by Jilly Cooper
‘Gee, thanks,’ said Tab listlessly. ‘You are lucky keeping Baby as a friend. Tristan won’t even speak to me. Even George seems to like Baby now.’
‘George now knows that Baby’s only a friend, and that his heart lies entirely elsewhere,’ said Flora, then realizing what she’d said, added hastily, ‘Oh, look, Granny’s back in the press box in his black robes. Such a surreal, sinister touch.’
‘Last time I acted with Granny I was nearly burnt to death,’ shuddered Tab. ‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered.
For there, away from the crowd, his glossy black hair gleaming, his shadow as misshapen and knowing as a Velazquez dwarf, the personification of darkness in that burning afternoon sun, stood Isa.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ croaked Tab.
‘Come to wish my wife and my old friend good luck,’ mocked Isa, never taking his eyes off Baby.
Oh, help, thought Flora in terror. Isa’s the one. He’s just the right height to pass himself off as the ghost of Rannaldini and he exudes such evil.
Up galumphed Griselda, oblivious of any tension.
‘I’ve found Tab’s saddle, at last. It was under a table,’ she shouted, as she handed it to Rupert’s groom, Dizzy, who slapped it onto The Ghost, tightened his girths and pulled down the stirrups.
‘He’s ready, Tab,’ she cried.
But Tab was gazing up at Baby, who’d gone even whiter than she had. ‘So you’re the one Isa loves,’ she whispered. ‘No-one fucking told me. You bastard, Baby!’
‘Dépêchez-vous, Tab,’ shouted Bernard.
‘How long’s it been going on?’ hissed Tab. ‘Before our marriage, I suppose. You’d like me out of the way, wouldn’t you?’ She was taunting Baby now.
‘In your present mood, anyone would,’ snapped Baby, gathering up his reins.
‘Isa probably wants your horses back,’ hissed Tab. ‘My father won’t want to train them when he hears what you’ve been up to.’
Picking up the vibes, Baby’s mare nearly took off.
‘Come on, Tab, everyone’s waiting,’ chided Dizzy, giving her a leg up.
Rozzy rushed forward to give her boots a last polish, Griselda tucked in her shirt and smoothed down her breeches. René took the shine off her nose with a powder brush.
‘Your collar’s sticking up, Tab,’ cried out Simone.
‘A little piece of hair’s come loose from your toggle,’ cried Rozzy.
‘Oh, fuck off, the lot of you,’ screamed Tab.
‘Cool it, Tab,’ yelled Ricky France-Lynch.
‘Please don’t shout,’ grumbled Dommie Carlisle, ‘I’ve got a bloody awful headache. Shouldn’t have spent last night shagging someone called Pissy or Cushy.’
Ogborne revved up the car. Valentin in the passenger seat could see through his long lens the players shouting at each other, the ponies’ legs a jumble against the pink faces and pretty clothes of the excited crowd. Rannaldini’s overture was echoing round the field.
‘Quiet, please, everyone,’ yelled Bernard. ‘We’re turning over.’
Clocking the loathing on Baby’s face, Tab panicked.
He’s going to kill me, she thought, but it was too late.
As Ogborne trod on the accelerator Tristan, in the back of the car, had shouted, ‘Action’.
Ricky France-Lynch stroked the ball to Baby, who hit it perfectly, galloping after it towards goal. Too fast, thought Rupert, in sudden terror, as Tab came thundering in at an angle to push him off the ball. But Baby’s pony held firm, and dapple-grey and chestnut shoulders met in a shunt so forceful it took both horses off the ground in a cloud of dust, but gave Tab the slight advantage to stroke the ball back up-field to safety.
‘Wonderful,’ breathed Tristan. ‘Keep rolling.’
But as Tab leant over, putting her whole weight on her right stirrup to take the backhand, the leather gave way like a broken arm. There was no way she could save herself. She was toppling over. Next moment the ground came hurtling up to meet her.
The crowd gave a collective scream of horror.
Fuck, I wonder if we’ve shot enough, Tristan was horrified to find himself thinking, particularly when Tab remained in a huddled heap.
The Ghost was running around trailing his reins. Ambulances and police cars were careering across the field. Baby was instantly off his pony, pleading as he knelt down beside Tab.
