Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  One afternoon in late November, Fen and Sarah had been hacking out, getting Desdemona and Macaulay fit for Olympia. As they rode into the yard they found Dino, who’d just had a strenuous session in the indoor school, cooling off Manny in the yard.

  Next minute Tory came out of the kitchen door, her hands covered with flour.

  “Oh, Dino, someone named Mary Jo rang. She’s staying at the Dorchester. Can you ring her?”

  “Sure, I’ll do it now.” He handed the horse to Louise, his groom, and walked into the house.

  “Lucky Mary Jo,” sighed Sarah.

  “Who’s she?” asked Tory. “She asked after Jake’s leg and sounded awfully nice.”

  “Mary Jo Wilson, I should think,” said Fen, sliding off Desdemona. “The American girl wonder. Lots of red hair tucked into a bun and perfectly tied stocks, with diamond tiepins, and a white carnation in her buttonhole. Too bloody poncy for words, if you ask me. I’m sure she rides sidesaddle in bed.”

  “But jolly attractive in a Helen Campbell-Black sort of way,” said Sarah, not without malice. “Dino obviously likes redheads.”

  “Well, she sounded sweet,” repeated Tory, without any malice at all.

  Dino came back into the yard. “Sorry it’s short notice,” he said to Tory, “but I won’t be in for dinner tonight.”

  “Shall I keep something hot for you?” said Tory.

  “I’m sure Mary Jo’s doing that already,” snapped Fen, then immediately wished she hadn’t.

  Dino shot her a sour look. “It’ll make a nice change,” he said evenly, and went off to supervise Manny’s feed.

  “Why are you so foul to him, Fen?” said Tory reproachfully.

  “Because he’s so bloody swollen-headed.”

  “His head’s not the only thing that’ll be swollen when he sees Mary Jo,” said Sarah with a giggle.

  “Don’t be disgusting,” snapped Fen.

  She felt impossibly bad-tempered, particularly when Dino came back in time for breakfast the next morning, spent all day yawning, and was so untogether Hardy had him off three times.

  A week later Dino boxed up his horses and took them off to a show in Vienna, where there was a World Cup qualifier. Fen was so certain he’d taken Mary Jo that she rang up the Dorchester, to be told that Miss Wilson had checked out the morning Dino had left and wasn’t expected back until December twelfth, the day Dino was due home. Fen spent the next few days imagining Dino waltzing around and around a Viennese ballroom to the Blue Danube with Mary Jo in his arms.

  Dino returned as expected on the twelfth after a very successful show. Manny had obviously improved dramatically under Jake’s tuition. He had qualified for the World Cup, won a big class on the third night, and come second in the Grand Prix. Jake was delighted. That’s what he gets a kick out of, thought Fen. He really likes improving horses at home better than jumping them at shows.

  Dino brought toys for the children, silk scarves for the grooms, a beautiful black sloppy sweater for Tory, which covered all her bulges, and a new bit which they were all raving about on the continent for Jake. But nothing apparently for Fen. That’s because I was so horrible before he left, she thought miserably, escaping to the yard. It was a very cold night. The water trough was already frozen and a thin sheet of ice lay over the cobblestones. In the tackroom she found a drooping Louise hanging up Dino’s tack, which she’d been cleaning on the drive home.

  “You must be knackered, poor thing.”

  Louise nodded. “Sure, but it was a great show. You always feel less bushed when you win.”

  Fiddling with the striped handle of a body brush, Fen casually asked, “How did Mary Jo do?”

  “Not bad,” said Louise, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for Mary Jo to have been with them. “She’s having problems with Melchior. He keeps kicking out fences; but Balthazar jumped real super and qualified for the World Cup. She’s worried she won’t make the team for L.A., particularly as Dino must be a dead cert now. But the competition’s so hot and she’s twenty-six already and by the next games she’ll probably be tied up with babies. Pity she can’t come down here for a week or two and work with Jake. Not that the American coaches aren’t great, but Jake does have the edge with difficult horses.”

