Riders

by Jilly Cooper

  He stopped suddenly, flushing slightly, hearing his own obsession, wanting to disguise it.

  Helen looked at the black hair, the thickly lashed dark eyes, and the thin, watchful face. Suddenly she winced and clutched her temples.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I get this pain. It seems to start as a headache, then becomes toothache, then often reappears as earache.”

  “Neuralgia,” said Jake. “Caused by tension.”

  He felt so sorry for her. She reminded him of a vixen escaping from hounds, lying in the bracken taking a brief panting respite to get her breath back. In a minute she’d be running again, waiting, terrified, for the kill. But Rupert hadn’t killed her. He’d totally destroyed her self-esteem.

  As they came out of the pub it was still snowing, shortening the visibility, so they could see only the vague outlines of the towers of Oxford.

  “ ‘Beautiful city’,” said Helen softly. “ ‘Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, unpopular names and impossible loyalties.’ ”

  “Pretty impossible to be loyal to Rupert,” said Jake dryly.

  Underfoot it was freezing so hard that he ought to have been more frightened of falling over. But, in vino, he crossed the snow without a slide or a stumble.

  Helen was amazed that Marcus recovered so quickly. Driving in on the fifth day to take him home, she found him playing with the most exquisite model circus. There were clowns, little dogs with ruffs, a ringmaster, and even a ballerina in a pink tutu, who slotted into a cantering horse with a pink plume. All the nurses were gathered around playing with it.

  “How darling,” said Helen in delight. “Who gave you that?”

  “Dake did.”

  “Dake?” said Helen, puzzled.

  “Dake with the sore leg. It’s better now. Want to see Dake.”

  “Who can he mean?”

  “Jake Lovell,” said Sister Wutherspoon warmly. “He popped in last night on his way back to Warwickshire and brought the circus with him. Marcus was a bit restless, excited about going home. Sister Tethers, who was on duty, had a very sick child to look after. Jake stayed playing with Marcus for hours.”

  “How very kind,” said Helen. “How very, very kind.”

  “Mr. Buchannan gave him the go-ahead on Monday evening. I still don’t think he’s come down to earth.”

  “Oh, I’m so pleased,” said Helen, “and he still remembered Marcus.”

  “Want to see Dake,” said Marcus.

  51

  The winter seemed to go on and on, but at last the snow melted; aconites and snowdrops appeared and Helen watched Rupert’s dogs trampling over her crocuses, snapping off their fragile heads, and found she minded less than on other years.

  As she went for long solitary walks in the woods, her thoughts strayed far too often to Jake Lovell. Over and over again she got out the road atlas and realized how far he’d driven through the snow to give Marcus the circus. She remembered how unembarrassed he’d been by her tears and how cold he’d got sitting in the car, just patting her shoulder.

  As she watched the spring emerge with aching slowness she wondered how she could thank him for lunch and for the circus. She didn’t want to write in case some secretary opened the letter. He might have told Tory about lunch, but if he hadn’t, it might make things awkward. Personal letters were so obvious when they arrived at a private house. She remembered so many arriving for Rupert over the years, usually in gaudily colored envelopes, sometimes with SWAK on the back, and how she’d longed to steam them open. Janey, she knew, would have had no such scruples.

  Chatting to Janey in the kitchen one day, and leafing through the latest issue of Horse and Hound, with a shock of recognition she came across a picture of Jake. The caption underneath said he would be making his comeback at the Crittleden Easter meeting, and how glad readers would be to see this brilliant but very private rider back on the circuit. He had evidently recovered from one of the worst accidents in show-jumping history and had learned to walk by sheer guts and determination. The story went on to praise his staunch, close-knit family and to explain that Jake had not achieved the international fame of other British riders because, before the World Championship, he preferred to jump in this country and get home to his family in the evening. Malise Gordon was quoted as being absolutely delighted. If all went as planned, he hoped Jake would be offering himself for selection for Los Angeles.

  “Good that Jake Lovell’s back, isn’t it?” she said to Janey.

