The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘All that matters is that you annihilate Bluey Charteris and Penscombe Pride,’ she heard Rannaldini saying as he shut the door on them both.

  Kitty longed to look her best on the day of the race, but as she’d been wracked with morning sickness worse than Danny, and the rain that suited Arthur only crinkled the hair she’d blow-dried straight, there wasn’t much hope.

  Although Rutminster was only fifteen miles away, Rannaldini insisted on ferrying his party, which also included Hermione and Bob, Meredith and Rachel and Guy and Georgie, by helicopter. Terrified of throwing up over the dove-grey suede upholstery, Kitty pleaded last-minute shopping in Rutminster for the celebration party the utterly confident Rannaldini was planning for that evening, when everyone would drink Krug out of the Rutminster Cup.

  Having bought some home-made pâté and a side of smoked salmon from a delicatessen in the High Street, Kitty drove past the russet houses of the Close, peering out behind their fans of magnolia grandiflora, and, parking her car, popped in to the cathedral.

  The numbers of the hymns were up for Palm Sunday tomorrow. In a side chapel, pinned to a green baize screen, Kitty noticed children’s drawings of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on donkeys even more outlandishly shaped than Arthur.

  Would the baby inside her, which could so easily be Lysander’s, one day draw pictures like that? she thought despairingly, as she sunk to her knees on a faded crimson hassock.

  ‘Please, please, dear God,’ pleaded Kitty, ‘let him get round, I don’t care if he wins. Just let him come back safe, he’s so brave and reckless.’

  Surely it wasn’t adultery to pray for someone’s safety?

  Through the clear-glass lattice window to her right, fringes of rain were falling out of dark purple clouds on to the palest green leaves, just emerging from the chestnut trees.

  ‘Rain’s good for Arfur, God, but please don’t let him slip.’

  Beside her lay the stone effigy of Robert, Lord Rutminster, who died in the crusades. He had pudding-basin hair and his nose broken off, but he was flanked by stone angels, with a little dog like Jack at his feet. Kitty ran a finger down his pale battered translucent face.

  Oh, let angels ride on Lysander’s shoulders, too. Wiping away the tears, she quickly lit a candle for him. Walking towards the door, she saw a man standing beneath the tattered colours of the local regiments. He looked vaguely familiar, so she smiled, then went absolutely scarlet as she realized the last time she’d seen him she’d been in her bra and knickers, bopping in the rain. As she scuttled out, however, she looked round.

  ‘Good luck,’ she stammered.

  ‘Good luck, Kitty,’ said David Hawkley.

  Any comfort she might have felt evaporated as Clive slid forward out of nowhere to open the door of the Mini to take her to the races.

  Rutminster racecourse on the final day of the meeting had never been fuller. Anticipating victory for Rupert, who was a huge local hero, and forgetting the recession, the multitude were drowning their sorrows. Penscombe Pride would get them out of trouble, pay their mortgage arrears, their poll tax and their daughter’s wedding. As the beautiful little bay with his bright questing eyes and his zig zag blaze, who had never fallen in his life, or lost in his last eight races, strutted round the paddock like a bantam cock, no-one would have thought he carried top weight and the expectation of hundreds of thousands of punters. Ten-deep, they gathered round the rails to admire him.

  He was followed at a respectable distance by The Prince of Darkness, who was a hand bigger. He looked magnificent with his blood-red rug rolled back to show rippling muscle worthy of a black middle-weight champion. But his evil eye rolled and his jaws strained against his muzzle and everyone kept clear of his hoofs because he could lash out with all four of them.

  Of the thirty other runners, the most serious contenders were Camomile Lawn, a fleet chestnut mare so flashy Tab said she ought to wear an ankle bracelet, Male Nurse, a stocky brown gelding who jumped and stayed well, Yummy Yuppy, the handsome dark bay who had fallen last year, Blarney Stone, who had won the Irish Grand National, Paddywack, who was third to Penscombe Pride and The Prince of Darkness last year and Fräulein Mahler, Rannaldini’s second horse, whom Lysander had ridden into the lake last summer.

  A ripple of delighted laughter ran through the crowd as Arthur entered the paddock. A hand bigger than any other horse, shambling round like a great circus elephant, his coat gleaming like an iceberg, he was plainly delighted at the attention he was causing. The crowd, particularly the men, admired his slim blond stable-girl with her exquisite bone structure and arrogant eyes, and, seeing RC-B on Arthur’s new blue rug, made the connection and nodded wisely.

