by Fiona Walker
‘Zey will talk about us still, of course,’ MC predicted minutes later as she undressed Rory with consummate skill, fingers as deft with buttons as a catwalk stylist changing a male model. ‘Now you are winning, you weel be on everybody’s lips.’
‘Do you really think so?’ he asked, hoping nothing bad was being said about him in the Lime Tree Farm lorry, parked in the prime Badminton pitch it had occupied for over a decade, like the central tepee in a Native American encampment. The Moncrieffs were notorious gossips, so their lorry was a campfire for all-comers.
‘Absolutement.’ MC removed his trousers faster than a casualty nurse treating a minor burn. Then she dropped to her knees. ‘But tonight, you are only on my lips, chéri.’
Rory closed his eyes ecstatically, deciding on balance that he didn’t mind being talked about if it involved lip service like this.
But talk in the lorry park that week was not about Rory and MC. Nor was it still debating the identity of Lucy Field’s married lover, a topic that had kept the scandalmongers speculating for two seasons now. It was all about the Tash-Hugo-Lough love triangle. Rumours were running riot, with claims that Lough and Tash had been spotted kissing in the ha-ha at Hyam Hall, canoodling behind the bushes at Larkhill and fornicating against the orangery at Belton.
‘It’s all such rubbish – Tash didn’t even go to Belton,’ Penny Moncrieff complained to Gus. ‘Where on earth do they get it from?’
Gus coughed uncomfortably, but said nothing.
By the Friday night, Tash and Hugo, sharing a rented cottage on the edge of the estate with the children and au pairs, were feeling so much tension from the obvious scrutiny that they were under, that they were barely speaking.
On Saturday, the weather flipped sides and was unexpectedly hot, throwing cross-country preparations into disarray as the going changed from soft to sticky. Riders grumbled about the stamina-sapping ground, the risk of injury and slippages. Everybody knew that the toughest course in the world would take no prisoners in ideal conditions, let alone in punishing heat and with claggy going.
‘They’ll come home exhausted, if at all,’ Julia Ditton, commentating for the BBC, predicted darkly. The first two horses on the course bore this out by retiring early.
Next out was Hugo’s first horse, Sir Galahad. The duo seemed set to defy the pessimists, streaking round in Hugo’s inimitable, quick-witted style. But disaster struck when the horse tripped badly on a loose leg boot in the middle of the bounce into the lake and chested the second element, propelling Hugo out over the jump and into the water.
‘Now there’s a sight you don’t see very often!’ Mike Tucker chortled delightedly on the live commentary as Hugo waded out to catch his horse. ‘Beauchamp taking a swim!’
‘Hot day. Nice to cool off,’ Hugo managed to joke through gritted teeth when Julia Ditton dashed up to him with a microphone at the end of his round.
There was no laughter back at the stables when Jenny examined the cause of the fall. The straps of the boot had been cut.
‘I put them on myself, and taped them before you warmed up,’ she said. ‘They were fine.’
‘Could anybody else have got at them before the start?’ Hugo demanded.
‘No – I mean, we were all there checking everything and putting on the leg grease, me, Beccy – and Lem was there for Lough, helping out.’
‘Was Lough near by at the time?’
Jenny nodded. ‘We should complain to the stewards.’
He waved the idea away. ‘Waste of time – we can’t prove anything. Just looks like sour grapes.’
Jenny cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘Beccy has been … very strange all this week.’
It was true that Beccy couldn’t stop crying, and wouldn’t tell anybody why. She kept locking herself in the loo of the horsebox and refused to come out.
‘Okay. Say nothing, but don’t let her near Cub from now on. I’m going to get out of these wet things.’
Tash, who’d seen the fall on the screen in the supporters’ tent and had been running around trying to find Hugo ever since, was handicapped by Cora who had become very clingy lately and refused to leave her mother’s side, but weighed a ton to carry and was far too slow and unsteady to walk any distance. She finally tracked him down at the horsebox, changing into dry clothes.
‘Are you okay?’ she gasped breathlessly, Cora dangling round her neck.
