Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  Malise switched off the video machine.

  “I don’t think I need to tell you much else. If you do get a medal, particularly a gold, it will be the greatest moment of you life, make no mistake about that. And if you don’t get that medal because you were not quite good enough on the day, or because your horse wasn’t fit, or because your nerves got to you, that’s all well and good. But if you can look back afterwards and say, I failed because I drank too much, or didn’t train or stayed up too late or didn’t work my horse diligently enough, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

  He might be echoing Jake, Helen said to herself.

  He looked round at the five riders. “You’re probably the oldest Olympic squad we’ve ever fielded, except for Fen, which means we can offer a wealth of experience; but the heat may get to you. It also means this may well be your last chance of a crack at the Olympics.”

  He turned to the grooms and to Helen and to Griselda’s rather mild father, who was sharing the arm of a chair with Ivor’s mother. “I’d like to say the same to the families and grooms and wives for the next month. Try to be totally unselfish. You will find the riders tricky, irascible, and demanding. As the competition gets nearer, this may take the form of increasing detachment as they try to distance themselves. This you must put up with. They need to keep calm, for in this way the horses will stay calm. Don’t make unnecessary demands. Wives and families, if they’re not coming to L.A., shouldn’t expect regular telephone calls. Times are cockeyed. Security will often make it difficult to get to a telephone.”

  Malise looked over to Jake.

  “I’m sorry Tory’s not here,” he said with a smile, “but she’s the one person I know who doesn’t need to hear any of this. She’s always given you exemplary backup.”

  Helen bit her lip. She felt an agonizing stab of jealousy. She must try not to hassle Jake.

  “All right, that’s all,” said Malise briskly, “except I want to come home with two golds.”

  Having redeemed himself and his country by winning the Grand Prix on Saturday night, Rupert flew Rocky direct to Los Angeles the following day, which would give them both nearly a month to get used to the climate.

  A fortnight later, he flew back to England on the excuse of having his Olympic uniform fitted and sorting out business matters, but in reality to see Amanda Hamilton. He was meeting her at her house in Kensington. This he regarded as a major breakthrough and also that he’d been able to drag her down from Scotland in the middle of August, when she should be making shooting lunches for Rollo and entertaining his cabinet colleagues.

  As he drove past pavements pastel with tourists and looked at the expanse of female leg and the briefness of skirts and shorts, Rupert reflected how strange it was that his sexual energies had become almost entirely concentrated on Amanda. The fact that she often didn’t bother to dress up or wash her hair or put on makeup when she saw him only increased his interest. As did the fact that she was always busy with her children or her committees or Rollo’s career and had very little spare time for him. He’d had to fight every inch of the way. Used to girls who were only too available, who were always bathed and scented and dolled up to the nth degree and quivering with anticipation, Rupert found her an amazing novelty. They knew all the same people and were governed by the same rules. She was also the first woman he couldn’t bully.

  The house in Rutland Gate was burglar-alarmed up to the eyeballs. Amanda’s excuse to Rollo had been Great Aunt Augusta’s eightieth birthday party, which had taken place at lunchtime. Amanda would spend the night in London and fly north next morning.

  It was always a good idea, she explained to Rollo, to pop in on the servants unexpectedly and keep them on their toes.

  The servants, a Filipino couple, who’d left a member of the Royal family because there had been too many riding boots to clean, were very put out at Mrs. Hamilton’s arrival. They’d planned to have a party in the basement that night, but were slightly appeased when Amanda told them to carry on and that she wouldn’t be needing dinner.

  After dining in Barnes, which was safe, according to Amanda, because “one never saw anyone one knew in the suburbs,” and which didn’t take long because Rupert wasn’t drinking, they crept into the house unnoticed. Downstairs, the party was in full swing.

  “Will Rollo have me for breaking and entering?” said Rupert, removing his tie.

  Amanda didn’t laugh. “You know he can’t afford any scandal,” she said, putting her diamond earrings in her jewel case. “Is Helen flying back to L.A. with you next week?”

