Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  The mist seemed to be clearing. She could see trees below, and, oh God, surely that was the same cairn of rocks? They were going round in a circle.

  She gave a sob of despair as Revenge turned and started picking his way delicately down a steep hill. It seemed to go on forever; any minute she’d fall off him and tumble crashing to the bottom. Then suddenly the mist seemed to slide away and dimly she could see lights ahead.

  Jake, back at the Mill House, was frantic. He’d been out on one of the novices, scouring the countryside for Fen, shouting, calling, finding nothing. No sound had come back through the thick blanket of fog. Every time he saw a car snaking along the road, he waited for a squeal of brakes and terrible screams.

  He came home again. There was no news.

  “Bloody stupid girl. Christ, why did she do it?”

  Tory took a deep breath. “You’re too tough with her, Jakey. She’s only thirteen.”

  “No time to be superstitious,” snarled Jake, and rode off into the night.

  Tory sighed and went back into the house. It was nearly nine o’clock. Darklis was crying, woken up no doubt by Isa, who was worried about Fen. She had just settled them, when from the yard she heard Africa give her deep whinny. All the other horses immediately rushed to their half-doors, peering out at the clouds rolling back on a beautiful starlit night. The dry leaves circled and rustled, whipped by the wind. The horses turned to prowl around in the straw, then came back to the door and listened again, each knuckering more excitedly.

  Suddenly Tory heard hoofbeats. Africa sent out a joyful neigh into the darkness. The other horses whinnied, snorting and pawing at their doors. Revenge didn’t whinny back; his task wasn’t over yet. Five minutes later he walked into the yard.

  Tory ran out. “Oh, thank God you’re home.”

  Fen burst into tears. “Rev did it. He bought me back. I’m so sorry, so terribly terribly sorry.”

  Rushing out of the tackroom, Tanya caught her as she fell off the horse. “You’re frozen, pet. There, don’t cry. You’re safe.”

  “Rev did it,” mumbled Fen.

  Revenge didn’t want a hero’s welcome. He stumped past the other horses without a glance, making disapproving noises about stupid teenagers who got lost and made him late for supper. He smelt of mist, sweat, and exhaustion, and went straight to his box and, with a long groan, folded up and began to roll, his feet shadowboxing the air.

  “Where’s Jake?” muttered Fen, through frantically chattering teeth.

  “Out looking for you. Go in and have a bath.”

  Even after a bath she was still cold. She put on her nightgown and three jerseys over it, looking around her little room. The green-sprigged Laura Ashley wallpaper, put up especially by Tory, was already covered in posters of Billy Lloyd-Foxe and Ludwig von Schellenberg. The shelves brimmed over with every horse book imaginable, and her collapsing Pullein-Thompson novels. Every shelf was crowded with china horses which took Tory so long to dust. On her dressing table was the hedgehog which Jake had made her from teasels for her last birthday. They had been so good to her and she’d kicked them in the teeth.

  Jake would be quite right to pack her back to her mother and the colonel. She picked up Lester, her battered teddy bear, named after Lester Piggott, cuddling him for comfort. Her heart sank even further at the sound of horse’s hoofs on the bridge, muffled by the willows—Jake coming home.

  He’d be insane with rage. He had a five o’clock start in the morning. His best horse had been sabotaged. Looking through a crack in the curtain she saw him slide off the big black gelding, hand him to Tanya, and go into Revenge’s box. Leading him out, he examined his legs, making Tory walk him up and down.

  Fen trembled, terrified he’d find something wrong. But he merely nodded curtly and turned towards the house. Fen crept away from the curtain. Next moment she heard him coming up the stairs, and the boards creaking outside her room. I’m not going to cry, she thought desperately, he’s bored by tears.

  “I’m so sorry,” she stammered.

  “I should think so,” he said bleakly. “Of all the bloody irresponsible things to do. You could have killed yourself and the horse.”

  “I didn’t think.” She hung her head.

  “Time you started. Can’t afford passengers.”

  “Please don’t send me back.” A tear splashed onto her hands. If she had looked up she would have seen his face soften.

