Riders

by Jilly Cooper

“I don’t want excuses,” said Malise. “Rupert accepts full responsibility, but that still doesn’t alter the fact that you shouldn’t have been out of your room, in a party dress, an hour after you’d been sent to bed. Now, d’you want to come and have a look at the Sistine Chapel?”

  There were two big classes that afternoon: the first a knockout competition, the second a puissance, sponsored by one of Italy’s leading car manufacturers.

  “Macaulay’s in a foul mood,” Sarah told Fen when she got to the showground. “He’s just sulking in his box.”

  “He’s fed up with not winning,” said Fen. “I’m going to jump him in the puissance.”

  Sarah looked horrified. “Are you sure that’s wise? Jake’s never jumped him in a puissance, and high-jumping really isn’t his forte. The ground’s absolutely rock hard.”

  “I don’t care,” said Fen. “Get him ready.”

  The knockout competition before the puissance consisted of two U-shaped courses each of nine jumps, lying side by side. The riders raced up the outside of the U’s, then around the top and came side by side down the inside of the U’s. Riders going around the right-hand U had to wear a primrose yellow sash to distinguish them. Twenty-four riders started. Fen had a walkover in the first round. Apart from that, she had a tough draw, which included Guy de la Tour, Ludwig, and Rupert. In the other draw was Piero Fratinelli, son of the car firm and darling of the crowd.

  Her first battle was against Griselda, whom she had great delight in beating by a couple of lengths. This was just Desdemona’s sort of class. She was nippy, lithe as a cat; her father hadn’t won the Cesarewitch for nothing.

  Count Guy, whom she rode against next, had had rather too many glasses of wine at lunchtime and carelessly had the first fence down, so Fen was able to conserve Desdemona’s energy and coast to an easy clear. Ludwig put out Rupert; Piero Fratinelli sadly put out Billy. But Fen had no time to feel sorry before she had donned the yellow sash and was back in the ring, competing against Ludwig.

  “He’s taken one prize off us this week, and he’s not going to do it again,” Fen said to Desdemona.

  The handsome Ludwig was already in the ring, exchanging badinage with the rest of the German team who, already knocked out, were sitting in the riders’ stand. He turned, giving Fen a dazzling but slightly patronizing smile.

  “Ah, Mees Fenella, I vill really haf to try. You look very nice in zat yellow sash.”

  “Yes,” muttered Fen, “and I’m jolly well going to wear it again in the final.”

  Ludwig got away a fraction after Fen, who streaked ahead, nibbling at Desdemona’s ears, racing her like a gymkhana pony, rocketing over the jumps without any regard for safety. On the U-turn her hat flew off.

  Oh, Christ, thought Billy, in anguish. I hope she doesn’t fall on her head.

  Ludwig, on his big striding horse, was gaining on her. Neck and neck they came down the center.

  “Go on, Des,” screamed Fen.

  Desdemona saw the collecting ring. Her blood was up. Flattening her pink ears in fury, she edged past the post a nose ahead of Ludwig.

  “Photo feenish,” chorused the German team from the stands.

  “It’s ours,” said Rupert, grinning and making a V-sign at them.

  Piero beat Wishbone, to the delight of the crowd. The stadium was like a cauldron. Fen kept the primrose yellow sash and the right side. She had to wait, riding Desdemona around and around, while Piero got his breath back.

  “Number Thirty-one,” said the collecting ring steward.

  “Good luck,” said Rupert, handing her her hat. “At least we know you’re not swollen-headed.”

  Ignoring him, Fen rode into the ring, where Piero was sitting on the huge, dark bay thoroughbred, Dante, who had been purchased for millions of lira and who was hardly sweating.

  How ever much she polished Desdemona’s coat, she’d never got her that shiny, thought Fen wistfully, but the little mare stepped out proudly, ears pricked and flickering at the cheers.

  David and Goliath, thought Billy, as Piero looked down at Fen, and smiled as he took off his hat to the judges. Fen bowed beside him. Then with a supremely Latin gesture, Piero picked up Fen’s hand and kissed it.

  “Bella bella bella,” roared the crowd.

  “She’s gone scarlet, bless her,” said Driffield fondly.

