by Jilly Cooper
The English men were a bitter disappointment, too. None of them looked like Darcy, or Rochester, or Heathcliff, or Burgo Fitzgerald, or Sebastian Flyte. None of them washed their hair often enough; she never dared look in their ears in the subway. They also seemed de-sexed by the cold weather. They never gazed or whistled at her in the street. Anyway, Helen was not the sort of girl who would have picked up men. As the days passed, she grew more and more lonely.
Harold Mountjoy was another disappointment. After one letter: “Darling girl, forgive a scribbled note, but you are too precious to have brief letters. It would take a month to tell you all I feel about you, and I don’t have the time,” he didn’t write at Christmas or remember her birthday or even Valentine’s Day.
Finally, at the beginning of March, Helen decided she could bear her digs no longer. On the same day that her landlady used a cat-food-encrusted spoon to stir the beef stew with, and the tomcat invaded her room for the hundredth time and sprayed on her typewriter cover, she moved into Regina House, an all-female hostel in Hammersmith, which catered exclusively for visiting academics, and was at least clean and warm.
Nor was her job in publishing very exciting. The initial bliss of being paid to read all day soon palled because of the almost universal awfulness of the manuscripts submitted. To begin with, Helen wrote the authors polite letters of rejection, whereupon they all wrote back, sending her other unpublished works and pestering her to publish them; so finally she resorted, like everyone else, to rejection slips.
Her two bosses took very extended lunch hours and spent long weekends at their houses in the country. One of the director’s sons, having ignored her in the office, asked her out to dinner one evening and lunged so ferociously in the car going home that Helen was forced to slap his face. From then on he went back to ignoring her.
The only other unmarried man in the office was a science graduate in his late twenties named Nigel, a vegetarian with brushed-forward fawn hair, a straggly beard, a thin neck like a goose, and spectacles. For six months, Helen and he had been stepping round each other, she out of loneliness, and he out of desire. They had long political arguments and grumbled about their capitalist bosses. Nigel introduced her to Orwell and bombarded her with leftist literature.
He was also heavily involved with the anti-fox hunting movement and seemed to spend an exciting resistance life on weekends rescuing foxes and hares from ravening packs of hounds, harassing hunt balls with tear gas, and descending by helicopter into the middle of coursing meetings. He was constantly on the telephone to various cronies named Paul and Dave, arranging dead-of-night rendezvous to unblock earths. Often he came in on Monday with a black eye or bandaged wrist, after scuffles with hunt supporters.
One Friday, towards the end of March, he asked Helen out to lunch. He was wearing a yellow corduroy coat, a black shirt, had clean hair, and looked less unattractive than usual. Inevitably, the conversation got around to blood sports.
“They think we’re all lefties or students on the dole living in towns,” he said, whipping off his spectacles. “But we come from all walks of life. You see, the fox,” he went on in his flat Northern accent, “beautiful, dirty, hard-pressed with so many people after him, hounds, foot-followers, riders, horses, terriers, he needs us on his side to tip the balance a little.”
Helen’s huge eyes filled with tears. For a moment, in his blaze of conviction, Nigel reminded her of Harold Mountjoy. He speared a piece of stuffed eggplant with his fork. “Why don’t you come out with us tomorrow? We’re driving down to Gloucestershire to rot up the Chalford and Bisley. It’s the last meet of the season. Dave’s got hold of a lot of fireworks; it should be a good day.”
Helen, unable to face another weekend on her own, trailing round galleries or visiting the house of some long-dead writer, said she’d love to.
“And afterwards, we might have dinner in Oxford,” said Nigel. “They’ve opened a good vegetarian restaurant in the High.”
And now she was rattling down the M4 to Gloucestershire and wondering why the hell she’d agreed to come. The dilapidated car was driven by a bearded young zoology graduate named Paul, who had cotton wool in his ears and was already losing his hair. Beside him sat Nigel. Both men were wearing gum boots and khaki combat kit, and khaki, she decided, simply wasn’t Nigel’s color.