  “I can’t think why he doesn’t apply for the job as American chef d’equipe,” snapped Fen and, chucking down the body brush, she stalked out into the bitterly cold night, wandering around in jersey and jeans, oblivious of time and temperature. Tory’s voice brought her back to reality. In the kitchen she found Dino, changed into a gray cashmere jersey and gray cords, drinking a large whisky and soda and telling Tory about Vienna. Rosettes and photographs were spread out all over the pine table.

  “It’s so beautiful. We went to one cemetery where all the great musicians are buried: Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Haydn. The most moving thing of all was Schubert’s grave. Look.” He handed the photo to Tory. “On the headstone they’ve carved a picture of him arriving in heaven and an angel putting a laurel wreath on his head—because no one recognized his genius on earth.”

  “Unlike you,” said Fen acidly. “Everyone appreciates you, Dino.”

  “Not everyone.” Dino’s face was expressionless, but he quickly gathered up the photographs.

  “Lovey, you look frozen,” said Tory. “Have a hot bath. I’m just off with Isa to see Darklis’s play. Dinner’s in the oven. Goulash and baked potatoes. And there’s an apple pie in the larder if you want it.”

  Jake was away in Ireland for two days to look at some horses. It had been regarded as a great step forward that he felt well enough to go. Fen, however, couldn’t face dinner alone with Dino and Louise.

  “Thanks.” She walked through the kitchen. “I’m not hungry at the moment. Wish Darklis tons of luck.”

  In her bedroom she slumped on her bed. Fighting tiredness and misery, she drew the blue and white gingham curtains. The tops were still off the shampoo and conditioner she’d used to wash her hair for Dino’s return; the wet towel was still on the bed, the hair dryer plugged in. Despite switching on the fire she couldn’t stop shivering and decided to have a bath. She’d just stripped off when there was a knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” She grabbed the wet towel.

  “Me.” Dino came into the room, shutting the door behind him.

  Fen turned away towards the mirror. “I’m about to have a bath.”

  “I’ve fixed you a drink.” He put a large vodka and tonic down on the dressing table. There was a pause as he picked up the Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle with a teazel face, a mob cap, and a pink dress which stood beside all the china horses on the bookshelf.

  “That’s kind of neat.”

  “Jake made it for me years ago.”

  She sat on the dressing-table stool, thin bare shoulders rising out of the dark red towel, slanting eyes suspicious.

  Dino noticed the plugged-in hair dryer.

  “Going out?”

  She shook her head. “My hair was dirty.”

  The room was warming up now. Why couldn’t her teeth stop chattering?

  “I’ve got a present for you,” said Dino, easing a black square box out of his hip pocket and opening it. Fen gasped as he took out a gold chain, with an F exquisitely set in pearls and emeralds on the end. He hung it around her neck, fumbling over the clasp, with hands that were not quite steady.

  “Well,” he said.

  Looking up at his reflection, she noticed his suntan was fading and the Siamese-cat eyes were squinting slightly as they always did when he was very tired.

  “It’s lovely,” she whispered, fingering the F. “It’s the loveliest thing anyone’s ever, ever given me. I’ll never take it off. Thank you so much. I thought,” her voice shook, “you’d deliberately forgotten me because I’d been such a bitch.”

  She stood up to turn round, but Dino gripped her bare arms, dropping a slow infinitely measured kiss on her left collarbone. Suddenly her stomach started to curl and a pulse to
beat insistently between her legs.

  “How could I forget you?” he said ruefully. “I never think of anyone else.” He was nuzzling at the side of her neck now, softly kissing the lobes of her ears. “And, quite frankly, if I don’t unzip my fly and climb inside you soon I’m going to end up in the funny farm.”

  “Truly? You’re not just being kind?”

  “Kind? Christ, I’ve backed off enough.”

  He turned her around. She gazed up at him, troubled, trembling. “I’m not sure, Dino. I’ve been so hurt, I’ve only got a little bit of heart left.”

  “I’ve got more than enough heart for both of us. I won’t hurt you, sweetheart. I’m going to make you better.”

  Slowly he drew back her clenched arms which were holding the towel up and put her hands round his neck. Beneath her fingers she could feel the power of his shoulder muscles.

  “Go on, kiss me,” he whispered.