  It would make her swollen-headed if he told her that the only reason he was so harsh with her was because he knew how good she could be. He put a hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s all right, no harm done. Rev’s okay Must like it here. After all, he came home.”

  Fen looked up, eyes streaming. “He did; he was so clever. I was completely lost. He brought me home like Lassie.” There was a pause.

  “When d’you break up?”

  “The eighteenth.”

  “Well, you can leave two days early and come to Olympia with me.”

  She gazed at him unbelievingly.

  For a minute she couldn’t speak, then she flung her arms round Jake’s neck. “Oh, Jakey, thank you,” she sobbed, “I love you so much.”

  Helen had honestly intended to go to the Olympia show. She still had some Christmas shopping to do. She’d catch up on a few matinees in the afternoons and spend the evenings watching Rupert. Friends who’d gone skiing had lent them a penthouse flat, overlooking Holland Park, just a few minutes from Olympia. She was touched and a little ashamed by Rupert’s delight that she would be with him. It was the first show she’d been to for ages. She’d been so sick with the baby and felt so tired, and after a tidal wave of Rupert’s female fans sent her flying and nearly trampled her to death at the Royal International back in July, she’d decided to give shows a miss.

  Rupert had been competing abroad for much of the last five months, and during the separations she’d been very lonely and spent many restless nights worrying she might miscarry or the baby might be deformed. She took her pregnancy very seriously, eating the right food, resting, going religiously to prenatal classes, and giving up drink completely. So those jolly reunions after Billy and Rupert came back from successful shows, when even Helen got mildly tight, were things of the past.

  She steeled herself not to mind when Rupert was away. She missed him, but subconsciously she built up other resources. She spent a fortune on baby clothes and another fortune on a new nursery suite, decorating the baby’s room daffodil yellow and white and putting in an oven, a washing machine, a dryer, and a small fridge next door, with a room for the nanny, all done up in Laura Ashley, beyond that.

  She also liked being able to watch all the egghead programs she wanted on television, to listen to classical music all the time, and not to have to cook huge meals when she was feeling sick.

  Then Rupert would come home, bringing not tenderness but silver cups and suitcases of dirty washing. Invariably on his return he wanted a sexual marathon, and although her gynecologist had reassured her that sex couldn’t harm the baby, Rupert’s lovemaking was so vigorous that she was terrified she’d miscarry and found herself tensing up and going dry inside.

  She also had the feeling Rupert wasn’t being supportive enough. He flatly refused to go to prenatal classes or be present at the birth.

  “It’s too Islington for words,” he said, by way of excuse. “I’ve pulled calves, I’ve pulled foals, but I’ll be buggered if I’ll pull my own baby. I’ve found you the best gynecologist in the country, booked you into a private room at Gloucester Hospital. Let them get on with it.”

  He also laughed his head off when he found her listening to Beethoven and Vivaldi in order to stimulate mentally the baby in the womb.

  “D’you want to give birth to a string quartet?”

  Throughout November and December he’d been away on a successful but punishing round trip to Geneva, Vienna, and Amsterdam, which left only a hectic twenty-four hours at home before setting out for Olympia. Even so Rupert found
time for sex. He’d won a Polaroid camera as one of his extra prizes at Amsterdam and was determined to take photographs of Helen in the nude.

  “Your boobs are so fantastic since you got pregnant.”

  Helen, conscious of her swelling stomach, couldn’t get into the swing of things at all. Nor did she like being photographed first thing in the morning without any makeup on.

  “It’s not your face I’m interested in,” said Rupert, laying each photograph on the dressing table so they gradually took on color and shape, until he got so turned on he had to make love to her.

  Afterwards she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, to find a naked Rupert joyfully poring over the photographs.

  “For goodness’ sake put them away. Mrs. Bodkin might see them,” she pleaded.

  “This one’s much the best. Come and look.”

  Helen approached cautiously; then embarrassment turned to rage as she realized he was admiring not her naked beauty but a photograph of Badger, lying grinning upside down in his basket, now banished to the landing.

  “I must show Billy,” said Rupert.

  “Why not take one of Mavis, too?” snapped Helen.