Even worse, she had to sit in the back with Paul’s girlfriend, Maureen, who was large, dismissive, and aggressively unglamorous, with dirty dark brown hair, black fingernails, and no makeup on her shiny white face. Between her heavy lace-up boots and the bottom of the khaki trousers were two inches of hairy, unshaven leg. She was also wearing a voluminous white sheepskin coat which stank as it dried off. It was rather like sharing the back with a large unfriendly dog. Even worse, she insisted on referring to Helen as Ellen.
Taking one look at Helen’s rust corduroy trousers tucked into brown shiny boots, dark green cashmere turtleneck jersey, and brown herringbone jacket, she said, “I don’t expect you’ve ever demonstrated against anything in your life, Ellen.”
Helen replied, somewhat frostily, that she’d been on several anti-Vietnam war marches, which launched Maureen, Nigel, and Paul into an unprovoked attack on America and Nixon and Watergate, and how corrupt the Americans were, which irritated Helen to death. It was all right for her to go on about corruption in America, but not at all okay for the Brits to take it for granted.
Sulkily, she buried herself in a piece in the paper speculating as to whether Princess Anne was going to marry Captain Mark Phillips. She’d been following conflicting reports of the romance with shamefaced interest. Mark Phillips was so good-looking, with his neat smooth head, and gleaming dark hair, so much more attractive than Nigel and Paul’s straggly locks. In America, hair like theirs had long gone out of fashion, other than for aging hippies.
They were off the motorway now, driving past hedgerows starry with primroses. Buds were beginning to soften and blur the trees against a clear blue sky. Flocks of pigeons rose like smoke from the newly plowed fields. Helen felt tears stinging her eyes once more.
“Spring returns, but not my friend,” she murmured, thinking sadly of Harold Mountjoy.
“I suppose foxes do have to be kept down somehow,” she said out loud, feeling she ought to contribute something to the discussion. “They do kill chickens.”
“Rubbish,” snapped Maureen. “These days, chickens are safely trapped in battery houses.”
“And Ellen,” said Paul earnestly, “only five percent of foxes ever touch chicken.”
Helen had a sudden vision of the five percent sitting down to coq au vin with knives and forks.
Now Maureen, Paul, and Nigel were slagging someone they referred to as R.C.B.
“Who’s R.C.B.?” asked Helen, and was told it was Rupert Campbell-Black, the one the Antis hated most.
“Male chauvinist pig of the worst kind,” said Maureen.
“Upper-class shit who makes Hitler look like Nestlé’s milk,” said Paul.
“Always rides his horses straight at us,” said Nigel. “Broke Paul’s wrist with his whip last autumn.”
“Remember that hunt ball when he smashed a champagne bottle on the table and threatened you with it, Nige?” said Maureen.
“What does he do?” asked Helen.
“Show jumps internationally,” said Paul, “and allegedly beats up his horses. But he’s so loaded, he doesn’t need to do anything very much.”
Helen noticed the curling copies of the New Statesman and Tribune on the backseat and a tattered copy of Bertolt Brecht in the pocket of Maureen’s coat. These are people who care about things, she reproved herself, I must try to like them better.
“What do we do when we get there?” she asked.
“The basic idea, Ellen,” said Maureen, “is to copy everything the huntsmen do. We bring our own horns—Paul here actually plays the horn in an orchestra—and use them to split the pack. We’ve perfected our view halloos, and we also spray the meet with a spec
ial mixture called Anti-mate, which confuses the hounds.”
Nigel looked at his watch, which he wore ten minutes fast, on the inside of his wrist. “Nearly there,” he said.
Helen got out her mirror, added some blusher to her pale, freckled cheeks, ran a comb through her gleaming dark red page boy, and rearranged the tortoiseshell headband that kept it off her forehead.
“You’re not going to a party,” reproved Maureen.
Defiantly, Helen sprayed on some scent.
“Nice pong,” said Paul, wrinkling his long nose. “D’you know the one about the Irish saboteurs, Ellen? They spent all day trying to sabotage a drag hunt.”
“Don’t tell ethnic jokes, Paul,” said Nigel, smiling as widely as his small mouth would allow.
They were beginning to overtake riders and horses hacking to the meet. A pretty blonde on an overexcited chestnut waved them past.
“You’ve no idea how we’re going to cook your goose later, my beauty,” Nigel gloated.
