The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  57

  Lysander was so unhappy that the weight dropped off him. He had never been up at six in the morning before unless he’d been partying all night. Nor had he ever been worked so hard. Rupert immediately moved him into Penscombe, putting him up in a little room under the eaves with low beams — ‘one can’t concuss him more than he is already’ — a patchwork quilt and paintings of Rupert’s old ponies on the whitewashed wall.

  ‘I’m not having you mooning around in Magpie Cottage with your bins trained on Valhalla,’ he told Lysander. ‘I want you here where I can keep an eye on you.’

  Lysander would never have survived without Rupert’s girl grooms. Once they realized they weren’t going to get him into bed — and he rejected their offers so sweetly — they stopped squabbling over him and covered up for him instead.

  Every morning they would shake him awake, practically dressing him, forcing extra jerseys over his diminishing frame, frogmarching him to whatever difficult horse — Lysander could never remember — that Rupert had earmarked for him the night before.

  But however difficult the horse, he seemed to steal into its head and heart before arriving somewhat to his amazement on its back. Horses really wanted to go well for him and seemed delighted by their own capabilities.

  His problem was concentration. If he started thinking of Kitty when he was three lengths clear in a gallop, he’d be trailing the field in a matter of seconds. He was also a chatterbox, talking constantly on the gallops and even when jumping fences. If a jockey or a horse had a fall he had to pull up instantly to see if they were all right, and walking Arthur round the Gloucestershire lanes took hours because he stopped to chat to everyone — anything to avoid going back to clean mountains of tack or spend hours dunking hay in icy water to get rid of the dust.

  Having lost an efficient if truculent tractor-driver in Tabitha’s boyfriend Ashley, Rupert made an early mistake of handing over the job to Lysander. Flying home the following evening Rupert was appalled to see lines that should have flowed straight over the rich brown earth tangled together like a kitten’s ball of string. A very harrowing experience, admitted Rupert, when he’d regained his sense of humour and put Lysander back to cleaning tack.

  Taggie was the person who really saved Lysander’s life. If he hadn’t been so hopelessly in love with Kitty he would have certainly been smitten. Worried about his pallor and dramatic weight loss, while the other riders were joyously guzzling fried eggs, sausages and bacon sandwiches after the gallops, Taggie tried to tempt Lysander with grilled soles, or steaks dripping with herbs and butter. She put slimming biscuits in a flowered tin in his bedroom and made him hot chocolate with skimmed milk at night to help him sleep, which he surreptitiously emptied down the sink because he couldn’t stand the stuff.

  And Taggie listened when he banged on about Kitty — the grooms restricted him to five minutes an hour. Still numb at the loss of her own baby, when she was not cooking for Rupert’s staff, she was always bottle-rearing calves and lambs, or feeding hens and ducks, or Rupert’s dogs, or topping up the birdtable, or smuggling forbidden toast and marmalade to Arthur when he hung forlornly out of his chewed-down half-door.

  Owners bored Rupert, but Taggie was always ready with a sympathetic ear, a cup of tea and home-made chocolate cake.

  This led to problems. Checking on Arthur one afternoon, Lysander was amazed to discover Taggie cringing at the back of the box, stroking an outraged Tiny.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Hush!’ Taggie went scarlet. ‘Mr Pandopoulos is here, and he keeps groping me. If Rupert found out he’d hit him across the yard and tell him to take his horses away, and we really can’t afford it at the moment.’

  Lysander’s face fell. ‘And Rupert’s keeping me and Arthur and Tiny for nothing. Oh, when’s he going to let me race ride, so I can start earning my keep?’

  ‘You’re doing that already. Rupert’s really pleased with the way the horses have improved. Being tough is the only way he feels he can get results.’

  Lysander had never met a couple so aware of each other, as they drifted together, watching, touching, like each other’s shadows. Their love filled Lysander with envy. But Rupert was very tricky. Lysander had to be careful not to be too friendly to Taggie. The only thing male and beautiful Rupert really wanted in his yard was horses.

  Lysander hardly noticed the war, as bulletins came and went on the tack-room radio, but, reeling from one of Rupert’s tongue-lashings, he often felt like Baghdad after a night’s bombardment.

  In the second week in February he was just schooling a vastly improved but still cussed Meutrier over a row of fences. The setting sun, like an exploding ball of flame rising into a thick black nuclear cloud, seemed to symbolize everyone’s worries over the approaching land war.

  Planes had roared overhead all day. Rupert, who was in a particularly foul mood because King Hussein, a fellow old Harrovian, appeared to be supporting the Iraqis, called Lysander over.

  ‘Why the fuck don’t you use your whip?’

  ‘My Uncle Alastair said it was a lazy way of riding,’ said Lysander, quaking but defiant. ‘Meutrier was really trying, so it’s stupid to hit him. And when horses are exhausted, it only slows them down. Honestly, Rupert, it makes me sick to see jockeys flogging horses. There’s no need to hit them so hard.’

