Mount!

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘He looks wery well,’ cried Marketa. ‘Go and get changed, I’ll look after Quickly.’

  Celeste had been known to spend over an hour to tart herself up before leading up horses but Lark took only a few minutes to brush her teeth and wriggle into her new jeans and turquoise T-shirt, which clung excitingly over her new Wonderbra.

  ‘You look stunning, wery woluptuous,’ said Marketa as she powdered Lark’s nose and applied a dab of green eyeshadow and mascara to her pale lashes.

  Etta and Valent stood in the centre of the parade ring. Both too nervous to have any lunch, they were planning dinner in the reputedly wonderful restaurant upstairs. A bottle of Bollinger was already on ice so they could watch later races on a television set at the end of their table.

  With Rupert away, Dora had marshalled the press to witness Eddie’s first ride back on the flat. Towering above the other jockeys, he looked much more glamorous, Rupert’s sapphire and emerald colours bringing out the brilliant blue of his eyes and, despite the dramatic weight loss, he still had long legs and broad shoulders.

  Brute’s colt Geoffrey, with his huge flopping donkey ears and half-closed eyes, was certainly the plainest in the parade ring.

  ‘That ’orse ain’t a two-year-old,’ shouted a wag in the crowd. ‘’E’s an old age pensioner!’

  Wincing at the guffaws, Rosaria, who was leading him up, patted Geoffrey protectively.

  Gav, standing with Etta and Valent, was briefing Eddie.

  ‘Ride him positively, try and sit behind and move up near the end. He can get through any gap.’

  But he’d lost Eddie, who was looking at Lark as she led up a jig-jogging Quickly.

  ‘Wow,’ said Eddie. ‘You should’ve won the best-turned-out prize. You’ve definitely got to promise to sleep with me if I win.’

  ‘Shut up, Eddie,’ snapped Valent and Gav as the latter legged him up.

  Lark waited near the finish, clutching Marketa’s hand, glued to the big screen. ‘Oh please, please dear God.’

  Gavin had gone down to the start with Quickly, walking him round quietly, away from the other horses. Quickly rolled his eyes but decided to behave. Having gone straight into the stalls, even though not jumping out as fast as some, he clearly hadn’t listened to Gav’s instructions and went straight to the front to avoid having grey grit, known as kickback, in his pretty face.

  As they hurtled round the course, it could be seen how brilliantly Eddie rode and how his body seemed to melt into Quickly’s. Although Quickly hung right and interfered with several horses, including Geoffrey, he didn’t run out of puff and scorching past the post an amazing ten lengths clear, he ran halfway round the course again before Eddie could pull him up.

  Back at Penscombe, as the bell rang out for a win, yard and stud were yelling their heads off, particularly Jemmy who had put all his wages on Quickly.

  ‘Thank God we persuaded Rupert.’ Taggie and Gala were hugging one another. ‘Let’s go and take carrots to Love Rat.’

  Even though it was only £1,000 prize money and only 10 per cent for Eddie, it was his first win on the flat in England.

  Camera crews and journalists centred on Quickly’s overjoyed stable lass racing up the course, particularly when Eddie bent down and kissed her, on and on until Quickly bit her to break them up.

  ‘Nice one,’ observed Trixie, who was awaiting the results of her A-level retakes and who’d been so engrossed in a piece she was writing for the Guardian that she’d only just remembered to switch on the television.

  Touching his hat in the same nonchalant way that a snoozing Forester flicked his tail an inch upwards when Taggie entered the room, a grinning Eddie acknowledged the applause as he rode into the winner’s enclosure. Noticing the tears pouring down Lark’s cheeks and the heaving prettiness of her breasts in that T-shirt, he slid off, shook hands with an ecstatic Valent and Etta, unsaddled Quickly, weighed in and after returning for a joyful photograph, took Quickly’s reins and threw them at Marketa. Then, ignoring a battalion of press, he whisked a besotted Lark out of the winner’s enclosure and into the hotel.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she gasped.

  ‘For a victory shag. Stupid Brute dropped his key card – I overheard him telling Alison which room he was in.’

  ‘We can’t,’ cried Lark. ‘Trixie! Quickly!’

  But Eddie shut her up, kissing her all the way up in the lift. Brute’s card slid easily into the door. Inside was a huge double bed and a lovely view on to the course.

