Well Groomed

by Fiona Walker

  Tash wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. ‘Brian’s very – distinctive,’ she said kindly.

  ‘Brian’s very ugly,’ Hugo laughed. ‘Whereas you are very beautiful indeed.’

  Tash gaped at him. She couldn’t believe he’d just said that. She was longing for him to repeat it just to make sure, but he was still giving her that kind, encouraging big-brother smile that said nothing at all.

  On the return journey, she sat between Stefan, who was driving, and Hugo, who slept throughout, his long thigh resting carelessly against hers, head lolling alternately against his breast bone and her shoulder. At one point her face seemed to be full of his slithering, sweet-smelling hair. With a great squirm of fear tightening in her stomach, she realised that the old magic was working again. Her crush was coming back like some terrible childhood illness one thought one couldn’t catch twice, but that hit ten times as hard when it returned.

  Eating a Zoe special – cauliflower and carrot chilli – that night at Lime Tree Farm, Tash broke the news about her meeting with Mogo to Gus.

  ‘I see,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Well, that would be good if it worked out, but don’t build your hopes up – you know how things can go phut when it comes to sponsors.’

  ‘Sure.’ Tash forked her food around the plate unenthusiastically.

  ‘Well, I think it’s fantastic!’ India told everyone eagerly. ‘Tash rode brilliantly today – even Hugo called her “shit hot and bloody scary”.’

  ‘Language!’ Zoe laughed in mock-horror. ‘Although perhaps I should call Hugo and say that.’

  ‘I shouldn’t bother.’ India wrinkled her nose. ‘He’s got a hot date tonight. Stefan says she’s drop-dead gorgeous.’ She peeked furtively at Tash.

  Tash was chewing on a whole green chilli, seeming not to notice.

  ‘Well, I’m jolly pleased you did well today, Tash.’ Penny cleared her throat and reached for the wine bottle. ‘We have a lame horse, twisted wrist, kicked shin and torn shoulder muscle between us to show for our day’s work.’

  Tash kept quiet, not certain how to respond to that one. At her feet, Beetroot was licking the flagstones thoughtfully.

  ‘Niall phoned,’ Zoe told her as she started to collect up plates.

  ‘Did he?’ Tash looked at her watch to see what time it was in the States. ‘I could call him back now – where’s the number?’ The chilli was starting to bite and her mouth suddenly burst into flames.

  ‘He – er – didn’t leave one.’ Zoe bit her lip. ‘He was mid-way on his coast-to-coast promo and calling from some airport – even he didn’t seem to know which. Says he’s spent every day trapped in a hotel suite with a different journalist poling up every five minutes on roster to ask exactly the same questions. He sounded terribly tired.’

  ‘Did he leave a message?’ Tash’s eyes were starting to stream, her mouth positively dissolving now, her throat one big fireball of pain. She was trying to keep her dignity, but it was hard when one’s nose had started to dribble with chilli blast-back.

  Zoe was looking at her in concern. ‘He says he loves you,’ she said unconvincingly, ‘and that he forgot to mention that he’s free for that weekend at your ma’s if you make it the second in May.’

  ‘But that’s just before Badminton!’ she howled, sounding like Darth Vader.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry, Tash,’ Gus stood up, his voice caustic. ‘You’re doing so well at the moment, you won’t need the practice.’ He walked out, taking the wine bottle with him.

  Tash sank her head into her hands, nose going like an outlet pipe now, a blow torch blasting through her mouth and aiming into her throat, bonfire coming the other way. The only reason she was doing well right now, she wanted to yell if she only could, was because she had all the time in the world to practise. She was supposed to be getting married in two months and she had seen far, far more of her horses this year than of her lover. What was worse, she was finding she missed him less and less.

  Twenty-Five

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, HUGO greeted her with a cup of undrinkably bad instant coffee made in the tack room and a big, genial smile. She still kept having to double-take when he smiled at her, it was incredibly hard to adjust to. She couldn’t wait to say hi to Mickey, who was looking spectacular now that his dull, clipped winter coat had been replaced by the glossy steel of his summer one. His lop ears waggled back and forth with amazed delight when he saw her and, thoroughly overexcited, he tried to thrust a mouthful of hay into her face.

