Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  “Great, but he’s not nearly as attractive as you.”

  Billy blushed. “He must have been pulling his punches.”

  The cavalcade that brings the Horse of the Year show to an end must be the most moving event in the equestrian calendar. Among the celebrities were little Stroller and two of the police horses who’d displayed exceptional bravery in an IRA incident, followed by ponies, hacks, and hunters, the heavy horses and, finally, the Olympic team. Then Malise, not without a tremor of emotion in his voice, read out Ronald Duncan’s beautiful poem: “To the Horse,” and Janey found herself in floods of tears again. What a wonderful, dashing, romantic, colorful world she was moving into, she thought, after three large vodka and tonics on an empty stomach.

  As Billy came out to the collecting ring, a man came up to him whom he instantly recognized from Rupert’s description as Kevin Coley.

  “Bill Lloyd-Foxe?” he said, pumping him by the hand. “Kev Coley.”

  Billy was almost blinded by his jewelry.

  “I think Rupe’s spoken about me.”

  “Of course,” said Billy, trying not to laugh. “He was most impressed.”

  “So was I, by tonight’s win. Great stuff, Bill, great stuff. I’m ready to talk terms. Why don’t we have dinner together?”

  Billy’s heart sank. “Well, actually, I’ve got someone with me.”

  “Bring her, too,” said Kev expansively. “My wife Enid’s up in the stands. The girls can chat while we talk business.”

  Suddenly they were interrupted by an old lady, tears pouring down her face. “Oh, Mr. Lloyd-Foxe, I read in the paper you were thinking of turning professional. You won’t sell The Bull, will you?”

  Billy smiled. “Of course not.”

  “I’ve bought him some Polos.” She got a dusty packet covered in face powder out of her bag.

  “Gosh, that’s terribly kind of you,” said Billy.

  “Don’t you worry your head, ma’am,” said Kevin Coley. “If Bill turns professional, he’ll never have to sell The Bull.”

  Billy found Janey in the lorry, repairing her face. Tracey had already hung the rosettes up on the string across the window.

  “Darling, I cried my eyes out—it was so choke-making.” She mustn’t hug him too hard or her new trousers might rip.

  “Sweetheart, do you mind if we go out to dinner with a man who wants to sponsor me?”

  “No, yes, I do. I want to be alone with you and see the conquering hero come.” Putting her hand down, she touched his cock.

  Suddenly Billy realized that if he married this wonderful girl, he could sleep with her every night for the rest of his life.

  “We can do that later on,” he said. “It just means that if I pull this deal off, I can ask you to marry me.”

  Rupert joined them, wearing a dark suit, and smelling of aftershave.

  “I hear you’ve met up with Medallion Man,” he said, then in an undertone to Billy, “Do you mind frightfully saying that I had dinner with you all tonight if Helen asks? I am sure she won’t.”

  “Where are you off to?” said Billy.

  “Well, do you remember a little unfinished business called Tiffany Bathgate?” and added, as Billy looked disapproving, “and anyway, I thought I’d make myself scarce, in case you and Janey wanted to use the lorry later.”

  At four o’clock in the morning, Billy lay in Janey’s arms in the double bed in her flat. They had just made love and he was thinking how beautifully she kept the place. There were clean dark blue sheets on the bed, and three bunches of freesias on the bedside table had driven out any smell of cat. What a glorious, talented creature she was.

  “Ouch” he said, trying not to wake her as Harold Evans kneaded his stomach.

  “Billy,” she said, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you. Promise you won’t hate me for it?”

  Billy’s heart sank. The lovely iridescent soap bubble was about to burst. “I’m twenty-nine, not twenty-four,” she went on.

  Billy started to laugh with sheer relief. “Is that all? I wouldn’t have minded if you’d said forty-four. Are you sure you won’t find it infra dig to marry a younger man?”

  26

  Billy found himself very nervous about telling Helen he was getting married. Rupert had been no problem. In fact Rupert and Janey both experienced passionate relief that they enormously liked but didn’t fancy one another; they were too alike, perhaps. And Rupert, having set up the sponsorship which enabled Billy to marry Janey and start his own yard, felt he had masterminded the whole affair, which mitigated any jealousy.