  As she tentatively put her lips up, he kissed her back so gently she thought she’d faint with joy; first her top lip, then the bottom, then sliding his tongue between her teeth. One hand was cupping her left breast now, moving slowly and lovingly, the harbinger of pleasure.

  “Darling little Fen, tell me what turns you on.”

  “You do,” she moaned. “Oh, please go on.”

  But as he pulled her down on the bed and began to kiss her in earnest, sliding his hand over her body, she caught a glimpse of Billy’s photograph beside the bed. Then she thought about Janey and then about Mary Jo Wilson, who last night had been lying beside Dino submitting, no doubt ecstatically, to the same expert caresses. She couldn’t stand it. This time she wanted a man who was all hers, one whom she didn’t have to share.

  Violently, she pulled away from him.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?”

  “You are. You’re so bloody promiscuous, smarming all over me one minute, then rushing up to London at the drop of a telephone receiver to push off to Vienna with Mary Jo. Guess who’s coming for Dino? You bet your sweet life Mary Jo is.”

  For a second Dino’s hand clenched on her shoulder. Then he looked around the room at the posters of Snoopy and the china horses and Lester the teddy bear and the pajama case in the shape of a camel, and then at the tattered photograph of Billy Lloyd-Foxe in the leather case.

  “You’re still a kid, aren’t you?” he said bitterly. “I guess you’re just about adult enough to sleep with an old teddy bear like Billy Lloyd-Foxe.”

  “Bastard,” hissed Fen, and the next moment she’d slapped Dino’s face very hard. “Just shut up about Billy.”

  Dino shrugged. “And you resort to blows like a kid. Unfortunately, I happen to be a grown-up boy. I had my twenty-first birthday five years ago and I’ve got the appetites of a normal guy. If you think I’m going to remain celibate while you keep putting another battery in the stupid torch you’re carrying for Billy you’ve got another think coming.”

  “It’s not a stupid flashlight,” screamed Fen. “You’re just like Rupert and Jake. None of you understand the meaning of the word love.”

  “All I can promise,” said Dino, “is that I want you more than any girl I’ve ever met, but I’m a hedonist, not a medieval knight keeping myself pure for some unobtainable lady love, nor do I like sleeping alone. The central heating in this house leaves a lot to be desired. So if you won’t put out I’m going to find my entertainment someplace else.”

  And with that he left her. The next minute she heard his car door bang and the crunch of wheels on the gravel.

  Bursting into tears, she threw herself down on the already sodden bed.

  46

  The next few days were awful. Fen and Dino hardly exchanged a word. Fen got up before dawn. Dino changed his routine, got up after lunch, and spent his evenings working the horses in the indoor school. It seemed impossible in such a small house that they could avoid meeting. Dino was polite but unsmiling; he no longer mobbed her up.

  On Friday morning Fen, Dino, Louise, and Sarah were due to get up at 3.30 A.M. for a four-thirty departure for a show in Amsterdam. On the Thursday before that, the Sunday Express sent a photographer and a reporter down to the Mill House to interview Fen. In the evening she had to go to a dinner at the Savoy, where she was being nominated for one of the Sporting Personality of the Year awards. The organizers were sending a car for her, which, at the end of the evening, would whizz her back to Warwickshire to catch three hours sleep before leaving for Amsterdam.

  The Sunday Express reporter was a charming middle-aged roué, who thought Fen was gorgeous and buttered her up to mountainous heights in the hope of possible indiscretions. After lunch cooked by Tory, the photographer took pictures of Desdemona and Macaulay from flattering angles, as they were still a bit podgy from their six weeks’ rest, later photographing the yard and the house and the kitchen, with Tory cooking at the Aga and Fen pretending to fill in entry forms against a background of rosettes.

  “I’m thinking of getting a secretary to cope with all my fan mail,” said Fen, who’d had three glasses of wine at lunch.

  “I’m not surprised,” said the Express reporter. “Every little girl in England dreams of being like you.”

  “I hope to Christ they don’t behave like her,” said a voice, and Dino wandered in, unshaven, yawning, bloodshot-eyed, and poured himself a large whisky.

  “Is that your breakfast?” snapped Fen.

  “No, the first one was my breakfast,” said Dino. “Hi,” he added to the reporter, and wandered off in the direction of the stables.

