by Jilly Cooper
“You’re wearing your nightgown, child,” she said, looking at Tory’s floating white dress. “I like your blue pants.”
Then she held out a wrinkled, black-nailed hand to Jake.
“I assume this is Mr. Wrong,” she added, with a cackle of laughter.
“Granny,” said Tory, blushing.
Jake grinned.
“Sit down, sit down; no, not in that chair,” she said, as Jake was almost bitten by an ancient, rheumy-eyed Jack Russell already sprawled on it.
All the other pekes and pugs lay at her feet snuffling and panting. She wore an ancient cardigan, a lace shirt, obviously for the second or third day, and a tweed skirt with a droopy, descending hem.
She and Lady Dorothy must go to the same tailor, thought Jake. But aquamarines and diamonds flashed on the grimy hands as she talked, and the pearls round her neck were each as big as a mistletoe berry.
“I suppose you want a drink; young people drink at the most extraordinary hours these days. There are some tins of iced beer in the fridge, Mr. Lovell. Unless you’d like something stronger? Then, go and get them, Tory.”
The room had the glorious, overcrowded look resulting from an exodus from a larger country house. Jake’s hands rested on the rough carved mane of a lion. The carpet was the blurred pink and green of an Impressionist painting.
As Tory went out, Granny Maxwell studied Jake, who was surreptitiously looking at the horses circling at the start. At least he didn’t fidget.
“Epsom,” she said, handing him the paper, “I’ve had a bet in this race. Any tips for the three-thirty?”
Jake glanced at the runners.
“I’d have a fiver on Mal le Maison.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t chosen Marriage of Convenience. Or how about Fortune Hunter?” she added maliciously. “He’s a hundred to one.”
Jake looked at her steadily.
“I’ll stick with Mal le Maison,” he said flatly. “And if I wanted to pick an outsider, I’d choose Whirlwind Courtship.”
“You haven’t known Tory long, have you?”
“Not very long, but I like outsiders.”
At least he’s not frightened of me, thought Granny Maxwell; that in itself is a novelty. Old and bored and waiting for death, she was aware that her family only came to see her when they were in financial trouble. She sometimes felt she was only kept alive by feuds and tyranny.
Tory came back with the cans of beer and a glass, and was immediately sent up to talk to Mrs. Maggs, who was sorting out the hot cupboard.
“She’s made you lardy cake and gingerbread men for tea. She thinks you’re still eight. You look very tired, child,” she added in a gentler voice, “and you’ve lost a lot of weight.”
She turned to Jake. “Bring your glass of beer and let’s walk round the garden,” she said, struggling to her feet. She walked very stiffly and had to be helped over the step. One hip was obviously very painful.
“Rheumatism,” she explained. “It’s difficult to be a very nice old woman when everything hurts.”
Having picked several heads off a coral pink geranium, she set off along the herbaceous border. It was the most glorious, over-packed garden; peonies jostled with huge Oriental poppies, lupins, and irises. Catmint, not yet out, stroked their legs as they passed.
The pack of dogs, some on three legs, panted after them grumbling and yapping.
“This is what I call a beautiful garden,” said Jake.
“As opposed to what?”
“To Tory’s mother’s. All the flowers seem to stand in their own patch of earth there, in serried ranks. Thou shalt not touch.”
“Like a park,” said Granny Maxwell.
A bird flashed by, yellow as laburnum.
“Yellowhammer,” said Granny Maxwell.
“Golden oriole, I think,” said Jake. “Very rare in these parts; it must be the heat.”
Suddenly a jaunty mongrel with a tight brindle coat came bounding across the lawn and was greeted by much yapping and every sign of delight by the pack, particularly a little blond peke, who wagged her tail and kissed him. Granny Maxwell turned to Jake.