  “I shouldn’t imagine Rupert thinks so.” Janey took the magazine from Helen. “I’ve always thought he was very attractive. All that Heathcliff gypsy passion kept under such perfect control. He’s much more self-confident too. I saw him interviewed on the box last night about his comeback and he actually managed to string a sentence together. And, instead of looking sulky and defensive, he was rather cool and detached.”

  Helen found her voice thickening, as it did when she asked if she could cash a check at the village shop. “Have you ever heard any gossip about other women?”

  “No, he’s squeaky-clean reputation-wise. You only have to look at Tory to see he hasn’t got very high standards.”

  “I guess he’s only interested in getting to the top,” said Helen.

  “Perhaps,” said Janey thoughtfully, “but there’s something irresistible about men who are impossibly hard to get, which is not something one can say about your dear husband.”

  It was strange, reflected Helen, that, after that unspeakably dreadful last night in Kenya, she and Janey could still be friends. Janey had an amazing ability to swan in, not attempting to justify or apologize for appalling behavior, which made it possible. Rupert, however, she could not forgive. They both moved around the house not communicating, like goldfish in a bowl.

  The week before Easter brought the first sunshine for days. Helen went around the house turning off lights that weren’t on, because the rooms were suddenly so unexpectedly bright. Out in the fields she noticed little red buds on the wild roses and larks singing in the hazy drained blue sky, thrashing their bodies like moths against nonexistent windows. Perhaps I could escape, thought Helen, listening to the larks’ strange whistle; perhaps I too am thrashing against a window that isn’t really there.

  Next day the vicar came to tea, to talk about raising money for the church spire. Afterwards Rupert walked in from the stables, to find Helen and he praying together in the drawing room.

  “Christ,” he said in horror, and walked out again.

  The vicar, who had a white beard and stank like a polecat, scrambled creaking to his feet.

  “I wish we could make some progress with your husband,” he said with a sigh. “I feel he is very troubled.”

  “I don’t think he’d see it that way,” said Helen hastily, “but thank you very much.”

  Carrying the tea things into the kitchen, she found Rupert and Tab eating an Easter egg and reading Dandy together.

  “Flappy Oyster,” said Tab.

  She shouldn’t be eating Easter eggs before Easter Sunday, thought Helen, appalled, but she didn’t say anything.

  Rupert looked up. “Has your friend from Hollywood gone?”

  Burying her face in the dishwasher, as she stacked the cups and saucers, Helen said, “I thought I might come to Crittleden on Saturday.”

  “The anniversary of your first show,” said Rupert. “That’s rather touching.”

  “I’m having lunch with the Godbolds,” said Helen, putting all the knives in the wrong way up, “so I can come on afterwards. I also thought I might fly out to Rome for a couple of days.”

  Rupert looked slightly startled. “Whatever you like,” he said.

  For the first time in years Helen felt excited and took ages planning what she was going to wear to Crittleden. Despite the lack of sun April had been very dry, so she wouldn’t have to wear gum boots. She settled for a pinstriped suit, a white silk shirt, and a charcoal gray tie and a gray trilby.

  Afte
r a lightning lunch at the Godbolds, where she ate nothing, she arrived at Crittleden just as the riders were walking the course for the big class. There was Rupert fooling around with Wishbone and Billy, and there was Jake, still limping quite badly, walking beside Fen. He looked small and preoccupied and very pale. Neither of them were speaking. Fen was only an inch or two smaller than he was.

  Jake felt nausea creeping through his stomach as he made his way towards the collecting ring. People nodded and waved and clapped him on the back, but he hardly noticed them. Why the hell hadn’t he chosen a smaller show to make his comeback?

  A little girl rushed forward for his autograph. “Later,” he snapped.

  Lack of sleep and food had made him dizzy. Everything seemed unreal. For the past week he’d hardly slept, dozing off, then waking up with the sensation of falling, then lying awake, jumping fences in his head, seeing them growing higher and impossibly higher, as the long hours crept towards dawn and cigarettes piled up in the ashtray.

  The sky was getting grayer. He began to shake.

