

  Cracking Leading Sire was Rupert’s Troy. But would being abroad so much destroy his marriage?

  Declan then chided Rupert that Taggie was looking desperately tired, that the family descended the moment Rupert went away and that Gala seemed to be spending more and more time in the yard. Despite a part-time carer coming in every morning from the village, an increasingly dotty Old Eddie hadn’t taken to her, and poor Taggie was having to look after him. Yesterday she’d lost him in Waitrose, and tracked him down at the checkout, asking the girl there to cut his nails. Only that very morning, Old Eddie had driven the whole household demented by vanishing for two hours and being found sleeping peacefully in his beloved Love Rat’s box.

  ‘If he’d chosen Titus Andronicus, that might have sorted all our problems,’ growled Declan. ‘You need a proper full-time carer.’

  Oh God, not another ‘treasure’, jerking off about making a difference, thought Rupert. But hearing how well Gala was doing with Quickly and Touchy Filly, and what an asset she was already proving in the yard, he was very reluctant to order her to spend more time with Eddie. He therefore rang Mrs Simmons at the carers agency.

  ‘I don’t know how you’d feel about a male carer?’ she said.

  ‘Well, at least my father wouldn’t goose or rather geese him. He’s jumped on so many.’

  ‘Oh Mr Campbell-Black! A very nice South African called Jan, pronounced Yan, Van Deventer recently arrived in England and has just joined our agency. He’s an ex-army officer, so he can talk to your father about army things, and he’s an experienced carer.’

  Thinking of Charlie in Casualty, Rupert said: ‘Send him over.’

  40

  Valentine’s Day dawned. Out of a pale-green sky flecked with sooty black clouds shone a silvery Venus.

  The Planet of Love is on high, thought Gala.

  She hadn’t felt so happy since Ben died as, oblivious to an icy cold wind, she cantered Master Quickly, his blond mane caressing her face, marvelling at the power of his acceleration, amazed by the speed with which he made up ground. Too fast for any of Rupert’s other horses, he had to be sent up the gallops on his own. There was talk of trying to steady him by using his beloved Safety Car as a pacemaker.

  The rest of the yard were not fans, having been nipped by Quickly too often, but he’d been sweet to Gala, not biting her at all. Missing Lark, Dave and Gav, he’d transferred his affection to her, crying like a baby when she returned to the house to look after Old Eddie at lunchtime. He and Purrpuss were also devoted to one another. The moment Quickly returned from the gallops, Purrpuss would be waiting in the manger to wash Quickly’s face and thoroughly clean his ears before settling on his back. At night when Quickly lay down to sleep, Purrpuss curled up, a hot water bottle against his belly.

  Last night too, Gala had been cheered by such a long chat with Rupert about the horses, particularly the next lot he’d be taking to Dubai for the World Cup in March.

  It was a beautiful day. The birds were singing their heads off. Rupert’s lawn was edged with yellow aconites, with their little green ruffs of leaves, and drifts of snowdrops. Daffodil buds were turning downwards as the red postman’s van staggered up the drive, weighed down by everyone’s Valentines. Returning to the yard office, Gala was thrilled to have one from Palm Beach: Hi, sexy, missing you, not long now, which meant Gav hadn’t taken offence at her last letter. She also got a Valentine from Gropius – must be from Rupert. The Planet of Love was on high, but she must stop her thoughts straying in his direction, particularly as he’d got hundreds and hundreds of Valentines.

  ‘Won’t even bother to open them,’ grumbled Geraldine, gathering them up.

  If Rupert got hundreds, Taggie got ten. The one in a pale-blue envelope without a stamp, bought at the airport, containing the words: To my only darling, was from Rupert. The rest, she immediately shoved under the blue and white striped lining paper in a kitchen drawer, in case Rupert saw them and had a tantrum. It was a comfort, she told herself, that he minded so much, particularly when Geraldine that very morning had remarked what a nice change it must be for Rupert, having someone in the house with whom to talk horses.

  ‘Pity someone can’t put a cross noseband on that poisonous bitch to keep her mouth shut,’ observed a passing Dora.