“We used to call them ‘butcher’s dogs’ in my day, because they followed the butcher’s van. Owners get very fussed when mongrels try to mate with their pedigree dogs. I imagine that’s why my daughter-in-law is making such a fuss about you. I made a fuss when my son threw himself away on Molly. Her father was a hairdresser. Remember that, if you ever think about her.”
“I try not to,” said Jake.
“She never got over being the toast of Hong Kong.”
“Now she’s the sliced bread of Bilborough.”
Mrs. Maxwell gave a cackle of laughter.
“Tell me about yourself. You had polio as a child?”
He nodded. “When I was six I was in the hospital for eighteen months, learning to walk again. It left me with a wasted leg.”
“And a raging desire to prove yourself, presumably,” said Granny Maxwell dryly. “And your father was a gypsy?”
Juke nodded.
“My mother’s family tried to resettle him, but he missed the wandering life and the horses. He was a genius with horses. So he pushed off soon after I came out of the hospital.”
“And your mother committed suicide. You blamed yourself for that, I suppose?”
“I think she was let down by some chap who she took up with after my father left, but I didn’t know that at the time.”
“What happened after she died?”
“The school where I went free as a day boy made me board. I hated it, so I ran away and joined a group of gypsies. They taught me all I know, to poach and to look after horses and train dogs. There was an old grandmother there; she taught me about all the medicines she’d learnt from her great-grandmother.”
He took Granny Maxwell’s arm and guided her down some stone steps to a pond filled with irises and marsh marigolds. She caught her breath at the pain.
“An infusion of the leaves of Traveler’s Joy works wonders for rheumatism,” he said. “I’ll make you some up to try, or if you prefer, you can carry the skin of a dead frog against your skin.”
Granny Maxwell watched the dogs lapping out of the pond. The mongrel got into the water, drinking, paddling, and making a lot of splashing.
“I always feel very badly about the gypsies,” she sighed. “It’s one of the great unnecessary tragedies of progress. They should never have been forced into compounds to settle and sell scrap metal. But it’s always the same story today of harassment from the police and from farmers. Before the war they always used to park in our fields for the seasonal piecework. My father often kept them employed from March until Christmas.
“I miss the sight of their fires at twilight, with that marvelous smell of rabbit stew, and the gaudy washing on the line, and the shaggy horses and silent, lean dogs. They knew a thing or two, those dogs.”
Jake didn’t say anything, but felt an emotion, almost love, stronger than he had ever felt for another human being.
“How long were you with the gypsies?”
“Three years. Then I was picked up by the police and put in an orphanage.”
“Can’t have been much fun.”
“It was better than prep school. The kids were less vicious. They even accused me of having a posh accent.”
They walked back across the burnt lawn.
“We need rain badly. And what about this horse Tory appears to have bought?”
When he spoke about Africa, his face took on a tinge of color.
“She’s just the best horse I’ve ever ridden; she’s got so much potential and such a lovely nature.”
“Are you sure you don’t love her more than Tory?”
Jake thought for a minute, frowning, then he said: “I’m not sure, but if I take care of Tory as well as I look after Africa she won’t do too badly. Anyway, she couldn’t be worse off than she is at the moment with that bitch of a mother. She’ll have a nervous break
down if she has to go to many more of those smart parties. It’s like putting a carthorse in a hack class, then beating it if it doesn’t win.”
“And I gather Molly has a new boyfriend, some colonel?”
“He’s a jerk; they don’t want Tory.”
“Why are they so reluctant to let her go, then?”
“Molly likes something to sharpen her claws on. Tory’s her cat-scratching board.”
She bent down to pull a bit of groundsel, then asked Jake to uproot a thread of bindweed that was toppling a lupin.
“It’s hell getting old. I can only prune sitting down now. And what’s in it for you?” she asked.
“I couldn’t marry her if she weren’t rich. I’ve got to get started somehow. And I think Tory and I could make each other happy. Neither of us has ever really had a home before.”
That was the nearest he was going to get to placating her.