  “That’s Dino Ferranti, isn’t it?” asked the reporter, refilling Fen’s glass. “Good-looking bloke, despite the stubble. More like a rock star. He your latest?”

  “Hardly,” snapped Fen, “He’s working with Jake. Honestly, if I were cast away on a desert island I’d rather be propositioned by a gorilla!”

  “You’d be wasting your time,” said Dino, coming back into the room. “Gorillas are mostly gay. Anyone seen this week’s Horse and Hound?”

  “And don’t bloody eavesdrop,” said Fen, “Let’s go into the sitting room. We’ll be more private.”

  It was already dark when she waved them good-bye. Outside, the lorry was waiting, already filled with petrol, water, and human and equine supplies. She’d better step on it. The car was picking her up at five-thirty. Sitting at the kitchen table she found Dino, Tory, and Sarah checking the list of what they were taking to Amsterdam. Fen looked at her message pad—ATV, Woman’s Own, and Malise Gordon had rung. Picking up the telephone, she suddenly noticed black fur all over her pale pink angora jersey, which was drying on a towel on the edge of the Aga.

  “Bloody hell,” she said, dropping the receiver back on its cradle.

  Tory looked up, alarmed. “What’s the matter?”

  “My pink jersey. I’ve got to take it tomorrow and you can’t even keep the bloody cats off it.”

  Dino looked up from a pile of horses’ health papers.

  “Pack it in,” he said softly. “Tory’s cooked lunch for your press admirer, which you haven’t even had the manners to thank her for. She’s done all our ironing for tomorrow and seen everything’s back from the cleaners, as well as providing enough food for us for a month. She doesn’t actually have the time to police your pale pink sweater,” he really spat out the P’s, “against marauding tomcats.”

  Fen lost her temper. “I ran this bloody yard single-handed for five months and now I don’t get any proper backup,” she screamed, and stormed out of the kitchen. Ten minutes later she was back with dripping hair: “Who’s been using my hair dryer?”

  “I did,” said Tory apologetically, “on Darklis.”

  “Well, you’ve fused it. How am I expected to dry my hair?”

  “Why don’t you go stick your head in the oven,” said Dino, “and preferably don’t light the gas! You’re getting much too big for your £500 boots. We all know you’re England’s answer to show jumping and the role model for the entire schoolgirl population, and
we’re fed up with it. You know perfectly well you wouldn’t speak to Tory like this if Jake was here.”

  “Were here,” screamed Fen, “were here. ‘If’ takes the subjunctive,” and she stormed out of the room again.

  “Oh, dear,” said Tory, in distress, gazing at the last orange rays of sunset. “Oh, dear, oh, dear.”

  Fen was in such a rage that she went off to London without saying good-bye to anyone. She wore a black, backless taffeta dress she’d bought in Paris the previous summer and never worn, with high-heeled black shoes, black stockings, and Dino’s necklace at her throat. As she walked into the predinner drinks party, which was choc-a-bloc with every sporting celebrity, commentator, and journalist you could imagine, a few heads turned in her direction. She drifted over to Dudley Diplock, propped up against the fireplace, who was already three-parts cut, and gave the room the benefit of her back view. The dress was so low it almost gave her a cleavage at the back. When she turned around five minutes later, everyone was gaping at her. It was one of those evenings when her looks really worked, perhaps because she was giving off such wanton promise, or because she longed to forget Dino and everything at home.

  “What does F stand for?” asked a famous tennis player.

  “Fuckable,” said Fen sweetly, “and it’s spelt out in emeralds and pearls.”

  “You can say that again,” said the tennis player as everyone laughed.

  Soon the journalists were hovering round her. They kept asking her about Billy and Dino, but she cracked back that she was married to her career and had no intention of getting a divorce. She had a good deal to drink and had some difficulty negotiating even the short walk into the dining room. She found herself sitting between a famous footballer with permed blond hair and a fake suntan, named Garry, and an Olympic shotputter whose arm muscles bulged through his dinner jacket, whose stomach folded over the table, and who lifted Fen above his head to loud cheers when she complained she couldn’t see the Princess.