Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  Rupert Campbell-Black, who was passing, grinned down at her: “Well done, angel. I’ll marry you when you grow up.”

  The saboteurs leapt into their five cars.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for foxes,” hissed Paul. Nigel was still grumbling about his ankle.

  Hurtling down a country lane, sending the catkins shivering, they found hounds being put into the palest green larch covert. The saboteurs parked above it and the next moment a posse, including Nigel and Paul, vaulted over the fence and, armed with Anti-mate, disappeared after them. Judging by the expletives and the shaking of fists, they were causing havoc in the woods. The master decided to move on.

  “Out of my way,” he said bossily to a group of girl riders, “you’re not with the pony club now. I expect you’ve only come out to gaze at Rupert Campbell-Black.”

  The saboteurs moved off in search of fresh sport. Stopping in a layby to spray pepper, they got stuck in the mud. Two foot-followers, not realizing who they were, pushed them out.

  The next two hours were like being at a race meeting, permanently under starter’s orders. Every time the hunt picked up a scent the Antis managed to foil them.

  Later, Maureen and Helen hung over a gate watching a sluggish stream choking its way through overhanging osiers and pussy willows. Fat celandines were pushing their way through the dead leaves. Helen gloried in the spring sunshine beating through her dark green jersey.

  “Are the saboteurs anti-fishing as well?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” said Maureen earnestly. “Our more extreme members feel it’s cruel to the worm.”

  Helen’s stomach gave an ominous rumble.

  “I’m starving,” said Maureen. “Thank God I had a cooked breakfast. We’re all rendezvousing at the Spotted Cow at one o’clock.”

  Helen, who had had no breakfast and only scrambled eggs the previous night, had visions of gins and tonics and pub steak and kidney pudding. The plowed brown fields in their evenness reminded her of mince. Perhaps there’d be shepherd’s pie for lunch.

  But in the end, they only stopped at the village shop to buy oranges and some Perrier.

  “Can’t squander the saboteurs’ funds on food and drink,” said Nigel, offering her his bottle of Perrier.

  Helen suddenly thought how much she’d prefer to share a flask of brandy with Rupert Campbell-Black. If she’d been out with him, she figured, he’d have made sure she was properly looked after.

  The saboteurs were parked outside the Spotted Cow as the hunt came past, looking understandably bootfaced after such an abortive morning.

  “Pull the choke out,” whispered Paul. “It’ll muddle the hounds.”

  On the other side of another wood, the hats of the riders could be seen moving ceaselessly back and forth.

  Another posse of saboteurs moved in from the right, view-hallooing to distract the hounds and throwing in a couple of firecrackers, which set the already excited horses plunging.

  “Pa, pa, pa, pa,” came the tender melancholy note of the horn.

  “Oh, good. I mean, oh dear!” said Helen. “They’ve found a fox.”

  “That’s Paul,” said Maureen smugly. “He can blow a horn as well as any huntsman.”

  Two women supporters in green quilted coats and tweed skirts parked nearby and got out of their car.

  “Bloody Antis,” said one, incongruously smoothing a wildlife sanctuary sticker on her windscreen.

  “Have you heard how the Paignton-Laceys” dance went?” said her friend.

  “Fiona’s not up yet this morning, but I saw Primrose, who said it was frightfully good. More chaps than girls for a change. Rupert Campbell-Black disgraced himself as usual. Got off with Gabriella. Evidently they disappeared for hours and hours. Charlie got quite frantic. They’ve only been married a year.”

  “Better than Marcia’s dance,” said the first one. “Evidently he got simply plastered and docked the tails of all the yew peacocks; I mean they’ve taken literally hundreds of years to grow. I’d have sued the little beast.”

  “He gets away with it,” said the first one, “because he is so frightfully attractive.”

  Suddenly she gave an enraged bellow as Nigel and Paul, spattered with mud, their hands cut and bleeding from the under-growth, tore up the hill with the heavies hot on their trail, and leapt into the car.

