Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  Billy went back to Janey. As an excuse to escape from the party for a second, Helen decided to check if Marcus was okay. There were wine stains all over her beautiful carpet. Why couldn’t they all go, so she could get the place straight again? In the hall Rupert was talking to Hans and a couple of Italians. When he’d drunk too much, he seldom betrayed it, but his eyes tended to glitter. Now they were like sapphires under a burglar’s flashlight.

  “Where are you going?” he said, not turning around.

  “Just to check Marcus.”

  “If he doesn’t shut up, I’ll come upstairs and ram a cricket stump up his arse.”

  Quivering with rage, Helen fled upstairs. How could Rupert say terrible things like that, just to get a laugh, when Marcus was so darling? Despite the din, he was still fast asleep.

  Whoops and yells from downstairs made her rush out onto the landing. Hanging over the stairs, she heard Rupert saying to a rather pale Podge, “Go on darling, go and get him.”

  “Mrs. C-B won’t like it.”

  “She’ll have to lump it.”

  Podge opened the front door. Helen could see a flurry of snowflakes and she was gone.

  “You can’t, Rupert,” said Janey, half laughing. “Don’t be a sod, not on Helen’s new carpet. It’s taken quite enough punishment as it is.”

  Helen went back and turned off Marcus’s light. What could they be talking about? She powdered her nose and combed her hair. Oh God, she was tired. If only she could go to bed and read Mansfield Park. Then she heard more cheers and a commotion downstairs. For a minute she thought she must be dreaming, for there was Revenge in the hall, and Rupert was jumping onto his back, riding into the drawing room to colossal cheers and screams of laughter. Blazing with fury, she ran down the stairs.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she screamed. Over the laughter, no one heard.

  “Twenty-five pounds you can’t jump that sofa,” said Count Guy.

  “Done,” said Rupert and the next moment he’d cleared it, narrowly missing the chandelier.

  “Rupert!” screamed Helen. “What are you doing on that horse?”

  Everyone suddenly went quiet.

  “No party’s complete without Revenge,” said Rupert, and popped him back over the sofa.

  “Get him out of here,” she screamed hysterically. “Out, out, out!”

  “All right,” said Rupert, but as Revenge came into the hall, unnerved no doubt by the occasion, he crapped extensively, which was greeted by howls of mirth.

  “I think he’s trying to say he doesn’t like your new carpet,” said Rupert. Helen gave a scream of horror and fled upstairs, throwing herself down on her bed, sobbing her heart out. How could he do this to her, how could he, how could he?

  Malise met Hilary at the bottom of the stairs. They had already had a long discussion about the Campbell-Black marriage and knew whose side they were on.

  “Go to her,” said Malise. “At once. I’ll see someone clears up this mess.”

  Hilary found Helen a sodden heap on the bed. “I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it. Why does he humiliate me like that?”

  “I don’t know, dear.” Hilary stroked her hair. “He’s a monster, as I keep telling you. You’re exhausted. Take a couple of pills and go to sleep. I’ll help you get undressed.”

  Just as she had got a still sobbing Helen out of her clothes and was fetching her nightgown from under the pillow, Rupert walked in.

  “Get out,” he said to Hilary. “I might have guessed you’d be here.”

  “I’ve just given your wife a couple of sleeping pills. Now leave her alone.”

  “She can’t go to sleep. She’s the hostess.”

  “You stop being a hostess after something like that. How could you do that to her? You’re the most uncaring man I’ve ever met.”

  “It was a joke and for a bet,” said Rupert tonelessly. “All the mess has been cleared up. There’s not a mark on the carpet. Now get out.”

  “Please stay,” sobbed Helen.

  “I’m not leaving till you fall asleep, dear,” said Hilary.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” exploded Rupert, storming out of the room.

  Helen, surprisingly, was so exhausted she fell asleep almost immediately. Hilary stayed a few minutes, folding up her clothes and tidying the room and her own appearance. Switching off the light, she quietly closed the door, then, moving down the landing, checked first Marcus and then Kate. Out on the landing she found Rupert, waiting with a glass in his hand. His hatred was almost palpable.

  “They’re all asleep, no thanks to you,” she said.