  She was fed up with those wretched dogs and horses. It wasn’t a question of playing second fiddle; she wasn’t even in the orchestra.

  Later Rupert and Billy had a session with their secretary, Miss Hawkins, catching up on the mail and checking that entry forms had been sent off for the next few months. When Helen came down with some washing she found the dark blue diary for the next year on the kitchen table. They must have been working out the first six months’ show dates. Fondly she turned to March 7, the most important entry of all, the expected date for the birth of the baby. But instead, to her fury, she found Antwerp, Dortmund, Milan scrawled across the first eighteen days in March, with red marker arrows stretching from page to page indicating they wouldn’t be returning to England between shows. Helen couldn’t believe it. Rupert intended to be away for the most momentous event of his life. She stormed into the drawing room, where Rupert was pouring himself and Billy prelunch drinks.

  “Billy, will you please leave the room,” she said in a dangerously quiet voice. “I want to speak with Rupert.”

  “Yes, sir, certainly sir,” said Billy, grinning and making himself scarce.

  “What on earth’s the matter?” asked Rupert. “Not sulking about Badger’s picture, are you? D’you want a drink?”

  “You know I haven’t touched liquor since I became pregnant. I’d like to know the meaning of this.” She flung the diary at Rupert. “Look at March.”

  Rupert opened it. “Well? Oh, I’m sorry to be away three weeks on the trot, but they’re all good shows and I’ll be home a lot in January and February.”

  “Haven’t you any idea what else is happening in March?”

  Rupert look blank. “Can’t think.”

  “Our baby is to be born.”

  Rupert grinned in dismay. “Oh, Christ, angel, I’m frightfully sorry. It completely slipped my mind. Don’t worry, I can hop on a plane the minute you go into labor, or if you really think it’ll arrive on the seventh,” he glanced at the diary, “I could fly out late to Antwerp. They don’t have the big prize money there till the third day.”

  Helen, for the first time since they were married, went berserk, screaming abuse at Rupert, her red hair flying like a maenad, her face scarlet.

  Rupert looked at her in amazement. “Are you sure you haven’t been drinking?”

  The next minute she was hurling ornaments at him. The altered Augustus John went flying through the air and hit the wall with a splintering crash. Then she started on the bookshelf. Burke’s Landed Gentry nearly landed on target, followed by Ruff’s Guide to the Turf, followed by bound volumes of Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall fell at Rupert’s feet. Rupert, laughing and dodging out of the way like a boxer, annoyed her even more. As the top shelf was emptied, there was a knock on the door. It was Mrs. Bodkin in her hat and coat, quivering with curiosity.

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Yes,” said Helen. “Bring me a jug of orange juice, please.”

  Two minutes later Mrs. Bodkin puffed in with the jug and two glasses on a tray.

  “Thank you. That’ll be all, Mrs. B. See you tomorrow,” said Helen, firmly shutting the door on her. Then, picking up the jug of orange juice, she hurled it in Rupert’s face and collapsed sobbing on the sofa.

  Nothing Rupert could say would placate her. If he wasn’t going to be with her when the baby was born, she wasn’t coming to his bloody show. She still refused to speak to him when he and Billy set off to London that afternoon. Rupert, who’d always believed that a room full of roses and a gold bracelet could placate any woman, was slightly surprised.

  21

  Olympia, the last show before Christmas, always has an end-of-term atmosphere. Most of the riders have a break afterwards until the middle of January. All the glamour of the sport is concentrated and enhanced by an indoor show. The collecting ring stewards and the stable manager in charge of the one hundred and fifty loose boxes have increasing difficulty keeping high-spirited riders in order as the excitement mounts. Practical jokes and parties go on all week.

  Neither Billy nor Rupert, however, were in a particularly festive mood as their lorry rolled into the horse-box park on the eve of the first day. Billy was fretting because he suspected Lavinia Greenslade had transferred her affections to a handsome French count named Guy de la Tour. Rupert was still smarting over Helen’s intransigence. Christmas shopping traffic jams were driving him wild.

  “Fuck the plebs, fuck the plebs,” he screamed, leaning on his horn.