  Taking off, Paul shook off the heavies, finally stopping at the edge of a beech wood looking down a valley. In the back, Nigel was noisily sucking an orange. Getting out of the car, Helen caught her breath, for there, slowly riding up the hill, came Rupert Campbell-Black, his gleaming bay mare and his red coat the only splashes of color against the greens and browns. Gaining the top of the hill, he paused, trying to work out which way the hounds might run. The sun, which had been hovering in the wings like an actor waiting to make an entrance, broke away from the clouds, warming the brown fields. Nigel got out of the car, wiping his hands on his trousers.

  “ ‘To one who has been long in city pent,’ ” he said pompously as he edged towards Helen: “ ‘ ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven.’ ”

  Helen, who privately thought it would be much sweeter to look into the fair and very close face of Rupert Campbell-Black, edged away again.

  “I think they’re going to draw this covert,” said Nigel, vanishing into the beech copse, followed by Paul.

  A hound spoke. Then the triumphant chorus rang out and there was the wild cry of the true horn. Suddenly, with the master cheering them on the line, hounds streamed down the valley in a dappled cloud. Then came the field, galloping, jumping, barging through gates with a clash of stirrups. There was Rupert, looking in a completely different class to the others, riding so easily and fluidly, almost nibbling his horse’s ears as he seemed to lift her over a huge hedge.

  “Wire on the other side,” he yelled back to Billy, who gathered his black cob together and cleared it just as easily. There was a clattering of hooves as they jumped into the road and out again, and set off towards the beech copse, which had been liberally sprayed with pepper and Anti-mate. As they entered the copse, Nigel and Paul stood on a nearby fence and started to blow a horn concerto, utterly muddling the hounds who, distracted by the pepper and the Anti-mate, charged around, frenziedly zigzagging back and forth, whimpering with frustration as they tried to pick up the scent.

  Helen suddenly felt furious with Nigel and Paul. What right had they to spoil everyone’s day? She and Maureen were standing in the field skirting the copse when suddenly Nigel came hurtling out of the wood, followed by Paul. The next minute Rupert Campbell-Black galloped around the corner, riding straight at them, his eyes blazing.

  “He won’t touch the girls,” screamed Nigel, promptly plunging his horn down Helen’s new dark green cashmere jersey, stretching the neckband, and disappearing over the hedge. “Chivalry will prevent him,” he called over his shoulder.

  Chivalry prevented Rupert doing no such thing. He rode straight up to Helen, reined in the plunging mare, and, before Helen could stop him, leaned over, put a warm hand down the front of her jersey, and retrieved the horn.

  “A good-looking Anti,” he said in mock-wonder. “I never expected to see one. What’s a pretty girl like you doing, getting mixed up with a desiccated creep like Nigel?”

  “How dare you?” gasped Helen, hand to her breast as though she’d been violated.

  “How dare you?” said Rupert. “This is private property. You’re trespassing. I’d go back to London and not get involved with a lot of rent-a-crowd lefties.”

  “All right, Helen?” asked Nigel, emerging from the under-growth.

  “She’s not getting much help from you, you little rat,” said Rupert. “She’s got a very good body, though.”

  Blushing crimson, hopelessly aware how unbecoming it was with her red hair, Helen gazed fixedly at Rupert’s highly polished boot.

  “Don’t you insult my girlfriend,” said Nigel, striding up, slipping in a cowpat and putting his ar
m round Helen’s shoulders.

  Equally furiously, she shrugged him off.

  “On the contrary,” said Rupert, pocketing the horn. “I was being excessively polite, telling her she’s the only decent-looking girl I’d ever seen out with the Antis.” He nodded in Maureen’s direction. “What d’you use that one for, breaking down lift doors?”

  For a second he made the mare plunge towards Nigel, who retreated into the hedge, then, wheeling round, he was off.

  “I’ll get even with you,” screeched Nigel.

  As they set off again, Helen sat in the back, stunned. Rupert was simply the most wrong but entirely romantic person she’d ever met. She was appalled how violently she felt attracted to him. She could still feel the warmth of his leisurely hand and remember the way the brilliant blue eyes had moved over her, assessing, absorbing data like a computer.

  “ ‘My only love sprang from my only hate,’ ” she whispered.

  As Rupert cantered back to join the despondent remains of the hunt, Gabriella, who’d earlier helped herself to his hip flask, caught up with him.

  “Coo-ee, darling, where have you been?”