  “Yes,” said Rupert. “I think she must have been to some marriage guidance counselor, who’s told her to take an interest in my career.”

  “Good,” said Amanda, feeling the earth of the plants by the window.

  “Why do servants never understand about watering?”

  “Why ‘good’?” snapped Rupert from inside his shirt.

  “You don’t want a messy divorce at the moment. You’ll go down much better with the party if you have a beautiful and adoring wife.”

  “I go down brilliantly anyway,” said Rupert, leaping on her.

  “It does seem rather awful doing it in Rollo’s bed.”

  “Not nearly as awful as not doing it.”

  Afterwards, she lay in Rupert’s arms thinking but not telling him how lovely it was to have a whole night together. Against her better judgment she was becoming increasingly fond of him. Rupert was spoilt and perfectly disgraceful, but he made her laugh and then of course he was terribly attractive.

  “If you get a gold, will you retire?”

  “Nail my whip to the wall, you mean? I might. I can’t go on riding horses forever.”

  “What are you going to do about Helen? I really do mean it. You don’t want a divorce if you’re going into politics.”

  “As long as I can have the dogs and Tab and the house, I wouldn’t mind. Helen can have Marcus and the first editions and the Van Dyck.”

  “Will you promise to think seriously about politics after L.A.?” urged Amanda. “The PM was very charmed by you. If Sir William goes to the Common Market there should be a safe seat in Gloucestershire in the autumn. You can’t play around forever. An aging playboy is a pathetic sight,” she went on, lying back on the pillow. “Gradually he starts drifting down to girls who are less pretty, and instead of making them on the first night it takes three nights, or they decide after one night they don’t like him. You’re thirty-one now.”

  “And you think that’s going to be my fate?” said Rupert, coldly.

  Amanda Hamilton looked at the beautiful, depraved face and the marvelously lean, muscular, suntanned body, and her face softened.

  “No, not for a long time, but I don’t think an unhappy marriage, coupled with an intellectually undemanding career, are doing you any good.”

  Rupert took her face between his hands. “I suppose you’d never think of divorcing Rollo? You and I’d be marvelous together.”

  Amanda blushed. “I’m far too old for you and there’s Rollo’s career and anyway we’ve got four children to educate. They’ll probably all go on to a university.”

  “I’ll educate your children,” said Rupert. He glanced at the silver-framed photograph on the mantelpiece of Amanda’s eldest daughter, Georgina, and was about to say he wouldn’t mind teaching her the facts of life at all, then thought better of it. Amanda didn’t like those kinds of jokes.

  By now, Rupert wanted her again and, getting out of bed, prowled the room looking for novelty. He could take her sitting in that pink, buttonback chair, then his eye lit on the huge mirror over the mantelpiece.

  “What are you doing?” asked Amanda. “That looking glass is seventeenth century. It was a wedding present from Rollo’s grandmother. Been in his family for years.”

  “I want to see us,” said Rupert, gasping under the huge weight of the mirror. He balanced it on the padded arms of the chair, which he’d pulled alongside the bed.


  “Can you see yourself now?” he asked Amanda.

  “Not a thing.”

  “I’ll tip it forward a bit.” Rupert piled up pale blue and lilac silk cushions behind the mirror.

  “For God’s sake, be careful,” said Amanda, but she was diverted by what she saw.

  The old glass was very flattering and gave a dusky warmth to her body and a golden glow to her face. She liked the way her breasts fell and the lovely curve of her waist into her hips.

  “Christ, that’s marvelous,” said Rupert, getting onto the bed behind her. He was so dark tanned it was almost like going to bed with a black man. Fascinated, she watched his long fingers stroking her belly, then sliding into the dark bush.

  “Look how beautiful you are,” he said softly, spreading back the butterfly wings of her labia. Next moment he had lifted her buttocks and driven his cock into the warm, sticky cave of her vagina.

  Amanda gasped.

  “Nice, isn’t it?”

