by Jilly Cooper
‘Put him down,’ said Rupert, as a pack of dogs swarmed round trying to reach a bristling Jack. ‘They’re quite safe, and the two Jack Russells are bitches.’
Enviously Lysander examined the photographs which crowded the walls of Rupert and his daughters, Perdita and Tabitha, winning world championships at show jumping, brandishing polo cups and leading in winners on the flat and over fences.
‘I’m really sorry not to ring first,’ he mumbled, ‘but my telephone’s stopped working.’
‘Hug the Aga,’ said Rupert, putting on the kettle. ‘You look frozen.’
You could tell when a horse was in pain by its eyes; Lysander’s were bright red, but the pupils and the irises were drab and lifeless. He was as pale as the Christmas roses Taggie had arranged in a dark green vase on the table. Jeans, skin-tight when he was skiing, were really baggy now.
‘How’s Arthur?’ asked Lysander.
‘King Arthur of the round belly,’ said Rupert. ‘God, he was cross when I cut down his rations. He ate every blade of straw, so I’ve put him on shredded newspaper. I expect he and Tiny are busily piecing together lurid stories about you and Mrs Rannaldini. How is she?’
‘Oh, Rupert!’ Once more, with all the egotism of heartbreak, Lysander launched into his tale of woe.
‘How can I convince her that I’m serious?’ he pleaded finally, as he dipped a fifth piece of shortbread into his tea before handing it to a slavering Jack. ‘I’d like to get a medal in the Gulf to show her I’m not just a cheap gigolo. The Yanks are paying people a thousand pounds a week just to put up tents.’
‘I thought you were paid ten times as much as that for erections in England,’ said Rupert, who’d been doing the entries for next week’s races and working out who was going to ride out which horse tomorrow morning as he listened. ‘All right, joke, joke,’ he added, as Lysander’s face blackened. ‘Anyway, I’ve got news for you. Bunny, the vet, and I think we’ve sussed Arthur’s problem.’
Rupert half-rose to look out of the window. ‘That’s her now.’
Arthur as usual was lying flat out snoring with his eyes wide open to get attention.
‘I ought to move Penscombe Pride from the next-door box,’ said Rupert as he opened the half-door. ‘He isn’t getting any sleep with that racket going on, but he’s got a bit of a crush on Arthur.’
Arthur lurched to his feet in delight when he heard his master’s voice. Whickering like Vesuvius, he nudged Lysander in the belly, grumbling about the dreadful starvation diet to which he’d been subjected. As usual he looked like nothing on earth, his face, back and quarters smeared with green, his mane and tail strewn with pieces of pink Financial Times like confetti. Having tried to eat Donald Duck, he went sharply into reverse and shook ostentatiously when he saw Bunny the vet.
‘He’s a terrible drip,’ said Lysander apologetically. ‘A programme seller in a white coat has him all of a tremble.’
Rounded, sweet and smiling, with long, soft brown hair and a gentle comforting voice, Bunny reminded Lysander for a fleeting agonizing moment of Kitty.
‘We’ve discounted navicular,’ she told Lysander. ‘It’s easy to make a mistake on an X-ray, but those lesions are actually normal synovial recesses.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Lysander, not knowing if that was good, and hanging tightly on to Arthur’s headcollar as he kept trying to edge away.
‘Will you trot him up now,’ asked Bunny.
Even Arthur’s delight at putting as many yards as possible between himself and Bunny soon disappeared as pain overwhelmed him. Miserably, he stumbled across the yard. Lysander could hardly bear to look. Arthur seemed worse than ever.
‘He’s certainly lame on both front legs,’ said Bunny, when they had both returned. ‘But I think the pain’s coming from his coffin joints. Arthur,’ she added, picking up his near-fore, ‘has abnormally shaped feet with very long toes.’
‘Sounds like Lady Chisleden,’ said Lysander, giggling out of nerves.
Bunny raised her eyes to heaven.
‘I have the misfortune to look after her lunatic Arabs,’ she sighed.
Having clipped back the hair and scrubbed both Arthur’s front feet, she filled a syringe with local anaesthetic: ‘I’m going to do a nerve block in the near-fore coffin joint,’ she explained as she plunged the needle into the front of a wincing Arthur’s foot.