  ‘Eddie, we can’t – you’ve got to collect your prize.’

  ‘You’re my prize. Etta and Valent will collect it.’

  ‘I’ve got to hose Quickly down and walk him round till he stops blowing. He needs me.’

  ‘Not nearly as much as I do.’

  ‘What about Dick the Second? He’s in the next race.’

  ‘It’s the one after next, we’ve still got time.’

  He was so handsome, so hot, so happy and so certain as with amazing speed he pulled her T-shirt over her head.

  ‘Lovely,’ he unhooked her bra, ‘even lovelier,’ and still kissing her, unzipped her jeans and despite their tightness managed to tug them off.

  ‘Look at you, look at you.’

  ‘What happens if Brute comes back?’

  ‘He’s got a horse in the next race.’

  ‘Eddie, I haven’t done it before.’

  Eddie only stopped for a second. ‘You haven’t? You’re a virgin?’

  Lark nodded. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Eddie drew down her pink pants and slid a hand between her legs.

  ‘Not that one would know it.’ And he lifted her up, laid her on the bed and was out of his silks, boots and breeches in a second.

  ‘Eddie, I love you but I don’t know how to do it.’

  ‘Leave that to me.’

  ‘I don’t know if I’ve got a hymen.’

  ‘Probably lost it, riding so much. Hi! Man,’ grinned Eddie. Next moment he was on top of her. ‘Oh you beauty, you’ve brought me luck.’

  ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ Lark gave a scream, as he thrust a considerable cock inside her. ‘I love you. Ow, ow! I’ve always loved you.’

  It was all over in a minute.

  ‘Next time I’ll make you come,’ promised Eddie, kissing her.

  There was blood all over the sheets, but it didn’t show up on her black jeans.

  Outside they ran into a hen party, a dozen drunk women wearing ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hats and blowing squeakers.

  ‘Love you for supper!’ they shouted at Eddie as he took Lark’s hand and raced her down the landing, past maids with trolleys, piled high with towels and little bottles.

  Only when they emerged outside to a baying pack of press did Eddie realize.

  ‘You’ve missed a stewards’ enquiry,’ howled Gav.

  Brute had evidently complained that Quickly, hanging right and careering round like a drunkard, had cost Geoffrey, who’d come second, the race – clearly absurd when Quickly had won by such a vast margin. But Eddie hadn’t been there to fight his corner. The stewards, having watched the race several times, gave it to Geoffrey and a ten-day ban to Eddie for contempt of court.

  The fall-out was hideous. Cathal would have won a vast accumulator. Jemmy had blown all his wages. Valent, who’d bet £5,000, yelled at Eddie. He and Etta had been so looking forward to hanging a silver plate on the wall, empty since Mrs Wilkinson’s National Cup went back.

  In the middle of Valent’s dressing down, Rupert rang from America, sacked Lark until talked round by Gav, and told Eddie he’d never get a ride for the yard again.

  Eddie got home to find Trixie had walked out, taking Herry and all her belongings back to Seth Bainton who, having landed this huge part, wanted to up his macho image by leaking the fact he was Herry’s father.

  ‘Seth, who is even more unsuitable than Eddie,’ cried a distraught Etta.

  Eddie was utterly devastated. Poor Lark, poor Trixie. How could he have behaved so app
allingly? Across the valley, up in the sky, he could see the pale moon, two days short of the halfway mark, so it resembled a jockey’s sad, emaciated face, his hair hidden by his helmet, turned-down hollowed eyes and nose just smudges, the mouth a blur above a pointed chin.

  That’s me, he thought despairingly.

  Even Taggie was furious with him, having pushed his cause with Rupert. He’d let down Gav and Quickly, who’d run like an angel, not to mention poor, poor Lark.

  The press had a field day with endless jokes about Eddie putting himself rather than the race to bed and pictures of him and Lark everywhere.

  ‘What a good thing we bought you those smart jeans and that cool T-shirt,’ crowed Marketa. ‘You look really good.’

  Matters weren’t helped by Valent bollocking a returning Rupert for spending so much time away.

  ‘To hell with Love Rat, you should be here to keep an eye on things.’

  Whereupon an irate Rupert chewed Gav out for not keeping his eye on Eddie, whereupon an irate Gala flared up: ‘That’s not fair! Gav’s been sorting Quickly out ever since he came here. He’s done an amazing job on him and Eddie.’

