by Fiona Walker
‘She was all over him like aftershave,’ Penny giggled. ‘There were all the other men in the room with their eyes on stalks, absolutely spitting with envy, and Hugo could hardly open his eyes.’
‘He only woke up when she practically grabbed his groin to get his attention,’ Gus said in near-disbelief as he wandered through the kitchen to fetch another sweater.
‘Did he say yes?’ Zoe asked. ‘To the location shoot, I mean.’ For some reason she looked at Tash when she said this. Flustered, Tash pretended to be engrossed in untangling a pile of exercise bandages.
‘Not sure.’ Penny wrinkled her nose as she downed Alka-Seltzers dissolved in orange juice. ‘I think he might have been concussed from coming off that bike with you, Tash. How you could just leave him down there with a head injury, I’ll never know. Everyone at the party was talking about it.’
‘He was fine!’ Tash bristled, a blush curling into her cheeks. ‘He was walking and talking perfectly well. It was just a scratch.’
Penny gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Bloody foolhardy thing to do, if you ask me.’
‘Why did you do it?’ Zoe joined her sister in looking disapproving. ‘I’m sure Niall would never have left the party if he’d thought you were going to start leaping on motorbikes and careering around Hugo’s fields the moment he turned his back.’
‘It was a dare.’ Tash was aware that she was slouching around like a surly teenager. ‘And, anyway, I thought Niall was coming back.’
‘Sorry, my fault.’ Zoe looked apologetic. ‘It took ages to persuade Rufus that it wasn’t a good idea to go to bed in the back of the car. Niall was wonderful with him so I offered him a coffee for his efforts. Then we started talking and we didn’t notice the time.’
‘You drank coffee?’ she asked casually.
Zoe nodded. ‘Gallons of it. Niall was just telling me about the Anne Brontë adaptation when India wandered in – she got a lift back from the party with the Cubitts. Wildfell Hall’s one of her set texts at the moment, so they were discussing it forever – they were like a couple of swots revising for Oxbridge entrance. He said she’d given him such good ideas that he wanted to rush back to the forge to go through the script and make notes.’
Instead, he went back to the forge and drank a bottle of scotch while waiting for me, Tash realised with a plummeting heart. She could still hear Hugo’s words of the night before stinging in her ears. She longed to confess her fears to Zoe, but had to race outside to bandage up Snob so that he would be ready to load the moment Hugo’s box arrived. With Ted not on hand, she had a pile of things to do.
Tripping over a hungover Gus who was listening slyly to Today on the tack-room wireless, she was still well behind schedule when Franny drove into the yard, glowering behind the wheel of Hugo’s vast high-tech lorry, stereo pounding out the Chris Evans morning show.
Scruffy and unshaven, Ted leaped down from the cab, grinning the happy, Cheshire cat smile of the recently shagged. He had a woolly hat pulled over his shorn scalp to protect against the early-morning chill.
‘Hugo’s conked out in the back, so don’t panic.’ He started to gather up tack and heave it over to the huge holds at the base of the lorry. ‘Christ knows how he’ll get round – he’s been vomiting rainbows all morning, and Surfer hasn’t qualified for Badminton yet, so they have to go clear.’
With a grumbling Gus roped in to help, they were on their way within half an hour, Snob trying to kick his way out of the rear as he always did on his way to competitions, thoroughly het up with excitement, like a football hooligan on his way to a grudge match.
‘Shut that fucker up or I’ll shoot him!’ came a deep voice from the living compartment.
‘Hugo’s unusually cheerful.’ Ted didn’t look up from the Sun.
In the cab, Tash and Franny tried not to giggle. Stefan, in the back with Hugo, was throwing up over and over again in the tiny loo cubicle.
‘He looks hellish,’ Franny whispered as they raced up the slip road and on to the M4, her rubber t-shirt straining over her vast chest as she craned to look in the wing mirror. ‘And I’m sure he’s still half-cut. Everyone at that party was off their heads – I reckon there’ll be a lot of falls today. You were one of the only ones to stay sober and leave early, Tash. You should coast it.’
