by Fiona Walker
The British team were expected to win at Aachen, and led by a big margin after the dressage. They had the strongest team in years – Olympic gold medallist Hugo, defending European champion Lucy Field, world championship runner-up Colly Trewin and the Kentucky and Badminton winner Rory. How could they lose? But now their pathfinder, who had already failed to show his usual panache in the dressage, was clocking up penalty points faster than a speeding Ferrari on the M25. Chef d’Equipe Brian Sedgewick had deliberately changed tactics this year, thinking his team so invincible that it would pay to rattle the opposition from the start. Thus Hugo had found himself cast as trailblazer. Accustomed to anchoring Britain’s hopes as last team member on the course, riding first was a novelty that he was not enjoying. He’d been expected to post a lightning-fast clear to throw down the gauntlet to the other European teams. Instead, he seemed to be riding in mittens.
To more groans in West Berkshire they overshot another corner in the main stadium. Hugo’s face was ashen, knowing he’d let down his country.
‘Oh Hugo!’ Penny covered her eyes.
‘His mind’s not on the job!’ barked Gus, who was still smarting that he hadn’t been selected for the team.
Penny peeked at him through her fingers. ‘I told you at Jenny and Dolf’s wedding this would happen. He’s all over the place.’
‘Man shouldn’t let the shaky state of his marriage affect his riding,’ Gus grumbled.
‘Well you certainly never do,’ his wife sniped back.
Faith and Lemon exchanged a look. Behind them, Lough didn’t blink as Hugo cantered dispiritedly through the finish, where Tash was waiting.
‘She looks dreadful,’ Penny sighed. Tash was deathly pale and looked painfully thin. The cameras panned from Hugo jumping off and running up his stirrups, barely acknowledging his wife’s presence, to their children in the arms of the Czech au pairs behind the near by barriers, all loyally wearing Team Mogo polo shirts. It made for a photogenic tableau, but to insiders like the Moncrieffs it was clear that the Beauchampions were barely on speaking terms and that their marriage was hanging together by a thread.
Lough headed to the door, calling for Lemon to follow. ‘We have horses to work.’
‘But I want to stay and watch,’ Lemon whined. ‘Surely you can’t leave now?’
‘I’ve seen all I want to see,’ Lough muttered, stalking out. Sighing, Lem tipped a dog off his lap and trotted after his boss.
‘Are you sure Lough and Tash were all over each other at Luhmühlen?’ Penny whispered to Gus after they’d gone.
‘So everyone says.’
‘India didn’t seem to think so.’
‘Believe me, they were rolling in the hay every time Hugo’s back was turned,’ Gus assured her, his hypocrisy escaping him. ‘He was bloody brave to keep going.’
‘I know that feeling,’ Penny snarled.
In the corner of the room, Faith tried to blend into the bookshelves.
The Moncrieffs’ marriage might be stitched together with somewhat better thread than the Beauchamps’, but it was still looking as frayed as their soft furnishings.
The second British team member out on course was Lucy Field. Her horses had been plagued with injury all season so that she was piloting her third string but the public favourite, the little coloured gelding Love To Bits, who was owned by a royal and so meant the added burden of publicity.
Faith noticed the eager way in which Gus leaned forwards as she set out, his breath shortening, making low encouraging noises over each fence and his eyes gleaming with pride. So did Penny, who gripped Dolly the collie’s collar so tightly she yelped.
When Lucy tipped up over the second part of the Camel Humps and parted company with the diminutive skewbald, Gus howled in anguish. His stricken face gave him away; it was a complete over-reaction. Lucy’s fall was enviably elegant – she landed almost balletically on her feet, keeping a hold of her reins, but it still meant automatic elimination and put British hopes under incredible strain. Penny’s hopes strained even more.
‘I’m just so disappointed for the team,’ Gus blustered when she glared at him.