  Downstairs they could hear a tantivy. The band was playing the “Post Horn gallop.” Rupert stooped to pat Badger, who was trembling. He hated rows and was rising like a souffleé out of one of the Jack Russells’ baskets.

  “Why do you drool over that dog and neglect Helen? What’s she ever done to you?”

  Rupert stood up. “She was perfectly happy before you came along and started breast-feeding her this feminist crap.”

  “That’s not true. She was nearly dying when I first met her, and you weren’t even there.”

  “I happened to be trapped in one of the worst blizzards of the winter; not much I could do about it.”

  “You grumble that she has no friends, and then when she finds one, you insult her. You always treat me as if I don’t exist.”

  “Perhaps you don’t. I detest women that come on like Super-girl, and you detest me,” he said coming towards her, breathing in the hot feral sweat of her body, “because your pratt of a husband couldn’t even satisfy a hamster.”

  “Don’t you dare say anything against Crispin!” screamed Hilary.

  “You have to go round poisoning other people’s marriages,” Rupert went on. “Well, bloody well stay away from Helen.”

  “She needs a few allies.”

  “Not like you, she doesn’t.” He was taunting her now. “I know what your game is. You liked undressing her, didn’t you? She’s beautiful, isn’t she? And you’ve been running after her as fast as your unshaven legs can carry you, you bloody dyke. Well, she won’t enjoy it, she’s not very keen on that sort of thing.”

  Next minute Hilary had slapped him very hard across the face. Without a thought, Rupert hit her back, even harder. She burst into tears and, somehow, a second later she was in his arms and he was kissing her, forcing her mouth open. Frantically she struggled, flailing her fists against his back, so much broader and more muscled than Crispin’s. Suddenly she relaxed, mouth separating, and was kissing him back even more fiercely.

  “I hate you,” she sobbed.

  “You don’t. You want me like hell. You’ve wanted me ever since you saw me at Gloucester Hospital. That’s why you’ve been smarming over Helen all this time.”

  “You’re a brute.”

  “Of course.” He took her hair and yanked her head back so he could kiss her again. Fingers splayed on her back, his thumbs caressed her shaven armpits. “That’s a great improvement,” he said softly. “It was getting so long, you could have plaited it.”

  He drew back the landing curtain. The snow was three inches thick on the window ledge and still coming down.

  “We mustn’t,” she said, pulling away from him. “It’s so unsupportive.”

  “Not nearly as unsupportive as you’re going to be,” he whispered evilly. “I’m going hunting tomorrow. Get rid of Crispin after lunch. He can take Germaine tobogganing for an hour or so.”

  27

  Unable to face the hassle of a big wedding, Billy married Janey in Gloucester Registry Office at the beginning of January, thus forfeiting the large number of wedding presents which are so useful to a couple setting up house. Rupert was best man. Helen was disappointed that they didn’t even bother to have the marriage blessed in Penscombe church, but Billy felt, that first year with Janey, that the gods were blessing him anyway. Never had he been so happy.

  Just before they married, Janey negotiated a fat deal
with her paper that she would write a series of racy interviews around the world, which enabled her to travel with Billy on the circuit, all expenses paid. From Antwerp, to Paris, to Madrid, to Athens, to New York her portable typewriter gathered airline stickers, as she talked to presidents, rock stars, and distinguished tax exiles.

  Often there were tensions when she had to file her weekly piece. A sweating, tearful, teeth-gritting Janey, bashing away at her typewriter in some foreign hotel bedroom, wasn’t conducive to Billy getting any sleep before a big class. Nor did Janey, hopelessly unpunctual, endear herself to other members of the team by making them late for dinners and parties. Billy was too besotted to notice. His horses were going well. Mandryka, the dark brown Hanoverian Ludwig von Schellenberg had given as a wedding present, upgraded himself incredibly quickly and was showing all the makings of being as great a horse as The Bull, or Moggie Meal Al, as he was now renamed. Billy winced, but not much. At £50,000 a year from Kevin Coley, it was worth wincing for. Anyway he was still the same Bull in the stable.