Walking the course before her dressage test, Tash had grave doubts that she would coast it at all. She had even less hope of Hugo being capable of mounting, let alone riding his nervy, clever liver-chestnut, Surfer. Thankfully it was a two-day event, which meant that both the show-jumping and the cross-country phases were to follow the next day. All they had to do that morning was perform their dressage tests. They were walking the course early because another intermediate competition was running alongside the more senior class, and those entrants went across country that afternoon, using part of the same course. It meant it would be hard to get close enough to the fences to study them any later that day, but both Stefan and Hugo grumbled like mad at the early start.
Lowerton was an extremely tricky, undulating course on which it was almost impossible to get a good, flowing rhythm as the track twisted around like a snake with colic, forever changing direction and gradient. The fences themselves were a tricky bunch of corners and arrow-heads which needed supreme accuracy and strong control. The latter was something Tash had lacked of late with Snob. She was certain that she’d have a battle on her hands the next day trying to hold him on line. These days he took more diversions than the North Circular.
Hugo made no comment about the night before. Hardly speaking to Tash at all, except to snap at her to hurry up as they walked the course with Stefan, he was sullen and jittery, eyelids dropping over diabolical bags beneath.
He barely seemed to be taking in the fences as they tottered around, meeting a lot of other green-faced eventers en route – all of them gossiping about the party and muttering darkly about deliberate sabotage on Hugo’s part. It was only when they saw his pale green face that they realised he was feeling the roughest of them all.
‘Are you two planning to ride pillion across country, like you did last night?’ Lucy Field giggled, digging for gossip.
‘Tash never lets me ride Snob,’ Hugo muttered darkly. ‘She thinks I might show her up.’
‘You wouldn’t know which way to point him if you rode him tomorrow,’ Tash said pettily, noticing that he’d given one of the hardest fences on the course – a vast bounce over a footbridge – only the most cursory of glances.
‘I’ve ridden this course for the last four years,’ he muttered as she pedantically paced out a double of bullfinches at the brow of a hill, which gave one the impression of jumping into the sky.
‘There are a couple of new fences this year,’ she pointed out, retracing her steps to check she had counted right.
‘Well, I’ll make sure I introduce myself to them then.’ He staggered off, hardly glancing at the bullfinches.
Rolling her eyes, she carried on with her meticulous appraisal of every fence and alternative route into them. Tottering wanly beside her, Stefan threw up behind practically every single one, but at least he diligently worked out the distances and approach lines, unlike his crabby boss.
‘I can’t think what’s got into him,’ he complained as they trailed through ominously slippery mud. ‘I’ve seen him hungover before, but never like this. I’d say he was under a black cloud, but then again we all are.’
The sky was so heavy with rain, it seemed to be dropping by feet every second, like a plunging grey parachute canopy, yet no drops fell as a squally breeze buffeted hoods against the backs of heads and knocked bush hats into adjoining fields where they had to be chased along like stray kites.
Back at the lorry, Ted and Franny had settled the horses in the temporary stabling nearby and were huddled in the living quarters microwaving mugs of coffee and looking glum. Franny’s straining leather trousers were covered with purple antiseptic spray.
‘Bodybuilder cut his fetlock sli
pping down the ramp.’ Franny tipped the peak of her baseball cap away from her nose and gazed at Tash forlornly. ‘Hugo’s just fired me for the third time today.’
Tash winced. ‘So he’s just got Surfer to compete?’
She nodded. ‘No bad thing – he has such bad shakes, he’ll be using the reins as divining rods in the dressage.’
Later that afternoon, Tash managed a fairly respectable dressage score, enhanced by the fact that everyone else, hungover to the back teeth from Hugo’s party, performed abysmally. She had never known so many top drawer eventers forget their tests.
‘It’s bloody sabotage,’ cursed one of the best British riders, Brian Sedgewick, whose lop-sided rugby-player’s face was almost grey with nausea. ‘Hugo should be shot.’