  Nothing would happen in a hurry, anyway. Billy would have to find somewhere to live and, although it might be difficult to go on being partners if Billy were a professional, Rupert was sure they could work something out. Although it would be a struggle financially, Rupert wasn’t prepared to turn professional until he’d had another stab at a gold medal in Los Angeles in four years’ time.

  Helen, however, was shattered when she heard the news. Without Billy the precarious balance of their marriage would surely be destroyed. He was so sweet to Marcus and he could always jolly Rupert out of a bad mood by making him laugh. Nor did the two women really take to each other. After Billy and Rupert returned from their American trip, Billy brought Janey down for the weekend. Both girls were set back on their heels by the glamour of the other. Janey never expected Helen to be that beautiful. Helen didn’t expect Janey to be that sexy. Janey had never worn a bra and her clothes were always a little too tight, because she kept falling by the wayside on her diets, and her shirts and dresses were always done up a button too low. Helen’s were always buttoned up to the neck. After six years in Fleet Street, Janey was virtually unshockable and, during dinner on the Friday she arrived, kept both Rupert and Billy in stitches, providing wildly inaccurate lowdown on the sex lives of leading public figures.

  Helen had taken great trouble to cook a superb dinner: crab pancakes in cheese sauce, gigot of lamb, and the most perfect quince sorbet. It was a good technique if one wanted to establish a reputation as a brilliant cook, reflected Janey, to serve very small helpings as Helen did, so everyone wanted seconds. Janey, not having eaten all day, was starving, and had thirds of everything, praising Helen like mad. Everyone drank a lot. Janey got happily tight.

  How nice, thought Rupert, to find a woman with such an appetite. He’d never admired Lavinia; she was a drip. Janey was fun and tough. She would be good for Billy.

  Between Helen and Janey there was also professional jealousy. Janey asked Helen about her novel. Helen said it was coming on very very slowly.

  “I’m an academic, you see, and I’m not prepared to put up with anything second-rate.”

  “Why don’t you try journalism?” asked Janey.

  Helen said she didn’t really feel she could bring herself to do anything like that. She’d never read the Post, but she’d heard it was very sensational.

  Janey registered the snub and said that, in her experience, writers who were any good, wrote.

  “I’ve got a book coming out in the spring,” she said. “A collection of interviews. I just got the piece I did on you in at the end, darling,” she added to Billy.

  She and Billy were so in love, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Helen wistfully tried to remember the time when she and Rupert were like that. The attempt at a second honeymoon after the Olympics had not lasted very long.

  Marcus was brought down and admired and fed. How can such good-looking parents produce such a hideous baby? thought Janey. But realizing it would endear her to Helen, she asked if she could give Marcus his bottle.

  “Billy tells me you’re getting a nanny.”

  “Well, a girl,” said Helen. “It’ll mean I can spend more time with Rupert.” She must try to like this self-confident, sexy creature. “I’m so pleased you’re getting married to Billy,” she said when they were alone. “He’s so darling, but he’s kind of vulnerable, too. You will look after him, won’t you?”<
br />
  “Strange—Rupert said the same thing,” said Janey. “I actually hope he’s going to look after me.”

  Everyone else thought Janey was marvelous; the dogs, the grooms, Marcus, Miss Hawkins, Mrs. Bodkin, for whom Janey left a fiver. There was a bad moment, however, when Janey was changing for dinner on Saturday night and couldn’t be bothered to go down the passage to the loo. Instead, she got a chair and was crouching over the basin having a pee, when Helen walked in to turn down the beds. Helen was shocked rigid and even more annoyed that Rupert thought it was very funny. Janey, sensitive as radar, realized Helen didn’t approve of her.

  “She’s a bit lined-skirt-and-petticoat, or half-slip, as she’d call it, isn’t she?” she said to Billy. “I bet she makes love in long rubber gloves.”

  Billy laughed, but he refused to bitch about Helen.

  “We really must look for a house very soon,” said Janey.

  Rupert persuaded Helen to give a party at Penscombe for Billy and Janey. As she’d done up the house so beautifully, he said, it would be nice for everyone to see it, and they hadn’t had a party since their marriage. She wouldn’t have to do any work. They’d get in caterers, and as the drawing room wasn’t big enough for dancing, they’d hire a marquee. The party would be held in the middle of December just before the Olympia Christmas show, so all the foreign riders would be in the country.