‘I’ll put out the lunchtime feeds,’ she spat, stomping out. Gus lingered briefly, watching in silence as Lucy remounted to hack home, her pretty face desolate. Then he, too, wandered out of the room.
Moments later, Faith could hear the beep-beeps of him writing a text in the corridor.
She stayed glued to the screen, knowing that the last two riders had to make their rounds stick.
Third to go Colly Trewin managed after a fashion, but her big Irish Sport Horse, Mighty Mouse, found it hard to cope in the heat and ran out of steam three-quarters of the way round, racking up expensive time penalties as a result.
It would be left to Rory to defend team honour.
Faith rested her elbows on her knees and chewed her thumbnails, as nervous as she would be if she were riding the course herself. She quickly pulled her phone from her pocket to text him good luck, but the battery was dead.
About to head up to her attic room to find the charger, she realised Stefan was setting out across country representing Sweden, and sat back down to watch him.
Riding out on the sun-baked downs, Beccy was in a black mood because she’d wanted to stay in the Haydown tack room watching the European Championships on the old portable all day, but Franny had insisted that she must ride her allotted horses that afternoon instead of putting them in the automatic walker.
Now Beccy was cantering rather too fast along one of the chalk tracks on top of the downs, eager to get back in time to watch Rory’s round. As she cut across the pasture and took a short cut to drop back down the hill towards the village, she realised too late that she’d chosen a slope that was far too steep and was travelling far too fast to pull up. Her only choice was to lean right back and pray as the horse put his hindlegs right under him and almost slid down on his bottom as though tackling the Derby bank at Hickstead.
A lone rider was trotting along the track directly below and had to stop sharply as Beccy’s horse almost landed on top of him. ‘What the hell …?’
‘Sorry about that,’ she said cheerfully as she brushed dust from her knee and gathered up the reins, beaming with relief that she hadn’t fallen off. Then, to her horror, she realised the other rider was Lough.
Blushing with customary ferocity, she kicked her startled horse in the ribs and began to trot in the opposite direction, grateful that it was pointing her towards home.
‘Wait!’ he called, turning his own horse around.
Beccy checked back to a walk and gazed down at her hands, tight on the reins. As Lough drew alongside she couldn’t look him in the face, but in her peripheral vision she saw his long legs and dusty black riding boots three feet away.
They rode side by side in silence, Beccy nervously pushing into a trot again, out on to the village road, hooves striking as rhythmically as her hammer-on-anvil-heart.
They were almost at the fork where Maccombe’s single-track lane peeled away from the bigger Fosbourne one when Lough eventually spoke, his deep voice sending the hammer into overdrive.
‘Thank you for the texts.’
She could melt the tarmac with her face now. ‘Yes – hum – sorry. I’ve stopped doing that.’
They dropped back to a walk, the turning just yards ahead of them.
‘Please don’t. I miss them.’
‘You do?’ She looked across at him. His huge, mocha eyes were so intense, she had to look away again. ‘I’ve been focusing everything I have on riding better.’
‘It’s paying off.’
She shook her head, staring fixedly at her horse’s ears. ‘I was disqualified for taking the wrong course at Stonar yesterday.’
‘Happens to us all, especially if we ride as fast and strong as you do.’
She felt as though her saddle was inflating and she was riding high, thrilled by the compliment; Franny just yelled at her non-stop for being slapdash.
‘I watched you at Milton Keynes last week,’ he told her as they reached the fork. ‘You’re good. Very good. Keep it up.’ With a nod, he trotted on.
No mention of Tash whatsoever, Beccy realised, heading up on to the wide verge to canter up the hill to Haydown like a balloon floating on an almighty high.
She was so happy when she got back to the yard that she quite forgot about Rory in Germany, anchoring the shaky team and chasing his first individual medal. An astonished Franny watched as Beccy marched straight past the live coverage to swap saddles, saying that she was going to school all her horses until dusk.
Rory was in total disarray. His love affair with Marie-Clair was over, as of three days ago, when he’d caught her in bed with fellow rider, Kevin.