  “Are you all right?” said Sarah. “Don’t worry. You’ve been jumping super at home. Mac’ll take care of you.”

  Macaulay tried to knock Jake’s hat off to cheer him up and was sworn at for his pains. When Jake was mounted, Macaulay tried again, just a little buck that in the old days would have made Jake laugh—but which today nearly put him on the floor and produced another torrent of abuse. To further shatter Jake’s confidence, Rupert was crashing Rock Star over the practice fences, putting him wrong, so he hit his forelegs hard and would be certain to pick them up when he went into the ring. God, he was a beautiful horse in the flesh, thought Jake; a chestnut stallion showing all the compressed power of his American breeding, with curving muscles like coiled steel cables.

  Jake jumped a couple of fences, then, having been nearly sent flying by Rupert, retreated to the outer field, desperately trying to get his nerves under control. Suddenly he passed Helen Campbell-Black, looking like a city gent, ludicrously out of place in a pinstriped suit.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling and coming towards him.

  Jake nodded curtly and, circling, rode back to the arena.

  Fen was waiting for him: “You’re on,” she said. “Good luck.”

  “Good luck,” called voices on all sides.

  In the old days he had usually been all right once he got into the ring, the nervous tension a necessary preliminary to the class itself, heightening awareness, but that was when his body was fit and flexible, not frozen with fear. Now he was like a child at his first gymkhana. What if he really was jinxed? Sailor had died here. Last year he had smashed up his leg. These things went in threes. What had the fates in store for him today?

  Macaulay, aware of his master’s terror, heard the bell and suddenly decided to take matters into his own big hoofs. Bucketing towards the first fence, he cleared it easily. Somehow, clinging onto his mane, Jake stayed in the saddle. It was a very hit and miss business. The crowd had their hearts in their mouths all the way round. No one cheered, for they didn’t want in any way to distract Macaulay, but as he cleared the last triple with a flourish they broke into a roar that seemed to part the gray clouds and bring out the sun, putting a sparkle on everything.

  Fen found herself hugging Malise in the collecting ring. “He did it,” she gulped, “he really did it. It’s going to be all right.”

  As Jake rode towards the exit, deadpan as ever, the cheers mounted and all the people in the boxes came out onto the balconies to bellow their approval. Helen joined in the applause politely. She felt absurdly deflated. Jake had hardly noticed her and then cut her dead.

  “Great round,” said Malise.

  Jake shook his head. “It was bloody terrible and you know it, but at least I, or rather Macaulay, got around.”

  Everyone was congratulating him. It amazed him. They were so thrilled to see him back. But he couldn’t take the hero worship and the enthusiasm just yet. He wanted to be alone with Macaulay to thank him. Riding quietly out of the collecting ring he saw Helen Campbell-Black. Aware that he’d snubbed her earlier, he rode towards her.

  “Hello.”

  She looked up: “Oh, hi,” she said, ultracasually.

  There was a long pause.

  “He jumped well,” she stammered. “I’m so happy for you.”

  “How’s Marcus?” said Jake to the top of her trilby.

  “He’s real fine, so much better. Look, I’ve been meaning to thank you for ages for lunch and for Marcus’s circus. You were so kind driving all that way.” She was really gibbering now.

  “That’s all right,” said Jake.

  After another long pause she looked up and they gazed at each other.

  “I’ve got your handkerchief, too,” she said, color mounting in her face, “and Marcus plays with his circus the whole time. He just adored you.”

  Jake said nothing, but went on staring down at her.

  As Macaulay sidled beneath him, Helen put up a trembling hand to stroke the horse’s black neck.

  “Are you going to Rome?” she asked, desperate for something to say.

  “No. Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “W-what?” She looked at him in amazement.

  “I said, don’t go. Make some excuse. When’s Rupert leaving?”

  “Lunchtime on Monday week. He’s flying out.”

  “Right. You’ll be home in the afternoon?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll ring you there.” And he was gone.

