Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  “Are you all right, darling? Christ, I’ve been worried. Look, I’m not leaving you in London anymore. You must move in at once. I can’t bear another night away from you.”

  “But what am I going to do with myself all day?”

  “You can organize my life.”

  “Can I redecorate your house?”

  “If it makes you happy, as long as you let me burn your entire wardrobe, and promise never to buy any more clothes without my coming too. I haven’t got a show next Monday,” he went on. “I thought we might get married.”

  And so they were married at Gloucester Registry office. Helen wore a gray silk suit chosen by Rupert. Billy and Humpty were witnesses.

  They set off to Yorkshire on their honeymoon, staying in an old pub in the middle of the moors. On the Tuesday Rupert went to look at a horse which he decided not to buy. On Thursday he said he was fed up with the pub and knew a better one over the Pennines.

  As they were driving there Helen suddenly noticed AA signs and advertising posters: “The great Lancashire show starts today.” She said idly to Rupert, “Is Billy going?”

  “Yes,” said Rupert, leaning across and kissing her, “and so are we.”

  When they reached the show, there were Billy and Tracey looking sheepish, and Marion looking bootfaced, and, surprise surprise, Mayfair and Macaulay and Rupert’s riding clothes. Helen looked down at the huge unusual ring of sapphires and emeralds which Rupert had given her as an engagement ring and remembered what Doreen Hamilton had said about being a show jumper’s wife, and laughed instead of cried.

  “Darling Mother,” she wrote home that evening, “I got married on Monday. My husband is called Rupert Campbell-Black. He is real handsome and very famous in England, because he is a stadium jumping star. In England it is called show jumping, and a big sport rather like baseball. He has the most beautiful stately home near Shakespeare’s birthplace, you will just go crazy about it. It is so old, and the village he lives in looks as though none of the houses have been touched since Elizabeth Ist’s day. I enclose photographs of the house and of Rupert. I know you wanted me to get married in Florida and in white, Mother, but I promise you I am truly truly happy. I never believed being in love could be like this. Rupert had a very traumatic childhood, I’m surprised he hasn’t been in analysis for years, but he is very normal. His mother lives in the Bahamas and is on her third husband, and his father is on his fourth wife.

  “I haven’t met them yet. But soon I’m going to meet Rupert’s old Nanny, who is really the person who brought him up, and gave him security. He thinks the world of her. I’m going to make him happy. I love him so much I long to have you meet him, but the summer is Rupert’s busy time. At the moment he is at shows all the week and at weekends, but I promise the first weekend we get free, we’ll fly out and see you. All love, Helen.”

  Rupert’s meeting with Helen’s parents didn’t take place until August and was not a success. The plan was that Helen should fly direct to Florida and Rupert, having looked at some horses in Kentucky, should join her a couple of days later. As it was in the middle of the show-jumping season, Helen explained, he would be able to stay only for the weekend before flying back to Europe for the Dublin Horse Show, where, having been forgiven at last by Malise, he had been picked to jump for Great Britain, but at least it would give her parents the chance to meet him.

  Arriving home, Helen was appalled to find her mother had arranged a full-scale wedding party, with three hundred guests to meet Helen’s handsome English husband, with even a minister coming to the house to perform a service beforehand, in which the happy couple would be blessed.

  “I just don’t feel you’re married after a registry office ceremony,” said her mother.

  “Rupert’ll absolutely freak out,” protested Helen. “He hasn’t brought a cutaway, or even a dinner jacket.”

  “He can always hire one, or borrow one from Father,” said her mother.

  With a growing feeling of apprehension, Helen watched the preparations. In fact, her mother was so well organized that on Friday afternoon she and her four daughters were able to slip down to the beach below their house for a couple of hours’ sun. Helen’s three sisters, all lithe and beautiful, awaited Rupert’s arrival that evening with intense excitement. They were amazed at the change in Helen. She looked so beautiful and happy, and so much more self-assured.

  “Look at that dreamy yacht,” said Esme, the younger sister, as a big boat with bright blue sails crowded with bronzed, half-naked people tacked close to the shore. The next moment one of them had jumped ship. Wading through the shallows carrying a case, he turned as he reached the sand and, brandishing it, shouted, “Thanks for the lift.”