‘Never fucking better,’ he hissed as he pulled a T-shirt over his head.
For once not telling him off for not wearing a Mogo top – or pulling him up about swearing in front of Cora – Tash let the wriggling toddler slither to the floor. ‘I’ve just seen Jenny. She says it was deliberate.’
‘Looks like it.’
‘I think you should withdraw Cub. It’s too dangerous.’
He held up his hand to quieten her as the distant cross-country commentary announced that Lough Strachan had cleared the first fence and was away. ‘Lover boy’s on course if you want to watch.’
‘Please don’t say that,’ Tash said, not noticing that Cora had appropriated her father’s spare cross-country helmet and was filling it with food from the fridge as a make-believe picnic basket.
They walked back towards the supporters’ tent in silence. Hugo had several hours before he needed to start warming up Cub, and wanted to face the commiserations of his fellow riders straight away to get it over with. He also secretly hoped to watch Lough suffer a similar fate on the big screen.
But Lough gave an exemplary performance, piloting the unfamiliar ride around his first-ever Badminton as though they’d been a partnership for years, taking all the direct routes, picking out the most brilliant, economic lines and the best of the ground to preserve the horse’s legs. They galloped through the finish inside the time to be greeted by enormous cheers of support, particularly from the female spectators. Lemon bounced up and down like a rubber ball as he took over the horse to cool him down and loosen off while Lough was hailed from all sides by the excited owners and fellow New Zealanders.
It had been a breathtaking bit of riding. His was the first penalty-free clear round of the day; to go inside the time had been thought impossible until now. Anybody who had not yet realised that Lough Strachan had arrived in the UK and was a force to be reckoned with, was now left in no doubt that the Devil on Horseback was here.
Swept away by the hysteria of the supporters’ tent, Tash felt jubilant. Seeing the man she’d been training with finally start to get the recognition he deserved, she urged Hugo to come with her and the children to congratulate him too: ‘Let’s bury the hatchet, show a united front. We can get past all this nonsense.’
‘Since when was trying to steal another man’s wife nonsense?’ He stood up and marched out.
By the time she’d gathered Cora in her toddler reins, Amery in the buggy and all their paraphernalia to follow him, he’d disappeared from sight.
Spotting Veruschka and Vasilly at a burger van, she apologetically handed over her children and dashed straight to the stables. But Hugo wasn’t there, only Jenny, plaiting up Cub.
Nor was he in the lorry park, although she found his phone in the horsebox. Shame-faced, she checked the many unread good luck and commiseration messages cluttering the inbox. Two stuck out horribly, both listed as from Shadowfax. She recognised the name with a jolt.
Sent five minutes before his start time: Pride comes before a fall.
Then, sent just a minute after his crash into the water: Told you so.
Heart slamming, she held the phone like an unexploded bomb when a message suddenly came through from V. Where r u? Thought we said meet in the Allen Grove at one? Can’t be spotted by you-know-who! Xxx
A lime pit of corrosive, angry indignation stripped her skin. How dare he! How dare he march around full of aggrandised hurt when he was the one being unfaithful. He had been unfaithful with V for months and months. Jealousy pulled the artery from her throat and starved her mind of oxygen as she hurled the phone at th
e wall.
She looked at her watch. Five past one.
Bursting out of the horsebox, she crashed straight into Lough.
‘Is Hugo around?’ He looked furious. ‘People are saying I sabotaged his ride. This has gone far enough.’
Angry tears were suddenly falling from her eyes. She knew she looked half-mad. Sitting outside a nearby horsebox on folding chairs eating their lunch in the sunshine, several riders and their teams were watching with interest. One discreetly reached for a mobile phone and turned on the camera.
‘What is it?’ Lough took her hands in his, like ropes tethering her rocking ship to a harbour wall.
‘I can’t – I must –’ She fought the tears but they were coming hard and fast now.
‘What, Tash?’
‘It’s such a mess. Such a bloody mess. I can’t take it any more,’ she sobbed.
His eyes lifted to her face, full of hope.
She tried to pull away from him, but the harbour ropes were harnessing her now.