  Billy looked at him in amazement. Christ, even Driff was smitten.

  Piero and Fen lined up, Desdemona snatching at her bit and casting disapproving glances at Dante: don’t you dare cheat now. The red flag dropped: they were off.

  “Come on, angel,” cried Fen, as they threw themselves over the first three fences. Reaching the bend, she saw a huge black shape already swinging around. He was ahead of her.

  “Go on, Des,” screamed Fen, bucketing over the fences like a runaway Ferrari. The crowd were going berserk. “Piero, Piero, Piero,” the cry rose to a tremendous roar. Piero, ahead by a fence, looked round to make sure of his lead. Fen picked up her whip and gave Desdemona a jockey’s swipe down her steaming flank. Outraged, the mare shot into overdrive. At the same time, the dark bay, Dante, caught a pole with his off hind. As it fell Fen drew level. She was over and clear; she’d made it. Desdemona, livid at being whacked, went into a succession of outraged bucks which nearly unseated Fen.

  “I’m sorry, angel,” she said, pulling her up. “I needn’t have done it but I daren’t risk it. You are a total star.”

  She hoped the crowd weren’t going to lynch her for beating their hero, but Malise’s face told her everything.

  “You’ve broken your duck. Brilliantly ridden.”

  “Terrific,” said Billy, hugging her. “She went like a dream.”

  “Not bad for a beginner,” said Rupert. “Are we friends again?”

  “No,” said Fen, and stalked off to warm Macaulay up for the puissance.

  That evening, when she got back to the hotel Fen rang Jake.

  “I suppose you’ve won a class at last,” he said sourly, “or you wouldn’t be ringing.”

  “Co-rrect,” said Fen. “I made such a cock-up of things earlier in the week, I didn’t dare. Desdemona won the knockout. I beat Ludwig, then Piero in the final.”

  Jake grunted. “How’s Macaulay?”

  “Wonderful. Actually I’ve got good news and bad news about him.”

  “For Christ’s sake. He’s all right, isn’t he?”

  “Well, the bad news is, I entered him in the puissance.”

  “You what?” Even at a thousand miles away, she quailed.

  “But the good news is, he won.”

  For two minutes Jake called her every name under the sun. Then he asked, “How high did he jump?”

  Fen giggled. “Seven foot, two, easy-peasy. He could have gone higher; and, oh Jake, he was so delighted to be in the money again. You know how he adores winning. He bucked after every jump and insisted on doing two laps of honor and ate the president’s carnation. But he’s really well,” she added hastily. “I hosed down his legs myself and put on cooling liniment, and I’ll walk him round in an hour or two, but it really bucked him up.”

  “How much have you won?”

  “Well, I haven’t worked it out yet; you know my maths. About £3,000, I should think. But the best news is I won a little car as well, so I’ll be able to whizz you around all over the place when you come out of hospital. How are you, anyway?”

  Jake didn’t want to talk about himself, but she could tell by the sound of his voice how thrilled he was.

  40

  There was a drinks’ party at the British Embassy that night, and for once the team weren’t under Malise’s ever-watchful eye. A complimentary ticket from the minister of the arts to hear Placido Domingo as Otello at the Teatro dell’Opera had been too much for him, but he’d had tough words with the team beforehand.

  “This is the first Nations’ Cup in the series. If we win, it’ll be a colossal boost to morale. So there’s to be no heavy drinking and I want everyone
in their rooms by midnight. You’ll be the only one completely sober,” he added to Billy, “so I’m relying on you to look after Fen and see she’s in her own bed and not Rupert’s by eleven o’clock.”

  Billy shook his head. “If you honestly think Rupert’ll take any notice of me.”

  Rupert arrived at the party in a new suit—pale blue and made for him by one of Italy’s leading couturiers, who normally only designed clothes for women, but who had succumbed because he rightly felt Rupert would be such a good advertisement for his product.

  Anyone else would have looked a raving poofter, thought Billy, particularly wearing an amethyst-colored shirt and tie. But such was Rupert’s masculinity, and the enhanced blueness of his eyes, and the lean, broad-shouldered length of his body, that the result was sensational.