  “Are you ready for that?” said Milly, the second sister, in wonder.

  “It’s Rupert,” gasped Helen.

  He was as blond and as brown as a beach boy, and he was wearing nothing except a rather small United States flag draped round his loins.

  “Jesus,” said Claudia, the third sister.

  “Don’t swear, Claudia,” said Mrs. Macaulay.

  Helen hurtled down the beach, flung her arms round Rupert’s neck, and only just stopped the American flag tumbling to half-mast.

  “Darling, we were expecting you tonight.”

  “I got a lift with some chums. I missed you.”

  On Palm Beach, home of the beautiful, he was still the most beautiful of all.

  “Mother, this is Rupert,” said Helen.

  Mrs. Macaulay was vain enough not to be very pleased at having to meet her new son-in-law when she was scarlet and sweating from the heat. She would have preferred to have parted the wisteria on the terrace, welcoming him in a pretty dress, hair newly set, makeup light but perfect. But she knew one must behave like a lady at all times, so she radiated graciousness.

  “Hi, Rupert,” she said, holding out a hand slippery with suntan oil and trying not to look at the American flag. “I’m so pleased to welcome you as our son. I hope you’ll call me Mother.”

  Rupert, in fact, never managed to call her anything. He didn’t even kiss her; both felt it would have been too sweaty an embrace. He looked at her handsome, rigid, determined face with the graying red hair. He took in the well-controlled figure in its skirted bathing dress, he noticed the gold cross hanging between the crepey breasts, and he shuddered and vowed he would never let Helen get like that. Mrs. Macaulay averted her eyes and noted Rupert was not wearing a wedding ring. Father must find him one before tomorrow.

  “I’m not going to hire a morning coat,” snapped Rupert, when at last he and Helen were alone in their bedroom, “nor am I going to be blessed by some Yankee poofter. We were married in England; that’s enough for me.”

  “Hush, darling, they’ll hear you, and it’s worth it for all the wedding gifts.”

  “Not if you look at them closely. Six magazine racks, two sets of monogrammed highball glasses, twelve egg coddlers, a dozen staghorn steak knives. Jesus! Two sets of glasses with polo players on. Polo, I ask you.”

  “Oh, that was darling Great-Aunt Grace. Doesn’t know the difference between show jumping and polo. She was doing her best. There’s a lovely dinner service, and some beautiful cachepots, and glass. The problem is how to get them all home.”

  “We’ll have to hire a plane and hope it crashes on takeoff.”

  Helen giggled, but she felt defensive about her parents and their friends. If only he would behave for the wedding, she knew everyone would love him. Rupert went moodily to the window.

  “God, I miss Badger. Why don’t your parents have a dog? I am not going through with this party. If I do I’ll wear a suit.”

  “All right,” said Helen soothingly. “But please, darling, be nice just this once. Mother’s been arranging it for weeks and Milly’s going to sing “What Is Life to Me Without You.” Mother’s been coaching her for weeks, and Dad’s even been out and bought himself an Ascot and some striped pants. All you’ve got to do is show up and be pol
ite.”

  Rupert behaved rather well during the service. Later everyone crowded onto the lawn, and after champagne had been drunk for an hour or so, the most distinguished male relation rose to praise Helen, and to welcome Rupert to the family. Afterwards there was a pause.

  “Speech, speech,” shouted all the relations and friends and the large sprinkling of Mr. Macaulay’s patients, flashing their beautifully capped teeth. Rupert, wearing a dark suit and not wearing the wedding ring his father-in-law had pressed on him that morning, rose to his feet.

  “My heart is in my mouth at this wonderful party,” he said charmingly, “but as my Nanny always told me not to talk with my mouth full, I’m not going to say anything, except to thank Mr. and Mrs. Macaulay. I could tell jokes about gay Irish dentists, but I don’t think my father-in-law would like that. Thank you all for your wonderful presents,” and with that he quietly slid under the table.

  “But you weren’t even drunk,” said Helen, still furious, as their plane took off for England.

