Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  “What an adorable place,” said Fen, in ecstasy. “Gosh, you’re lucky to live here.”

  In the gateway Billy put his arms round her, holding her like a balloon that might float away at any moment.

  “It’s all right,” she said softly. “I’m here to look after you.”

  As he opened the front door, Mavis shot ahead, squeaking with excitement. He turned on the light and went into the kitchen, dumping the cases. Fen followed him. “It looks lovely,” she said.

  “Mrs. B.’s been working fantastically hard,” said Billy. “Christ, I wish we could have a drink.”

  “I’ll make some coffee,” said Fen, picking up the kettle.

  “Are you hungry?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then let’s go to bed. I need to lay you and the ghost.”

  Fen went into the hall. Behind the door opposite, she could hear excited squeaking and scrabbling.

  “Mavis must have shut herself in.”

  She opened the door and switched on the light, then gave a gasp of horror. In front of the fire, thin, beautiful, and menacing in a black sleeveless T-shirt and the tightest black leather trousers, stood Janey.

  “Hello, Fen,” she said with a twisted smile. “It’s been amazingly kind of you to look after Billy in my absence, but I’d like him back now.”

  Fen gave a sob and turned on her heel, bumping into Billy as he came out of the kitchen.

  “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “No, I’ve seen a real live person. Go into the drawing room and see.”

  As she fled down the garden path she heard Billy calling her to come back, but she kept on running along the woodland path. Once she stumbled and fell over, cutting her hands but not even feeling the pain. She didn’t stop until she reached Rupert’s front door. It was open. The dogs surged forward, barking. Rupert came out of the kitchen, a large whisky in one hand, a letter in the other.

  “Hello, duck. Had a tiff?” Then he saw her dirty grazed hands and her stricken face. “Angel, what’s the matter?”

  “It’s J-Janey, she was waiting for us at the cottage.”

  “Fucking hell, how did she get in?” He led Fen into the kitchen and poured her a large drink.

  “I don’t want anything.” Her face crumpled.

  “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. He won’t take her back.”

  “He will, I know he will. He only had me as a stopgap.”

  “Rubbish, I’ve never seen him happier.”

  “I can’t bear it, I simply can’t bear it.”

  Helen, who’d been tucking the children up, heard the commotion and came downstairs. Walking into the kitchen, she found a blond in Rupert’s arms.

  “Oh, I do beg your pardon,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Don’t be stupid, it’s Fen. That bitch Janey’s come back.”

  Fen turned to Helen. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” she sobbed, “but I didn’t know where else to go.”

  The telephone rang. Still with one arm round Fen, Rupert picked it up.

  “Yes, she’s here. Well, not brilliant. What the fuck’s going on? Good, see you. He’s coming over,” he said replacing the receiver. “Now dry your eyes and have that drink.”

  Billy was over in ten minutes. Rupert left them alone. Fen looked up, her eyes spilling over with tears. “Oh, Billy.”

  “Darling Fen.” He drew her towards him. “I never dreamed in a million years she’d come back.”

  “You must talk it over with her. She’s still your wife.”

  “I don’t know if I want her back. I’m so much better without her.”

  “There’s something you should know. Janey sent you two telegrams, one in Paris and one in Lucerne. Rupert tore them up.”

  Billy digested this. Then he said bitterly, “That was only when I started winning again. Janey likes hitching her wagon to a star. Whether she’ll be so amused by a star on the wagon, I doubt.”

  His hold tightened on her. “I’ll go back and have it out with her. Will you stay here? Rupert’ll look after you and I’ll come and see you in the morning. I just want you to know you’re the sweetest thing I’ve ever been lucky enough to meet in my life.”

  Meanwhile Rupert had gone onto the terrace and had found Helen watching the stars come out, the faint reflection of the half-moon mingling with the water lilies strewn across the lake.

  “How the hell did Janey know Billy was coming home tonight?”

  “Well, I may have told her. I don’t think I did. I had lunch with her yesterday. She was wearing Billy’s Old Harrovian tie. I certainly told her Billy was real happy with Fen.”