‘Oh, angel, I’m sorry, please be OK.’
But Tab didn’t move, whiter than the burning sun above. From the horrible angle of her head to her body, Baby knew she had broken her neck.
Rupert, who’d vaulted on to someone’s pony, beat the police cars and ambulances. ‘Turn that fucking music off! Why’d you have to hit her so hard?’ he yelled at Baby. Then, catching sight of his motionless daughter, he dropped to his knees beside her. ‘Oh, my Christ.’
Her stirrup, with its broken leather, was still attached to her foot.
Driving back with Alpheus’s suit, taking a short-cut through one of George’s side gates, Wolfie heard a wail of sirens. Through a screen of hogweed, blond grasses and mauve willowherb, he saw an ambulance belting towards the main gates.
Abandoning the Lamborghini in the gateway to the field where all the unit was parked, he tore after the ambulance, which was temporarily trapped behind a hay lorry.
‘Who is it?’ he begged a cameraman running in the other direction.
‘Campbell-Black’s daughter. Looks nasty.’
Catching up with the ambulance, Wolfie drummed his fists frenziedly on the back door until it opened a fraction.
‘You can’t come in,’ said an ambulance man, putting his head out.
‘I bloody can. What’s the matter with her?’
‘Are you a relative?’
‘Brother,’ gasped Wolfie.
Seeing his blond hair and normally ruddy face now as white as Tab’s, they allowed him in, then were slightly startled when he began gabbling away in German, beseeching Tab to live.
Wolfie was magnificent. He comforted and found cups of tea for his sobbing stepmother and, later, for a stunned, horrified Taggie. He conjured up a large whisky for Rupert and, by acting as mediator, defused the situation when Rupert’s explosions of rage looked like antagonizing the hospital staff.
He also remained icily calm when the specialist listed the terrible alternatives so he could translate the details – albeit watered down – to the others, who were too shocked to take them in.
Tab had been rushed into Intensive Care, where X-rays had mercifully ruled out a broken neck or a fractured skull. But they would have to watch out she didn’t develop a subdural oedema.
‘What the fuck’s that? Can’t you speak English?’
The specialist’s lips tightened. ‘A blood clot inside the cavity of the brain, Mr Campbell-Black. We’ll keep examining her pupils for signs of bleeding under the skull.’
‘And if you find them?’ Wolfie’s voice shook only slightly.
‘We’ll whizz her straight off to a neuro-surgeon and drill straight through the skull.’
Helen’s sobs redoubled.
‘She’ll be all right.’ Wolfie put an arm round her shoulders.
‘How d’you fucking know?’ snapped Rupert. ‘And how long before we find out?’
Du lieber Gott, beseeched Wolfie, for the thousandth time, don’t extinguish something so vibrant and lovely.
He had never seen anyone so pale. Against Tab’s face, the white sheets, spattered with blood from another nosebleed, seemed warm as ivory. Nothing could be more inert than her little hand, which lay in his as cold and as still as a pebble on the shore. Helen, snivelling gently, was holding the other hand. In the corner sat a motionless Taggie and a silent Xavier, who had insisted on coming but who looked absolutely frozen with shock. Rupert, pacing up and down outside, was the first to see Fanshawe and Debbie.
‘Whaddja want?’
‘How’s Mrs Lovell?’
‘Unconscious.’
Fanshawe steeled h
imself.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we’re treating her fall as attempted murder.’ Then, seeing the fury in Rupert’s face, ‘Her right-hand stirrup leather was cut through, probably with a penknife.’
‘And that happened in a place crawling with cops! Why the hell should anyone want to kill Tab?’
Fanshawe refrained from pointing out that Tab had achieved an all-time high in bloodiness over the last few days.
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out, sir. Can you remember who was near her while she was mounting? Nicking the leather would have only taken a couple of seconds.’
‘Dizzy, my head groom, saddled the pony,’ said Rupert, ‘but she’s been with me for ever. She adores Tab. Also,’ Rupert screwed up his eyes, ‘Dizzy gave her a leg up so no weight would have been put on the leather. Grisel brought the saddle over. Grisel’s an old softie – she wouldn’t hurt Tab. There was that make-up poofter, René, and Simone, she’s a duck, and Rozzy, that drip who’s bats about Tristan. Isa, her bastard of a husband was there, Baby, Mikhail. Everyone, really.’