But the grumblings stopped when Hugo’s own test was the worst he had executed in over five years. Surfer was a lean, graceful liver-chestnut with long, nervy rabbit’s ears that twitched like antennae with concentration as he listened to his rider’s every breath. They were usually a lethal combination, with Hugo’s fluid, almost imperceptible aids spurring the horse into balletic brilliance. All the other riders envied Hugo like mad for clicking with him. But today those Cadbury brown ears were flat to the horse’s neatly bobbled plaits as Hugo sat hunch-backed in the saddle, his concentration in tatters. He forgot his way twice, flopped around in the saddle like an amateur, and his mouth disappeared entirely for the last few moments as he battled not to throw up. Riding out of the ring, he was off Surfer in super-quick time and, chucking the reins to Franny, hared off to the Portaloos.
A bleach-faced Stefan received the dubious honour of being the first person ever to fall off during the Lowerton dressage phase. He came out looking very hang-dog with a muddy top hat and pride as bruised as a windfall.
No one was feeling particularly social that evening; Tash had been invited to a pasta session in a nearby box, but just wanted to use the cab phone to call Niall and then go to bed in anticipation of the dawn start the next morning. At least Hugo had stomped off in high dudgeon to spend the night at his friend’s farmhouse and was no longer lurking around to snarl and mob her up.
The following morning everything was freshly rinsed and still dripping. Drizzle leaked through layers of clothing, left tiny droplets on hair and made the competitors’ paper numbers as soft and rippable as damp tissues. Most kept theirs inside the plastic bibs they wore on their chests, but for the few who didn’t it was a case of shouting out their number each time they passed a fence judge.
Tash, who had an early cross-country draw, walked the course one last time before taking Snob out for a pipe-opener and some basic schooling to calm his nerves.
Wet, muddy and cast in early-morning shadows, the fences looked even less appetising than they had the day before. One fence particularly worried her – a sunken road that one had to jump in and out of before coming straight up against the narrowest of arrow heads. Coming near the end of the course, it required a die-straight line with no room for error. Combined with the wet, slippery ground it would be like trying to sword dance barefoot on an ice rink.
‘Bloody nasty object.’ Lucy Field, the diminutive blonde eventer, caught her up as she stared at it. ‘I’m going the long way. My nag’ll glance off that in this weather.’
Imagining the speed at which she and the headstrong Snob would be travelling by the time they reached it, Tash decided she should play it safe too. Going early, they had little chance to see how other riders tackled it. Their draw also meant that the ground would be very slippery. The more horses that went around, the more cut up and grippable it would become. Tash and Snob followed fewer entries, so would be galloping on something close to an oil slick.
Back at the make-shift wooden stables that had been erected for the weekend, it was all activity. Snob didn’t have to be pretty and plaited for the two phases that came that day, but he had been shampooed anyway, to remove his stable stain, and was sulkily allowing himself to be vigorously rubbed by Ted, looking like a young rugby player, furious that his mother was washing away the mud from his first ever scrum.
‘Hugo’s still in bed.’ Ted dodged Snob’s snapping teeth. ‘Says he doesn’t need to walk the course again. Now Bod’s been scratched, he doesn’t have to ride until after lunch.’
‘Lucky for him.’ Tash watched as Snob tore a piece out of Ted’s denim jacket. ‘He in a good mood?’
‘You mean Snob or Hugo?’
‘Both.’
‘No.’
To prove his point, Snob smashed his way around the show-jumping course that morning like an over-sprung pin-ball, demolishing two flower arrangements and splitting a pole with his hind legs as he kicked back so hard at the final fence that Tash left the ring with her chin between his ears.
Later, she finished her cross-country round with aching arms, a red face and a pounding heart. They had survived by the skin of their teeth, although Tash was amazed that she had any teeth left, she had gritted them so much on the way round.
Huddling in wax coats and bush hats, Ted and Stefan were whooping their support and congratulating her as she slithered to a halt close to the weigh-in trailer, but she knew that, despite the clear, she hadn’t ridden at all well. Most of the round had been spent trying to pull Snob’s head up from between his legs as he fought to get away from her and go faster. He was wearing one of the strongest bits available and yet she was a hair’s breadth away from losing control. She had schooled and schooled him for weeks to no avail. He was simply too strong and she was in despair. He might love and honour her, but, like an errant husband, he no longer obeyed.
