We sat in silence for a few seconds.
“The only thing you can do,” Forster said eventually, “is to find yourself a sponsor.”
“I had thought of that,” I said. “But who?”
“Well,” Forster considered it. “It isn’t as if you’re a well-known event rider with a string of past successes to your credit. You’re an unknown quantity, so you can’t expect the big companies to be interested. They wouldn’t be prepared to back a struggling amateur because they are only in it for advertising purposes, and they wouldn’t get enough publicity out of you to make it worth their while.”
“I know,” I said. “So it’s hopeless really; and I can’t go to my employers. The Fanes haven’t a bean.”
“The only person I can think of,” Forster said, “is Felix Hissey.”
“No thank you,” I said flatly. “I don’t think that would do at all.”
“Why on earth not?” Forster wanted to know. “Felix Hissey is very into eventing and he might just be interested. His company sponsors two of the biggest events in the country.”
“He also has an unexpected vacancy for a groom,” I said. “Which you may well have a guilty conscience about.”
“I see,” Forster said resentfully. “So you’ve been tipped off by the scandal-mongering Fanes.”
“They aren’t really scandal-mongering,” I protested. “They were only telling me for my own protection.”
“I’d like to hear what else they told you,” Forster said vengefully. “The next time I see those two, I’ll crack their stupid heads together.”
“You must admit though, that when you told me about the Hissey job, you did have an ulterior motive.”
“So what if I had? It would have done you a good turn at the same time. Nobody in their right mind would want to work for the Fanes.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” I said. “Thanks a lot.” Now it was my turn to feel nettled. I was fed up with Forster and the stench of the cow was beginning to turn my stomach. “I have to go now,” I said. “I’m late already and the Fanes will be frantic.”
“Oh no, Elaine,” Forster said. “You’re not going anywhere yet.” He put out a hand and pinned me back in my seat.
I wasn’t sure that I liked the way things were going. I had let go of the reins and Doreen’s pony had moved further along the verge, still pulling at the grass. “I do have to go,” I said anxiously. “The Fanes …”
“The Fanes can go to hell,” Forster said. He put his arm round my shoulders.
I could see that I would have to make a firm stand if I was to keep the situation under control. I removed his arm. “I’m sorry, Nick,” I said. “I really can’t stay any longer. I am supposed to be working, after all, and there’s a lot to be done in the yard; we’ve three new liveries coming in tomorrow.”
Forster looked as if he might object, then he shrugged. “All right,” he said. “If you’re so determined to be conscientious, I’ll see you on your day off. When is it?”
“I haven’t actually got one organized yet,” I admitted. “We’ve been so busy, it didn’t seem fair to ask.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve organized yourself any wages yet, either,” he said in an exasperated tone.
“”Well, no,” I said. “How could I? There hasn’t been any money coming into the yard. The Fanes are on their uppers. There didn’t seem any point in going on about it.”
“Honestly, Elaine,” he exploded. “I said you were barmy the first time I saw you and I was right. You’re the biggest idiot I’ve ever met! Nobody works without being paid for it; you must be round the twist!”
This was the last straw. I gave him a shove and dived for the door handle. “I’m not staying here to be shouted at.” I told him. “And anyway, it's none of your business."
“Suit yourself,” he said coldly. “Girls like you deserve all they get.” He turned the key in the ignition. The engine roared.
I wasn't going to let him get away with that. “I beg your pardon?” I exclaimed. I felt my face flush with anger. “I think you might be mistaken there; you’re the one with the lousy reputation!”
“I’m not talking about reputations,” he said. “I’m talking about working for peanuts. I like my job; I like the hounds and the horses and the hunting, I even like the foxes; but I wouldn’t work for nothing, and my employers respect me enough to pay me a decent wage. You girl grooms moan about being underpaid and overworked, but it’s your own fault, you let yourselves be exploited all the way along the line. You’re fools.” He kept his eye on the road. “And you’re acting like one of the biggest fools of all Elaine, if only you would realize it.”
