Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  “It’s all right. He’ll live,” said Malise irritably. “The doctor doesn’t think it’s serious, but Billy certainly doesn’t know what day of the week it is and there’s no chance of him riding.”

  Tracey burst into tears. Marion stopped plaiting and put her arms round Tracey, glaring at Jake as though it was his fault.

  “He’s got a head like a bullet; don’t worry,” Marion said soothingly.

  “Come on,” said Malise, not unkindly. “Pull yourself together; put The Bull back in his box and get moving on whoever Jake’s going to ride. Africa, I presume.”

  Jake shook his head. “Her leg’s not right. I’m not risking it. I’ll ride Sailor.”

  For a second Malise hesitated. “You don’t want to jump The Bull?”

  Catching Tracey’s and Marion’s looks of horror, Jake shook his head. If by the remotest chance he didn’t let the side down, he was bloody well not having it attributed to the fact that he wasn’t riding his own horse.

  “All right, you’d better get changed. You’re meant to be walking the course in an hour, but with the general coming and Spanish dilatoriness it’s impossible to be sure.”

  Luckily Jake didn’t have time to panic. Tracey sewed the Union Jack onto his red coat. Normally he would have been fretting around, trying to find the socks, the breeches, the shirt and the white tie which he wore when he last won a class. But as it was so long since he had won anything, he’d forgotten which was the last set of clothes that worked. His face looked gray and contrasted with the whiteness of his shirt like a before-and-after laundry detergent ad. His hands were trembling so much he could hardly tie his tie, and his red coat, which fitted him before he left England, was now too loose. Then suddenly, when he dropped a peseta and was searching for it under the forage bin, he found his tansy flower, slightly battered but intact. Overjoyed, he slipped it into his left boot. Aware of it, a tiny bump under his heel, he felt perhaps his luck might be turning at last.

  Rupert arrived at the showground in a foul temper. He’d just had a dressing-down from Malise for going bullfighting on the morning of a Nations’ Cup. He was worried about Billy and he realized, with Billy gone, that their chances of even being placed were negligible. Normally he didn’t need to distance himself before a big class, but Helen’s chatter about El Grecos and Goyas, and her trip to Toledo, “with the old houses silhouetted against the skyline,” got on his nerves and he’d snapped at her unnecessarily.

  She’d hoped to win him over in a new dress—a Laura Ashley white smock dotted with yellow buttercups, worn with a huge yellow straw hat—but he had merely snapped, “What on earth are you wearing that for?”

  “It’s the latest milkmaid look,” said Helen.

  “I don’t like milkmaids, only whisky maids; and you’re going to obscure about fifteen people’s view in that hat. No, there isn’t time to change; we’re late as it is.”

  “God, it’s hot,” said Lavinia Greenslade, as they sweated in the unrelenting sun, waiting for the go-ahead to walk the course. Her eyes were swollen and pink from crying over Billy’s concussion. It had taken all Malise Gordon’s steely persuasion, coupled with her parents’ ranting, to make her agree to ride.

  The rotund Humpty was sweating so profusely that great damp patches had seeped through his red coat under the arms and down the spine.

  “Wish we could jump in our shirtsleeves,” he grumbled.

  “Not in fwont of the genewal,” said Lavinia. “He’s weally hot on pwotocol.”

  Jake clenched his teeth together, so the others couldn’t hear them chattering like castanets. Walking the course didn’t improve his nerves. The fourteen jumps were enormous—most of them bigger than he was—with a huge combination in the middle and a double at the end with an awkward distance. You could either take three small strides between the two jumps or two long ones. He tried to concentrate on what Malise was saying as they paced out the distances.

  In a Nations’ Cup, four riders on four horses jump for each country, jumping two rounds each over the same course. There is a draw for the order in which the nations jump. Today it was France, Italy, Spain, Germany then Great Britain last, which meant that a French rider would jump first, followed by an Italian, then a Spaniard, a German, and finally a British rider. Then the second French rider would jump followed by the second Italian, and so on until all the riders had jumped. Each nation would then total the scores of its three best riders, discarding the worst score. The nation with the lowest number of faults would then be in the lead at half time. The whole process is then repeated, each rider jumping in the same order. Once again the three lowest scores are totted up and the nation with the lowest total over the two rounds wins the cup. If two countries tie there is a jump-off. Nations’ Cup matches are held all over Europe throughout the summer and autumn and the side that notches up the most points during the year is awarded the President’s Cup. For the last two years this had been won by Germany.