  Helen was thrown into complete panic. Had she dreamed it? Could Jake really have said that? From that Saturday at Crittleden to the Monday nine days later, when Rupert left for Rome, she went through every fluctuation of excitement, worry, terror, and disbelief.

  She was completely inattentive at committee meetings and at parties. When the parties were boring she could think of nothing but Jake. Yet when Amanda Hamilton invited them to dinner on the Saturday and Helen, radiant in russet taffeta, was chatted up by two rather glamorous Tory MPs, she hardly missed him at all. Amanda had been particularly nice to her, soliciting her aid to persuade Rupert to go into politics.

  Perhaps if he did, thought Helen, things would be different. He’d be in England most of the time and there wouldn’t be any of those punishing three-o’clock-in-the-morning departures, and by using his brain he might have less of a chip about her apparent intellectual superiority.

  Rupert was highly relieved that Helen wasn’t coming to Rome. Amanda Hamilton was going to be out there for the Rome tennis tournament, staying with friends. He was making no progress with Amanda. Like a do-it-yourself cupboard, he told Billy, she was taking far longer to make than one would expect. Pathological about adverse press, she even refused to lunch with him. But she fascinated him more than any woman he’d met for ages, and he was determined to get her into bed before long.

  When Rupert’s car refused to start on Monday, Helen drove him to the airport. As she drove slowly back to Penscombe, admiring the wild cherry blossom and the pale green spring leaves, she reflected that it was a good thing she’d be out when Jake rang, just to show she wasn’t that keen.

  Walking into the house she buried her face in a huge bunch of white lilac which filled the entire hall with its scent. Marcus rushed out to meet her and show her the pictures of the fair he’d painted at play school.

  “Any messages?” she called out casually to Charlene, who was in the kitchen.

  “No. Oh, I tell a lie, Mrs. Bacon rang about jumble.”

  “No one else? Are you sure you didn’t go out or into the garden?”

  “I’ve been here all afternoon.”

  Helen was totally thrown. She’d been so certain Jake was going to crowd her, that she had a tiger by the tail. Why the hell couldn’t Mrs. Bodkin throw away dead flowers, she thought, as she wandered restlessly round the drawing room, moving ornaments, even snapping at Marcus. She tried to read. Half an hour
passed. Then Malise rang, hoping to catch Rupert before he left. Janey rang for a gossip and the headmistress of Marcus’s play group rang about their summer bring-and-buy. Helen was uncharacteristically terse with all of them. Then Charlene’s mother rang and gossiped to Charlene for twenty minutes. Helen couldn’t even accuse her of wasting money as it was an incoming call. Perhaps Jake was in a call box trying to get through; perhaps he’d lost the number. Oh, the nightmare of being ex-directory. Unsupervised by Charlene, the children swarmed into the drawing room. The next moment Tab had put jammy fingerprints all over the apricot silk curtains.

  “Charlene,” screamed Helen, “for God’s sake, get off the telephone.”

  Charlene flounced in, looking martyred. “It’s Gran. She’s got cancer of the bowel.”

  “Oh, God,” said Helen, mortified. “I’m so sorry.”

  The telephone rang. Helen sprang to it.

  “Hello.”

  “Helen?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Jake. Sorry I couldn’t ring before. The class went on and on.”

  There was a pause. Mindlessly she watched Tab stumping towards the table with the long pale blue cloth, on which stood all Helen’s favorite ornaments.

  “Look, I know it’s short notice, but I’m coming your way tomorrow. Can we lunch?”

  “I don’t know. Tab, leave that tablecloth alone. Alone, I said.”

  “Shall I pick you up?”

  “No.” It was almost a scream. “Tab—I said, put it down!”

  “You know the Red Elephant at Willacombe?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll see you there at one o’clock.”

  “Okay—hey wait.”

  But he had replaced the receiver.

  Leaping forward, Helen retrieved a Rockingham dalmation from Tab’s predatory fingers.

  “I said, ‘Don’t touch.’ ”

  Picking up the child, she was suddenly overwhelmed with happiness, swinging her around and around, covering her with kisses until she screamed with delight.