She felt his body against hers, hard and solid and still hot from riding across country.
‘You don’t have to take it, Tash.’
‘Tell that to Hugo!’ she raged through the tears.
‘You have no idea how much pleasure that would give me.’ He laughed suddenly, that rare laugh that she’d grown so fond of, despite its rarity, like a nightjar’s call.
Tash leant back and stared up at him, taking several frantic heartbeats to take in what he was saying.
And she knew that it was unmistakeably there, a gong struck in her chest, an inability to catch her breath, focus or see past him without the urge to fall into his arms. She wanted to throw herself against his heat and love, to blot out what was happening.
But she shook her head violently. ‘Please let me go. I don’t want that.’
He dropped his hands, his eyes so lost in hers that it was a while before she realised she was free to leave.
Then she ran as fast as she could.
In the Beauchamps’ lorry a beeping from Hugo’s phone announced a new photo-message.
Allen Grove was a wood at the far end of the estate’s park, just beyond the limit of the cross-country course, and out of bounds to the public, although those who remembered the long-format competition, which had involved miles of roads and tracks plus a steeplechase before horses set out on the cross-country, knew it well. Tash ran all the way there.
Chest burning, legs heavy with lactic acid, she climbed over the first gate she could find and ran blindly on into the woods. But it was a huge, dense area. All she could hear were birds calling overhead, her steps crunching, her breath gasping and the distant Tannoy.
She would never find them here. It was a perfect adulterer’s lair.
She sagged back against a tree trunk and closed her eyes, grateful for the cool and privacy of the woods. But a moment’s silence gave her a hundred intense flashbacks to Lough touching her, holding her, to her excitement and shame and now, far more dangerous, her competitive streak.
It was better to keep running.
She could hear the commentary about Rory now and felt a cramp of disgrace that she had neglected him, as had they all. She turned to leave the woods the way she’d come in. Then she realised that a couple were having sex up against a tree, just a few metres away.
The woman was facing Tash, and she recognised her with immediate horror. Lucy Field, minxy blonde eventer notorious for trotting up her horses in the shortest of skirts and highest of heels at every veterinary inspection, for appearing in every nude horsy charity calendar and for sleeping her away round most of the horseboxes in the lorry park before she settled down with nice-but-dim Jamie Stanton, middle son of a great eventing dynasty.
It was Lucy, she realised, feeling faint. Hugo was screwing Lucy.
But even as she thought it she heard the man grunting and groaning out of sight and she realised he wasn’t Hugo. And when he started to speak, she knew exactly who he was.
‘Yes! Don’t stop. Bloody Jesus. Don’t stop!’
That voice had shouted at her a hundred times and more.
It was Gus. Eventing’s lovely vintage teddy bear who’d lost his stuffing. Penny’s Gus. Lime Tree’s Gus. Everybody’s Gus.
‘OHMYGOD! We’ve been seen!’ Lucy shouted suddenly.
But Tash hardly registered it. Her mind was bubbling over now, totally incapable of finding its balance. If Gus was at it and Hugo was at it, was everybody at it? Rory was forever at it … the Cole Porter song sprang into her head, rattling ludicrously with its cheery suggestion that birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it …
She shook her head violently to make the song disappear.
Keep running she reminded herself. Keep moving.
Turning away as Gus and Lucy dived for cover, she sprinted back towards the safety of the horsebox, but found her stepsister had beaten her to it and was sitting on the ramp, tears streaming down her face.
‘What on earth is it, Beccy?’
‘I’m having the w-w-worse time of m-my life here!’ she announced theatrically, snuffling madly. ‘And now I c-can’t get in the h-h-horsebox because it’s l-locked.’
‘Is this about Lem?’ Tash had noticed they were keeping well apart.
Beccy nodded, then shook her head, then burst into tears again. Tash hugged her tightly and waited for the tears to ebb, fishing the horsebox keys from her pocket and holding them up. ‘Now you can get in and get whatever it is you need.’
Beccy shrugged and shuddered with abating tears. ‘I was going to lock myself in the loo.’