  Holding the jealous Snob at a safe distance, Hugo laughed in amazement. ‘He looks like some sort of camp make-up artiste.’

  But he was far from friendly once he had her and Snob circling around him in the indoor school. Out of necessity rather than cruelty, he revealed all of their weak spots as easily as the king revealing the four and twenty blackbirds. One by one, he picked on her legs, her hands, her back, her head and her feet.

  ‘Okay, drop the reins but keep riding forward. Where does he go?’

  ‘To the left.’ Tash almost fell off as Snob veered dramatically to one side.

  ‘Know why he does that?’

  ‘Because he favours that side.’

  ‘Nope.’ Hugo walked forward and grabbed the rein to slow up Snob. ‘You favour that side. You might not realise it, but your weight is almost entirely on your left buttock – here.’ He slipped a warm hand beneath her rear. ‘He pitches that way to compensate for all the pressure bearing down on him.’

  Tash shifted away, not wanting him to have a chance to assess the pudginess of her bottom.

  ‘That’s better.’ Hugo removed the hand, unsmiling. ‘When he gets overexcited across country, he veers left because it’s now ingrained. The same happens show-jumping, especially when he’s had a couple down and tenses up – I’ve seen him do it. Now go through those canter transitions down the centre line again, this time trying to place your weight evenly.’

  Tash did and Snob veered left.

  ‘And again – concentrate.’

  Again he veered left.

  ‘Once more!’

  And so on for almost an hour until Snob was heading in a straight line but was looking exceptionally fed up.

  ‘That’ll need a lot of work,’ Hugo commented afterwards as they took a break, sitting on jumping barrels sharing a cigarette. ‘You both have a very stubborn habit to break. Right, let’s work on your confidence. Get that kit off.’

  ‘What?’ she yelped.

  Hugo looked withering. ‘The horse’s, Tash, the horse’s. I want to lunge you both.’

  ‘Without the saddle?’ Her eyes narrowed. She knew this trick.

  ‘Yup.’

  Ten minutes later and she was swearing every blue word she knew under her breath as Hugo lunged Snob around a jumping grid, letting him shoot out all manner of bucks and leaps and swerves which sent her sailing through the air time and time again. This was one of Hugo’s favourite old training methods and he had used it before on her – it was a guaranteed bum-crushing, bone-aching short-cut to shame. Black and blue after half an hour, she called it a day.

  ‘What possible good can this do?’ She limped furiously up to him. ‘Me getting flung off just encourages him to misbehave.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ Hugo patted Snob and checked his legs for heat. ‘From where I’m standing he’s getting more careful and you’re less terrified every time he dips his head to take a pull or lets out a happy buck. You know the reins will drag you off if you check too hard, so you let him get on with it.’

  ‘Bollocks! Without a saddle on, I fall off every time he lets out—’

  ‘Not every time,’ he corrected. ‘And when you do stay on – which you certainly would if you had a saddle between you and his back – you are so pleased to have sat through it that you trust him to get over the fence without jabbing his mouth.’

  ‘God, you’re the sort of man who throws babies into swimming pools to teach them to swim, aren’t you?’ she muttered. />
  ‘Only some babies.’ He smiled right into her eyes and she suddenly remembered with a great body-blush that one of the first conversations she had ever had with him – bang in the middle of the worst excesses of the Crush – had ended up with her falling into her mother’s swimming pool.

  ‘Are you saying I jab Snob in the mouth?’ she spluttered, trying to remain furiously indignant about her bruised behind.

  ‘Yup, but you can’t really help it – it’s a natural reaction to his pulling, but it’s habitual and the one leads to the other. You think he’s going to pull so you take a tug, and check and panic and check until he’s off balance and dragging you into a fence like a bolting bison – it’s no wonder he can’t settle between fences, because he’s so worried about what will happen when he gets there. It’s why you keep having to put him in stronger and stronger bits, because he keeps fighting through them.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tash blinked. She suddenly realised that she’d only caught about two-thirds of what he’d been saying. She’d been watching his mouth, those curling lips, cool white teeth and healthy pink tongue. She wondered what it tasted like.

  ‘Er . . .’ She tried to remember what he’d been driving at. ‘Well, it never happens with Hunk,’ she said lamely, noticing that Hugo’s eyes were the same searing blue as a Savlon tube. She would never look at a Savlon tube the same way again, she decided.