“Aren’t you banking too much on that horse being a winner? She might break a leg tomorrow.”
“I’ll get more horses. This is only the beginning. To make it work as a show jumper, you’ve got to have at least half a dozen top horses and novices coming on all the time. The gypsies taught me how to recognize a good horse, and I can ride them, and I’ve got patience.”
“Let’s go and watch the three-thirty,” said Granny Maxwell.
Mal le Maison was second, Whirlwind Courtship nowhere. That’s torn it, thought Jake. At that moment, Tory came in with a tray.
“Are you ready for tea yet, Granny?”
“Put the tray down on this table in front of me, thank you, and sit down. I have something to say to you both.”
For a minute she looked at them both with speculative eyes.
“I’m not going to give you any money. Young people should get along by themselves. Tory has a considerable income and you’ll soon save enough to buy and sell a few horses.”
Jake’s face was expressionless. That was that. His hopes crashed.
“I’ve no intention of breaking the trust,” Granny Maxwell went on, picking up the blond peke and rolling it onto its back, “until I see if you’re capable of making Tory happy. In three years’ time, she’ll get the money anyway. However…”
Jake stiffened, fighting back hope, as with maddening deliberation Granny Maxwell poured tea into three cups, and went into a long “would anyone like milk, sugar, or lemon” routine, and then handed out plates, and asked whether anyone would like a sandwich.
“However,” she repeated, “Mr. Binlock is retiring to a cottage in the middle of June, which means the Mill House at Withrington—that’s about twenty miles north of here—will be empty. You can have that.”
Tory turned pale. “But Granny, it’s got stables and fields,” she stammered.
“Exactly, but it’s tumbledown and very damp. I hope you haven’t got a weak chest,” she added to Jake, “but it’s yours if you want it.”
“Oh, Granny, darling,” said Tory, crossing the room and flinging her arms round her grandmother.
“Don’t smother me, child, and there’s no need to cry. And as you don’t appear to have any transport, I’ll buy you a decent horse box for a wedding present.”
Jake shook his head. “I can’t believe it,” he said.
“There’s one condition,” Granny Maxwell went on with a cackle of laughter. “That the first time you appear at Wembley, you buy me a seat in the front row. I’m a bored old woman. In time, if you do well, I might buy a couple of horses and let you ride them for me.”
“If you really are going to buy us a horse box,” said Jake, “I’d better learn to drive properly and take a test.”
6
Six long months after she arrived in London in 1972, Helen Macaulay met Rupert Campbell-Black. Born in Florida, the eldest daughter of a successful dentist, Helen was considered the brilliant child of the family. Her mother, a passionate Anglophile and the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, was constantly reminding people of her English ancestry. In fact, a distant connection had come over, if not on the Mayflower, perhaps by the next boat. Mrs. Macaulay glossed over this fact and from an early age encouraged the young Helen to read English novels and poetry and admire all things English. Later, Helen majored in English Literature at the University of Tampa, where she was confidently expected to get a brilliant degree.
Deeply romantic on the one hand, Helen was also repressed by the rigid respectability of her family. The only proof that her parents had ever copulated at all were the four Macaulay daughters. Helen had never heard her mother and father row, or seen either of them naked. Her mother, who always insisted on women doctors, never mentioned sex, except to imply that it was degrading and wicked. Neither of her parents ever told her she was beautiful. Work to keep sin at bay, feel guilty if you slack, was the Macaulay motto.
Until she was nineteen, Helen never gave her parents a moment’s trouble. She worked at school, helped her mother in the house, never had acne or gained weight, and never answered back. At Tampa, at the beginning of the seventies, however, she came under the influence of the women’s movement—anathema to her mother, who believed a woman’s place was in the home. Her mother did, however, support the feminists’ view that a woman should never allow herself to be treated as a sex object, nor be admired for her body rather than her mind.
