Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  “That’s my kid brother,” said Rupert. “What d’you want to drink?”

  Helen shook her head. As Rupert poured himself a large glass of brandy, Helen caught sight of a study next door, the walls lined with books, all behind grilles.

  “May I look?”

  “Of course. Most of those on the left are first editions.”

  Helen gave a cry of excitement: “Why, here’s Keats’ Endymion, and Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, and Mansfield Park. Oh, wow! Your mother must be a very cultured woman.”

  This seemed to amuse Rupert. “She’s never read any of them.”

  “But that’s awful. Is there a key?”

  “Somewhere, I expect.”

  She got to her feet reluctantly. On the study desk was a huge pile of letters.

  “Doesn’t your mother open her mail either?”

  “It’s a family failing.”

  “Will she be home soon?”

  “She’s not here,” said Rupert, draining his glass of brandy. “She’s in the Bahamas escaping from the tax man.”

  Helen looked at him, appalled.

  “I must go. If I’d known she wasn’t going to be here, I’d never have come.”

  “You haven’t come yet, sweetheart,” said Rupert softly, taking her in his arms, “but you soon will, I promise.”

  She was almost overwhelmed by the warmth and sheer power of him, so different from Harold Mountjoy, who’d been a bit of a weed.

  “No,” she yelped.

  “Yes,” said Rupert into her hair. “You need some material for your ‘narvel.’ ”

  “You shouldn’t have pretended your mother was here.” She struggled to get away from him.

  “I didn’t. Anyway, all’s fair in love and war and I don’t imagine it’s going to be war between us,” and he bent his head and kissed her. For a few seconds she kept her lips rigid, then, powerless, she found herself kissing him back, her hands moving up to the sleek, surprisingly silky hair.

  Rupert pulled her down on the faded rose pink sofa.

  “I haven’t stopped thinking about you for a moment since I first saw you,” he said. He was running his hands over her back now, assessing the amount of underwear, planning where the next assault should come from. There were no clips on the gray dress which would have to come over her head, which might frighten her if removed too soon. Over her shoulder he met the jovial eyes of one of his forebears. “Atta boy,” he seemed to say.

  “No,” said Helen, trying to prise off the hand barnacled over her left breast.

  “You’re repeating yourself, angel. You must realize I’m unfixed, like your landlady’s tomcat.”

  Through her dress he expertly undid her bra with his left hand. The thumb of his right hand began to strafe her nipple.

  “No, I’m not like that.”

  “Like what?” whispered Rupert. “D’you want to spend the rest of your life behind bars, unopened like those first editions?”

  Helen burst into tears. At first she was crying so hard, Rupert couldn’t understand what she was saying. Then the first storm of weeping gave way to shuddering sobs and gradually the whole story came pouring out. How respectable her family were, what a terrible shock it had been when she became pregnant by a married man and flunked her finals. How her parents had been real supportive sending her to Europe to get over it all.

  “This afternoon you appeared to be getting over it very well,” said Rupert. “Perhaps I should send your father a bill. What did you say this married man was called?”

  “Harold Mountjoy.”

  “Should have been called Mount Helen.”

  Helen sniffed. “He’s a very distinguished writer,” she said reprovingly. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of his work.”

  “You must know I haven’t heard of anyone,” said Rupert.

  “I loved him,” said Helen. “I thought he loved me. But he only wrote once. He forgot Christmas, my birthday, Valentine’s Day.”

  “Mothering Sunday?” asked Rupert, grinning.

  “The pregnancy was terminated,” said Helen with dignity.

  “I promise I won’t let you get pregnant,” said Rupert gravely.

  “That’s not the point. I don’t want to be treated like a sex object.”

  “Because you object to sex?”

  “Oh, don’t be so flip,” wailed Helen.

  Rupert got out a blue silk handkerchief and wiped away the mascara that was running down her cheeks. He had enough experience of women to realize that if you backed off and were kind and considerate on a first occasion, they dropped into the palm of your hand on the next.