  All the girls at the party were certainly falling over themselves to offer him smoked salmon and asparagus rolls and fill up his glass with champagne.

  “They’re all convinced I’m an American tennis player,” he said, fighting his way through the crowd to Billy. “I’ve already been complimented three times on my back hand and my serve. The only thing I want to serve here,” he said, lowering his voice, “is Fenella Maxwell.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” snapped Billy.

  “She wants it,” said Rupert softly. “She was like a mare in season last night. Besides I’ve a score to settle with Hopalong Chastity.”

  “Poor sod’s in hospital with a smashed leg. Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “William, he’s tried to kill me twice, once with a knife, once with Macaulay. I intend to get my own back.”

  He glanced across the room to where Fen was talking to the Italian minister of the arts, who was about three times her age. She looked pale and tired.

  “Look at her being letched over by that disgusting wop. I’ll just make her jealous by chatting up those two girls over there and I’ve got her on a plate.”

  “Your conceit is unending. Christ, I wish I could have a drink.”

  “Those two look as though they might have some dope at home. Come on.”

  The girls were certainly very pretty—one blond, one redheaded.

  “You must be tennis players,” giggled the redhead. “You look so incredibly healthy.”

  “No,” said Rupert, unsmiling.

  “What do you do then?”

  “I ride horses,” said Rupert; then, after a pause, “extremely successfully.”

  The conversation moved on to marriage.

  “Billy is separated and gloriously available,” said Rupert. “I am married and ditto.”

  “Doesn’t your wife mind?”

  “No.”

  “Does she work for a living?”

  “No, nor does she smoke, drink, or fuck.”

  The girls laughed uproariously. Billy turned away. Outside it was dusk. A stone nymph in an off-the-shoulder dress reclined in the long grass, set against a blackening yew tree. Fireflies flickered round a couple of orange trees in tubs. Water from a fountain tumbled down gray-green steps between banks of pale lilac geraniums.

  I can’t bear it, he thought miserably, and toyed with the idea of asking Fen to come and have dinner with him alone. She didn’t look very happy, particularly now the blonde was obviously getting off with Rupert. She and her friend were secretaries at the embassy, the blonde was saying; they loved the life in Rome.

  Her redhead friend joined Billy by the window.

  “I’m sorry about your marriage,” she said. “I’m separated myself. No one who hasn’t been through it knows how awful it is.”

  Billy mistook the brimming tears of self-pity in her eyes for pity of his own plight.

  “When did you split up?” he asked.

  “Six months ago,” she said, and she was off.

  Fifteen minutes later they were interrupted by Driffield, looking like a thundercloud.

  “Crippled lame,” he said in disgust. “Horse can’t put his foot down. Vet’s just had a look; thinks it’s an abscess.” He grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing tray. “Where’s Malise?”

  “Gone to the opera.”

  “Bloody fairy.”

  “My God,” said Griselda, joining them. “That means Fen will have to jump. That’s all we need.”

  “She jumped bloody well this afternoon,” said Driffield.

  “I’d better go and tell her,” said Billy. But, glancing across the room, he saw she’d disappeared. He tried the other rooms, fighting his way through the yelling crowd, then he tried the garden, hearing laughter from behind a rosebush.

  “Fuck off,” said a voice as he peered around. Two elegant young men were locked in each other’s arms.

  Fen’s coat wasn’t in the cloakroom. Yes, said the attendant, a girl in a pink dress and pink shoes had just left with the minister of the arts. He assumed she was his daughter.

  “She isn’t,” said Billy bleakly.

  “Lucky chap,” said the attendant.

  Billy returned to Rupert and told him what had happened. Rupert, who’d already drunk a bottle and a half of champagne, shrugged his shoulders. “Oh well, she won’t come to any harm with him. He looked past it. Anyway these ’ere,” he jerked his head in the direction of the two secretaries, “look very accommodating. We’ll all have dinner, then go back to their place.”

  “I don’t want to,” protested Billy. “I must find Fen.”

  “She’ll go back to the hotel early,” said Rupert. “She heard Malise’s pep talk. She was as contrite as anything this morning.”