To her parents’ horror, Helen started getting caught up in student protest movements, demonstrating against the Vietnam war and joining civil rights marches. Even worse, she came home on vacation and said disparaging things about Richard Nixon. But far worse was to come. During her third year, Helen flunked out with a nervous breakdown, pregnant by her English professor, Harold Mountjoy.
Heavily married, but accustomed to the easy conquest of female students, Harold Mountjoy was quite unprepared for the torrent of emotion he unleashed in Helen Macaulay. It was Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, Charlotte Brontë and her professor all over again. Except that Helen was a beauty. Only a tremendous earnestness and dedication to study had kept her on the straight and narrow so long at Tampa. On campus she was known as the fair Miss Frigidaire. Harold Mountjoy set about defrosting her. Seeing her huge hazel eyes fixed on him, like amber traffic lights, during lectures he should have read caution. Instead, one day after class, he kept her back to answer a complicated question on Browning’s “Paracelsus.”
Discussing ambition in life, Harold had lightly quoted: “ ‘I am he that aspired to know, and thou?’ ” To which Helen had instantly, almost despairingly, quoted back: “ ‘I would love infinitely, and be loved!’ ”
Harold Mountjoy realized he was on to a good thing and asked her for a drink. Secret meetings followed; self-conscious letters weighed down by literary allusions were exchanged, and finally Helen’s virginity was lost in a motel twenty-five miles from the campus, followed by fearful guilt, followed by more motels and more guilt. Under Harold’s radical guidance, Helen embraced radical causes and on vacation shocked her parents even more.
Finally, towards the end of the summer term, Helen fainted in class. Her roommate, who, despite Helen’s attempts at secrecy, had regularly been reading her diary, went to the head of the faculty. He, in turn, was highly delighted, because for years he had been looking for an excuse to dump Harold Mountjoy, whom he regarded as not only immoral but, far worse, intellectually suspect. Helen’s parents were summoned. Appalled, they removed her from college. Her father, being a dentist, had the medical contacts to organize a discreet abortion. Helen and Harold were forbidden to see one another again. Harold, clinging to his job, terrified his wife would find out, complied with the request. This was the last straw for Helen. Losing her virginity had meant total commitment. She had expected Harold to tell her to keep the baby and to divorce his wife.
Desperately worried about her, her parents, who were kindly if rigid people, packed her off to England in the hope that this other great imagined love of her life would distract her. She was to stay for at least a year. Helen rang Harold Mountjoy in de
spair. He urged her to go. They would both write. In time they would meet again. There was a possibility he’d get over to England in August. At last Helen agreed.
The head of the faculty wrote to his London publishers, giving Helen an excellent reference and praising her diligence, and they agreed to give her a job, reading manuscripts, writing blurbs, and copyediting. He also fixed her up with digs with a female author in Hampstead.
So Helen pieced her broken heart together and came to England in October, unable to suppress a feeling of excitement that she would soon be able to visit St. Paul’s, where John Donne had preached, and Wimpole Street, where Robert Browning had courted Elizabeth Barrett. She might even get up to the Lakes to see Wordsworth’s cottage, or Haworth, home of the Brontës.
Sadly, England proved a disappointment. Accustomed to year-round Florida sunshine, Helen arrived at the beginning of the worst winter for years. She couldn’t believe how cold it was.
By day she froze in her publishing house, by night she froze at her digs, which were awful. The female author was an ancient lesbian who watched her every move. Upstairs was a lecherous lodger who made eyes at her at mealtimes and kept coming into her room on trumped-up excuses. The place was filthy and reeked of a tomcat, which her landlady refused to castrate. The landlady also used the same dishcloth to wash up the cat’s plates and the humans’ plates. The food was awful; they seemed to eat carbohydrates with carbohydrates in England. She found herself eating cookies and candy to keep out the cold, put on ten pounds, and panicked.
At the weekends she froze on sightseeing tours, shivering at Stratford, at the Tower, and on the train down to Hampton Court, and in numerous art galleries.