  ‘That’s because you don’t do it with Hunk,’ he was saying calmly. ‘It’s largely about the mental attitude of your partnership, and you and this guy need some serious marriage therapy. Now get his saddle on again and we’ll go once around the course here to cheer you both up before calling it a day.’

  Hugo rode around with her on one of his novice hopes, The Broker. They stopped after every fence to discuss how she’d taken it and, if Snob had charged into it, what she had done wrong. Tash found his advice immensely useful, although she continued to grumble and gripe and eye him up like mad when he wasn’t looking. By the time they walked away from the last fence on a long rein, the sky was darkening ominously overhead and there were already lights on in Hugo’s house.

  ‘Is that Stefan?’ Tash looked up at the beautiful building, its climbing ivy fat and vivid from late-spring growth, like a revitalised perm.

  ‘Probably.’ Hugo rubbed his nose with the nub of his crop. ‘He’s been with the blacksmith all afternoon. You off out with Niall to celebrate your birthday tonight?’

  Amazed he’d remembered that it was her birthday, she shook her head. ‘He’s still in the States.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked across the valley, where the last reds of the sun were fading into the mackerel sky above the ridgeway crest.

  Tash watched him in profile for a second, drinking in the straight nose, well-defined chin and long-lashed eyes before turning to stare fixedly between the two red points of Snob’s ears.

  ‘You looking forward to seeing him again?’

  ‘No, I’m dreading it,’ she snapped sarcastically, and then instantly regretted it as he shot her a scornful look.

  They rode on in silence for a few minutes, listening to the mournful two-tone call of a distant cuckoo and the jangling of Broker’s snaffle as his head bobbed while he walked.

  As they squelched up Twenty Acres in sombre silence, Tash felt a long nail of skin-splitting dissatisfaction claw at her spine. I don’t want to marry Niall, she thought wretchedly.

  Then she almost fell off as she realised the implications of her thought, her hand flying to her mouth.

  She wasn’t sure if Hugo noticed, but thankfully he said nothing, instead whistling for his terrier, Plod, who was snorkelling a hole behind them.

  In the floodlit yard, Jenny and another groom were giving the horses their penultimate hard feed and supervising two youngsters from the village who came in to clean tack for pocket money.

  ‘Good session?’ Jenny looked up at Tash from beneath the brim of a baseball cap shaped like a banana.

  Trying to stop Snob from taking flight as he clocked the cap, Tash shot a sideways look at Hugo and nodded. ‘Very constructive.’

  ‘Meaning he yelled at you a lot?’ Jenny winked.

  ‘I was a perfect gentleman.’ Hugo jumped off Broker and led him alongside Snob who was preoccupied with gaping at the banana. ‘D’you want to come in for a drink?’

  Tash felt a little skip of longing in her belly as she watched him pull off his crash cap.

  She looked at the ever-blackening sky and shook her head, relieved. ‘I’m risking it hacking back in this light as it is. Can I borrow some reflective stuff?’

  ‘Nope.’ Hugo scratched Snob’s nose and looked up at her.

  ‘You haven’t had your present yet,’ he said, watching her with amusement.

  ‘My present?’ Tash asked in confusion.

  ‘It is your birthday today, isn’t it?’ he laughed.

  ‘Yes, it’s my birthday.’ She grinned rather goofily because she was so pleased with this new, nice Hugo with whom she wanted to loll around all evening.

  ‘In that case you must have a present,’ he said. ‘Everyone should have a present that really means something on their birthday.’

  Tash quailed, aware that her – rather dull – gift for his thirtieth had disappeared into Niall’s stomach.

  ‘You don’t have to give me anything,’ she said, to let him off the hook. ‘I mean it’s not as if . . .’ She trailed into an awkward silence, her pride getting in the way.

  ‘As if what?’ he asked gently.

  ‘As if you knew today was my birthday until India mentioned it yesterday.’

  ‘Of course I knew,’ he said matter-of-factly, leading Broker off to the boxes in the far yard which were out of sight.

  After he’d gone, Jenny took off her banana cap and sighed, fanning her face with it.

  ‘You’re so lucky, Tash.’ She leaned across to give Snob a pat, face dreamy. ‘I do envy you.’