‘Lucy Latimer was holding the saddle when Tristan sacked her,’ said Debbie, ‘but she’s done a bunk, evidently searching for her dog.’
‘We gather Mrs Lovell was upset because someone put the wrong saddle on her pony,’ added Fanshawe, ‘and there was a long delay before Lady Griselda discovered the right one under the table in Wardrobe.’
‘Tab’s saddlecloth is a very distinctive blue and black check,’ said Rupert. ‘Everyone on the unit would have recognized it and known Tab would be wanting it later.’
‘So the murderer could have cut the leather much earlier.’
‘And will strike again. He’s tried to kill Tab before,’ snarled Rupert. ‘Why the hell haven’t you put a hundred men round this hospital?’
Tab was in a twilight of pain. Black clouds whirled before her eyes, then became smoky grey mist but, as if they were thick elasticated cobwebs, try as she might she couldn’t struggle through them. Ahead shone a blinding light. Perhaps she was dead and had reached the other side. To the right she could make out a shadowy angel with a clipboard, who was ticking people off as they disappeared into the light. Tab was frantic to go through too. ‘Gertrude,’ she croaked, ‘I must say I’m sorry to Gertrude.’
‘She’s not here at the moment.’ The angel consulted the clipboard. ‘And we’re not ready for you either. There are people on earth who need you.’
And Tab had groaned as the mists came down again.
But suddenly they were clearing again and she could see Wolfie sitting on a chair. He looked so sad, but try as she might she couldn’t call out to him. Not even when a little white dog with a black patch trotted into the room.
Gertrude, Gertrude! Again Tab tried to speak, but no words came out. After licking her hand, the little white dog trotted purposefully over to Wolfie, and nudged his knees until he bent down and picked her up. Having licked his face, which seemed to be glistening with tears, Gertrude curled up with a contented sigh on his knee.
Once again, Tab battled to speak, but the mists descended blacker than ever. Then they cleared and Gertrude had gone. It was the most enormous struggle but finally she managed to whisper, ‘Wolfie, I’m here.’
Next minute her hands were seized and Wolfie was gazing down at her, trying to stop more tears pouring out of his reddened eyes, even more unable to speak than she was.
‘Oh, Wolfie,’ she whispered, ‘Gertrude’s ghost came in and jumped on your knee. She was so happy to be there, I know she was telling me she’s forgiven me, and you’re the one, and everything’s going to be all right. Oh, Wolfie, you have got a halo. I love you so much.’ Her voice faded as she drifted off to sleep again.
Wolfie stumbled into the corridor where he found Rupert.
‘She came round.’
‘Thank Christ! Did she make sense?’
‘Not at all. She was gabbling on about Gertrude’s ghost. Then she said she loved me.’ His voice broke. ‘She must be delirious.’
Next moment, he had collapsed on the sofa, put his head in his hands and burst into agonizing sobs. ‘I’m so sorry to be a wimp, Rupert, but I thought she was going to die, and I love her so much.’
‘I know you do,’ said Rupert, in an unsteady voice. ‘But she’s going to be OK.’
Tab’s first question when she came round was ‘Why did you go to France?’
‘Because you told me to.’
‘And why have you been crying?’
‘I was worried.’ Then, steeling himself because he felt he must level with her, ‘Tristan backed off from you earlier in the summer because he’d been told by my father that there was bad blood in his family and he should never have children. Lucy and I went to France to prove it wasn’t true so now he can marry you, if you want him to.’ He took her hands again.
‘You and Lucy went all that way.’ Tab’s forehead wrinkled trying to understand. ‘So you’re not in love with Lucy?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Why were you kissing her, then?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your memory,’ said Wolfie, trying to smile. ‘We were comforting each other. We thought you loved Tristan.’
‘I’ve been so jealous,’ mumbled Tab. ‘This is seriously embarrassing, but once you’d gone away I realized it was you I loved, not Tristan. He’s so ratty and obsessed with his film. I feel safe with you. I’ve wanted to kill Lucy for the last few days.’
Wolfie was struck dumb again as the colour flooded his incredulous, bewildered, hopeful face.
‘Your father?’ he mumbled. ‘He’d never approve. I’m three-quarters Kraut, a quarter Italian, a Rannaldini, and a disinherited one at that.’