  ‘That horse couldn’t win if it started last week,’ yelled a wag on the steps.

  ‘Don’t be so fucking sure,’ yelled back Tabitha.

  The crowd roared, in no doubt now that she was Rupert’s daughter, and they were delighted when Georgie Maguire, ravishing in a suit of grass-green silk, sheltered by a pink peony-patterned umbrella gave Tab the two-hundred-pound prize for the best turned-out horse.

  Up in the private boxes, after excellent lunches, the rich and sometimes famous and their satellite freeloaders looked down on the runners. The noisiest, most glamorous, throng inhabited the Venturer Television box. They included Freddie Jones, Pridie’s co-owner, as plump and as jolly as his writer wife, Lizzie, and Taggie’s parents, Declan and Maud O’Hara, who hadn’t forgiven Rupert for his crack about Arthur staying longer than she did. Billy Lloyd-Foxe, Rupert’s old show-jumping crony, who was doing the commentary for Venturer, and his wanton, blond wife, Janey, who was covering the race for the Daily Post, and finally Ricky France-Lynch, polo captain of England, who’d had Lysander’s ponies at livery, and his adorably pretty, painter wife, Daisy, who was busy sketching everything in sight.

  By ghastly irony, Rannaldini’s box was bang next door, and Rannaldini ignored them icily. But he couldn’t stop Freddie Jones gossiping to Larry about the way the recession had stymied the electronics business, nor Meredith and Hermione, radiant in squashy blond furs, casting covetous eyes at Rupert, nor the chairman of the New World Phil, who was enjoying the hospitality more than the horses, gazing at Taggie, who echoed Rupert’s colours in a dark blue suit with an emerald-green turban, and whose navy-blue-stockinged legs were longer than any of the horses’.

  ‘I fancy Male Nurse,’ said Meredith, taking his eyes off Rupert for a second to study his racecard.

  ‘That figures,’ said Guy. ‘I fancy Busty Beauty.’

  That figures, too, thought Georgie.

  Georgie didn’t care, because she’d had glorious sex with Guy that morning, because people had shoved Hermione aside to mob her and get her autograph when she’d arrived at the course, and because she’d been asked to present the turn-out prize, and because down below on the grass, watching his son go round the paddock, looking aloof and Byronic, stood David Hawkley. They had just managed to avoid the Press and snatch a blissful two minutes together behind the hot dog stand.

  Why, therefore, was she so upset when she caught Guy giving Julia’s friend, Daisy France-Lynch, a discreet wave? Had Ricky and Daisy had cosy foursomes with Julia and Guy?

  ‘Oh, look,’ Meredith broke into her reverie. ‘Rannaldini and divine Rupert have both come into the paddock. Very dirty of Rannaldini to have raked up Isa Lovell. Perhaps Rupert will challenge him to a duel.’

  Weighed out, dressed in his black, white and brown colours, Lysander huddled in the jockeys’ changing room, trying to keep down half a cup of sweet tea. His knees were knocking, his mind a blank. He couldn’t remember any of Rupert’s instructions. Around him jockeys hid their nerves in hectic skylarking. Rushing to the lavatory when he arrived, he had found a note pinned to the door in Bluey’s handwriting: ‘This bog is reserved for Lysander Hawkley for the next two hours,’ and smiled feebly, but he couldn’t join in. All he could think was that he might see Kitty again in a minute, but she was probably too frigh
tened of horses to venture into the paddock, and he mustn’t let Rupert, Tab and Arthur down. At least this morning’s shaving cuts had stopped bleeding.

  As tense as a sprung trap in the woods, Rupert didn’t hear a word Freddie Jones was saying as he waited for Isaac Lovell to come out with the other jockeys. He was trying to be rational, but in his head he was back in 1980, with Isa’s father, Jake, winning his silver, and Rupert coming nowhere on the most expensive show-jumper in the world.

  There was that shit Rannaldini in his black astrakhan coat and poor little Kitty looking as bombed as a stuffed fox in a glass case. And there, Rupert gave a hiss, was Isa Lovell, a couple of inches taller than Rannaldini, but with the same dark gypsy stillness as his father – which always captivated women and horses. For a second Rupert’s eyes met Isa’s, then slid away, as he felt all the old black murderous churning.