In many ways, it was a relief. For the first time in his life, he had fallen completely out of love. Easy come, easy go Rory had a terrible reputation with women, but in fact he had never ended a relationship until now. In his early twenties he’d lurched between crushing rejections as he gave his heart away too freely. Since then, one-night stands and convenient short affairs, mostly with older, married women like MC, had filled the gaps, but he didn’t really trust love as an emotion and was frightened of his over-zealous heart. He was no good at romance. He was better at riding, and it was the one relationship he had stuck with, increasingly successfully this year as he cut out the drinking that had always blotted out the lost love.
He knew that MC had never pretended to be anything other than a passing trainer, in sex and horses, but of course he had loved her in his impetuous, imperfect way and to lose that love left him more homesick than ever. She’d taught him that if he was prepared to raise his game and give more he would get so much back. Over recent weeks, he’d repaid her instruction by riding better than ever and making love like never before, but he was increasingly pining for what he had left behind.
In his heart, he knew that his tempestuous French siren, who was so dominating and certain and driven, was just an echo of what he really needed. What he needed had been there all along. There was a love that had been bowled at him too often to be ignored, but which he was now almost too frightened of hitting straight into another’s hands to begin to walk to the crease to strike it. He had to earn it first.
At Aachen Rory was determined to prove himself worthy as he prepared to ride across country. He knew she’d be watching. His dressage had been superb. He was the young pretender in pole position for the Championship gold, with his nation’s pride riding on his big white shoulder protectors and his horse’s gleaming chestnut back. He wanted to return home a hero and sweep her off her feet.
He’d texted Faith an hour before his start time.Wish me luck. Can
I buy you supper if I win?
He was still waiting for a reply when he was finally forced to hand his phone down to his groom as the starter counted him down.
On the tight, twisting course, the fences came up thick and fast with not much thinking time in between. It was not a course for a man with his mind elsewhere.
All alone in the Lime Tree Farm sitting room, Faith pulled a cushion on to her lap and chewed its rim as Rory started. One of the host country’s individual riders was on the course and the patriotic German production team kept cutting away to show him just as Rory was approaching a fence, making her moan with frustration.
Then the German finished and the television cameras focused on Rory, who was by now half way round the course. He was clear so far and on target for time, riding more determinedly than Faith had ever seen. Fox looked magnificent, his chestnut coat like hot toffee, his ears flicking backwards and forwards, listening to his rider and assessing the task as he prepared for each fence. They were a true partnership now, Faith realised. Being with Marie-Clair these past weeks had really improved Rory’s technique; he was calmer and more accurate, less cocky and devil-may-care.
But then, as they approached the Sunken Road, it all went wrong. It was as though Rory lost all concentration. Coming in too fast, he gave Fox no time to find a stride on his way out and the horse tripped up the step. He lurched towards the jump and made an almighty, honest leap to try to clear it, twisting as he hit it with his stifle before crashing down on top of Rory.
‘No.’ Faith felt terror scour her skin. ‘No, no, no, no!’
The Fox scrabbled upright, his hooves inches from his rider’s body. Rory didn’t move.
‘No,’ Faith breathed, her throat cramping. ‘Please be all right. Please be all right.’
Penny was in the doorway, having rushed in from the office to watch. ‘It’s okay – look. He’s getting up.’
Faith let out a gasp of relief as Rory slowly knelt, before being helped to his feet by a steward. Paramedics were rushing towards him but he waved them away. Smiling ruefully, he reclaimed his horse and patted him apologetically, hooking the reins back over Fox’s neck and stooping down to check his legs. Moments later, Rory collapsed. This time he didn’t get up again. The television cameras cut away to some picturesque shots of the showground.
Pressing her hands to her temples, Faith let out a scream of such terrifying dismay all the dogs around her scrabbled from the room in a panic and Gus rushed in from the yard thinking somebody was being murdered.