  Now he was lifting her right leg, holding back the inside of her thigh so she could see the long length of his cock driving into her. It was like an express train going into a tunnel.

  Madly excited, Amanda bucked back against him, feeling his fingers stroking her faster and faster.

  “Come on, darling, come on.”

  As they both came they were aware of a mighty crash. Amanda gave a shriek as, lurching forward, the mirror hit the wooden handles of the chair and crashed to the ground in a thousand pieces.

  “Now see what you’ve done,” she said furiously. “Rollo will murder me.”

  Next minute she heard voices. Drunken, excited Filipinos were storming up the stairs.

  “Move the chair back and get into the bathroom,” snapped Amanda, sliding into her nightie.

  “All right, Conceptione,” Rupert heard her saying. “I’m afraid the mirror fell off the wall—the string must have rotted.” Hastily, she shoved Rupert’s glass of Coke behind a cachepot. “Bring me a Hoover. No, I’ll clear it up. I’m fine. You go back to your party.”

  Three minutes later Rupert heard the noise of the Hoover. Still pushing it around the floor, Amanda opened the door to the bathroom. “You can come out now.”

  Rupert could tell she was absolutely livid.

  “I’ll pay for it,” he said.

  “The money doesn’t matter,” she wailed. “Think of the seven years’ bad luck. Think of Georgie’s O levels and the next election.”

  Rupert looked out through the lift-gate bars on the window at the yellowing grass of Kensington Gardens.

  What about my gold? he thought broodingly.

  As soon as Jake returned from Dublin, Olympic panic set in. The telephone never stopped ringing with officials, press, horsiana manufacturers, and potential sponsors, who’d heard he and Fen might go professional after the Games.

  Because they were not rich like Rupert, they had to keep taking the rest of the horses to shows right up to the last moment. In between, there were endless medical tests for both horses and riders, and Jake and Fen had to rush up to London to get their Olympic uniforms fitted, then on to Moss Bros. to choose coats and breeches.

  Fen was livid she wasn’t allowed to wear a dark blue coat. “Black’s so hard,” she grumbled. “Anyway, I’m not going to a funeral.”

  “You may well think you are,” said Jake, “when you see the size of the fences.”

  Jake was so ludicrously busy he had no time to see Helen, which, despite Malise’s strictures, drove her so frantic she even rang him at the yard.

  “It’s me, darling. Why haven’t you called? Pretend this is a wrong number and call me back as soon as you’ve got a moment.”

  It was almost a relief when she and Rupert flew off to Los Angeles, giving him a breathing space in which he could concentrate on the job in hand. But if he worked flat out during the day, he still spent his few hours in bed worrying about the future.

  Their finances were still in a precarious position. The bank manager needed the Mill House and the yard and Tory’s shares as security. He was very proud of Jake and his incredible comeback and often dropped his name at the golf club, but Jake knew this amiability would vanish overnight if he got into financial trouble.

  Now he had been picked for the Olympics he was an infinitely more bankable proposition, particularly as half a dozen potential sponsors were pestering him. But he didn’t like any of them and he knew they’d cool off if he came home without a medal. Anyway, he’d seen the appalling pressures sponsors had put on Billy, Humpty, and Driffield—having to take days off to open factories and turn up at parties and chat up important clients before a big class. Jake knew he didn’t have the easy kind of charm or placid temperament to cope with such an invasion of his privacy. He was terrified of no longer being his own boss. It would be back to Brook Farm Riding School and Mrs. Wilton. If the sponsors owned the horses they might take them away, as Colonel Carter had taken Revenge.

  More than anything he wanted to get a gold and beat Rupert. But now just as much, he wanted Helen, her cool, slender body and the extraordinary white-hot passion he inspired in her. When he was with the horses or the family he could switch off and forget about her. But at night the pain of longing came back more intensely than ever.