  In fact, in that first year of marriage, Janey and Billy were extremely rich. Janey’s salary, plus expenses, plus Billy’s steady winnings, plus Kevin’s sponsorship, added up to nearly £100,000 a year. And although Billy was always buying Rupert drinks and gave Helen his winnings for housekeeping (when he hadn’t spent them celebrating), gas, electricity, telephone, and heating bills at Penscombe were invariably picked up by Rupert.

  When they were in England, Billy and Janey lived with Helen and Rupert and muttered vaguely about house-hunting. In the end it was again part of Rupert’s colossal generosity towards Billy that he let them have Lime Tree Place, an enchanting but dilapidated seventeenth-century cottage on the Penscombe estate, which had just become vacant, on condition they pay for doing it up. Planning permission had to be obtained to extend the kitchen and build on a dining room, two more bedrooms, and a nursery. Being twenty-nine, Janey hoped to start a baby almost immediately. In time, they would turn the moldering, moss-encrusted outbuildings into stabling for a dozen horses. Helen came down to the cottage and talked a lot about closet space and knocking down walls, and, inspired by the beauty of Penscombe, Janey felt there was no need to spare any expense.

  For Janey and Billy, that first year seemed effortless, because at home they were backed up by Helen’s clockwork domestic routine which ironed Billy’s breeches, washed his shirts, remembered to get his red coats and dinner jackets back from the cleaners; and by Miss Hawkins, who saw that Billy’s entry forms were sent off and bills were paid and appointments put in the diary.

  For Janey’s liking, they had spent rather too much time with Kevin and Enid Coley, who flew out to several of the foreign shows and were always hanging about at Wembley, Crittleden, and Olympia.

  Billy made excuses for Kevin, saying he was merely proud that Billy’s horses were going so well and particularly that Moggie Meal Al came second in the European championships in Paris. And if Kevin did tell Billy how to ride and Malise exactly how to run the British team, Billy felt Malise was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Janey was rather less tolerant. As a wedding present, the Coleys gave them a large china poodle lifting its leg on a lamppost. Janey wrote Enid a gushing letter of thanks and put the poodle in the cellar.

  There were also too many invitations to visit Château Kitsch, as Janey called Kevin’s mock Tudor castle in Sunningdale, where there was lots of horseplay and one was likely to be pushed into the heated swimming pool at any moment. But on the way home, they enjoyed lots of giggles about the electric toadstools that lit up on either side of the drive at night, and the huge luminous Moggie Meal Cat symbol outside the front door which winked and me-owed when you pressed the doorbell, and the button in Kevin’s den which had merely to be pushed for the entire leather-bound works of Dickens and Scott to slide back, revealing a bar offering every drink known to man.

  Janey, reared in Fleet Street, could drink even Billy under the table. Looking out of the window one evening, Helen saw them coming up the drive hysterical with laughter, as Billy pretended to lift his leg on every chestnut tree.

  “Billy’s being Kevin’s china poodle,” explained Janey. “Christ, my feet are killing me. We ran out of petrol and had to walk from Stroud.”

  Helen had mixed feelings about Janey. In the end you couldn’t help liking her. She was fun and marvelously iconoclastic about show jumping, but she was a bit too easy to talk to. Any secret confided would be round Penscombe and Fleet Street in a flash. And Janey was so messy, wandering round the house with her cat, Harold Evans, riding like a parrot on her shoulder, eyes screwed up against the cigarette smoke, spilling ash and leaving a trail of dirty cups and, after midday, glasses.

  Helen, so fastidious, couldn’t bear the fact that Janey kept pinching her perfume and makeup and borrowing her clothes. There was an embarrassing occasion when Helen and Rupert were away for the weekend and Janey borrowed one of Helen’s dresses to go out to dinner with the Coleys and split it, not even down the seam, so it was beyond repair.

  Even worse was the time Helen came downstairs, ashen, because her mink coat, given to her by Rupert on their second anniversary, was missing. She was about to ring the police, when Janey suggested they look round the house first.

  “Isn’t this it, bundled up in the downstairs loo?” Janey announced rather casually two minutes later. “Mrs. Bodkin must have brought it down for refurbishing—ha-ha, that’s a joke—or something.”

  It was unfortunate that Janey had left three toffee papers, and a program for a Michael Frayn play that had been on in Bath, in the pocket. Helen was very upset, but too nice to shout at Janey. Instead she went to church and asked God to make her more tolerant.

