Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  “Please let me come and live with you,” she sobbed. “I won’t be a nuisance. I’ll babysit and I’ll get up early, and work at night and at the weekends.”

  Jake stroked her hair. “I’ll talk to Tory. Come downstairs and have something to eat.”

  “I can’t, truly. I’d be sick. Oh, Jake, I’m so sorry. You must be knackered, and to be faced with me after that drive. But I keep thinking of Marigold.” Her face crumpled again. “How lonely and bewildered she’ll be.”

  “I’ll go and ring your mother,” said Jake.

  “Fen’s here,” she heard him say on the downstairs telephone. “No, don’t talk to her tonight. She’s fast asleep; must have walked most of the way.”

  Jake overslept next morning. Pulling on his clothes, he went downstairs to see how Revenge had survived the night. As he put on his shoes in the kitchen, he could hear Africa knocking her water bucket about and Sailor pawing the door and neighing, “Where’s my bloody breakfast.”

  “All right, all right,” grumbled Jake, “I’m coming.”

  Outside he froze with horror. Both halves of Revenge’s door were open. Isa, fascinated by the horses, had developed a dreadful habit of standing on a bucket and letting himself into the boxes. Heart hammering, Jake ran across the yard as fast as his limp would allow. Inside he found Fen, her arms round Revenge’s neck, feeding him carrots and kissing him on the nose.

  “Good boy, good boy. You’ll love it here and you’re going to become a great and famous show jumper. Jake’ll see to that.”

  “Fen,” said Jake, desperately trying to keep his voice steady, “come out of there.”

  She looked up at him with an angelic smile. “He’s so sweet. Can I ride him later?”

  Revenge glared at Jake, raised a threatening front hoof, and then darted his big white teeth in the direction of Jake’s arm.

  “Stop it,” said Fen firmly, taking his head collar and giving it a shake. “That’s bad manners. You don’t bite your master.”

  Revenge debated the matter for a minute, rolling his eyes and looking bootfaced.

  “No,” said Fen, even more firmly, “you’re just showing off. You’re an old softy, really.”

  Revenge, deciding that perhaps he was, butted Fen in the pockets in search of more carrots.

  “What’s his name?” she asked.

  “Revenge.”

  Fen grinned. “Revenge is sweet, he really is.”

  At that moment Jake decided to keep her.

  “If you’re so taken by him, you’d better feed him and skip him out.”

  “What’s he been eating?” said Fen.

  “Stable boys, mostly,” said Jake, “but I think we’ll try and wean him off that habit.”

  Rupert drove home in a blazing temper. He’d tried everything to make Masters tear up the check, but when the man insisted he’d given the buyer a receipt, and refused to name him, Rupert lost his temper and an undignified shouting match ensued.

  On the way home Rupert took it out on Sarah, the brunette he’d met at a show earlier in the week. He’d been furious with himself for bedding her that morning. He’d been on the way home from a dinner in London and had rung Helen to say he’d be late home, as he was making a detour to Surrey to look at a horse. The detour had also taken in Sarah’s flat. He hadn’t enjoyed screwing her at all and he’d fallen asleep afterwards, which made him impossibly late for his appointment with Masters. He’d taken a stupid risk, too. Masters might easily have rung home and Helen smelled a rat and been hurt unnecessarily. He didn’t feel particularly guilty about being unfaithful, but enraged that, through his stupid dalliance, he’d lost a really good horse. He’d have to get his spies out and track Revenge down. By the time he had chewed up a few more people, he might go even cheaper. Since Madrid, Macaulay had been a write-off, losing all his form and confidence. He’d have to go too, he thought, as he dropped Sarah off.

  “When’ll I see you again?” she called after him anxiously.

  But Rupert had driven off without a word. Even the sight of Penscombe in the height of its summer beauty didn’t soothe him. Helen’s clothes, her endless schemes for the garden—a lilac walk here, a little heated swimming pool there, a seventeenth-century stone nymph there—cost a fortune. Billy worked hard, but he cost a fortune, too, always buying other people drinks and feeding Mavis chicken. The whole shooting match is dependent on me, Rupert thought sulkily. I’ve got to win and win to support it.