  Rupert turned on her in fury. “You did what?”

  “Well, she was so worried, she said it was so much on her conscience. Billy being on his own and drinking and doing so badly.”

  “She knew bloody well he was doing well; she sent him telegrams.”

  “Then she looked really sad, and said she did hope some day he’d find someone nice—so I told her about Fen.”

  “She was fishing, you stupid bitch.”

  “Rupert, please, don’t talk to me like that.”

  “You’ve only done Billy the worst turn ever. He’d just struggled out of the quicksand; now you’ve pushed him back again.”

  At that moment, Billy came out on the terrace.

  “Will you look after her?”

  “You should be doing that,” snapped Rupert, “and kicking out that slut.”

  Rupert stayed up half the night talking to Fen, who was almost crazy with grief.

  “I’m sorry to be so boring but I love him so, so much. I saw her. I know she wants to come back, and she’s so winning, and Billy’s too straight not to let her. It’s funny, I wanted to fall in love so badly—but I never dreamed it would hurt so much. Life’s not like the Pullein-Thompson novels, is it? They always have happy endings.”

  Helen couldn’t sleep. Why did Rupert always have more time for other people—Fen, Billy, Tab—than he did for her? On the other hand she knew she was being punished.

  “Dear God,” she prayed, “what have I done? I told Janey about Fen, not because I wanted to reassure her, but because I wanted to put her down.”

  42

  Next day the rain came, stripping off the last pastel frivolity of the blossom, segregating the fluffy white heads of the dandelion clocks, bowing down the cow parsley, muffling the cuckoo, and turning every showground into a quagmire. To Fen, it seemed she was permanently soaked to the skin, always cold, shivering with misery, particularly at night without Billy to love and warm her. Lester, the teddy bear, was reinstated and soaked with tears, like her pillow, as, night after night, she cried herself to sleep. By day, work was the only anodyne. She begged Malise to excuse her from the huge nine-day show at Aachen on the grounds that Billy would be in the team, probably with Janey in tow. Instead Malise left Billy out, giving him a few weeks’ sabbatical to sort out his marriage. Billy, after all, had turned professional and was no longer eligible for Los Angeles, and Malise was determined to get his Olympic squad into shape in plenty of time. On present form, Fen, Rupert, and Ivor Braine were certain to be part of the team. The fourth place he still hoped to keep open for Jake, provided his leg mended in time.

  Fen tried to hide her heartbreak from Jake when she visited him in hospital on her return from Lucerne.

  “Look what we won,” she said brightly, tossing a carrier bag full of rosettes onto the white counterpane.

  Jake took one look at her face.

  “Who is it, that bastard, Campbell-Black? I said it would happen. I’ll bloody kill Malise when I see him.”

  Fen went over to the window, fighting back the tears.

  “It wasn’t Rupert at all. It was Billy.”

  “Billy!” For a moment Jake was dumbfounded.

  “What happened? You’re not…?”

  “No, nothing like that. Janey came back.”

  “Chris
t. I suppose the bitch found out he was going well and didn’t want to miss out.”

  “Something like that.”

  Jake loved Fen, but so angry was he with Billy and Janey, and so horrified to see Fen’s haggard face, that he took it out on her. He hated himself. He wished he had words to comfort her, but he just wanted to hit out at a world that seemed so manifestly unfair to both of them.

  Fen let him rage until he’d run out of reproof and expletives, then collapsed sobbing on the bed.

  “I couldn’t help it, Jake. I didn’t mean to fall in love.”

  Jake patted her shoulder. “Sorry I came on so strong. I just hate you being hurt. Should never have let you go.”

  “Haven’t you ever been in love or hurt by a woman?”

  “Never—by a woman.” (Not since his mother had committed suicide, anyway.)

  “Not even Tory?”

  “Tory couldn’t hurt a fly button.”