In his brief stay at Penscombe, Arthur had endeared himself to everyone. Now all Rupert’s grooms left their charges, stopped sweeping up and cleaning tack to gather round. They were soon joined by farm workers, gardeners, the estate carpenter, a man delivering feed and Mr and Mrs Bodkin, the ancient couple who seemed to have always looked after Rupert.
Snow was drifting down as though it had all the time in the world. Even when Lysander lit a cigarette, which was strictly forbidden in the yard, the autocratic Rupert didn’t snap at him.
‘OK. It should be dead now. Trot him up,’ said Bunny.
Tail whisking, pleased to have an audience, Arthur once again shambled off up the yard after Lysander, who was running backwards in order to look down at his legs.
‘He’s only lame on the off-fore now,’ said Rupert. ‘Trot him back.’
It took all Lysander’s strength to stop Arthur taking off towards the house. He’d had enough of vets and his disapproval turned to megasulks when Bunny plunged another needle into his off-fore coffin joint.
‘If he trots out sound now,’ she told Lysander, ‘it means all the pain’s inside the joints and we can cure him with a combination of intra-articular injections and corrective shoeing.’
It seemed the longest ten minutes of Lysander’s life. Penscombe was very high up. In winter, Rupert’s horses wore dark blue hoods at night and often three rugs against the cold. Now, sensing something was up, like medieval chargers waiting for the start of Agincourt, they leant over their half-doors.
The yard had fallen silent, except for the sweet liquid carolling of a single robin and the occasional outraged protest of Tiny who was being held out of the way by a nervous stable lad. Lysander lit another cigarette. The girl grooms grew closer. Arthur’s master was even more adorable than Arthur. Rupert lounged deceptively still against the lichened wall of the tack room. Only Jack, oblivious for once of the tension, was wagging his little tail and raising his ginger ears as he stepped round Taggie’s black-and-white mongrel, Gertrude.
‘Please God, make Arthur sound,’ pleaded Lysander. ‘I promise I’ll get up in the morning and drink less – a lot less.’
Arthur, bored, tried to eat Bunny’s Rolex.
‘I need that to tell the time,’ she cuffed him gently on his green nose. ‘All right, if you’d like to trot him up the yard in a straight line.’
As Arthur set off, Jack streaked after him, and Tiny broke away from her stable lad. Like outriders, they flanked Arthur as he shambled through the snowflakes, first gingerly testing his off-fore, anticipating pain, then putting it down again. No, it really didn’t hurt any more, nor, miraculously, did the other one. Then, joyfully, he was striding out, clattering up the cobbled yard, growing more and more confident, then out on to the gravel path until he reached the beech hedge round the tennis court. Swinging him round, with a Tarzan howl of joy, Lysander trotted him back, running backwards, nearly toppling over an uneven stone as he gazed in ecstasy at Arthur’s great platey feet, shooting out sparks as they flew over the ground.
‘Oh, Rupert, he’s sound, he’s fucking, fucking sound!’
A huge cheer went up from the crowd, which sent all the horses neighing and the dogs barking with excitement.
‘I cannot believe it.’ Lysander wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Just one more time, Arthur.’
Turning, he sprinted back to the beech hedge, and Arthur bounded after him, even putting in a gallumphing buck of delight.
‘Oh, thank you!’ Lysander kissed Bunny, all the grooms, ancient Mrs Bodkin and very nearly Rupert, before flinging his arms round Arthur, and kissing
the bits of his great ugly face that weren’t green. Jack yapped excitedly round their feet, until Lysander plonked him on to Arthur’s back, where he balanced still yapping to even louder cheers and screams of laughter, as Lysander trotted him up and down one more time.
‘Arthur has a bilateral coffin joint problem due to poor foot balance,’ explained Bunny, as Rupert opened a bottle of champagne, ‘so he’ll need egg-bar shoes, which are closed up in a circle where the heel ought to be. Then the heel will grow. You’ll gradually be able to cut the toes back and his feet will become a normal shape again.’
Lysander hugged her again. ‘It’s a miracle! I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Could Arthur have a small glass of champagne, Rupert? He really likes it – ouch,’ he yelled as Tiny bit him. ‘And can this bitch have one, too?’