  He drove straight around to the stables, where he found Billy working one of the novices in a nearby field. He admired Billy’s patience, but why was he resting The Bull and Kitchener this week and not at a show, winning money?

  Billy pulled up and rode towards him, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  “Did you get him?”

  “Already sold on.”

  “Shit, that was bad luck. Who got him?”

  “Wouldn’t say.”

  “Might have been more trouble than he was worth. This is going to be a very good horse, by the way.”

  “Good. It’s about time he started paying his way.”

  He found Marion in the tackroom, cleaning a saddle. She didn’t look up. Still sulking, thought Rupert. For a second he admired the unsupported breasts in the tight blue T-shirt, and the succulent thighs in the denim skirt, which was only just buttoned up enough to hold it up.

  “Didn’t get him,” he said. “He was sold on.”

  “Who to?” Marion bent over the pommel, so Rupert couldn’t see how much she was blushing.

  “Masters wouldn’t say.”

  “Just as well. I quite like having two arms and legs.”

  “Particularly when they’re such sexy legs.”

  She looked up: “Wasn’t aware you’d noticed them recently.”

  “I always notice them.”

  “How was Sarah?” It was an inspired guess, but it hit home.

  Rupert didn’t flicker, then, unable to resist a joke, added, “Rather like Coventry Cathedral—ravishing from the outside, but very disappointing once you got inside.”

  Marion started to giggle. “You are frightful.”

  He went up behind her, stroking the back of her neck. She leant against him, furious with herself for feeling faint with longing.

  “Rupert, darling,” called a voice.

  “In here,” said Rupert, moving away from Marion to examine the diet charts.

  It was Helen, also in navy blue, in a dress which must have cost fifty times more than my skirt and T-shirt, thought Marion. Helen was looking rather pale, her newly washed hair falling to her shoulders, subtly smelling of Miss Dior, her blue high heels catching in the ridges of the floor.

  She’s as out of place here as a tiger lily in a cabbage patch, thought Marion.

  “Darling, how did you get on?”

  “I’m coming in,” said Rupert. “I’m filthy. You can bring me a drink in the bath.”

  He was reading Horse and Hound in a foot of hot, scented water when she walked in. Funny, he reflected, how even after two years she averted her eyes.

  “Nice dress.”

  “It can go back if you don’t like it.”

  “I do. You can take it off in a minute.”

  “Here’s your drink,” she said hastily, hoping to distract him.

  Rupert took a deep gulp and went on reading Audax on the Derby.

  “Why don’t you come and soap my cock?”

  Helen blushed. “Billy’ll be in in a minute.”

  “So what? Not in here, he won’t. Come on.”

  Helen sat on the loo seat and took a birdlike sip of her drink.

  “Why are you drinking vodka?” demanded Rupert. (She usually had sherry.)

  “It’s Perrier, actually.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “I went to see Dr. Benson today.”

  He looked up sharply. “You ill?”

  “No,” she took a deep breath, “I’m going to have a baby.”

  “You what?
” The next moment he’d reared out of the bath like a great dripping whale and taken her in his arms, drenching her.

  “Oh, darling,” he said in a choked voice, “are you sure?”

  “Positive—Rupert, you’re soaking me.”

  “Christ, that’s fantastic. I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “You must rest. You mustn’t carry anything heavy. Are you sure you’re up to carrying that glass of Perrier? When did you think you were? Oh, sweetheart, you should have told me.”

  “I wanted to be sure.”

  “I thought you were on the Pill.”

  “I stopped taking it.” Tears suddenly filled her eyes. “I was real scared after the termination,” she almost gagged on the word, “I wouldn’t be able to conceive. Then I started feeling vile in Madrid.” She sat down on the loo seat.

  “You never told me.” Still dripping, he crouched beside her, kissing her again and again.

  She was so pleased he was pleased, but she wished he’d get dressed. This rampant nakedness seemed incongruous somehow with the momentousness of the occasion.

  Finally he stood up. “My father’ll be knocked out. What shall we call him—Eddie?”

  “He might be a girl.”