“I want to work with horses,” I said indignantly. “I want a chance to event. I didn’t realize that eventing yards were so few and far between, or that it was going to be so hard to find a job with a decent wage. People don’t seem to be able to pay very much. There doesn’t seem to be much money about in the horse world, when you get close enough to find out.”
“Rubbish,” Forster said, but his voice was suddenly less angry. “There is money in the horse world, but people have got used to having horse-mad girls on tap for cheap labour. It’s going to take them a long time to learn that if they want a decent groom they have to pay a decent wage, even if it means they have to keep far fewer horses.”
I was touched by this, and even a little ashamed. “I’ll talk to the Fanes,” I decided. “Now that we’ve got these new liveries, I’ll tackle them about my wages, and about my days off. Perhaps I am a fool, but you must admit that the Fanes are an extreme case; I can’t help feeling sorry for them. They were once a very fine family, but they have fallen on such hard times; they are a dying breed.”
“The Fanes,” Forster said, “are a pain in the arse.” He grinned, his humour almost fully restored. “Elaine, if you actually do want to tackle Felix Hissey about Harry Sabin’s bay gelding, he’ll be at the opening meet. He always parks his box in this lane; you can’t miss it, it’s a navy blue Lambourne. He leaves at two o’clock sharp every hunting day, and he comes back to his box for a quiet sandwich and a drink before he drives home. It might be a good opportunity to catch him. I can’t promise that he’ll be interested, but it’s worth a try.”
I was so delighted with this piece of information that I forgot about my injury, and the slimy cow, and Doreen’s pony, who was almost at the Hall gates, having eaten himself home. I leaned over and gave Forster a peck on his cheek. This was a tactical error, because I somehow got caught up in his broody dark-fringed eyes and almost before I knew it, he had taken hold of the back of my neck and stretched out the other hand to turn off the ignition. He was just closing in when I saw two faces, framed in the window beyond his shoulder. It was the Fanes.
I let out an involuntary yelp. Forster drew back, startled, and turned round in his seat. When he saw the Fanes he wrenched open the door.
“What the hell are you up to?” he shouted in a furious voice. “Creeping about and spying on people!”
“We weren’t actually creeping about,” Nigella objected. “You didn’t hear us coming. You had your engine running.”
“How dare you play fast and loose with our groom anyway,” Henrietta cried, her cheeks flushed with anger and excitement. “We guessed she was up to something! She said she was only going out to test the pony’s wind and she’s been gone for hours, she was going to meet you all the time!”
Forster jumped out of the van. “And what if she was?” he demanded angrily. “Since when have you been her nursemaid?”
I staggered out of the flesh wagon in order to cope with all this. My back had stiffened up and I was none to steady on my feet. I knew that I looked hot and dishevelled, and in the circumstances, I could hardly blame the Fanes for jumping to conclusions.
“Oh, Elaine,” Nigella said reproachfully. “How could you?”
“And with him, of all people,” Henrietta shouted. “After we warned you about his reputation!”
Forster took a threatening step towards Henrietta.
“Don’t you dare lay a finger on me!” she shrilled. “I know your type!”
“Not, perhaps, quite as well as you would like,” Forster said in an icy voice.
Henrietta backed away, her face crimson. “How dare you,” she choked.
“We honestly didn’t mean to spy on you, Elaine,” Nigella said in a harassed tone. “But you had been gone for ages, and you had said you felt peculiar. We were getting anxious and then we saw the pony loose on the grass verge; after all, we are supposed to be responsible for you, whilst you are living under our roof.”
“Or to be strictly accurate,” Forster snarled, “half of one.” He jumped into the flesh wagon, slammed the door, and roared off down the lane.
I walked painfully up the drive behind the Fanes, leading the pony, whose mouth dripped green froth. My head was spinning. Suddenly there were so many things to consider that I didn’t know where to start. Certainly I couldn’t deny that I had spent the afternoon with Forster without revealing the truth or telling lies, so I decided that the best thing to do was to leave things as they were and let the Fanes think what they liked. But for the rest of the afternoon, you could have cut the atmosphere in the stable yard with a knife.