  One of the added irritations caused by the saboteurs, thought Rupert, was that it had been impossible to shake Gabriella off. Last night, belonging to someone else, with her magnificent white bosom rising out of plunging black lace, she had been a far more desirable proposition. He had taken her in a cordoned-off bedroom, hung around with tapestries. In the middle, a long line of foot-followers had actually congaed unknowing through the room, whooping and yelling and reducing them both to helpless laughter. Today, red-veined from an excess of wine, with her makeup running, her hair coming down in a lacquered mass, and her bulky thighs in too-tight breeches, she had lost all her charm, though none of her ardor. Rupert had a sudden yearning for the whippet-slim Anti, with her hair the color of the bracken still strewing the rides.

  “What a bloody useless day,” he said.

  “It could be improved dramatically,” said Gabriella, riding her horse alongside him. “Why don’t we slip home? Charlie’s gone shooting.”

  “Probably like to count me as part of the bag,” said Rupert, looking at his watch. “It’s only a quarter to three. Worth giving it another hour.”

  He was relieved to see Billy emerging from the wood, his head buried in his horse’s neck to avoid the branches.

  “I feel better,” said Billy. “I’ve just been sick behind a holly bush. Have you got any brandy left, Rupe?”

  “Not much,” said Rupert, handing him the flask. “Better finish it.”

  Rupert’s fiendish behavior was soon relayed with relish to the rest of the Antis. Helen, unable to work up any indignation at all, picked a bunch of primroses and wrapped them in a paper handkerchief dipped in a puddle.

  Briefly, Paul and Nigel had lost the hounds, but had found them again in full cry within the walls of some huge estate. Unable to get at them physically, the saboteurs launched their toughest offensive. All hell broke loose as smoke bombs and thunderflashes exploded, foghorns wailed, and horns and whistles were blown.

  “Jesus Christ! Some buggers are shooting in the covert. Pull hounds out,” yelled a huntsman.

  Helen hid behind an ash tree, saying her prayers as the saboteurs charged about, yelling, screaming, slipping on wet leaves, tripping over bramble cables and the long silver roots of beech trees. Hounds had gone to pieces. All Helen could hear was whimpering. Nigel shimmied up the wall to look.

  “Master’s lost control,” he said happily.

  To the left, the Land Rovers with the heavies were moving in threateningly. Paul seized Helen, bustling her into the front of the car.

  “Let’s beat it,” he said.

  “Where are Maureen and Nigel?”

  “Mo’s in one of the other cars,” Paul put his foot down on the accelerator, “and Nigel’s got some ingenious plot of his own, but my lips are sealed. He’s taken Fiona’s car; said he’d join us later.”

  It had started to spit with rain. Old ladies hurried home, putting on headscarves. Women rushed out into the cottage gardens, taking in washing.

  “You’re not wearing your safety belt, Ellen,” said Paul. “Wouldn’t want an attractive young lady to come to any harm.”

  Turning on Radio Three, he accompanied a Beethoven sonata in a reedy tenor. Helen had a feeling he was glad they’d shed the others.

  “I know you’re Nige’s girl,” he said throatily.

  “I am not,” said Helen tartly. “There is nothing between us.”

  “That makes a difference. Didn’t want to tread on anyone’s corns. I happen to be playing at a concert at the Festival Hall next Saturday. Wonder if you’d care to come. We could have an Indian afterwards.”

  Helen, who hated curry, said she’d look in her diary, which he seemed to regard as a satisfactory answer. As he rabbited on about the orchestra and the paper he was writing on shrews, Helen found it was unnecessary to make any other comment than the occasional “um.” Breathing in the apricot dusk, she wondered what Rupert Campbell-Black was doing now.

  Rupert and Billy hacked back to their horse box through the pouring rain, discussing which horses they should take to the Crittleden Easter Meeting, which started on Friday. Billy, who’d put his collar up and turned his hat back to front to stop the rain running down his neck, was trying to light a cigarette.

  “Did you see the girl with the Antis?” asked Rupert, in that deceptively casual way that meant he was interested.

  “Bit thin,” said Billy.

  “Marvelous face, though. Doesn’t sound English. How the hell did Nigel get hold of her?”

  “Perhaps she likes his mind.”

  “Hardly likely to be anything else.”