  Rupert started doing his sums. “When he’s twenty-four, he’ll be able to ride in the 2000 Olympics.”

  He went to the bedroom window and opened it. “Billy, Billy.”

  “Put something on,” urged Helen, wrapping a towel around him.

  “Billee.”

  Next minute Billy appeared at the edge of the lawn, still riding the gray.

  “Yes?”

  “For Christ’s sake, come here.”

  “Not across the lawn,” wailed Helen. “Mr. Higgins’ll do his nut.”

  “Helen’s going to have a baby!”

  Billy threw his hat high up in the air and rode through some delphiniums.

  “Fantastic.”

  “You can be the fairy godfather,” said Rupert, “and just think what a wonderful opportunity it’ll be to get Nanny back to look after him.”

  Over my dead body, thought Helen.

  At that moment one of the Jack Russells wandered into the bedroom and sicked up a few frothy blades of grass on the carpet. And the dogs are going to be kept outside once the baby comes, she said to herself. I’m not having them in the nursery.

  20

  Fen never dreamt she’d have to work so hard. Jake’s indoor school was finished by the autumn, which meant, even as the days drew in, that she was able to get up at five in the morning and work the horses for two hours before school. Then she would come home, grab a quick bite to eat, dash off her homework, then back to the indoor school until late in the evening. Often she fell asleep at her desk. Her form mistress rang up Tory and complained. Fen was not stupid, just exhausted and totally unmotivated. It was the twentieth century; people didn’t send children down the mines anymore. Her complaints fell on deaf ears. Tory remonstrated gently with Jake and tried to get Fen into bed by ten, but it was often midnight before they finished.

  Jake was a very hard taskmaster. As Fen was tall for her age, it was pointless to waste time learning to ride ponies. She must go straight on to horses, and as she’d be competing initially against children who’d been riding the circuit since they were seven, there was a lot of ground to catch up.

  Fen found it hard to be patient. She only wanted to jump and jump, but Jake insisted she do the groundwork first, hardly letting her ride across the yard without coming to see if she were doing it properly. To straighten her back and deepen her seat, he gave her daily lessons on the lunge, without reins and stirrups, with her arms behind her back, and a stick through them to keep her shoulders straight. Cold weather didn’t deter him. Sometimes they worked outside, with everything frozen, and the snow hardening to a sheet of ice. With the wind up their tails, the horses would give a series of bucks and, stirrupless and reinless, Fen would fly through the air and emerge from the shrubbery like a snowman.

  Day after day she came in with raw bleeding knees and elbows, every bone in her body aching. Seldom did she complain, she was so frightened of being sent back.

  On the whole she was happy, because she felt she was getting somewhere. Like Jake, she loved the cozy family atmosphere created by Tory. She adored the children, Wolf and the cats and the horses, and hero-worshiped Jake. Revenge, however, was her special pet. She spent any free moments in his box, talking to him, calming him. In a way they were learning the ropes together. Like her, when he arrived, he was miserably displaced, suspicious of everyone. Gradually they got their confidence back.

  Revenge was never worked in the same field twice. Horrendously high-strung, he was a picky eater, hated any box but his own, and was liable to kick any strange stable to pieces. He also fell madly in love with Africa, following her everywhere, to Sailor’s irritation, and yelling his head off if she went to shows without him. Jake brought him on with infinite slowness, never overfacing him, retiring him over and over again, going for slow clears to give him confidence, never exciting him by jumping him against the clock.

  Revenge still put in the odd huge buck and had a piece out of Fen if he’d got out of bed the wrong side. But she defended him to the death.

  “He’s really a kind horse,” she would explain, “he always waits when he’s bucked you off.”

  Tory and Fen got on well, but there were undeniable tensions. Although she helped out in the stables, Fen made a lot of extra work at home. She was extremely untidy, dropping her clothes as she stepped out of them, forgetting to bring her washing down, spending hours in the bathroom washing her hair, gazing at her face in the steaming mirror, and leaving the bath filthy and the plughole blocked with hair. She was also terribly dreamy and, when she wasn’t with the horses, her nose was always buried in some technical horse book or riding magazine, and if there was washing-up she always managed to find something to do in the stable. Tory tried not to resent Fen nor to mind her teenage moods, nor to feel jealous that Jake and she spent so much time together.