  After that, Valentine’s Day went even more downhill for Taggie. A man coming to service the burglar alarm was even more alarmed to find a naked Old Eddie masturbating on the stairs. Then the part-time carer rang in with a migraine and Taggie managed to say, ‘Poor you,’ before slamming down the telephone, and saying: ‘Oh fuck.’

  By the time she had led Eddie upstairs, washed and dressed him and given him his breakfast, new puppy Gropius had chewed up one of Rupert’s loafers and Forester had gone awol. Oh, how she missed darling Lark, who had so often walked the dogs in her break, and kept an eye on them in the yard. With all those lorries delivering mares and leaving gates open, Taggie was terrified Forester might have sloped off hunting.

  Next moment the telephone rang. It was an hysterical Constance Sprightly from the vicarage. Forester had chased her tabby cat up a tree and was furiously barking at the foot. Not stopping to put on a coat, Taggie rushed out, ignoring the wolf whistles of traffic-jammed lorry drivers as she hurtled across the fields. However, by the time she reached the vicarage, Forester had moved on without mishap and disappeared at a brisk trot towards the village.

  Another of Forester’s maddening habits was that the louder you called him, the faster he tended to run away. Only when he couldn’t see Taggie did he get curious and deign to come back and look for her. The hedges on each side of the road had been hacked back. Taggie was feeling so sorry for the young shoots and buds that would never realize their promise, when she also realized that in her haste, she’d left Forester’s lead behind. Taking cover, she removed her white bra. Unable to see her, Forester, pink tongue lolling, totally without contrition, decided to return.

  Taggie’s now heaving, famously beautiful breasts which had never dropped with feeding children, were enhanced by a pale-grey T-shirt. Her pale cheeks were flushed from running. Walking home leading Forester by her bra, she was overtaken by a car. Inside was a suntanned, incredibly good-looking man with close-cropped hair the rich red-brown of the rain-soaked beech leaves carpeting Rupert’s woods. Laughing brown eyes and a wonderfully smiling mouth with a jutting pillow of lower lip were enhanced by very white teeth and dark designer stubble.

  Taggie was five foot ten and looked down on most men, particularly jockeys, but the man who jumped out of his car was broad-shouldered and at least three inches taller than her.

  Could she tell him the way to Penscombe Court?

  ‘Just up the road and turn left –
no, I mean right,’ she stammered in her deep, growling voice. ‘I’m Taggie Campbell-Black. See you up there.’

  ‘I’m Jan Van Deventer, mam, and I love your lead.’

  On arrival, clocked by a gawping Marketa, Louise and Clover, who were just riding in from fifth lot, Jan was taken by a thoroughly over-excited Geraldine to meet Rupert. If taken aback by such an Adonis, Rupert was too proud to show it, even when Jan picked up Taggie’s photograph on a nearby table and congratulated Rupert on having such a beautiful daughter.

  Less cool than he makes out, thought Rupert, noticing with satisfaction how Jan’s hand shook as he smoothed his hair.

  ‘Wonderful picture,’ observed Jan, looking up at the Stubbs. ‘Not meaning to be personal, sir, but that handsome guy looks just like you.’

  ‘He was an ancestor; the horse was Leading Sire of his day.’

  ‘Gather Blood River’s standing here – magnificent animal, saw him win the Cape Derby.’

  As Geraldine shimmered in with a latte from their new machine for Jan, a very black espresso for Rupert and a plate of chocolate biscuits, Rupert noticed that she’d put on lipstick, done her eyes and was wafting J’Adore.

  Jan proceeded to tell Rupert he was thirty-nine, and had spent ten years in the army – ‘mostly to stop blacks killing blacks, they’re so tribal’ – before becoming a golf pro at which he was a great success, particularly, he didn’t tell Rupert, with the ladies, who wriggled back against him when he put his arms round them to demonstrate a golf shot.

  ‘Feeling there was more to life,’ he went on, ‘I decided to become a carer, and found the job immensely satisfying. My parents are Afrikaners of Dutch Huguenot origin.’

  Getting up with a surge of energy to glance out of the window – ‘Beautiful place, sir’ – he caught sight of photos of Xavier, Bianca and Feral, and raised an eyebrow.