  There were frightful arguments over the guest list; all the show-jumping fraternity had to be asked.

  “But not Malise Gordon or Colonel Roxborough. I don’t want any grown-ups,” said Rupert.

  “Oh, we must have Malise,” protested Helen. “He’s so civilized.”

  “He wasn’t very civilized when Ivor Braine took the wrong course in the Nations’ Cup last week. If he comes, he’ll start telling me to go to bed early because I’ve got a class next year.”

  “You ought to ask him,” said Billy. “He’d be awfully hurt.”

  “Oh, all right, but I’m not asking Jake Lovell. His fat wife wouldn’t get through the door.”

  By the time they’d included Janey’s Fleet Street friends, and most of the celebrities she had interviewed, who knew Rupert and Billy anyway, as well as all Rupert’s smart friends, the numbers were up to three hundred. Rupert flipped through the final selection.

  “I’ve slept with practically every woman on this list. Gives me a feeling of déjà vu,” he said to Billy.

  “You haven’t slept with Hilary.”

  “She’s not coming!”

  “Bloody is. According to Mrs. B., she’s been round a lot recently.”

  Rupert, furious, stormed off to find Helen.

  “Either that woman doesn’t come to the party or I don’t.”

  “All your friends are coming,” said Helen. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t have one of mine.”

  “She’ll bring that disgusting baby, and start whipping out a triangular tit in the middle of the party.”

  “Hilary is not just a good painter, she’s a highly intelligent, concerned human being.”

  “Crap,” said Rupert. “All right, I’ll ask all the grooms then.”

  “You can’t,” said Helen aghast. “They can never hold their drink.”

  A week before the party, while Rupert and Billy were in Amsterdam, the au pair, Marie-Claire, slipped on the yellow stone steps in the hall and landed painfully on her coccyx. The next day Hilary slipped carrying Kate but managed to keep her balance. Helen suddenly decided to carpet the hall and the stairs a pale avocado green, to match the pale pink and green peony wallpaper. The carpet men worked overtime, the dogs sat in a martyred row on the tintacked underfelt, and everything was finished and tidied away by the eve of the party, when Rupert and Billy were due home.

  Helen had just got Marcus to sleep when they arrived and woke him up with all the din of barking, neighing, shouting, and the banging down of lorry ramps. Why the hell did they make so much noise? She had to spend a quarter of an hour soothing and rocking Marcus back to sleep, and went downstairs to the kitchen just as Rupert was coming in through the back door. There was snow in his hair.

  “Hello, darling,” he said, kissing her. “You all right? I see the marquee’s up. Everyone’s coming: the Germans, the French team, the Italians, all the Irish—it’s a complete sellout.”

  “Go and get a drink. There’s a surprise for you in the hall,” said Helen.

  Rupert went out—there was a long pause. The new carpet was so soft, Helen didn’t hear him come back. His face was expressionless.

  “Do you like it?”

  “I didn’t know Marcus could be that sick,” said Rupert. “That carpet is exactly the same color as regurgitated Heinz pea and bacon dinner. What the fuck have you done?”

  Helen bridled. “It’s called pistachio.”

  “Pissed-tachio after everyone’s spilt red wine over it tomorrow night,” said Rupert.

  “The steps were a death trap,” snapped Helen.

  “Pity your friend Hilary didn’t fall down them more often. That’s Cotswold stone you’ve just covered up!”

  “Those steps were dangerous. Marcus’ll be walking in a few months.”

  “He’ll walk right out of the house when he sees that carpet.”

  “Well, everyone thinks it’s very pretty.” Helen’s voice was rising. “Mrs. Bodkin, Marie-Claire.”

  “That’s only because you pay them. Who else? Thrillary, I suppose. Expect it’s her idea: matches her complexion.”

  It was, in fact, a great party. Rupert and Billy mixed a champagne cocktail to start off with, which, with one and a half hours solid drinking before dinner, got everyone plastered. Janey, looking sensational in see-through black, was such a hit with all the foreign riders that Billy put her on a leading rein and, screaming with laughter, towed her around after him. Their happiness was totally infectious. Even Driffield couldn’t find anything to grumble about.