  Fen adored Jake, but, unlike Tory, she saw his faults. Tory spent hours making quiches and chicken pies for Jake when he was away at shows, which he seldom touched because he got so nervous, and which Tanya, the groom, usually finished up so Tory wouldn’t be hurt. Jake never laughed at Tory’s jokes, seldom reacted, often didn’t answer. She noticed how Tory ended so many sentences with “Isn’t it,” to evoke some sort of response, how she never answered Jake back. Jake and Fen on the other hand had blazing rows.

  One gray day towards the end of November, Fen was particularly tired. Her form mistress had sent her out of the class and the headmistress had come past and shouted at her. Her period was due any minute, her spots were worse than ever, and she felt fat and edgy. Jake was in a picky mood. Tomorrow he and Tanya were off to Vienna and Amsterdam for two big shows. Everything had to be packed up and ready. It was so mild that Tanya had tied Revenge up in the yard to wash his tail. The dead dry leaves were swirling around his feet.

  She had just finished, and Fen, who had fed all the other horses, had Revenge’s feed ready, when she suddenly remembered she hadn’t added any vitamins or chopped carrot to encourage him to eat. Putting the bucket down beside Sailor’s door, she rushed back to the tackroom and here got sidetracked by the latest copy of Riding which had a piece on her hero, Billy Lloyd-Foxe. Alas, Sailor who was on a diet and incurably greedy, seeing the bucket, promptly unbolted his door. Having wolfed all Revenge’s feed, he was discovered by Jake smugly licking his lips.

  Jake hit the roof. “Fen!” he bellowed.

  “Yes,” she said nervously, coming out of the tackroom with a carrot in one hand and the magazine in the other.

  “Can’t you fucking concentrate for one minute?” said Jake furiously. “Filling your stupid head with dreams of Wembley, and lining up above Rupert Campbell-Black, with the Queen telling you what a star you are. Well, you’ll bloody well ne
ver get there unless you pull your head out of the clouds.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s the use of saying sorry? Sailor’s just eaten Revenge’s food. You’re bloody useless.”

  Fen lost her temper. “I hate you; you’re a slave driver.”

  Dropping Riding and the carrot, she raced across the yard, untying Revenge’s head collar. Leaping onto his back, she clattered across the yard, clearing the gate out to the fields, thundering across them, clearing fence after fence, making for the hills.

  “Come back,” howled Jake. “That horse is valuable.”

  “I don’t care,” screamed Fen, picking up Revenge as he stumbled over a rocky piece of ground, galloping on and on until she’d put four or five miles between herself and the Mill House.

  As she passed a cairn of rocks, she realized how dark it had got. Then, suddenly, like a blanket, the mist came down. Tugging Revenge around, she retraced her steps. She came to a fork in the pathway. There was boggy ground to the right. She turned left, the path turned upwards and upwards. It must lead somewhere. Then she went rigid with horror as she realized they were on the edge of a ravine and had nearly tumbled over. She gave a sob of terror as she realized she was totally lost. Gradually the enormity of her crime hit her. Revenge didn’t even belong to Jake; he was Colonel Carter’s and potentially the best horse in the yard, clipped and out in the cold in the middle of winter.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she cried, flinging her arms round the horse’s neck, shuddering uncontrollably in her thin, mist-soaked jersey. “Oh, God and Rev, please help me.”

  For a few seconds Revenge snatched at the short grass. Then he sniffed the wind and set off purposefully. Fen tried to check him, terrified of more ravines, but he was quite determined. They came to marshy ground. Fen, petrified of getting bogged down, could feel his hoofs sinking in, and hear the sucking sound as he pulled them out. She jumped as tall rushes brushed against her legs. Now he was splashing through a little stream. On he plodded, avoiding rocks and boulders, checking carefully for holes. Fen tucked her frozen hands in his blond mane, clinging to him for warmth, letting him carry her. He couldn’t know the way; he’d never been that far from home. They’d never find it.