  More important, he suddenly felt terribly tired. Phenomenally strong, he could go for long periods without sleep, but he realized that, apart from a two-hour marathon in the four-poster with Gabriella on Friday night, he hadn’t been to bed for three days. He had to drive home to Gloucestershire that night, a dealer was coming to see him first thing in the morning, and he wanted to buy Satan quickly before the Army started producing all kinds of red tape. He also had a string of novices to take to an indoor show the following evening.

  “All right,” he said, getting to his feet, “go home to your narvel. Let me put on a jersey and I’ll drive you back to your coven.”

  Helen felt absolutely miserable, convinced that she’d lost him. The sun had set and the trees and the houses, losing their distinctive features, were darkening against a glowing turquoise sky. Rupert didn’t speak on the way to Regina House, nor did he say anything about taking her to Crittleden. Let her work up a good lather of anxiety, he thought. Helen got lower and lower. Perhaps he was hurt by her saying she couldn’t sleep with him because she didn’t love him, but she felt it was just too soon.

  All the lights were on in Regina House as they drew up. A blackbird was singing in a nearby plane tree. Helen sat for a second, overwhelmed with anticlimax and despair, tears about to spill over again. The women’s movement was always urging one to be assertive and make the running, but in practice it wasn’t easy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “I didn’t mean to give you a hard time.”

  Rupert yawned.

  “On the contrary, sweetheart, it was me intending to give you a hard time.”

  He got out of the car, but before he could open the door for her she had scrambled out, standing up so they faced each other a foot apart.

  “Good night,” he said brusquely, intending to get back into the car and drive straight off.

  But suddenly the bells of a nearby church, carried by the west wind, drifted through the muzzy gray twilight. Rupert shivered, suddenly reminded of the desolation of Sunday nights at school, summoned by bells to Evensong, followed by cold ham and bread and marge for supper, and everyone else coming back feeling homesick from days out with their parents. Rupert had never really had a proper home to feel sick about.

  “I w-will see you again, won’t I?” she stammered.

  Her face, with its vast, brimming, mascara-smudged eyes, had lost all its color in the dusk. He took it in his hands.

  “Of course you will, my little red fox. I’ve let you escape this time, but I’ll get you in the end. Try and go to ground, you’ll find the earth blocked; disappear down another earth, I’ll get the terrier men to dig you out.”

  His white teeth gleamed. As he bent and kissed her, Helen trembled with fear and longing.

  “Don’t listen to Nige,” he said, getting back into the car. “He’s not my greatest fan. I’ll ring you later in the week about Crittleden,” and he was gone.

  Helen stood in the twilight, listening to the bells, thinking about weddings and the attraction of opposites.

  Rupert drove down the M4 thinking about Satan. He toyed with the idea of stopping off at the Newbury turn to see a married girlfriend whose husband was away, but he was too tired. At Exit 15 sleep overcame him and the moment he was off the motorway he pulled into a layby, climbed into the back, and, hugging Badger for warmth, fell asl
eep.

  The Frogsmore Valley is considered by many to be the most beautiful in the Cotswolds. On either side, fields, checkered by pale stone walls and dotted by lush woodland and the occasional farm, fall steeply down to jade green water meadows, divided by the briskly bustling Frogsmore stream.

  At the top of the valley, curling round like a horseshoe, lies the ancient village of Penscombe. Here, for the past hundred and twenty years, the Campbell-Blacks had made their home, alternately scandalizing and captivating the local community by their outrageous behavior. On Rupert’s twenty-first birthday, a month before he came out of the Army, his father, Edward Campbell-Black, had made over to him the house, Penscombe Court, and its surrounding two hundred acres. The motive for this altruistic gesture was that Edward had just further scandalized the community by leaving his wife and running off with the beautiful Italian wife of one of his Gloucestershire shooting cronies. On reflection too, Eddie decided he was bored with running the estate at a thumping loss, and his beautiful Italian prospective bride decided that neither of them could stand the bitter west winds which sweep straight off the Bristol Channel up the Frogsmore Valley to howl round Penscombe Court throughout the winter. So they decamped permanently to the South of France.