  ‘He is a little squit,’ whispered Taggie.

  Squeezing her hand until she winced, Rupert was relieved when the other jockeys spilled out as if from a conjurer’s coloured handkerchief into the paddock. The safety pin holding Lysander’s high black collar had come undone. Taggie refastened it. Like Arthur, he towered over his rivals, but he was thinner than any of them. Even his brown-topped boots were loose.

  Like Scarlett O’Hara being laced into her stays, Arthur groaned as his girths were tightened.

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ Tabitha kissed him on his whiskery nose. ‘Tomorrow you’ll be turned out to get fat and eat as much grass as you like.’

  Having seen Bluey safely mounted on Pridie, Rupert came over to give Lysander a leg up. Indignant at being ignored by his master, who was desperately scanning the private boxes for a glimpse of Kitty, Arthur deliberately stood on Lysander’s toe.

  ‘Fucking hell, Arthur, after all I’ve done for you!’ Lysander gathered up the reins.

  ‘Stop looking for Mrs Rannaldini, or I’ll put you in blinkers,’ chided Rupert, checking Arthur’s girths. ‘Now take it slowly, although you haven’t got much option on Arthur, and remember no black power salutes until you’re ten yards past the post, and don’t forget—’

  But Lysander never heard what he was going to say because Arthur, who never forgot a hand that fed him, had given his great Vesuvius whicker and carted his master and Tab, hauling helplessly on his lead rope, across the paddock to lay his great hairy face against Kitty’s and start eating her racecard.

  ‘Oh, Arfur!’ Kitty hugged the only horse in the world of whom she wasn’t terrified.

  For a second she and Lysander gazed at each other. Her little pug face was flushed from the hospitality tent. There were raindrops in her hair which crinkled unbecomingly. Her eyes were red, but, to Lysander, she had never looked more adorable. Kitty only noticed how the weight Lysander had lost showed off his beautiful bone structure, his huge eyes and his long, brown curly eyelashes, and how his hips had gone to nothing but his shoulders were still wide.

  Stunned by the intensity of their passion, neither of them could speak.

  Tab, meanwhile, was gazing at Isa Lovell, who was as dark and slender as a Tuscany cypress in the moonlight, and who was about to mount a plunging Prince of Darkness. Swinging round, Rannaldini was temporarily distracted by her disdainful beauty. The little Campbell-Black child would be an amusing conquest.

  He was about to introduce her to Isa Lovell, which would be an even more amusing one, when suddenly he caught sight of Lysander and heard him mutter: ‘Me and Arthur are trying to win this race for you, Kitty.’

  ‘That’s very unlikely,’ interrupted Rannaldini. ‘With your track record you’ll be lucky to get off at the start. And this must be Arthur. I didn’t know Rupert was reduced to training carthorses.’

  Lysander would have ridden Arthur into him, if Rupert hadn’t called him back.

  ‘Good luck, Lysander. Come ’ome safe and Arfur, too,’ cried Kitty defiantly.

  Arthur gazed back at her most reproachfully for not producing any bread-and-butter pudding.

  Lysander looked so thin and pale on the great white horse that, for a second, David Hawkley was reminded of the skeleton Death in Durer’s etching of ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’.

  ‘Good luck, God bless you,’ he called, as his son clattered past, but the wind and rain swept his words away.

  Tabitha gave Arthur a last hug as she released him on to the course. ‘Please come back safely,’ she said shakily, then smiling exactly like her father, ‘and in front. I’m off to put all my turn-out money on Arthur.’

  Leaving the paddock, Rupert nearly collided with Isa Lovell. Pale and expressionless and now astride the fearsome, leaping Prince of Darkness, he could have been the Jake Rupert had first battled with on the show-jumping circuit twenty years ago.

  ‘Hallo, Isa,’ he drawled. ‘I owe your father actually.’ Then, turning to Taggie, stunning in her slim blue suit, ‘Don’t you think I got the better bargain? I gather Jake’s still lumbered with the same clapped-out model.’

  ‘Rupert!’ said Taggie in horror.

  Isa would have had no scruples about riding The Prince into Rupert, but he had a race to win. Instead, hissing a gypsy curse, he spat neatly at Rupert’s feet, before thundering after the others.

  The Press were going berserk.