  But, how the hell could he support two households? If Helen ran off with him, Rupert would see she was left penniless. Even if she got a writing job she’d have to employ someone to look after the children (if Rupert let the children go, which was unlikely). And if Jake walked out on Tory he would lose the children, Fen, and the Mill House, not to mention Tory and her incredible backup. He’d have to find another owner. And how would he divide the horses? Would he get Macaulay’s front half, Tory the back, like a pantomime horse?

  Finally, Helen worried him. She said she was prepared to live on nothing, but she’d had six years with Rupert, with daily women to clean her beautiful house, nannies for the children, and gardeners to tend those exquisite flower beds, not to mention champagne and flowers at every four-star hotel she stayed at. How would she cope with poverty? She had compared herself with a potted plant, wilting unwatered in a greenhouse, while the rain fell on the sweet earth outside. But equally, how would a pot plant fare when faced with the winds and snows of the outside world?

  He had tried to discuss this with Helen, but she was so insecure she always misconstrued this as backing off. None of this had he thought through when, tanked up with champagne, he had posted her the blue silk handkerchief from Dublin.

  On the day before he left for Los Angeles, as if in answer to a prayer, he had a telephone call from Garfield Boyson, who owned a huge video empire. Boyson was amiable, intensely tough, a lifetime lover of horses, and rich enough not to be worried about money.

  “I’m driving through your village at lunchtime,” said his crackling voice from a car telephone. “How about a drink?”

  “Too busy,” said Jake. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “You’ll not be too busy for this,” said Boyson. “See you at the Stirrup Cup in half an hour.”

  Sloping off to take leave of Mrs. C-B, thought Fen sourly, as Jake disappeared without explanation. Village boys stopped to admire Boyson’s gleaming Rolls-Royce, his chauffeur nodding in the late August sunshine. Inside the bar a bench seat was tightly clamped round Boyson’s vast bulk. As he downed a treble whisky and clawed up potato crisps, his eyes, almost entirely hidden by rolls of flesh, were shrewd and kindly.

  “Hello, lad, what’d you like?”

  “Tomato juice. I’m working,” said Jake pointedly. He lit a cigarette.

  “You should give up that habit,” said Boyson. “L.A.’s lousy for people with bad chests.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Worcester sauce?” asked the barmaid. “Oh, it’s you, Jake. Didn’t see you come in. How’s it going?”

  “Spare,” said Jake.

  The barmaid looked at the wall where one of Macaulay’s World Championship rosettes was proudly hung.
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br />   “Hope we get one from Los Angeles to join it,” she said.

  Jake turned to Boyson. “Well, I’m sure you didn’t ask me here to tell me to give up smoking.”

  Boyson laughed fatly. “I didn’t. Sit down, lad. I’ve watched your career for some time. Admired your guts, the way you fought back. Admire that sparky sister-in-law of yours.”

  “Men tend to.” Unsmiling, Jake looked at his watch.

  “Rupert’s right about you,” said Boyson. “Said you were as short on charm as you were on inches.”

  “Thanks,” said Jake, draining his glass and getting to his feet.

  “Sit down,” said Boyson, waving a fat ringed hand. “One thing I don’t want is a PR man. I’ll not ask you to chat up customers and open shops. Just like to make things easier.”

  “What d’you get out of it?”

  “Well, not to pussyfoot around. My name in front of your horses. Boyson Macaulay. Boyson Hardy. Doesn’t sound bad.”

  “No!” said Jake.

  “Wait a minute. For that I’d pick up your bills and your traveling expenses and give you a new lorry with my name on it. Noticed yours was falling to pieces at Crittleden. I’d even buy you some horses.”

  “And when we start losing?”

  “We’ll draw up a watertight three-year contract. All riders lose form, so do horses. I know all that. But you’ve always worked with second-class horses, making them into top-class ones. I’d like to see what you could do with a horse like Rocky or Clara.”

  Boyson had ordered more drinks, exchanging Jake’s tomato juice for a large whisky. Jake drained it without noticing.

  “You’d start ordering me about, expecting me to ride your way.”