I got through evening stables early and went back to the Hall to telephone the vet. He agreed to examine the bay gelding the following day and I arranged to ring him at his surgery in the evening for his report. After that I boiled some kettles of water to augment my bath and soaked my aches and pains and washed my hair. Then I went down to the kitchen prepared to do some cooking because by this time I was feeling pretty remorseful about upsetting the Fanes.
I found the kitchen table heaped with offerings for a Help the Aged jumble sale, currently being organized by Lady Jennifer, who obligingly cleared a corner for me whilst I stirred the Aga into action. Amongst the pressed glass sugar bowls and the fairground Alsatians, there was a portable television set.
“It can’t possibly be a working model,” Lady Jennifer decided. “It would be just too generous for words.”
“It won’t be much use to anyone if it doesn’t work,” I pointed out. “You will have to test it.”
“Could you be an absolute angel and test it for me, Elaine?” she wondered, considering a wobbly plastic cake stand before applying a fifteen pence sticker to it. “I simply haven’t a clue about electricity.”
I promised to try it later. When Lady Jennifer had priced all the junk, she swept it into cardboard boxes and transported it to the front hall where jumble stretched from floor to ceiling, emanating a smell of B.O. and mothballs. A few minutes later she raced through the kitchen in her crumpled raincoat, bound for a spell of night duty with the Samaritans.
“Oh,” Henrietta said when she came into the kitchen. “Biscuits.”
“And a pie,” I said. “And a cake and a pudding. It’s a sort of apology for this afternoon.”
“As a matter of fact,” Nigella said, “we’ve been talking about that.”
“And we’ve decided,” Henrietta added with her mouth full of biscuit, “that we were probably a little hasty. After all, it’s your life, and you’re over the age of consent, so you can do what you like.”
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “Thank you very much.”
“Although we must point out,” Nigella said, “that we are a little concerned about your choice of friends.” She leaned over the table and sniffed the cake appreciatively.
“And as we have our reputation to consider,” Henrietta went on, adopting a serious tone, “We must ask you to protect yourself against any possible consequences.”
“I see,” I said. I wondered what possible consequences could arise from a peck on the cheek.
“I hope you don’t mind us being so forthright,” Nigella said. “But Nick Forster does have a very sticky reputation, although one has to admit that he is rather devastating to look at.”
“If you happen to like the dark, dangerous type,” Henrietta said, licking her unwashed fingers. “Personally, I don’t. I think he’s a nasty piece of work. By the way,” she added, “Where did the television come from?”
“It’s a jumble offering,” I said. “I promised we would test it.”
Henrietta kicked off her wellingtons and transferred her attention from the biscuits to the television set. There was no aerial, so she spent some time poking bits of wire into the back and fiddling with the controls, achieving a lot of zizzing noise and a row of shivering dots on the screen. Finally she had the brilliant idea of wiring the set up to the lightning conductor. This was a wild success and resulted in an excellent picture.
As the Fanes had never previously owned a television, the jumble set was an event worthy of celebration. Nigella disappeared into the depths of the cellar and returned decorated with cobwebs, clutching a dirt encrusted bottle of cloudy red wine out of which she strained terrifying lumps through a teacloth. Then we sat round the kitchen table eating pie and taking cautious sips of the wine, with our eyes glued to the television set, and it was all very jolly.
By the time we had started our second glass of wine, we were even jollier still. The Fanes were anticipating their high class liveries due to arrive the next morning, and I was imagining myself collecting fifteen hundred pounds from Felix Hissey and riding into the yard in triumph on Harry Sabin’s bay gelding. We were watching a top twenty record show.
“Look at him,” Henrietta said, waving her fork at the screen. “He’s got striped hair.”
The singer with the striped hair was replaced by the compère who had two lots of earrings and a furry chest.
“We’ve got a real treat for you now, folks,” he crowed. “Live in the studio; currently number eight in the charts and climbing fast – Can’t Make It Tonight, by Thunder and Lightning Limited!”