  The jockeys, as was traditional, showed their horses the first fence. A rampantly impatient Penscombe Pride nearly jumped it. As it was a long time since breakfast, Arthur started to eat it. A prat-in-a-hat then brayed through the downpour for the jockeys to line up. The Prince of Darkness, lashing his tail like an angry cat, flattened his ears and tried to take a chunk out of Arthur.

  ‘I wouldn’t.’ Lysander lifted his whip.

  ‘You shouldn’t take up so much room,’ mocked Isa Lovell in his flat Birmingham accent.

  A summer meadowful of butterflies was fluttering in Lysander’s belly. His black, brown and white colours were drenched with rain and sweat. The reins slipped through his stiff, trembling fingers. The rain drummed impatient fingers on his helmet. What the hell had Rupert said about the first fence? Gigantic gelding of little account, white elephant, no-hoper, carthorse, he thought furiously. We’ll show them, Arthur.

  No-one could see anything beyond the second fence. Several over-eager runners, including Pridie and The Prince of Darkness, were pushing their noses over the tape.

  ‘Turn round, jockeys, get back,’ brayed the prat-in-a-hat. ‘I can’t get it up.’

  ‘That’s nothing new, you asshole,’ muttered Bluey as they all swung round and realigned.

  Starting to giggle, Lysander was petrified he wouldn’t be able to stop. They were all bunched together. Snap went the tape and the 1991 Rutminster Cup was under way.

  62

  Lysander never dreamt it would be so fast. The Light Brigade hurtling into the Valley of Death didn’t have to stop and jump huge fences. His face and colours were instantly caked with mud kicked back from horses in front, but, heeding Rupert’s words, he managed to keep up with the hurtling, barging leaders over the first fence, and then, as they fanned out and rattled over the Rutminster–Cheltenham Road, he and Arthur settled into an easy stride, bowling along in the middle of the field.

  Meanwhile little Penscombe Pride, who loathed being overtaken, had set off at a cracking pace, but as he took the lead over the first fence, Fräulein Mahler, The Prince’s stable-mate, who never lasted more than a mile and a half, revved up beside him, forcing Pridie to go even faster, unsettling and muddling him, so he hit the second fence hard.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ muttered Rupert.

  He stood apart from the others in the box, tense as a waiting leopard, cigar between his long first and second fingers, binoculars flattening his dark blond eyelashes. Taggie knew better than to talk until the race was over.

  Penscombe Pride was still out in front, but having seen off Fräulein Mahler who had dropped back, the gutsy little bay was now being challenged by The Prince of Darkness, which denied him a breather as he climbed
the hill, forcing him to gallop on. Isa Lovell sat absolutely still and let his horse have its head, just the same technique as his father, thought Rupert savagely. The Prince was going really well. Rupert chewed on his cigar. All this would rattle Pridie and wear him out. He winced as that most careful of jumpers hit The Ambush hard; that would shake his confidence even more, and now The Prince was dropping back for a rest, and Fräulein was storming down with the last of her strength to challenge and rattle again. Shit, thought Rupert in outrage, these were just the sort of spoiling tactics with which he’d won races himself.

  Lysander hoped Arthur wasn’t going too fast. He seemed to be enjoying himself. It was like a jigsaw. You saw a gap and slotted in when you could. Now the big ditch was racing towards him. He searched his brains. What had Rupert said? Take off about eight feet away. He steadied Arthur, who flew over like a huge white swan. Beside him Blarney Stone only realized there was a ditch when he was on top of the fence, dropping his legs in it and knocking the stuffing out of himself. Rupert was right. Arthur had nearly reached the next fence by the time Blarney Stone had recovered.

  ‘You’re doing brilliantly, Arthur,’ said Lysander.

  Arthur flapped his ears, relishing the cheers of the drenched crowds at each fence.

  Coming up to The Ambush, five solid feet of birch and gorse, with a drop on the other side, which had caught out Yummy Yuppy last year and so shaken Pridie first time round, Lysander stood back again, but Camomile Lawn, half a length behind, was encouraged to take off at the same time, hit the fence smack on the way down and slipped on landing, rolling over and over.

  ‘Bad luck. You OK?’ shouted Lysander.

  He was able to give Arthur a breather, as instructed, as they climbed the now hopelessly churned-up hill, so he was able to gallop down like a three year old. They must be lying about fifteenth now, over the road and into the second circuit. But alas, the fog, reluctant to miss such an exciting race, had come down. Lysander couldn’t see more than a fence in front.