  Gradually the rosette board filled up the kitchen, as one show followed another—Aachen, Calgary, Wolfsburg. Funnily enough, it was Rupert who saved her in those first weeks. In the evenings abroad, he wouldn’t let her slink back to the lorry to cry her eyes out, but dragged her out to dinner with the team. In his mind she was part of Billy, and therefore to be protected, cherished, and occasionally bullied. He had never really had a woman friend before. Women in his book were to be pursued, screwed, and discarded. Repeatedly, he was on the brink of taking her to bed, because he wanted to and he thought it might blot out the pain, then some rare altruism stopped him.

  Fen was confused. Accustomed to hate Rupert, she now discovered in him an unexpected gentleness, particularly in the way he talked about Tabitha.

  Billy tackled Rupert the moment he came back to England.

  “How’s Fen?” was his first question.

  “I took her out to dinner last night.”

  “With the team?”

  “No, by myself.”

  “What the bloody hell for?”

  “She needed cheering up.”

  “What form did the cheering up take—horizontal?”

  “She wanted to talk. She’s still mad about you.”

  “Oh, God,” said Billy, trying not to feel pleased.

  “But the only way out of this stupid impasse is for her to find someone else.”

  Billy was appalled how much the thought upset him, but he said, “You may be right.”

  “Damn sure I’m right. Particularly if you persist in this bloody-fool belief that Janey’s the best thing for you.”

  Billy wasn’t sure. The night he’d got back to the cottage and found Janey there, they had screwed all night, blotting out all feelings of guilt and remorse. Next day, he’d insisted on driving Fen, white, silent, stunned, back to the Mill House, feeling her almost disintegrating in his arms as he said good-bye to her, saying he’d always adore her—which was a different word than love.

  When he got back, Janey’d been through his wallet and found Fen’s photo and was in hysterics.

  Billy tried to reason with her. “I never looked at another woman the entire time we were married. Then you file for divorce. I was trying to get over you.”

  “Why didn’t you come round and murder Kev?”

  “I’m not like that. I missed, the only time I took a slug at him.”

  “Was she better in bed than me?”

  “She was different,” said Billy tactfully.

  “Did you screw her in our bed?”

  Billy shook his head.

  “But you were coming back to.”

  “Look, you’d have thought I was a frightful drip if I hadn’t.”

  Billy had changed, thought Janey. The drink blotches, the red face, the sour whisky breath had gone. He was brown, lean, well muscled, tougher, more irritable, but infinitely more attractive.

  “You mustn’t see her anymore,” said Janey, pouring herself another glass of vodka, hardly graced by tonic.

  “How can I not see her? We’re in the same team. If I worked in an office, or was an engineer or an architect, I could try and find another job in another part of the country, but show jumping’s the only thing I can do. I was totally impotent after you left me. She picked me up from the gutter. She gave me back my confidence, my nerve, my sexuality. I’ve won £20,000 in the last month.”

  “What d’you want me to do, ask her to move in?”

  “I’m just trying to say it isn’t as simple as that. You can’t just waltz out of my life for nearly a year and expect things to be exactly the same.”

  “I’ve finished my book,” said Janey, “and I’ve been offered £30,000 for the serial rights. And my publisher has commissioned another book, so you won’t have to struggle quite so hard, darling.”

  She’s not listening, thought Billy in despair. She never listens, except when she’s on to a good story.

  Hysterical scenes followed. Janey steamed open letters, counted the Kleenex—‘Perhaps she’s used one’—examined the hairs in the bath: “That’s thicker and curlier than mine.”

  “That’s pubic hair, for Christ’s sake,” said Billy.

  Janey’s attitude was totally irrational. On endless occasions she had deceived him, betrayed him, made a fool of him, but it was part of her abyss of insecurity that she simply couldn’t believe that he wasn’t sloping off to see Fen when he got the chance.

  Nor was it just her insane jealousy of Fen; she was paranoid about the rest of the world. What did Billy’s mother, Helen, Rupert, Malise think about her behavior? Janey liked a place in the sun and a lot of spade work would be required to win back these people’s approval.

  Everyone was laying bets that the reconciliation wouldn’t last.