  Young Rupert further scandalized the community by moving back into the house with his friend Billy Lloyd-Foxe and a floating population of dogs and shapely girl grooms. Even worse, hellbent on making the place profitable, Rupert promptly dug up the famous rose garden and the orchard, built stables for thirty horses, turned the cricket pitch, where the village used to play regularly, into a show-jumping ring, and put up an indoor school beyond the stables to buttress them from the bitter winds.

  Gradually over the next four years, the chuntering subsided as Rupert and Billy started winning and were frequently seen on television clearing vast fences and being awarded silver cups by members of the Royal family. Journalists and television crews came down and raved about the charms of the village and the valley. Suddenly Penscombe had two local heroes and found itself on the map.

  Penscombe Court was, fortunately, situated on the north side of the valley, half a mile from the end of the village, so any late-night revelry was deadened by surrounding woodland and didn’t keep the village or the neighboring farmers awake too often. Rupert was generally considered capricious and arrogant, but Billy, who loved gossip and spent a lot of time in the village shop and the pub chattering to the locals, was universally adored. Any inseparable friend of Billy, it was felt, couldn’t be all bad; besides, the locals had known Rupert since he was a child and had seen stepparents come and go with alarming regularity and, being a tolerant and generous community, felt allowances should be made. They also realized that Rupert, like the rest of his family, was indifferent to public opinion, so that their disapproval would not make a hap’orth of difference.

  Just before midnight Rupert woke up from his nap in the layby and set off for home. He never saw the signposts to Penscombe’s without a leap of joy and recognition. As he drove along the top of the south side of the valley, Badger woke up and started snuffling excitedly at the crack of an open window. Ahead in the moonlight gleamed Penscombe’s church spire. Although it was after midnight, Rupert looked across to the north side and cursed in irritation to see half the lights in the house blazing. Billy must have gone to bed plastered without switching them off.

  As he stormed up the drive through the chestnut avenue planted by his great-grandfather, he could see the pale green leaves opening like parachutes. Behind white railings, three dozing horses in New Zealand rugs blinked as he passed. The car crunched on the gravel in front of the house. There was a great baying and yapping. As Rupert opened the front door, two Jack Russells, a Springer spaniel, a yellow labrador, and a blond mongrel with a tightly curled tail threw themselves on him in delight, growling and fighting each other. Finally they all started rubbishing Badger, jealous because he’d been the one to go on a jaunt. Rupert kicked them gently out of the way. His suitcase was still lying in the hall where he’d left it that morning. In the drawing room the fire was going out, Sunday papers half-read and a pile of entrance forms lay scattered over the sofa. One of the dogs had shredded his hunting tie on the rug in front of the fire.

  “Jesus,” said Rupert, slamming the door shut.

  In the kitchen he found Billy trying to read Horse and Hound, clean the brown tops of a pair of black boots, drink whisky, and fork oysters out of a tin, all at the same time.

  “Hi,” he said, looking up. “How did it go? Have you joined the Antis?”

  Billy was not a handsome young man, for his nose was broken and his sleepy dark brown eyes were seldom visible because they were always creased up with laughter, but he had a smile that could melt the Arctic Circle. Rupert, however, was not in a mood to be melted.

  “This place is a tip,” he snapped, pointing to the sink which was piled high with plates, glasses, and dog bowls. “Can’t you even put things in the dishwasher?”

  “It’s full,” said Billy calmly.

  “Or in the dustbin,” went on Rupert, pointing to the empty tins of dog food and milk cartons littering the shelf.

  “That’s full too,” said Billy.

  “And one of your dogs has crapped in the hall.”

  “It was one of your dogs,” said Billy without rancor. “Anyway, I’ve been bloody busy.”

  “Drinking my whisky and reading the Sunday papers.”