  Malise gave the order for the British team to jump: Humpty, Lavinia, Rupert, Jake.

  “If you get a double clear,” Humpty told Jake as they came out of the ring, “you get a free red coat.”

  “Can’t see myself having much chance of wearing out this one,” said Jake.

  He thought so even more a few seconds later as Lavinia gave a shriek of relieved joy, bounded towards Billy, as he stood swaying slightly at the entrance to the arena, and flung her arms round him.

  “Lavinia,” thundered her mother and father simultaneously.

  Lavinia ignored them. “Are you all wight? You shouldn’t have come out in this heat. Does your poor head hurt?”

  Billy was deathly pale, but he steadied himself against Lavinia and grinned sheepishly at Malise. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “T’riffic,” said Rupert. “You can ride after all.”

  “No, he can’t,” said Malise firmly. “Go and sit in the shade, Billy, and take my hat.” He removed his panama and handed it to Billy.

  “For Christ’s sake,” snarled Rupert, hardly bothering to lower his voice, “even concussed, Billy’s more valuable than Lavinia or Jake. They simply haven’t the nerve when the chips are down.”

  “Thank you, Wupert,” said Lavinia, disengaging herself from Billy. “If it weren’t against the intwests of my countwy, I’d hope you fall off.”

  “Are you implying my Lavinia isn’t up to it?” said Mrs. Greenslade, turning even redder in the face.

  “Yes,” said Rupert unrepentantly. “And Jake even less so.”

  “Shut up, Rupert,” said Malise, losing his temper. “You’re behaving like a yobbo.”

  “Well, if you want us to come bottom yet again, it’s up to you,” said Rupert.

  “I’m honestly not up to it,” said Billy placatingly. “I can see at least six of all of you.”

  Fortunately an ugly scene was averted by a loose horse pounding through the collecting ring, his lead rein trailing and flysheet slipping. Whickering with delight, he shoved the rest of the British team summarily out of the way and rushed straight up to Jake, burying his nose inside his coat and nudging him with delight. It was Sailor; his feet were oiled, his coat polished, his thin mane coaxed into plaits, his sparse tail fell jagged from a tube of royal blue tail bandage.

  The next minute Tracey joined them, panting and laughing.

  “The moment he saw you he broke away from me.”

  “Amazing that someone finds you attractive,” said Rupert.

  “That’s enough, Rupert,” said Malise icily. “You’d better warm up before the parade, Humpty.”

  18

  The general, in true Spanish tradition, was late. So the parade started without him. The Germans came first. The famous four, Hans, Manfred, Wolfgang, and Ludwig. Olympic gold medalists who had not lost a Nations’ Cup competition for two years, they had reason to be proud. They rode with a swagger on their equally famous horses: four beautiful Hanoverian geldings, with satin coats, elegant booted legs, arched necks, and chins
apparently soldered to their breastbones. As they passed, their grooms gripped the fence and cheered. They were followed by the French, beautifully turned out with the lighter and less obedient horses, and then the Italians in their impeccably cut coats with the blue collars, riding with slapdash elegance, two of them smoking. Then there was a great earsplitting cheer, sending a great communal waft of garlic up from the crowd, as the Spanish team came in. Beautiful riders on beautiful, powerful horses, their manes flowing free, but somehow not coordinated like the Germans. The crowd, however, thought they were the greatest, and screams and shouts of “Magnifico” and “Olé” followed them all round the ring.

  The British team came last. Rupert rode on the magnificent Belgravia, chestnut coat gleaming in the sunshine. Not having been ridden in at all (Marion hadn’t even had the time to walk him around), he was boisterous and uncontrollable, and the crowd, particularly the women, marveled how this handsome Englishman hardly moved in the saddle, as the horse bucked and violently shied beneath him. On his left was Humpty on Porky Boy, then Lavinia on the gray Snowstorm, whose coat was already turning blue with sweat, and then Sailor, shuffling along, looking on his last legs, as though he could hardly stagger as far as the grandstand. The crowd laughed, jeered, and pointed.