  ‘Why?’ Tash was preoccupied watching Plod the terrier trotting towards the far yard to follow his master. She longed to do the same thing. She really had to get a grip on this resurgent crush, she told herself. She was a mature, enlightened woman and should act like one.

  ‘I wish Hugo was as nice to me as he is to you,’ sighed Jenny again, suddenly looking terribly young and insecure. ‘He’s hell to work for really. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t fancy him so much.’

  At that moment, Stefan loped out of the tack-room on his long spidery legs. Pretending to be devastated, he groaned, covering his face. ‘What do I do wrong?’

  ‘You’re just too nice, Stef,’ Jenny shrugged. ‘And too promiscuous – everyone here knows you’re called “Groom Service” because you sleep with all the prettiest stable girls, whereas the only passes Hugo makes are in the dressage ring – more’s the pity.’

  Empathy drenching her every pore, Tash smiled at Jenny and shook her head.

  ‘You don’t want Hugo really,’ she told her rather unconvincingly. ‘I used to have a honking great crush on him myself,’ she confessed. ‘Years ago now – before Niall,’ she added quickly. ‘I used to moon around at my elder sister’s house staring longingly at him from behind bits of furniture. He still laughs about it.’

  ‘You fancied Hugo?’ Stefan gaped at her. ‘He’s never even mentioned it.’

  ‘Hasn’t he?’ Tash was surprised. ‘I was Jenny’s age – younger even.’ She glanced at Jenny in embarrassment, desperate not to sound condescending considering her own recent hormonal crisis. ‘It’s a bug most young women who meet him get, and it’s a sign of great taste.’ She smiled and then, deciding that was perhaps not strictly true, rushed on, ‘I suppose fancying Hugo is like spots – you have to suffer them at one time, and they seem like they’ll never go, but they do.’

  ‘You still have them,’ Stefan said with a wicked grin.

  ‘I what?’

  ‘You still have spots,’ he pointed out. ‘Well, one big one on your chin at least.’

  ‘Thanks,
Stef – no one can say you knock spots off other men.’ Tash jumped off Snob and loosened his girths, suddenly longing to slope off to a loo mirror and examine her chin.

  Then she spotted a streak of grey passing through the courtyard beyond and caught her breath.

  The next moment the dividing gate had swung open and, with a loud clatter of hooves on flagstones and a nervous whinny, Mickey Rourke appeared through it with boggling eyes and clumsy feet that flattened Hugo’s in his wake.

  ‘Ow – get off, you bugger!’ he wailed, eyes watering.

  Looking confused, Mickey stood stock still and gazed worriedly around him, his dinner-plate hoof still pressing down on Hugo’s foot. He was wearing an over-sized glittery ‘Happy Birthday’ gift tag like a rosette on one side of his big white face, obscuring most of one wall eye.

  Tash let out a brief whimper of joy. Spotting her, Mickey’s vacuous eyes lit up and, chortling a volley of whickers from deep within his throat, he broke free of Hugo and clattered across the yard to see her, sending two feed buckets and a wheelbarrow flying before he could dive for her pockets and head-butt her shoulders, almost pitching her into the tack room in his relief at seeing her.

  Realising that Snob was looking furiously put out and gearing up for a fight with the hapless Mickey, Stefan hastily took hold of the jealous chestnut and led him away. Tash barely seemed to notice as she read the gift tag on Mickey’s headcollar in near-disbelief.

  ‘Happy Birthday,’ Hugo drawled from the yard gate. ‘Now don’t you dare look in his mouth.’

  Pressing her face into Mickey’s huge grey cheek, Tash tried not to cry, knowing that her déjà vu crush was making her a risky emotional cocktail right now.

  ‘You can’t just give him to me, Hugo.’ She pulled back as Mickey spotted a discarded feed bucket and clattered off to investigate, the rope from his headcollar tripping him up as he went. ‘You paid tens and tens of thousands for him.’

  ‘He’s the clumsiest, stupidest horse I have ever encountered,’ Hugo confessed as Mickey picked up the entire bucket between his teeth and turned to face Tash proudly. ‘I don’t know how the hell you got a tune out of him, but I’m going nowhere very slowly every time I get on him. He’s all yours to ride on my behalf.’