  Occasionally, Janey cooked, but made such a mess in the kitchen that it took Helen twice as long to clear up afterwards, and she wished Janey wouldn’t take books out on her library tickets, read them in the bath, and forget to return them, or even worse, lose them abroad. Helen, who’d never kept a library book too long, and always renewed them, was upset and bustled.

  In a way, Billy and Janey’s presence helped Rupert and Helen’s marriage. Rupert tended not to be so intolerant if the others were there; but in another way their happiness showed up the flaws.

  Rupert was wildly jealous of the love Helen lavished on Marcus. “I’m so enjoying him,” she kept saying. (“As though Marcus was a quadruple vodka and tonic,” said Janey.) He was also envious of the relaxed hedonistic relationship Billy had with Janey. When had Helen ever got tight with him. When had they last been hysterical with laughter? He heard the giggles and gasps of pleasure issuing from their bedroom. Mrs. Bodkin was always finding empty bottles under the bed.

  Janey, Helen thought, brought out the worst in Billy. She encouraged him to drink more, bet more, always dine out rather than eat at home. Billy, more emotional and physically less strong than Rupert, couldn’t cope with such excess.

  The blatant sexuality of the relationship unnerved Helen, too. Billy and Janey were always sloping off to bed. You only had to look at Janey’s washing on the line. Mrs. Bodkin’s mouth disappeared in disapproval at the black and scarlet crotchless knickers, the cut-out bras, the G-strings, suspender belts, and fishnet stockings. Janey, careless and thoughtless, left her vibrator in their unmade bed, which was found by Mrs. Bodkin.

  “Billy’s got a bad back. It’s for massaging his spine,” explained Janey, airily. Mrs. Bodkin was not convinced; Janey was a minx.

  Helen and Janey’s attitudes to each other were ambiguous. Janey was jealous of Helen’s beauty. Helen even looked gorgeous in a bath cap, and Billy would never say a word against her. Helen, spurred on by Janey’s fame and journalistic success, started working on her novel again.

  “She talks as if she’s writing Hamlet,” grumbled Janey. It irritated the hell out of Janey that Helen was always slightly dismissive of Janey’s journalism. She never commented on Janey’s pieces even if they were spread across two pages of the paper. Even w
hen she produced her much praised interview with Kissinger entitled “You’re only as good as your last peace,” Helen merely said, when pestered, that she didn’t feel Janey had quite captured the full weight of Kissinger. It was part of her puritan upbringing that you must never praise if you didn’t admire. But in this instance, duty became a pleasure.

  “She doesn’t mean it bitchily,” Billy kept protesting.

  “Oh, she does, Buster, she does,” said Janey grimly.

  Helen, in fact, was jealous of Janey for being so sexy. Occasionally she worried that Billy, Rupert, and Janey spent so much time abroad together. Rupert did little to dispel this fear. It diverted any suspicions she might have had about him and Hilary.

  Show jumping and Rupert changed during the midseventies. As the sport became more popular and sponsorship increased, so did the prize money. Before, the show-jumping season had lasted from April to October; now, riders could jump all the year round and, because of the number of indoor evening shows, they were kept busy by night as well as by day. When he started in the sport, Rupert would buzz off to Argentina to play polo, or go racing at Longchamps or skiing at Klosters. Now, show jumping had become an all-consuming passion. Always on the circuit, he was jumping his horses so hard, he wore them out in a year or so and, as a result, was endlessly searching for new ones. If he was at home he was training horses or selling them on. Horses took over his life, so determined was he not to turn professional.

  Podge traveled with him, adoring, satisfying his physical needs, suffering but not sulking if something better took his fancy. And on the rare occasions he was back in Gloucestershire, there was Hilary, ranting, cantankerous, and insatiable, but exerting a horrible fascination over him.

  After the party for Janey and Billy, Helen retreated into herself, becoming more and more house-proud, “spending her time rubbing female fingerprints off Rupert,” said Janey. Helen spent a great deal of money on clothes and at the hairdresser’s, and did a lot for charity. Hilary didn’t help. For her own good reasons, she kept urging Helen to walk out on Rupert.