Soon the road was lined with boxes and trailers, and Paul drove faster through the deep brown puddles in order to splash all those riders in clean white breeches standing on the grass verge. Now he was fuming at being stuck at ten mph behind a huge horse box which kept crashing against the overhanging ash trees.
The meet was held in one of those sleepy Cotswold villages, with a village green flanked by golden-gray cottages, a lichened church knee-deep in daffodils, and a pub called the Goat in Boots. A large crowd had gathered to watch the riders in their black and scarlet coats saddling up, supervising the unboxing of their horses and grumbling about their hangovers.
“What a darling place,” said Helen, as the sun came out. The Antis, however, had no time for esthetic appreciation. Paul parked his car on the edge of the green and, getting out, they all surged forward to exchange firm handshakes and straight glances with other saboteurs. Both sexes were wearing khaki anoraks or combat kit as camouflage, but with their gray faces and long straggly hair and beards, they couldn’t have stood out more beside the fresh-faced, clean-cut locals.
“Here’s your own supply of Anti-mate,” said Nigel, dropping two aerosol cans into the pockets of Helen’s coat. “Spray it on hounds or riders, whenever you get the chance.”
Helen thought irritably that the cans would ruin the line of her coat, and when Nigel insisted on pinning two badges saying “Hounds Off Our Wild Life” and “Only Rotters Hunt Otters” on the lapels of her coat, she wondered if it was necessary for him to take so long and press his skinny hands quite so hard against her breast. Perhaps she’d have to use the Anti-mate on him.
Two sinister-looking men walked by with a quartet of small bright-eyed yapping dogs.
“Those are the terriers they use to dig out the fox,” whispered Maureen.
Helen also noticed several crimson-faced colonels and braying ladies on shooting sticks giving her dirty looks. A group of men in deerstalkers and dung-colored suits stood grimly beside a Land Rover.
“They’re paid by the hunt to sabotage us,” explained Maureen indignantly. “Given a chance, they’ll block the road and ram us with that Land Rover.”
Helen was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy. She edged slightly away from the group of saboteurs, then said to herself firmly, “I am a creative writer. Here is a golden opportunity to study the British in one of their most primitive rituals.”
Listening to the anxious whinnying from the boxes, she breathed in the heady smell of sweating horse, dung, and damp earth. The landlord of the pub was dispensing free drinks on a silver tray. His wife followed with a tray of sandwiches and sausage rolls. Helen, who had had no breakfast, was dying to tuck in, but felt, being part of the enemy, that she shouldn’t.
Nigel and Maureen had no such scruples.
“Good crowd,” said Nigel, greedily helping himself to three sandwiches. “Oh dear, they’re ham,” he added disapprovingly, and, removing the fillings, he dropped them disdainfully on the ground where they were devoured by a passing labrador.
Suddenly, as the gold hand of the church clock edged towards eleven o’clock, there was a murmur of excitement as a dark blue Porsche drew up.
“There he is,” hissed Maureen, as two men got out. Helen caught a glimpse of gleaming blond hair and haughty, suntanned features, as the taller of the two men vanished in a screaming tidal wave of teenagers brandishing autograph books. Others stood on the bonnets of their parents’ cars, or clambered onto each others’ shoulders trying to take photographs or get a better look.
“Worse than that Dick Jagger,” snorted an old lady, who’d been nearly knocked off her shooting stick by the rush.
A girl stumbled out of the melée, her face as bright pink as the page of the autograph book she was kissing. Half a minute later she was followed by her friend.
“He used this pen,” she sighed ecstatically. “I’m never going to use it again.”
Gradually the crowd dispersed and through a gap Helen was able to get a better look. The man had thick blond hair, brushed straight back and in two wings above the ears, emphasizing the clear, smooth forehead and the beautiful shape of his head. His face, with its Greek nose, high cheekbones, and long, denim blue eyes, was saved from effeminacy by a square jaw and a very determined mouth.
Totally oblivious of the mayhem he had caused, he was lounging against the Porsche, talking continuously but hardly moving his lips, to a stocky young man with light brown curly hair, a broken nose, sleepy eyes, and a noticeably green complexion. The blond man was signing autograph books so automatically and handing them onto his companion, that when the queue dried up, he held his hand out for another pen and a book.