  Jake gritted his teeth. He’d show them.

  The wait that followed was interminable. The teams lined up in front of the grandstand and all, except Lavinia, removed their hats as each country’s National Anthem was played. The band knew their own National Anthem and, confident the Germans would win, had been practicing “Deutschland, Deutschland” all week, but when they got to Great Britain, they launched into the “Star-Spangled Banner,” which everyone thought very funny except the mustachioed bandmaster, who turned an even deeper shade of purple.

  The horses meanwhile were going mad in the heat, except Sailor who stood half asleep, one back leg bent, hanging his head, twitching his flea-bitten coat against the flies, and occasionally flattening his ears at Belgravia, who was still barging around like a bee-stung bronco. Jake tried not to look at the jumps. All the women in the audience fanned themselves with their programs. Medallions, nestling in a thousand black hairy chests, glittered in the sunlight.

  In the riders’ stand, next to the collecting ring, Helen comforted a disconsolate Billy. “You’d be mad to jump,” she said.

  “Must say I’ve got the most awful headache. Jake’s horse looks like I feel,” said Billy.

  As the teams came out of the ring, Sailor bringing up the rear, shuffling along, head hanging, Helen looked at Jake’s set face. She hadn’t seen him smile once since he’d arrived. The knight of the sorrowful countenance, she thought.

  “He’s like Don Quixote,” she said to Billy, “and that poor beaten-down old horse looks like Rosinante.”

  Billy wasn’t interested in literary allusions.

  “What a bloody stupid thing to do,” he said. “Malise is livid.”

  “Doesn’t look it,” said Helen, watching Malise, in dark glasses, with a gardenia in the buttonhole of his pale gray suit, completely calm as he went from one member of the team to another, steadying their nerves, encouraging them.

  “Lavinia’s not wearing anything underneath that black coat,” sighed Billy.

  As the British team filed into the riders’ stand, Malise gave Helen the jumping order on a clipboard so she could keep the score. The general still hadn’t arrived, but it was decided to start. The arena went very quiet as the white doors opened and the first French rider came in and took off his hat to the judges. As he went past the start, the clock started ticking. It was soon obvious, as he demolished jump after jump, sending poles and bricks flying, that this was a far from easy course. The Italian who came on second was also all over the place and notched up twenty-eight faults.

  “Viva España!” screamed the crowd as the first Spanish rider came in. Although they had applauded the earlier riders politely, they cheered their own hero unrestrainedly.

  “Doesn’t look very magnifico to me,” said Rupert, as the horse went head over heels at the rustic poles, crashed through the wall and the final double, losing his rider again, and having to be led out impossibly lame.

  “I’ve seen enough,” said Humpty, running down the steps and out to the collecting ring to scramble onto Porky Boy as the first German rider rode leisurely into the ring. Hans Schmidt was the second best rider in the German team, but his dark brown horse didn’t like the course any more than the others and came out, most unusually, with twelve faults.

  As he walked out, ruefully shaking his blond head and muttering dummkopf, he was practically knocked sideways by Humpty bouncing into the ring. The merry Porky Boy, ears pricked and fighting for his head, his black tail swishing back and forth across his plump cobby quarters, bucketed towards the first fence. The crowd was amused by him and his rider, who rose so high out of the saddle over the bigger jumps that it seemed he would never come down again. But he got around with a very creditable twelve faults.

  Now it was time for the second Frenchman to jump.

  No one went clear, as round followed round and disaster followed disaster. Several horses overturned and were eliminated. A Spanish horse burst a blood vessel and had to be destroyed later in the day. Despite Rupert’s gloomy prognostications, Lavinia jumped well for only twelve faults, which meant the Germans and the English were level pegging on twenty-four faults at the end of the second round, with the other nations trailing well behind. The next German, Manfred, got eight faults, the best round so far. He was followed by Rupert, who did not jump well. Macaulay, like Belgravia, overoated and insufficiently ridden in, had been frightened in the collecting ring by three loudspeakers crackling fortissimo above his head. An enormously powerful horse, it took all Rupert’s strength to stop him running away in the ring. By some miracle they went clear until they got to the upright, where Macaulay, put wrong, hit it sharply.