Nigella laid down her fork on the table. “What did he say?”
As the first beats of Can’t Make It Tonight thundered out, the group appeared on the screen. There were three of them. They wore black leotards and leg-warmers which revealed unexpected areas of puny, unattractive flesh. They wore necklaces, bangles and earrings, vivid lipstick and heavy eye makeup. They didn’t have striped hair. They didn’t have any hair at all. They were completely bald.
There was no mistake, because as the camera followed their gyrations across the stage, it caught the name of the group emblazoned across the front of the drums. Thunder and Lightning Limited it said, with the familiar jag of lightning replacing the t.
11
High Class Liveries
The next morning we set about morning stables in an agony of apprehension, listening with half an ear for the sound of the horsebox which would deliver our three liveries. We didn’t know what to expect. We didn’t dare to imagine. But as the day passed and no horsebox arrived, our expectations began to fade.
By five o’clock it was already dark, and as we lit the barn lanterns which hung outside every other stable door, creating our own Dickensian world of flickering golden light and stamping hooves, an atmosphere of ostlers and old inns and stagecoaches, we began to realize that our liveries were not going to materialize. The general feeling was of anti-climax, coupled with a mixture of relief and dismay.
Henrietta slammed the doors of the prepared stables in a gesture of disgust. “They were never coming in the first place,” she said. “It was probably a trick. It was just a stupid joke.” She gave me a suspicious look, as if I might be responsible for it.
“Perhaps it’s just as well,” Nigella decided. “They weren’t exactly the type of clients we were hoping for. They might have worn lipstick at the opening meet. They might have worn mascara and eye shadow and spangles on their cheeks.”
“And just think of those three bald heads,” I said. “Even with a velvet cap on top, they would still have looked a sight.” Now that it wasn’t going to happen, we could voice our unspoken, unspeakable fears.
“They probably have a d
rink problem,” Nigella said. “And they might have had groupies. There might have been unmentionable goings-on in the back of the horsebox.”
“Not only that,” I said, “but I expect they are on drugs. They probably smoke pot or worse. They might have arrived at the opening meet stoned out of their minds. They would have got us thrown out of the Hunt.”
“All the same,” Henrietta grumbled. “We could have used their seventy-five pounds a week.”
Nigella and I fell silent, depressed by the thought of the money aspect; and in the silence we heard the unmistakeable hum of an engine on the drive.
The custom-built horsebox turned into the yard under the clock arch. The stable lanterns were mirrored in its gleaming black coachwork. They caught at the Rolls Royce insignia on the bonnet. When the driver jumped out, the door with its narrow red trim closed behind him with a discreet clunk. Muffled scraping noises issued from the rear of the box.
“Are you the Misses Fane?” the driver asked. He wasn’t wearing lipstick. He wasn’t bald. He was a thin, blond-haired, anxious looking man in a tweed jacket and Newmarket boots.
The Fanes stared at the horsebox with their mouths open. I said that we were. I asked, although I already knew, if he had brought the horses for Thunder and Lightning Limited.
The driver introduced himself as Chick Hayes. He handed me a set of keys. Special delivery, he said, of three horses and a horsebox. “The Lads” had suggested that he should leave us to it. They had a gig tonight in Norwich and he was supposed to be in charge of the lighting. So we would have to excuse him if he nipped off because he was already late. And “The Lads” didn’t like him to be late; they didn’t like it at all.
I asked Chick Hayes if we could expect “The Lads” to be attending the opening meet. To my relief he said no. They had a concert on Saturday and they wouldn’t be hunting until Thursday, when we should arrange to have the horses plaited and loaded for ten fifteen sharp. As the horses were all new, he said, it might be a good idea if we gave them an hour or two with the hunt on Tuesday, so that we could give “The Lads” an idea of what they were like to handle. Then, if any of them turned out to be tricky, we could ring him up to enable him to swop it for a better one. He couldn’t chance anything happening to one of “The Lads”, they were a valuable commodity. And the Insurance Company didn’t like the idea of “The Lads” going hunting; they didn’t like it at all.
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