  Billy was further depressed to see a huge lorry carelessly parked like an acute accent, with Guy de la Tour, Republique Française in huge letters across one side.

  “Let’s go and get drunk,” said Billy.

  Rupert’s temper was not improved the following day when they walked past the exercise ring and saw Fen lunging Revenge.

  “Nice horse,” said Billy.

  Although Revenge had been transformed into a picture of hard muscle, health, and well-being over the past six months, he was still unmistakable with his strange zigzagging blaze and his two long white socks. For a second they paused to watch him.

  “Don’t recognize the groom,” said Billy.

  “I say, darling,” shouted Rupert.

  Fen swung round, turning crimson. She couldn’t believe they were talking to her.

  “What’s the name of that horse?”

  “Revenge.”

  “Who does he belong to?”

  “Jake Lovell.”

  “Shit, that’s where he’s ended up,” said Rupert. “The little bastard pulled a fast one on me. I wonder who tipped him off.”

  Dear God, prayed Fen fervently, make my spots go, give me some decent boobs, and don’t let me fancy Rupert Campbell-Black.

  At the beginning of the week the collecting ring gossip was all of the two Italian horses who had escaped and had a lovely time galloping up and down the main road. Now it had switched to Guy de la Tour’s romance with Lavinia and to Jake Lovell’s new horse. Every time Revenge came into the arena, afternoon or evening, people rushed to the ringside to have a look. At the beginning of the show, the lights and the crowds had upset him and he went around star-gazing and leaping two foot above the jumps like a ginger, hairy-legged spider. After forty-eight hours, he settled down.

  There had been a bad moment, however, on the second day. Jake put his foot in the stirrup and Revenge put in a hell of a buck, landing Jake on top of a steaming pile of dung.

  “Found your own level, Lovell,” jeered Rupert as he rode past. Jake’s reply was suitably obscene. It took all Fen’s tact to calm him down.

  “I’ll soak your breeches in bleach,” she said soothingly. “All the stains’ll come out.”

  Nor were the fates being kind to Billy. Just when he was trying to woo Lavinia back
, a local barber gave him a hideous, far-too-short haircut.

  “I got so engrossed in Playboy, I forgot to watch him,” moaned Billy afterwards.

  Even worse, Billy turned The Bull too fast into the combination on the second night, forcing him to put in a stop. Billy sailed over his head, landing on a pole and knocking out his two front teeth, which further damaged his beauty. There wasn’t time to have them capped. He’d have to wait until after Christmas.

  With no sign of Helen, Rupert’s eye started to rove. Every day there were novelty events—the Army did a display of tent-pegging, lady clowns did dressage. The pony club put on a demonstration of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” First amused by the fact that Snow White’s horse had diarrhea, Rupert’s eye then fell on a ravishing girl playing Grumpy named Tiffany Bathgate. During the week he’d bought her drinks and chatted her up. He even bought her a £150 gold watch from the Garrard’s stand as a Christmas present, which she permanently showed off on her wrist like a dog holding out a sore paw.

  By the final night Fen was absolutely knackered. She hardly had the energy to wash her hair for the party that night. Living on junk food all week, her spots were worse than ever. She longed and longed to be a rider or at least one of the elite bunch of grooms who all knew each other, swapped endless gossip, and who had found time to go shopping and come back with pretty clothes from Biba and Bus Stop. She admired from afar the handsome Guy de la Tour, he who had so captivated Lavinia. Love had made Lavinia prettier than ever. She had cut off her long bubble curls and now, with her hair as short as a boy’s, looked the epitome of French chic. Already half the show-jumping groupies, who hung around the place in breeches hoping someone might mistake them for a competitor, had followed suit and lopped off their long rippling manes as well. Fen also noticed Billy looking absolutely miserable. She felt so sorry for him, although he had cheered up a bit earlier that evening when he and Rupert won the fancy dress relay. Billy with a pipe in his mouth and a Gannex mac had dressed up as Harold Wilson, while Rupert cavorted around in high heels, a red dress, and a blond wig, with orange peel in his teeth, as Marcia Falkender. It had brought the house down.