  Only Helen, in priceless ivy green silk, a boat-shaped neckline showing off her slender white shoulders, seemed tense. She was not a natural hostess and she was only too aware of all the Biancas and Granias and Gabriellas of Rupert’s past. Nor could she bear to see drink rings spreading like Olympic symbols on her furniture, and cigarette ash and wine stains on her new carpet.

  Rupert tried to persuade her to enjoy herself. But once dinner was over, he felt he could relax his duties as host. People knew where they could get a drink. From then on, he was seen coming off the dance floor with one beauty after another.

  Hilary arrived late. Armed with a carrycot, she marched down the hall, sending international show jumpers flying, and up the stairs.

  “Straight up to my wife’s bedroom,” said Rupert sourly.

  Next moment Helen went past with a baby’s bottle.

  “Is that for Hilary?”

  “Marcus is crying.”

  “You should have sent him to Mrs. Bodkin. Where the hell’s Marie-Claire?”

  “She disappeared into the shrubbery with one of the French team two hours ago and hasn’t been seen since,” snapped Helen. “I told you the drink was too strong.”

  Upstairs, Helen collected Marcus and went into the bedroom, where she found Hilary combing her hair.

  “Oh, you look beautiful,” she gasped.

  Hilary had been to the hairdresser’s and had her dark hair set in wild snaky curls round her face. She had rouged her cheekbones and kohled her eyes and was wearing a red and black gypsy dress with a flounced skirt and hooped earrings.

  “I never dreamed you could look so wonderful,” Helen said in genuine amazement.

  “I wanted to prove to your bloody husband I wasn’t a complete frump,” said Hilary. “I’ve even shaved under my armpits.” She held up her arms, showing not a trace of stubble. “And I absolutely hate myself.”

  “Well, I sure appreciate you,” said Helen.

  Hilary, drenching herself in Helen’s Miss Dior, said, “How’s it going? Sounds wild enough.”

  “I’m not great
at parties.”

  “Rupert shouldn’t subject you to them. What did he say about the carpet?”

  “He hated it.”

  Why did the conversation always return to Rupert? wondered Helen.

  The excitement had stepped up when they went downstairs. Ludwig was blowing a hunting horn. Billy, plastered and blissful, was necking on the sofa with Janey, Mavis curled up beside them, looking resigned.

  “Come and dance, Helen,” said Humpty Hamilton, who was wearing one of Rupert’s tweed caps back to front.

  “You haven’t met Hilary, have you?” said Helen.

  At that moment Rupert came off the dance floor with a ruffled blonde.

  “Evening,” he said to Hilary without any warmth.

  “Doesn’t Hilly look lovely?” said Helen.

  Rupert looked her up and down. “Rather like one of Jake Lovell’s relations.”

  Next moment a very drunken Hans staggered up and bore Helen off to dance. “What a beautiful place you have ’ere, Mees Helen. What a beautiful woman you are,” he sighed. “Lucky Rupert.”

  In front of them, in the crepuscular gloom, she could see Count Guy, wrapped like a wet towel round Marie-Claire. So it was that member of the French team, she thought, wondering if she ought to stop them.

  “Poor Laveenia.” Hans shook his head. “I bet she weesh she marry Billee now. But what a beauty he’s got heemself. What a beautiful girl.”

  “Yes, she’s very nice.”

  “Did you know Ludwig’s geeving Billee a horse as a vedding present? A very good one: Mandryka.”

  Count Guy’s arm was up to his elbow down Marie-Claire’s dress. Really, she couldn’t be a very suitable person to look after Marcus, thought Helen. Over in the corner, she saw Hilary dancing with Malise. They were talking intently. That was good; they’d get on together.

  The party ground on. The local MFH, trying to find his way home, drove over the ha-ha. Podge was sick in the flower bed. Helen was dancing with Billy, his hair all over the place.

  “It’s a wonderful party, Angel. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. You’ve made Janey so welcome, she can’t get over it. I say, there’s Hilary doing the tango with Ludwig. She’s looking really very sexy this evening, and you know I’m not her greatest fan.”