  Rounding the corner, fifty yards away, they saw Nigel busily letting down the tires of Rupert’s horse box. Riding on the verge, he hadn’t heard them coming.

  “Leave this to me,” said Rupert softly.

  Sliding off the mare, throwing the reins to Billy, he sprinted down the road and, taking a flying leap, landed on Nigel with a crash, knocking the breath out of his body. Next minute he had dragged him up a grassy side lane and was systematically beating him to a pulp. It was Billy who dragged Rupert off.

  “For God’s sake, that’s enough. You don’t want to be done for murder.”

  At that moment Frenchie, the groom, woke up from sleeping off his lunch and appeared out of the front of the horse box, rubbing his eyes.

  “Where the hell have you been?” snarled Rupert. “Getting pissed as usual, I suppose. Here, take the horses and get me some rope.”

  Pulling off his hunting tie, he stuffed it into Nigel’s mouth, then systematically stripped off Nigel’s clothes, looking down with distaste at the white skinny body. As Rupert tied his hands and feet with spare head-collar ropes, Nigel gave a groan and started to wriggle.

  “Think he’ll be all right?” said Billy.

  “Sadly, yes, the little shit,” said Rupert, giving him a kick in the ribs. “It’ll take him half an hour to wriggle down the road. It’ll still be light; someone’ll pick him up. Pity it’s such a warm night.”

  He picked up Nigel’s combat jacket and removed his address book from the inside pocket. As he flipped through it, they hitched a lift in the horse box back to the blue Porsche.

  “How riveting,” said Rupert. “He’s got Fiona’s telephone number, and mine, the little bastard, and yours too. What did he call that girl? Helen, I think. Here’s one. Helen Macaulay, Regina House, W. Fourteen. Where the hell’s that?”

  “Shepherd’s Bush or Hammersmith.”

  “Frightfully unsmart,” said Rupert. “I wonder if that’s her.”

  Helen got in around midnight. The walnut and cottage cheese paté and the vegetable curry had been disgusting. She’d hardly eaten anything, but, still dazed by Rupert Campbell-Black, had drunk more cheap elderberry wine than was good for her.

  Maureen had glared at her all evening; Nigel had n
ever turned up and Paul had somehow engineered that he drop her off at Regina House after dropping Maureen at her digs.

  “I won’t come up for a coffee, Mo. I expect you’re tired,” he said.

  Helen suspected that Maureen, standing in her furry coat like a disgruntled Pyrenean mountain dog, was no such thing. Outside Regina House Paul said, “May I kiss you, Ellen?” and lunged goatily. His beard tickled, he had B.O., and his breath smelled of curry. Helen lost her temper.

  “You’re too sanctimonious for words, right. You had a glorious day playing cops and robbers and feeling smug to boot, and what’s more I’d like to report you to the RSPCA for being horrible to hounds.” Leaping out, she slammed the car door in his face.

  Now she sat in her room feeling ashamed of herself and gazing at Harold Mountjoy’s photograph, which seemed to have lost all its appeal. She noticed the spoilt, slightly weak expression, the hair carefully combed forward to cover the lined forehead and crow’s-feet round the eyes.

  “ ‘My only love sprang from my only hate,’ ” she whispered. She’d never see Rupert again. He obviously had millions of girls after him and, anyway, he was thoroughly spoilt. She looked at the primroses in the tooth mug with the ochre centers and pastel petals. She’d have to put him in her novel, then she could dream about him. Slowly she undressed, gazing at her body in the mirror. She’d never really studied it before, and yet he’d said it was beautiful. She found she’d put her nightdress on inside out; that was supposed to be lucky. She could do with some luck. She jumped at a sudden pounding on the door. It was the principal of the hostel in a camel hair dressing gown, hair in a net.

  “Telephone,” she snapped. “Person says it’s an emergency. Can’t see how it can be.”

  Helen sighed; it must be Nigel. Perhaps he’d been arrested and needed bailing out, or was grumbling because Paul had driven off without him. At least he couldn’t accuse her of getting off with Paul.

  In the telephone booth someone had left a copy of Lorca. Helen picked up the receiver: “Hello.”

  “May I speak to Helen Macaulay,” said a voice. She’d recognize that clipped, light drawl anywhere. Her palms went damp, her knees turned to jelly.