  “The hell I have. By the way, there’s a nice piece about you in The Observer.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Oh, some sycophantic rubbish about you being the best rider in England.”

  “Don’t try to placate me, and why’s the telephone off the hook?”

  “To stop Bianca, and Gabriella, and goodness knows who else ringing up.”

  Rupert replaced the receiver. Five seconds later the telephone rang.

  “See what I mean?”

  Rupert picked it up. Both of them could hear squawking. Putting the receiver in a nearby cupboard, Rupert shut the door.

  Billy grinned: “Anyway, I repeat, I’ve been bloody busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Taking care of the entire yard single-handed. I’ve even sold a couple of horses for you.”

  “How much d’you get?”

  “Ten grand for Padua and eight for the gray with the ewe neck.”

  “Not enough,” said Rupert, looking slightly mollified.

  “Never is for you, and I worked everything we’re going to need tomorrow. Admittedly I was so hungover first thing I saw four ears every time I looked down a horse’s neck.”

  He speared up another oyster. “And I think I’ve sorted out why The Bull keeps stopping. He’s terrified of water.”

  “So am I,” said Rupert, “unless it’s got whisky in it.”

  He picked up the bottle and, not finding any clean glasses in the cupboard, poured it into a teacup.

  “Where the hell was Diane today?”

  “Said she’s got the curse, soldiered on for a couple of hours, then collapsed into bed.”

  “Rubbish,” said Rupert. “She had it a fortnight ago. She’d have stayed working if I’d been here. And Tracey?”

  “It’s her day off.”

  “And Marion?”

  “Gave in her notice and flatly refused to work. She was pissed off because you forgot to take her to some party on Saturday night. She’s been ringing Sits Vac in Horse and Hound all day and left them deliberately lying on the table for us to find.”

  He handed the magazine to Rupert.

  “ ‘Cheerful, capable groom,’ ” read out Rupert incredulously. “Cheerful! Christ! She’s about as cheerful as Blackpool lights during a power cut. ‘Experienced girl groom required for hunters and stud work. Opportunity to further breeding knowledge.’ She doesn’t have anything to learn about breeding either. Oh hell, let her go, I’m fed up with her tantrums.”

  “You cause most of them,” said Billy
reasonably. “You know perfectly well that Mayfair and Belgravia, not to mention The Bull and Kitchener, will all go into a decline if she leaves. And we can’t afford that at the beginning of the season.”

  He held out his glass for Rupert to fill up.

  “And just remember how tremendous she is with customs men. They’re so transfixed by her boobs they never bother to even glance at our papers.”

  “Are you after her or something?” said Rupert.

  “No, my heart belongs entirely to Mavis,” said Billy, looking down at the blond mongrel who was now curled up on his knee, slanting eyes closed, head resting on his collarbone.

  “Oh, all right,” said Rupert. “I’ll go and see her in a minute.”

  “She’ll be asleep by now.”

  “Not her, she’ll be tossing and turning with desire and frustration.”

  From the pantry next door the washing machine was thundering to a halt. Wiping the boot polish off his hands onto Mavis’s blond coat, Billy set her gently down on the floor. Opening the machine, he removed a tangle of white ties, shirts, breeches, socks, and underpants and threw them into the dryer.

  Rupert looked disapprovingly round the kitchen which was low-beamed with a flagstone floor and a window looking over the valley. A bridle hung from a meat hook; every shelf seemed to be covered with spilling ashtrays and unopened bills.

  “We must get a housekeeper. I’m fed up with chaos.”

  “It’s pointless,” said Billy. “You’d only employ pretty ones, then you couldn’t resist screwing them and they’d get bolshy. Mrs. Burroughs is coming in the morning. She’ll tidy the place up.”

  “I want it straight on weekends. Perhaps we ought to get Nanny back.”

  “She’d have a heart attack at the goings-on. Perhaps you ought to get married. Wives are supposed to do this sort of thing. How was your redheaded Anti?”