“What a beautiful, beautiful guy,” gasped Helen.
“Yes, and knows it,” snapped Maureen. “That’s R.C.B. and his shadow, Billy Lloyd-Foxe.”
The landlord pressed forward with the tray.
“Morning Rupe, morning Billy. Want a hair of the dog?”
“Christ, yes.” Reaching out, the stocky, light-brown-haired boy grabbed two glasses, one of which he handed to Rupert. Then, getting out a tenner and two flasks from his pocket, he handed them to the landlord, adding: “Could you bear to fill them up with brandy, Les? I’ll never fight my way through Rupe’s admirers.”
“Bit under the weather, are you, Billy?” said the landlord.
“Terrible. If I open my eyes, I’ll bleed to death.”
A groom was lowering the ramp of a nearby box and unloading a magnificent bay mare, sweating in a dark blue rug edged with emerald green with the initials R.C.B. in the corner, and looking back into the box, whinnying imperiously for her stable companions. Rupert turned around.
“How is she, Frenchie?”
“Bit over the top, sir,” said the groom. “She could use the exercise.”
He swept the rug off the sweating, shuddering mare and slapped on a saddle. Suddenly she started to hump her back with excitement, dancing on the spot as the hunt arrived in a flood of scarlet coats, burnished horses, and jolly, grinning hounds, tails wagging frenziedly, circling merrily, looking curiously naked without any collars.
Helen felt her heart lift; how beautiful and glamorous they all looked.
“Little people get on big horses and think they’re gods,” said Nigel thickly in her ear. “Those hounds haven’t been fed for three days.”
But Helen was gazing at Rupert Campbell-Black, who was taking off his navy blue jersey and shrugging himself into a red coat. Goodness, he was well constructed. Usually, men with such long legs had short bodies, but Rupert, from the broad flat shoulders to the lean muscular hips and powerful thighs, seemed perfectly in proportion.
Just as he and Billy mounted their horses the local photographer arrived, pushing his way through the ring of admirers.
“Hello, Rupert, can I have a photograph of you and Billy?”
“Okay,” said Rupert, gazing unsmiling into the camera.
“I’m not looking my best,” grumbled Billy. “I haven’t wash
ed my hair.”
“Good chance for publicity,” said Maureen sententiously, and barging her way through, she handed Rupert an anti-hunting leaflet.
“Thank you very much,” he said politely. “Can I have one for Billy?”
Maureen turned round to face the camera between them.
“Can I borrow your lighter, Billy?” said Rupert. Next minute he had set fire to the two leaflets and dropped them flaming at Maureen’s feet.
“You’re not even man enough to read them,” she said furiously.
Rupert looked her up and down. “It’s rather hard to tell what sex you are,” he drawled, “but you’re certainly not good-looking enough to hold such extreme views. Go away, you’re frightening my horse.”
The crowd screamed with laughter. Maureen flounced back to Helen. “The bastard, did you hear what he said?”
Over Maureen’s head, for a second, Rupert’s eyes met Helen’s. Then he looked away without interest. They’re right. He’s poisonous, she thought.
At that moment a beautiful, but over-made-up woman, her black coat straining over a splendid bosom, trotted up to Rupert with a proprietorial air.
“Darling, how are you feeling? I actually made it.”
Simultaneously the landlord arrived with the two filled flasks. As he handed one of them to Rupert she grabbed it, taking a large swig.
“Don’t drink it all,” snapped Rupert.
“Darling,” she said fondly, screwing back the top, and handing it to him, “you can come home later and drink as much of ours as you like.”
Rupert put a long booted leg forward and pulled up the mare’s girths.
“I don’t know if I’ll need Monty as well,” he said to the groom. “With these bloody hunt saboteurs about, we may not get much action. If you lose us, wait at the Spotted Cow.”
The next moment the hunt clattered off. Helen was amazed to see Nigel suddenly leap out of a hawthorn bush and squirt the hounds with Anti-mate. Next minute a little girl had rushed up and kicked him so hard on the ankles that he dropped the aerosol can with a yell.
“Stop it, you horrid man,” she screamed.