  Fen didn’t see Billy again until the Crittleden meeting at the end of July. Rupert had warned her that Janey was coming, so in order to upset herself as little as possible, Fen arrived only just in time to walk the course for the big event, the Crittleden Gold Cup, worth £15,000 to the winner. She found the showground in an uproar. Always with an eye to publicity, Steve Sullivan, who owned Crittleden, had introduced a new fence which all the riders considered unjumpable. Called the moat, it consisted of two grassy banks. The horses were expected to clamber up the first bank, along the top and halfway down the other side, where they were expected to pop across a ditch three foot deep, on to the second bank, which they again had to scale, ride along the top, and down the other side. Here they had to jump a small, three-foot rail a couple of strides away.

  Worried that all the show jumpers might load their horses up into their lorries and drive ten miles down the road to Pripley Green, where there was another big show taking place, Steve Sullivan had only put up details of the Gold Cup course an hour before the competition. When the riders saw the moat was included, all hell broke loose.

  “I’m not jumping that,” said Rupert.

  “Nor am I,” said Billy.

  “If they jump the moat, they’ll bank the other fences,” said Ivor Braine.

  “Remember the bank at Lucerne?” said Humpty. “They had an oxer immediately afterwards. All the horses treated the oxer like a bank and fell through. One of the Dutch horses had to be shot. I’m not risking Saddleback Sam.”

  “That ditch is three foot deep,” said Billy. “If a horse falls in, it’ll put him off jumping water for life.”

  “It’s a very gentle slope down,” protested Steve Sullivan. “It’s not slippery. They’ll jump it easily, won’t they Wishbone?” he added, appealing to the Irishman.

  “Sure. I can’t see the thing giving much trouble,” said Wishbone.

  “There,” said Steve. “I took my old mare across it the other night. She jumped it without turning a hair.”

  “She’s due to be turned into cat food at any minute,” snapped Rupert. “Doesn’t matter if she breaks a leg. These are top-class horses. I’m not risking £100,000 for a bloody moat.”

  He went off and complained to Malise, who came and examined the course.

 
“Seems perfectly jumpable to me; an acceptable hunting fence.”

  “These aren’t hunters,” said Rupert.

  Billy conferred with Mr. Block.

  “I haven’t spent eight months getting Bugle right to have him smash himself up in one afternoon. D’you mind if I pull him out?”

  “Do what you think best, lad,” said Mr. Block. “Don’t like the look of it myself. First hoss’ll be all right, but once the turf gets cut up, it’ll be like a greased slide in the playground.”

  Steve Sullivan’s sponsors, Fuma, the tobacco giants, however, had put a lot of money into the competition and wanted a contest. The telephones were jangling in the main stand. Steve suggested putting up a big wall which the riders could jump instead, as an alternative to the moat.

  “Not a fair contest,” said Rupert. “Walls aren’t the same as banks.”

  “Handing it on a plate to a little horse,” said Humpty. “Little horses only need two strides between the bottom of the bank and the rail.”

  Count Guy declared the moat vraiment dangereuse. Ludwig agreed: “It ees your Eenglish obsession with class, haffing a moat, Steve. Where is zee castle, zee elephant, and zee vild-life safari park?”

  Steve Sullivan was sweating. He’d never faced a mutiny before. The riders were all standing grimly on the bank, hands on their hips.

  Fen, meanwhile, had been quietly walking the rest of the course. It was a matt, still day, overcast but muggy, the grass very green from the recent storms. Midges danced in front of her eyes. Finally she reached the moat and stood banging her whip against her boots, looking at them in disapproval, hat pulled down over her nose.

  All those grown men, including Griselda, making such a fuss, she thought. It was a tabby cats’ indignation meeting. Rupert walked up and kissed her. “Hi, angel, you’ve arrived just in time to join the picket line. We’re going to give Steve his comeuppance.”

  At that moment a television minion, wearing a white peaked cap and tight pink trousers, rushed up. “Boys, boys, we simply must get started,” he cried, leaping to avoid a large pile of mud. “Motor racing’s finished, and so has the Ladies’ Singles, and they’re coming over to us at any minute.”