  “I know, but I was bored. I’m sorry, darling, but the only relations I like are sexual relations.”

  “And you’ve left Aunt Martha’s paintings behind.”

  “I know,” said Rupert. “I was terrified they might frighten the dogs.”

  Rupert’s parents both wrote Helen delightfully vague letters. Rupert’s mother sent her a diamond brooch with a broken clasp, Rupert’s father a jar of caviar. Both promised they’d be over sometime—probably when they want to borrow money, said Rupert—and wished them every happiness.

  Helen’s meeting with Rupert’s old Nanny was hardly more successful.

  “What shall I wear?” she asked Billy beforehand.

  “A skirt with horizontal stripes. All Nanny cares about is good childbearing hips.”

  Nanny’s cottage in Wiltshire had been bought and furnished by the Campbell-Black family. They had filled it with pieces from their various houses which were far too large. It was an obstacle race to get across the sitting room. Nanny, almost the largest thing in the cottage, stood six feet tall, with big ears, a whiskery seamed face, a boxer’s jaw, and shrewd, tough little brown eyes like Henry VII. She was wearing a shiny high-necked navy blue dress with a white collar, which gave the impression of a uniform. Although it was a very hot day, she was watching fireworks on a black and white television with the central heating at full blast and none of the windows open. Perhaps years of Campbell-Black austerity and indifference to the cold had unhinged her, thought Helen. Every surface in the room was covered in photographs of babies in long white dresses. The only others were of Rupert at every stage of his career, as a solemn blue-eyed baby, at St. Augustine’s, Harrow, in the Blues, and, mostly, of him show jumping. Otherwise there was no evidence that she was remotely pleased to see him.

  She hardly thanked him for the half-dozen bottles of her favorite, disgustingly sweet sherry that he brought her. Pouring out three glasses, she gave much the smallest to Helen.

  “Isn’t Helen beautiful?” said Rupert.

  Nanny looked Helen up and down and sniffed. “Very beautiful face,” she said.

  “She’s got a beautiful figure too,” protested Rupert, laughing. “I know you’d have only been happy if I’d married some Flanders mare producing sons every eight months.”

  Nanny snorted and proceeded to tear Rupert off a strip for hell-raising in Paris and getting arrested at Plymouth and getting married without a proper wedding. Rupert accepted it with amazing mildness.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t ask you to the wedding; we didn’t ask anyone. I couldn’t face all my stepparents muscling in on the act. And my mother would have been bored to have been reminded of all her weddings.”

  “Who’s your father married to at the moment?” said Nanny.

  “Some Italian whore,” said Rupert.

  “I suppose you had to get married?” asked Nanny.

  “No, we did not.”

  “Whatever happened to Bianca? And Melanie Potter? She was a bonny girl.”

  “She’s married with two daughters. I told you last time.”

  Nanny knew everything about him, and every round he’d jumped in the last two years.

  “Your mother remembered my birthday,” she said accusingly. “More than you did, and so did your brother Adrian. I hear he’s got a girlfriend.”

  “Are you sure?” said Rupert in amazement. “I don’t think so.”

  “Never knew he was bispectacled,” said Nanny.

  Helen didn’t dare look at Rupert.

  “Helen’s American,” said Rupert.

  “So I read,” said Nanny. “Never thought you’d end up with a foreigner. I’ve read about Watergate,” she added, as though Helen were personally responsible.

  Helen was so hot she took off her jersey, revealing her slender brown arms and waist.

  “Not much of her, is there?” said Nanny. “Anorexic, I suppose.”

  Finally, when Helen thought she’d faint from the heat, she said, “I think we ought to go, Rupert.”

  Nanny was not at all upset; she didn’t even come to the door. Desperate to get out into the fresh air, Helen made her good-byes and fled, but not before she heard Nanny say, “Got money, I suppose? Only reason for marrying a foreigner really.”

  “Isn’t she a gem?” said Rupert on the way home.

  “She’s a Machiavellian old monster,” said Helen.

  “Doesn’t mean it; she’s nearly eighty. All the same I can’t wait for you to have a baby so we can get her out of mothballs to look after it.”