  For a second the pole bounced agonizingly in the cup, then fell. Unbalanced, and taking off too early, Macaulay also had a foot in the water. Rupert came out of the ring looking bootfaced.

  He’s dying to beat the hell out of that horse, said Jake to himself. He watched Helen, beautiful in her yellow hat, biting her lip with disappointment as she entered eight faults by Rupert’s name. Jake didn’t want to be around when Rupert came back. He’d seen enough rounds anyway.

  Riding around the collecting ring, he felt sicker and sicker, trying to remember the turns and the distances between the jumps. But his mind had suddenly gone completely blank, as if someone had pulled a lavatory chain, draining all the information out of his head, leaving an empty cistern.

  He wished he could slip into the matadors’ church to pray. He listened to the deafening cheer as the last Spanish rider went in and groan follow groan as he demolished the course.

  Now it was time for the mighty Ludwig von Schellenberg, the greatest rider in the world, to go into the ring and show everyone how to do it, which he did, jumping clear. But so carried away was he by the poetry and stylishness of his round that he notched up one and a half time faults.

  He came out grinning and cursing. Now, as luck would have it, as Jake was due to jump, the last rider in Round One, the general chose to arrive and everything ground to a halt while two lines of soldiers with machine guns formed a guard of honor and the band played the Spanish National Anthem several times, and dignitaries were introduced with a lot of bowing and shaking of hands, and the general was settled in his seat.

  “This is a bugger,” said Malise, after Jake had been kept waiting twenty minutes. “I’m very sorry. They’ll call you any minute. Just aim for a steady clear, take it easy, and ride at the center of the fence.”

  Up in the riders’ stand Helen was doing sums.

  “If the Germans count Ludwig’s, Manfred’s, and Hans’s rounds, and drop Wolfgang’s, that puts them on twenty-one and a half,” she said. “We’ve got Rupert on eight, Humpty on twelve, and Lavinia on twelve; that makes th
irty-two.”

  “We won’t get lower than that this half,” said Rupert. “Jake’s bound to be eliminated.”

  Ludwig von Schellenberg came into the riders’ stand. “You look beautiful, Mees Helen, in that hat,” he said, clicking his heels as he kissed her hand.

  “She’s a Mrs. not a Miss, you smarmy Kraut, and keep your hands off her,” said Rupert, but quite amiably. Ludwig was one of the few riders he liked and admired.

  “Number Twenty-eight,” called the collecting ring steward.

  Jake rode quietly into the ring. During the long wait he had counted Sailor’s plaits, found there were fifteen, his unlucky number, and had quickly undone them, so Sailor’s sparse mane crinkled unbecomingly like Harpo Marx’s hair.

  As the horse shuffled in, flea-bitten, head hanging, Ludwig laughed and turned to Rupert: “Do you get your horses from zee knacker’s yard now?”

  “May I be Franco with you?” said Rupert. “That is the ugliest horse anyone’s ever seen.”

  Helen looked at Jake and repeated her remark about the knight of the sorrowful countenance to Malise, but Malise wasn’t listening either; he was praying.

  The audience was losing interest. There hadn’t been enough clear rounds, the Germans were so far ahead it didn’t look as though anyone, and definitely not the Spaniards, would catch them up. The general was talking to his energy minister about oil prices. No one was paying much attention as Sailor cantered towards the first fence.

  Tilting at windmills, thought Helen, filled with compassion.

  “Never get over it,” said Rupert.

  But suddenly this extraordinarily ugly animal shook himself like an old music hall actor who realizes he’s got a capacity crowd, gave a snort of pleasure, and took hold of the bit.

  “Christ, look at that,” said Humpty Hamilton as Sailor cleared the first fence.

  “And that,” said Billy as he cleared the second.

  “And that,” said Malise, resisting a temptation to crow, as he cleared the third.