  At dinner, the girls got sillier and sillier, and Billy’s despair deeper. Back at their flat he went to the bathroom to have a pee. The spilt talcum powder, the chaos of makeup, the tights and pants dripping over the bath, the trailing plant gasping for water, and the half-drunk gin and tonic reminded him poignantly of Janey. He longed to go back to the hotel. The redhead was pretty, but it was obvious she would much rather be in bed with Rupert. “Your friend’s a one, isn’t he?”

  On the walls of her room were posters of Robert Redford and Sylvester Stallone. The bed was very narrow.

  “I don’t usually do this on the first night,” she said, slipping out of her pale yellow dress with a slither of silk. Her body wasn’t as good stripped; her breasts drooped like half-filled beanbags.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” Billy said later, looking down at his flaccid, lifeless cock.

  “Don’t you find me attractive?” said the girl petulantly.

  “It’s because you’re so beautiful you’ve completely overwhelmed me,” lied Billy. “And I’ve got a big class tomorrow, which never helps.”

  With his hands and his tongue he had given her pleasure, but, rejected by her husband, she needed confirmation that men still found her irresistible. Billy could feel her being “frightfully understanding,” but he could imagine the whispering round the embassy tomorrow.

  “My dear, he couldn’t get it up at all. No wonder his wife walked out.”

  By a quarter to twelve Rupert was ready to go home too.

  “We’d love tickets for tomorrow,” said the blonde as they left. “You will ring, won’t you?”

  “I nearly couldn’t perform,” said Rupert in the taxi. “She just lay back stark naked on the bed and said, ‘Come on Campbell-Black, let’s see if you’re as good as they all say you are.’ Must be hell to be impotent.”

  “I hope to God Fen’s back,” said Billy.

  But to his horror her key, Number Eighty-eight, was still hanging at the reception desk.

  “Jesus,” said Rupert, “there’s Malise getting out of a cab. Go and tell him about Driffield. I’ll get the key and whizz up and wait in her room. You join me when the coast’s clear.”

  “Good opera?” Billy asked Malise.

  “Magical,” said Malise. “I cried nonstop through the last act.”

  He didn’t even seem to notice that the hall clock said half-past twelve.

  “First Edition’s unfit,” said B
illy. “Vet says it’s an abscess.”

  “Hell,” said Malise. “Fen’ll have to jump. Does she know?”

  “We didn’t tell her,” said Billy, “in case we raised her hopes and you wanted Driff to jump Anaconda.”

  Malise shook his head. “Macaulay’s the better bet. You saw Fen safely into bed, did you?”

  Billy nodded, blushing slightly. “Must be asleep by now.”

  “Good man. I’ll tell her in the morning.”

  With a growing sense of outrage, Billy and Rupert sat in Fen’s room, Rupert drinking weak brandies from Fen’s untouched duty-free bottle, Billy drinking one disgusting cup of black coffee from the sachets after another.

  At three-thirty, they heard a commotion outside.

  “J’ai perdu mon clef, key, you know; what St. Peter, the one with the kissed foot, had in abundance,” said a shrill voice, “so if you’d be so very kind as to let me into my room.”

  In a flash Rupert was at the door, where he found Fen and a sleepy-looking maid in a dressing gown.

  “Grazie,” he said to the maid, and pulled Fen inside. “What the bloody hell have you got to say for yourself?”

  Fen’s hair was tousled, her brown skin flushed. Her eyes glittered, red-irised, and out of focus. She was wearing an exquisite, gray silk shirt which just covered her groin, and carrying her pink dress.

  She gave a low bow.

  “Buona notte, senors; or should it be buon giorno, I forget. I sheem—hic—to have got myself into the wrong room.” She backed towards the door.

  “Come here,” hissed Rupert. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Do you really want to know? I’ve been having fun. When in Rome, get done by the Romans.” She opened the door into the passage, swinging on the handle.

  Rupert caught her by the scruff of the neck, frog-marched her back into the room, and sat her down on the bed. Then, locking the door, he pocketed the key.

  “Now, come on. Out with it.”

  Fen looked at them owlishly. “I’ve been out with the minister of the arts, such charm and such finesse. He said I was a work of art myself and he bought me thish lovely shirt from Pucci.”