When he and Lysander were back at the house in Rupert’s office, Rupert got out the whisky decanter.
‘Let’s have a proper drink. It’s things like this that make the job worthwhile. I must say Arthur’s a sweet horse.’
‘He’s so clever.’ Lysander admired the sleek, Stubbs horses over the fireplace and hoped, as he smelt Taggie’s boeuf Provençal drifting from the kitchen, that he might be asked to stay for supper. ‘And he’s brilliant at getting himself out of trouble.’
Which is more than can be said for you, thought Rupert, as he reached for the soda syphon. Aloud he said: ‘If you’re on, let’s give him one more crack at the Rutminster.’
Lysander swung round. ‘D’you think there’s time?’
‘Course there is. He’ll need a month on the roads. Then we’ll start cantering and doing a bit of jumping by the end of the second month, then galloping for the last month, slowly building him up. We’ve got till the beginning of April.’ Rupert flipped back the calendar. ’6 April to be exact.’
‘Oh, my goodness.’
Gazing at Rupert’s wonderfully handsome face with the skiing tan heightened by the cold, the sleek blond hair darkened by melting snowflakes and the cornflower-blue eyes for once gentle and without mockery, Lysander felt a wave of adoration. Once again he wanted to kneel down and kiss Rupert’s hand and to win his approval almost as much as Kitty’s love. God, he was turning into a wimp.
‘D’you mind awfully if I ring Kitty?’ he said, reeling euphorically towards the telephone.
‘We’ll have to get the right jockey,’ said Rupert, handing Lysander a glass. ‘Arthur needs cajoling, but not too much.’
In horror, Lysander came reeling back again.
‘But I’m going to ride,’ he protested.
But Rupert was glancing from his diary to the list of horses on the wall and wondering who to send to Lingfield later in the week.
‘If you’re pouring out all this money for training, you might as well have an experienced jockey,’ he said, then added: ‘Christ, what a day. Tabitha, my daughter, is supposed to be going back to school this evening. And she’s buggered off with a ghastly, bearded, animal-rights tractor-driver who thinks trainers are something one wears on one’s extremely dirty feet. And Taggie’s already paid the school fees. Honestly, with children at boarding-school, you’re talking about wrapping a new BMW round a tree every six months and walking away from it.’
Glancing up, he saw Lysander was mouthing desperately, trying to get out the words.
‘Look, basically, Rupert, I think we’re at cross purposes. I honestly didn’t mean to mislead you, but I can’t possibly afford to put Arthur into training.’
It was as though the whisky was sliding right back into the decanter.
‘Basically,’ stammered Lysander, ‘I opened my bank statement this morning. It was surprisingly depressing. I thought I had seventy-five grand, but actually I don’t. Rather the reverse.’
‘So, what do you have in mind?’ said Rupert softly, his long fingers curling round his glass of whisky, eyes narrowed, every trace of friendliness gone from his face. Lysander was suddenly aware of the explosive menace of the man.
‘Arthur’s been staying here ten days,’ went on Rupert, ‘which is almost more expensive than the Hotel Versailles, not to mention that man-eating Shetland. The vet’s bills alone have been astronomical. This isn’t Donkey Rescue,’ he added bitchily.
‘I can see that.’ Lysander put up a placating hand. ‘But I have won point to points, and my uncle Alastair—’
‘That drunken lech.’
Lysander winced. ‘He knew about horses. He said I could ride anything.’
‘And take anyone for a ride.’
Rupert’s cold, dead face and icy, bullying voice reminded Lysander of his father and made him stammer worse than ever.
‘B-b-basically if you give me a job riding your horses at work and in races, I’ll do it for free. I’ll even clean tack although I’m not very g-g-good at it. I always put on too much saddle soap, and if we get Arthur sound, and I win the Rutminster on him, Kitty would realize I wasn’t just a playboy, and I could afford to marry her.’
It took a lot to silence Rupert. The clock ticked, the fax machine squeaked and regurgitated. His secretary rattled away next door. There was a faint whirr from the kitchen as Taggie turned on the mixer. A ginger tom crashed through the cat door. A car drew up outside, and a door banged, before Rupert said: ‘This is the top yard in the country and you expect me to train some clapped-out dinosaur for nothing and pay its entry fees?’