  ‘Has he now?’ said Rupert in his ‘whatever gave you the right’ voice. ‘That horse will end up as a supermarket burger if he doesn’t get his act together.’

  ‘Oh burger off!’ yelled Gala.

  With Eddie and Trixie gone, the much-coveted top flat of the hostel, formerly known as ‘The Shaggery’, was available again. Not that it was a very attractive proposition, neither Eddie nor Trixie having done any housework since they moved in. Hundreds of unwashed socks festered under the bed, scrumpled-up tissues lay like snow, washing-up in the sink hit the ceiling, alongside discarded green-with-mould yoghurt tubs. Jokes were flying around about Quickly’s friend Purrpuss being offered a spot of moonlighting to get rid of the mice or Safety Car being recruited to sweep the floor.

  Celeste was pressuring Gav to suggest to Rupert that she and he moved in, but for once Gav stood firm. He was needed to keep an eye on the yard in his rooms over the tack room.

  So Rupert offered the flat to Louise, Marketa and Lark, who herself proceeded to do most of the blitzing. She also had to fight off endless pressure from her parents to leave such a den of iniquity and return home to a safe secretarial job in Essex. She tried to forget Eddie, who’d fled back home to Palm Beach, and buried herself in work, comforted that both Dave and Touchy Filly were cleaning up and Quickly must win a race soon.

  Happily, a solution was at hand. Quickly, albeit only two, was as over-sexed as Eddie. In the paddock before his next race over six furlongs at Windsor, he caught sight of a dear little dark-brown filly with neat white socks on her hind legs like a schoolgirl, called Trans Jennifer. Quickly proceeded to get all colty, arching his neck, lifting his back, snorting and trying to mount her.

  ‘Naughty,’ said Lark, shaking his bridle, embarrassed that the press were still taking her picture.

  ‘How’s the Wolverhampton Wanderer?’ shouted a wag in the crowd.

  Windsor is the most lovely racecourse with a white clubhouse, willows everywhere, through which can be seen boats gliding up a River Thames flickering in the evening sun. Etta and Valent arrived in one of these boats.

  Rupert was away again, so Gav gave instructions to Meerkat, who was apprehensive of riding with a wrist still tender and weak.

  ‘The course as you know is in the shape of a figure of eight, which means many bends, so for a change try and get Quickly, who has an outside draw, far ahead so you are not overtaken on the bends by horses on the inside.’

  Quickly, however, had ideas of his own. When the bell told the jockeys to mount, he mounted Trans Jennifer.

  ‘Oh Gawd, not again,’ said a loader as Quickly bounded down to the start and tried to follow Jennifer into her stall, and when her door slammed in his face, shot into his stall next door and was so busy whispering sweet everythings into her ear, he missed the kick when the doors swung open.

  Having shown phenomenal acceleration by the speed with which he made up ground forfeited in the stalls, he then proceeded to show off by hurtling down the course beside Jennifer, whisking in and out of the figure-of-eight bends, surging ahead of her to win by a very turned head and jumping on her again in the winner’s enclosure.

  ‘Randy little sod, like his trainer,’ tweeted Cosmo.

  Etta, Valent and Gav were overjoyed, so was Meerkat whose wrist had held out.

  ‘First ride back, he really looked after me,’ he told Robert Cooper from At the Races. ‘He’s the real deal, nothing gets near him at home.’

  ‘And at least Quickly’s no longer a maiden,’ crowed Dora.

  28

  The great Ebor Festival takes place at York at the end of August. Four days of fantastic racing, to which Rupert always took a stack of horses, and which included two huge races where two-year-olds could compete. Rupert proceeded to enter New Year’s Dave, already unbeaten in five starts, in the Gimcrack – an extremely famous race for two-year-old colts and a Group Two, which is the equivalent of the Championship Division in football and which offered splendid prize money of £200,000. Dave was second favourite with Cosmo Rannaldini’s dazzling colt I Will Repay as favourite.

  Even more audaciously, Rupert had entered Master Quickly for the Nunthorpe Stakes, one of the few Group Ones (the equivalent of football’s Premier League) which allows two-year-olds to race against their mighty elders. This fastest race in Europe is a five-furlong hurtle for a vast £250,000. Quickly, being only two, would get a massive weight concession to compete with older, stronger horses including several previous winners and Cosmo’s four-year-old, Ivan the Terrorist, a dark-brown belter with a raking stride.