‘That doesn’t matter a stuff. Dad really likes you.’ Tab stretched up her hand to touch his face. ‘You’re much more his cup of Earl Grey than Tristan. He loathes intellectuals.’
‘How d’you feel now?’ Wolfie trapped her hand, covering the palm with kisses.
‘My head aches, but my heart doesn’t any more.’
‘You mustn’t try to talk.’
‘I don’t want to talk, I want to kiss you.’
I shouldn’t be doing this to Tristan, thought Wolfie, but he bent his head and very gently kissed her dry lips, which immediately opened.
‘Stop that at once, you must not excite the patient,’ said an outraged nurse, who’d bustled in with a torch to check Tab’s pupils.
‘Yes, he must.’ Tab’s hand clamped round Wolfie’s neck. ‘It’s exactly what she does need.’
Outside, Rupert, trying to get through to Gerald Portland, had to cope with another casualty. This time it was Xavier, sobbing his heart out. Rupert was touched. Perhaps, at last, his son was mellowing towards his stepsister.
‘It’s all my fault,’ wailed Xav. ‘Tab was so horrible this morning, I prayed she’d die.’
For a second Rupert had difficulty in keeping a straight face. ‘It seems you didn’t pray hard enough,’ he said gravely. ‘She’s getting better by the minute.’
‘Will she be coming back to live with us?’ Xav asked gloomily.
Looking through the glass into Tab’s room, Rupert could see Wolfie taking off Tab’s wedding ring and throwing it in the bin. ‘I rather doubt it,’ he said.
‘D’you think her horrible mother could go and live with them both?’
Five minutes later, walking at speed along the corridor, Tristan went slap into Rupert and steeled himself for more abuse. But Rupert seemed in an excellent mood.
‘She’s come round. Go and say hello.’
As Tristan tiptoed in, Wolfie slid out without a word. Outside he leant his hot forehead against a cool corridor window, raising two sets of crossed fingers to the skies.
‘My poor darling, ’ow are you?’ Tristan took Tab’s hand.
‘OK.’ She forced herself to look at him. After a day in the sun, he was going brown again. She’d forgotten how handsome he was. ‘Look,’ she muttered, ‘
I know I threw myself at you. Wolfie told me why you backed off, but you mustn’t feel guilty about Claudine because I’m in love with Wolfie.’
Tristan noticed her ringless finger and her mud-splattered face. Only the ticking clock broke the long, long silence. ‘I know you are.’
Looking up, Tab was amazed to see happiness and sweetness in his face.
‘Darling Tab, you gave me the most beautiful night of my life.’
‘I thought I was so in love with you.’
‘And I with you, and I still think Wolfie is the luckiest guy in the world.’
‘You shouldn’t look so relieved,’ grumbled Tab. ‘It isn’t very flattering.’
‘It isn’t very flattering that your father looks ecstatic as well. I’m sorry, chérie, I’ve been like a bear with a hurt head and you had that ’orrible fall.’
‘Wolfie thinks you’ll be cross with him.’
‘Au contraire. I come not for Wolfie’s blood but his car keys. When he saw ambulance, he leave Lamborghini across gateway so the unit cannot get in or out. His burglar alarm is going off every second so Sylvestre is going ape-sheet. Worst of all, Alpheus’s suit is locked inside so we cannot film last scene.’
The moment Tristan returned to the set an anxious Rozzy asked after Tab.
‘Out of danger,’ said Tristan happily, ‘and absolutely crazy about Wolfie, which lets me off the hook.’
‘Oh, I’m so pleased for them both,’ sighed Rozzy, taking Alpheus’s suit from him. ‘I wonder if it needs a press.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Tristan. ‘Oh, Rozzy, I was such a bastard to Lucy earlier. Now I’m worried stiff. Someone tried to kill Tab, they slashed your dress yesterday, the murderer’s on the rampage, and Lucy’s not answering her mobile.’
‘Leave a message on her bleeper.’
‘I’ve been leaving them all day. I need her to make up Alpheus. We can cover his Shirley Temple curls with straw hat, but only Lucy can give those commonplace features an air of nobility. And to tell the truth,’ confessed Tristan wryly, ‘I shouted at her because I miss her so much.’