Rory would often thank his lucky stars for the superb Teutonic efficiency that had him in a bright yellow ambulance hurtling towards a specialist injury unit within minutes of falling.
At the time he knew nothing; he was unconscious for almost two days. His brain had started to swell badly, he was told afterwards, and he had been put in an induced coma to control it.
‘Good job it washn’t that big in the firsht place,’ he joked when he finally regained consciousness.
His speech had been affected by the fall, which the doctors assured him was probably only short-term. He now sounded permanently drunk, which frustrated him enormously as he struggled to be understood. The irony was not lost on him.
‘I ushed to shound like this all the time when I hit the shcotch,’ he complained. ‘Now I don’t drink and I shtill shodding well shound plastered.’
But he was left in no doubt how close to death he had come, and he was continually told that he was very lucky not to be embarking upon a long battle to learn to walk again. Sounding like Sylvester the Cat for a few weeks was a small price to pay; in all other ways he was remarkably unscathed.
He was in hospital in Germany for almost a week before being deemed stable enough for transfer to Oxford, where his family and friends could visit him more easily.
Faith was among the first to arrive at his bedside, loaded with eventing DVDs and digital photos of his horses.
‘Oh Faith, I do love you.’ He patted her hand and fell asleep.
‘Common side-effect of a head injury,’ one of the nurses told Faith calmly when she pressed the panic button, certain that he had slipped into a coma again.
‘Declaring love or falling asleep?’ Faith asked.
‘Both,’ the nurse said, pretending not to notice that Rory had one eye open and was watching Faith closely.
‘Your horses are fine,’ she told him and the eye snapped shut as she turned to look at him and take his hand, chattering away as she’d been told to by the nurses. ‘I check them every day after work, and Franny is looking after them fantastically. Tash is riding them like you wanted – just ticking over to let them recover from all that hammering you did on the Continent. She’s such a brilliant horsewoman, although they definitely miss you in the saddle,’ she added quickly. ‘But everybody says you’ll be back for Burghley and the Grand Slam chance, even though you might miss out on the British Open this year. You’re still top of the FEI Classics race, you know, with Lough snapping at your heels. God, he’s a pain in the arse to work with. He drives me mad.’
She loved the way he smiled in his sleep.
‘You’re lucky to be away from it all,’ she went on. ‘The atmosphere at Haydown is really weird and Hugo’s always so bad temp
ered. Beccy says he and Tash are trying to patch things up, so I hope it improves. Not that it’s much better at Lime Tree Farm. It’s so obvious Gus is shagging Lucy Field, but nobody is saying anything and they just carry on like nothing is happening, which is just mad. If I was Penny I’d castrate him. Men are such bastards sometimes.’
Rory stopped smiling in his sleep.
As she left, she took advantage of his unconscious state to drop a small kiss on his lips, trying not to dwell on the fact that the only times she had ever kissed him seemed to be was when he was comatose.
‘You are awful,’ a nurse told him afterwards when he sprang up out of bed to find a power point for the portable DVD player that Faith had thoughtfully brought in. ‘You’re not even supposed to be in bed at this time. Why d’you pretend to sleep?’
‘Becaush I’m madly in love with her,’ – he looked up at her through his long, sooty lashes – ‘and that meansh I get completely tongue-tied when she’sh around. My brain starts shwelling up all over again whenever I shee her.’
‘Ah!’ All the nurses were very fond of him, and that news would go down better than a box of chocolates in the staff room.
‘And other parts of me shwell up,’ he added, still smiling sweetly.
The nurse decided to save that comment for the pub after work.
Later that day Lough loped into Rory’s hospital room carrying a cactus and bag of sugared almonds.
‘One’s a prickly sod like me, the other’s a hard nut like you,’ he explained, settling in to a chair.
Rory’s pewter eyes regarded Lough as he looked around the room and out towards the corridor. ‘You misshed her by about half an hour.’