  It was plain, in fact, as the months went by, that Rupert and Helen were very different. Rupert was spoilt, easily irritated, and didn’t flinch from showing it. His ambition in life was to get his own way and beat the hell out of the opposition. He had many moments of frustration and boredom in life, but very few of self-doubt.

  Helen, on the other hand, was riddled with self-doubt. She believed that one should not only constantly strive to improve oneself and others, but that work would indeed keep the devil at bay.

  To begin with, therefore, she made heroic efforts to interest herself in horses and learn to ride, but she was too tense and nervous and the horses sensed this, and the way she always caught her breath got on Rupert’s nerves. Then Marion (Helen never knew if it were deliberate) put her up on one of the novices, who carted her through a wood with low-hanging branches and finally deposited her on the tarmac of the village street. Helen bruised herself very badly and after that gave up trying to ride.

  She still took an interest in show jumping, however, reading every book on the subject, scanning the papers for horsey news. She even started reading dressage books and discussing her theories with Rupert, trying to show him where he was going wrong. Rupert was not amused. He did not want gratuitous advice that Macaulay might go better in a running martingale, or Belgravia might profit from learning to execute half-passes.

  “When all’s said and done,” he told her sharply, “I’m riding the fucking horse, not you, so belt up.”

  Helen, during the long, long hours that Rupert and Billy were occupied with the horses, turned her attention to the house and soon had the place swarming with builders, plumbers, electricians, and painters.

  “You’d think they were building the Pyramids,” grumbled Rupert.

  But gradually the damp and the dry rot were eradicated, and a new heating and wiring system installed. Pastel colors replaced the crimson and dark green wallpapers and old brocades. Tattered silks and moth-eaten tapestries were succeeded by new pale silks, glazed chintz, and Laura Ashley flower prints.

  Helen also employed a decent cleaner, Mrs. Bodkin, paid her well, and managed to keep her. Mrs. Bodkin admired Helen. She found her formal and distant and not given to gossip, but she was kind, straight, listened to Mrs. Bodkin’s problems, and was prepared to muck in with the cleaning.

  She certainly needed to. Rupert and Billy were appallingly untidy. Both dropped their clothes where they took them off, nev
er brought a cup or glass downstairs, and, if they couldn’t find a boot jack at the front or back door, trailed mud all over the hall and the new carpet, followed by a convoy of dogs with dirty paws.

  The dogs drove Helen increasingly crackers, shedding hair, barking, fighting, claiming Rupert’s attention. Also, the colder the winter got, and the last one was a killer (you could skate on the water in the john) the more the dogs tried to climb into bed with them. Rupert, who fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow, didn’t notice or mind Badger lying across his feet, or a Springer Spaniel curled up in the warmth of his back. Helen, a nervous insomniac, was kept awake night after night, shoving the dogs out of bed and listening to them licking themselves or scratching interminably in creaking baskets.

  As the winter got colder, and the winds blew off the Bristol Channel, and the central heating was not yet installed, poor Florida-reared Helen developed a hacking cough. Rupert, who like most very healthy people, lacked sympathy with illness, suggested she should get a job coughing between movements on Radio Three.

  And that was another problem. Culturally they were so different. Every time she wanted to listen to classical music, Rupert turned on Radio One. Every week she determinedly read the Times Literary Supplement, Encounter, and New Society. She started to read the New Statesman, but Rupert canceled it; he was not having subversive Trotskyite rubbish corrupting the dogs, he said.

  Then there was the matter of the Augustus John drawing. Helen, having spent a long time deciding what would really please Rupert for a wedding present, spent her entire savings on a drawing of a horse by Augustus John.

  Rupert was enchanted.

  “I think that was the old roué who had a walkout with my grandmother.”

  He was studying the drawing in great detail when the doorbell rang. It was a man about the washing machine. When Helen returned quarter of an hour later, Rupert had propped the drawing on the sofa and was looking at it with satisfaction.

  That’s better.”

  “What?” said Helen. Then, noticing a pencil and rubber in Rupert’s hand, gave a gasp of horror. “What have you done?”