‘Ah. So was I, but we won’t both fit in there so we’ll have to take turns and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ Tash steered her to the front of the big Oakley.
Beccy rubbed her eyes and studied Tash closely. ‘Are you going to leave Hugo for Lough?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Christ, where did you get that from?’
‘Everybody’s saying it. They say that’s what the grudge match between them is all about.’
‘Well everybody’s wrong.’
Beccy sat at the table in the horsebox and began fiddling with the mobile phone that had been abandoned there. She turned to Tash. ‘So why is there a photo-message on here of you and Lough in a clinch?’
It was only after Beccy had eaten half a packet of biscuits and told Tash the gritty details of her split from Lemon that she remembered she was supposed to be grooming for Rory.
Faith hadn’t forgotten Rory, and made up for Beccy’s last-minute absence, watching him on the big screen in the arena as he flew around, trusting The Fox who had been round clear the previous year and knew what it was all about. Less headstrong than his brother, who Hugo would ride later, he was nevertheless so agile and fleet of foot that he devoured the track. And he clearly revelled in Rory’s light, skilful handling, the partnership having cemented itself more and more with each outing.
She welcomed them home as heroes. She was so proud that she even forgave MC for swooping in at the finish again and claiming Rory. ‘Formidable! I must introduce you to some very interested owners, chéri.’
Faith scowled, but Rory’s departing look lifted her heart a little as his eyes sparkled into hers and he blew her a kiss.
She knew MC’s powerful contacts could be a lifeline for Rory, who had so few real supporters, especially now she had probably scuppered his future with Dillon by being over-demanding. Her chest compressed uncomfortably at the thought.
Once Fox’s heart rate and temperature had stabilised she led him back to his stable to wash him, rug him up and and apply leg-cooling clay before dashing across the old stable yard to check on Gus’s ride, By Dickens, who had been round earlier, glancing off the corner in Huntman’s Close to scupper their chances in an otherwise foot-perfect performance.
‘Rory went clear,’ she told Penny breathlessly. ‘He was quite brilliant given the ground is so churned up now. His fuel tank started to empty after the Quarry. Rory nursed him h
ome with just a couple of time faults. Have you seen Lem? He borrowed my penknife and I need it back for the corkscrew.’ She held up a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
‘Rory’s on the wagon,’ Penny reminded her, emerging from By Dickens’s stall where she’d been wrapping his legs in her own customised injury-avoider of chilled supermarket cool bags cut down and encased in bandaging.
‘It’s not for Rory. It’s for us.’ Faith waggled it at her.
‘You are fabulous! So like your father.’ Penny laughed, not noticing Faith’s shocked face because she’d spotted Tash arriving with a tearstained Beccy.
‘Did you see my man go, Tash?’ she called out, her berry eyes alight. ‘Bloody brilliant. He’ll be back in a minute, he’s just gone to change. You’ve got ages before Hugo goes. Have a glass of wine.’
Certain that an image of Gus and Lucy Field in the woods was flashing up on her eyeballs like a cinema trailer, Tash looked hastily away. ‘Where is Hugo?’ Their area was deserted apart from Sir Galahad pulling at a haynet and looking very chilled out despite his earlier dunking. ‘I thought he’d be here.’
‘Taken Cub out in the park.’
He was probably in Allen Grove, meeting V, she realised wretchedly.
Then she saw Lough step from Rangitoto’s stable and, grabbing Beccy, went violently in reverse.
To cheer Beccy up, Tash took her to the retail village and bought her the eventing must-have, a pair of Dubarry boots, which she knew her stepsister had always lusted after. Just as she was paying for them, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
‘Good to see you, Tash. Hope you’re well – your little fellow must be almost one now?’ A tall, thin figure with iron grey hair pecked at her cheeks like a blackbird plucking a worm before leaning closer and whispering through a fixed smile, ‘Make a fool of Hugo and the whole eventing world will turn against you.’
‘Who was that?’ Beccy asked as the woman stalked away.
‘Gin Seaton,’ Tash said in a frozen voice. ‘Used to have a horse with us until her husband pulled the plug, saying it was too expensive.’