  Rupert was taking a terrific risk with Quickly. The only way to win the Nunthorpe was to explode out of the stalls and scorch down the straight York track. To prepare a horse, you must put him on a high-energy diet twelve days before, allowing him as little exercise as possible, and then only on a tight rein and at a hand canter … not yet, not yet … till on race day, he’s right on the edge, ready to explode, coiled like a spring – yet somehow you have to stop him fizzing over. The problem was how to get anything as volatile and hyped-up as Quickly down to the start, in front of a vast clamorous crowd and a mass of press.

  The calming process began when Quickly travelled up to Yorkshire with Purrpuss in a cat basket. Purring loudly, and ignoring the swallows swooping around, he instantly settled on Quickly’s back in the beautiful and tranquil stables. Quickly was in Box 73, which was once home to the great Sea the Stars and which Assistant Clerk of the Course Anthea Morshead had recommended because it was quiet, and would mean Quickly couldn’t see people coming and going into the yard. Rupert had also applied to bring Safety Car to ‘pony’ Quickly down to the start. Quite a euphemism for a seventeen-hands-high, one-eared horse with a straggly tail.

  Next door to Quickly and Safety Car was stabled New Year’s Dave, on whose chances the Racing Post were very keen.

  DAVE THE RAVE said the headline above a lovely cover picture of him sticking out his tongue for a Polo. They were less enthusiastic about Quickly’s chances.

  ‘So far Mrs Wilkinson’s foal has shown little beyond an ability to make a nuisance of himself.’

  All the stable staff were thrilled to be going to York, which had a marvellous canteen and fantastic accommodation, with travelling Head Lads given rooms to themselves.

  Marketa and Louise made no secret of their excitement at going, getting their hair streaked and tactlessly going on about how, with the overnight stay, they’d get the chance to pull Gav. Celeste was furious to be left behind, particularly as Lark would be up there as well, the little goody goody.

  ‘I’ll have to stay at home with Celeste,’ said Jemmy Carter gloomily.

  I’ll have to stay at home with Old Eddie, thought Gala, who once again wished she was working in the yard.

  Lark, who had to share a room at York, was reduced to holding a pill
ow over her head to avoid hearing Marketa noisily enjoying A. N. Other, who turned out to be one of Isa Lovell’s lads.

  ‘Did you learn anything useful about Isa’s horses?’ asked Gav, the next day.

  ‘No, he was much too good in bed.’

  ‘My roommate,’ grumbled Roving Mike, ‘stinks the room out with curry and keeps me awake praying. I got up in the night to have a pee and fell over him.’

  York is the most beautiful racecourse, set in lush parkland known as the Knavesmire, where public executions were once staged. Lovely houses peep out of huge dark-green trees in their full summer glory. Near the stands soar massive pillars, covered in posters of last year’s winners and unashamedly announcing, Welcome to Yorkshire! England’s biggest and most magnificent county.

  A vast copper beech shaded the parade ring, the bands played, and the glamorous First Day crowd, dressed up to the nines, were out to enjoy themselves. It had rained heavily in the night, but Rupert and Gav weren’t too worried. Dave loved the mud as much as hearing the rat tat tat of his feet on a quick surface.

  ‘The greatest horses go on any ground,’ said Rupert as he, Gav, a yawning, hungover Cathal and Meerkat, running to keep up, splashed the course.

  Valent was overjoyed at a chance to show his beloved county off to Etta. Driving instead of flying to York so they could appreciate the scenery, they passed houses of faded roan brick and ploughed fields the warm red-brown of bay horses. In other fields, giant gold cotton reels were being harvested. Bright pink willowherb and scarlet mountain ash berries brightened the verges.

  A signpost pointing one way directed them To the North and To the South.

  ‘Just like I feel,’ sighed Etta. ‘Oh please God let him run well.’

  ‘He’s brilliant.’ Valent put a hand on her thigh. ‘Master Quickly’s only rival is himself.’

  What enchanted Etta were the flowers all over the racecourse; even the stables were brightened by hanging baskets of crimson petunias. Quickly seemed very chilled when they visited him. Purrpuss, stretched out on his quarters, was washing behind his black ears.