‘I thought you might.’ Lysander stared at his bitten-off toes. ‘A big win would be good for your yard. People will be impressed that you’ve got Arthur. He still gets Christmas Cards and he got a jar of humbugs only last week. I can ride, I promise you.’
‘You’ve got to be joking. There’s no way I’ll let an airhead like you loose on my horses. We’re busy,’ he added with unusual sharpness as Taggie popped her head round the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ she blushed, ‘but Tab’s home.’
‘Let me get my hands on her.’ Rupert drained his whisky. ‘No, you don’t,’ he howled, as a blue streak topped by ruffled blond curls hurtled past the door.
Catching his daughter as she reached the bottom of the stairs, Rupert dragged her snarling like a Jack Russell into the office.
‘I’m not going back to Bagley Hall,’ screamed Tabitha. ‘I hate you.’
‘How dare you sneak off with that bloody leftie?’
‘If Ashley was the son of a duke you wouldn’t give a stuff,’ yelled back Tabitha. ‘You’re such a snob. When you were young you pulled everything: Dizzy, Podge, Marion, there wasn’t a groom unbonked in the South of England, and what about Perdita? The world must be strewn with your illegits.’
Tabitha had erupted into the room like a Catherine wheel, eyes narrower and bluer than Rupert’s, skin the thick creaminess of elderflowers, blond curls bouncing off the same smooth forehead, her face delicately modelled despite the huge screaming mouth. Lysander had never witnessed such rage, such bristling antagonism, such passion between two people. Any moment, they’d set fire to each other. Jack, allergic to rows, started yapping.
‘You ought to write your autobiography and call it The Stud Book,’ taunted Tabitha.
‘Shut up,’ yelled Rupert, ‘and don’t you start laughing.’ He turned on Lysander. ‘Get out, and shut that fucking dog up.’
As Lysander and Jack slid out into the hall, they found Taggie clutching her head.
‘Oh dear, oh dear.’
‘Hi.’ Lysander kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Oh wow, I don’t blame the tractor-driver.’
‘Rupert’s under a lot of pressure,’ said Taggie defensively. ‘He’s worried about the war. Having been in the Army, he feels he ought to be out there, and he’s worried about business; the Saudis and Kuwaitis own a lot of his horses.’
‘Lovely house,’ said Lysander, admiring the yellow flagstones, the tapestries and the huge oil of a rotund black Labrador.
‘When it’s quiet,’ said Taggie.
The screaming was escalating.
‘Don’t you touch m
e. I’ll ring Esther Rantzen and get you for child battering. I’ve had to live through one lousy newspaper scandal after another. No wonder I’m disturbed. Ashley says I ought to be in therapy.’
‘You ought to be in a chastity belt,’ yelled Rupert. ‘You’ve always had everything you wanted.’
‘So’ve you – mostly women.’
‘Not since Taggie, and you know it.’
‘She doesn’t trust you an inch. That’s why she tags (ha, bloody ha) along to everything. Never lets you out of her sight. I used to see something of you before you married her.’
Putting her hands over her ears, Taggie ran back to the kitchen.
‘Shut up!’ Rupert was shaking Tabitha like a rat. ‘You’ve gone too far this time. You can go and live with your mother. And I’ll sell Frankié, Sorrel and Biscuit.’
This was the red-hot poker on Tabitha’s back.
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she sobbed hysterically. ‘I’ll report you to the RSPCA and the NS what’s it. You promised Biscuit could end her days here! You promised!’ She was banging her fists frantically against Rupert’s chest.
‘If you ever see that hairy little wimp again, and you don’t go back to Bagley Hall tonight, Biscuit’ll be in a can, or shipped abroad for horse meat.’
Rupert had always insisted on an office with two doors, so he could escape from importuning women in the old days and now from tiresome owners.
‘Bastard!’ Tabitha ran screaming through the door leading upstairs.
Lysander jumped guiltily and fell into the office as Rupert opened the second door. His face was expressionless, but there was a glint in his eyes.
‘Where were we?’ he said amiably. ‘Oh yes, you wanted to race ride for me.’
Picking up the telephone, he dialled the yard.