At least the weather was on her side. Half an hour after she weighed in and cooled Snob off, the rain was coming down in sheets, jumping high off the horse-box roofs and driving into the entrances of the few trade stands that had turned up for the day.
Changing into dry clothes, Tash was fairly certain that her bad show-jumping would have left her unplaced, and she would have liked to box up and head home to Fosbourne Ducis and a few snatched hours with Niall, but they had to wait for Hugo and Stefan to finish.
Trying to make up for his appalling dressage of the day before, Stefan rode as though he had the devil at his back, securing the fastest clear round of the day, although he took some near-suicidal risks to achieve it. He was the first rider of the day to tackle the direct route of the sunken road, riding it as though it wasn’t there, which belied the tremendous skill involved in jumping it.
‘My heart was jumping higher than the horse,’ he confessed to Tash as he crashed around the box afterwards peeling off his wet clothes. ‘That fence won’t give you an inch, and the arrowhead is straight on top of you as you jump out of the road. Yeach!’ He shuddered, wandering around in his underpants. Stripped off, he was incredibly thin and bandy, like a long strip of trailing ivy.
Despite a commendable clear round at show-jumping, his dressage had been so bad that he, too, was unlikely to be placed. Once he was dressed in an Asterix sweatshirt and old navy cords, he and Tash cracked open a couple of cans of Tango and huddled together in the tented competitors’ area to listen to the commentary and smoke lots of nervous cigarettes. They knew that they had both been lucky to get around. The weather and the tricky course were causing havoc among less experienced competitors, and riders were being stopped out on the course over and over again as it had to be rebuilt, or the ambulance had to trundle over to collect a broken-boned competitor.
Having knocked out just one fence during his show-jumping round, Hugo was in with a far better chance than anyone could have anticipated the evening before. With multiple faults and high finishing times, most finishers had three-figure penalties, and the dressage score was a far less significant factor than usual. If he went clear and fast across country, Hugo had a good chance of being placed. To qualify Surfer for Badminton, he absolutely had to go clear.
But the ground had turned into a quagmire by the time he and Surfer were due to set out. Their start had
been delayed over and over again by the stoppages on the course, and Surfer was as wound up as an over-twisted coil.
Tash and Stefan wandered to the start to offer support, but Hugo was in no mood to take it. The ribby liver-chestnut was dancing around excitedly, eyes bulging, rabbit ears twitching. He looked far too eager and fresh, whereas Hugo looked jaded and preoccupied.
‘I feel like shit,’ he muttered through clenched teeth, leaning down to steal a puff from Tash’s cigarette. ‘I think I’m coming down with something.’
‘Alcohol poisoning,’ Stefan looked up at him with a sly grin. ‘Christ knows why you got so smashed at your party.’
‘Lost my heart over a woman, haven’t I?’ Hugo hissed, looking to the starter who was counting him down. Surfer gave a flurry of half-rears like a small child trying to see over heads at a football match.
Delighted, Stefan caught Tash’s eye and mouthed, ‘Lisette!’
Tash glanced up at Hugo. His beautiful, angular face as grey as the sky, he looked truly ill. He could ride better than anyone she knew across country, but even a virtuoso violinist couldn’t play in tune if he’d put on a pair of gloves.
‘Go safely,’ she urged him. ‘Don’t take any risks in this weather.’
For a moment he looked down at her as though noticing her for the first time, eyes raking her face, but then he resumed his visored look, and ignored her as he waited for the starter to shout: ‘Go!’
Thundering out of the start box, Surfer’s studded shoes kicked up such enormous divots that the starter got a mud cake right in the face.
‘Typical Hugo,’ Stefan laughed, watching the combination streak for the first fence as though riding the Cheltenham Gold Cup.
As soon as he was off, it was obvious that safety was well down on Hugo’s list of priorities. He was clearly attacking the course with the same intention that Stefan had – trying to make up for his abysmal dressage with a fast time and the quickest routes.