  This was an oblique reference to Jimmy Jardine, Rupert’s second jockey, who’d just begun a fortnight’s suspension for excessive use of the whip — probably at Rupert’s instructions.

  ‘So, you think Jimmy’s had nearly ninety winners this season just by feeding his horses sugar lumps. If you ride for me, you use your whip.’

  For a second they glared at each other. Lysander lowered his eyes first. He couldn’t face that cold dismissive contempt. Swinging Meutrier round, he rode wearily back to the yard. Overtaking them in the Land-Rover, Rupert was on the tack-room telephone when Lysander got back.

  ‘OK, Marcia, Jimmy’s been suspended, but I’m not sure he and Hopeless were twin souls. Anyway, I’m putting a new boy, Lysander Hawkley, up on him. You’ll like him, Marcia, he’s better-looking than Jimmy. Yes, the 2.30 tomorrow, Maiden Hurdle, Worcester.’

  Putting back the telephone, Rupert saw Lysander mouthing helplessly in the doorway, hanging for support from Meutrier’s sweating chestnut neck.

  ‘You heard me,’ said Rupert. ‘And you’d better take a whip or you won’t get Hopeless off the starting line.’

  Unplaced in her last eight races, Hopeless was an appropriately named chestnut mare with spindly legs, wild eyes and a punk mane, too sparse even to plait. Her owner, Marcia Melling, a glamorous but ageing divorcée, only kept the horse in training because she had a massive crush on Rupert, who in turn only trained the horse, and then with minimum effort, because he charged Marcia three times as much as any other owner.

  It was not with any hopes of victory that Lysander set out with Samantha and Maura, two of the girl grooms, in Rupert’s lorry on the thirty-five mile drive to Worcester the following morning. To distract him from his desperate nerves, Rupert had given him the responsibility of loading the five runners and their tack.

  It was a beautiful day, with soft brown trees sunlit against the khaki fields, catkins hanging like golden Tiffany lamps, and coltsfoot exploding in a sulphur haze on the verges.

  ‘Arthur always enjoys being read to,’ said Lysander, as he turned the lorry towards the motorway. ‘He likes the Sun better than the Independent, but he likes Dear Deirdre best.’

  ‘Dear Deirdre, I am in love with a married woman who will not leave her husband, Arthur must be quite sick of that one,’ said Samantha, handing Lysander her last cigarette. ‘You can’t stop here,’ she said in horror as Lysander screeched to a halt to much honking and fist-waving.

  ‘I’ve got to. I took half a bottle of Cascara last night to lose the last three pounds and I’m about to explode. Open the fucking door.’ Lysander leapt across them out of the lorry and bounded up the
hard shoulder.

  Rupert and Taggie were flying to Worcester from London with Mr Pandopoulos and Freddie Jones, the co-owner of Penscombe Pride. Tabitha, back for half-term, was being given a lift by Dizzy, Rupert’s tough, blond, glamorous head girl, who had recently returned to work for him after getting a divorce.

  Racing into the yard, Tabitha greeted her own ponies, then, armed with a Twix, rushed off to see Arthur. Coming out of his box, just avoiding Tiny’s teeth, she gave a gasp, for in the next box, rugged, bandaged, plaited up and fast asleep was Penscombe Pride.

  ‘Dizzy,’ screamed Tab, banging on the groom’s flat window.

  ‘What is it?’ said Dizzy, who rather fancied Mr Pandopoulos as a sugar daddy, turning off the hair drier.

  ‘Isn’t Pridie running in the 3.15?’

  ‘Certainly is. He should be halfway to Worcester by now.’

  ‘The hell he is, he’s still in his box.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Dizzy dropped the hairdrier. ‘That stupid fucker must have forgotten to load him. Sam and Maura are so in love with him, they wouldn’t have noticed.’

  ‘We’ve got to get him there,’ said Tabitha in panic. ‘Daddy’ll boot Lysander straight out if he finds out.’

  One of Rupert’s lorries was in for a service, the other had gone to Folkestone. There only remained the trailer used for ferrying pigs, calves and Tab’s ponies around — transport ill-fitting the winner of the Cotchester Gold Cup two years running and the yard’s biggest earner.

  ‘I daren’t risk it,’ said Dizzy. ‘We could borrow one of Ricky France-Lynch’s lorries.’

  ‘Ten miles in the wrong direction,’ urged Tab. ‘Pridie’ll enjoy the fresh air and at least his tack’s gone on already.’

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ said Tabitha, hanging out of the window as the speedometer hit sixty miles an hour along the narrow, winding high-banked country lanes.

  ‘I’m going to be sacked,’ said Dizzy. ‘Is Pridie still there?’

  ‘He’s fine.’ Leaning round Tabitha could see his lovely dark bay head, with the instantly recognizable zigzag blaze, and large, wide-set eyes looking over the top of the trailer at the russet cottages and orchards.

  As they rattled through Pershore, two women with shopping bags cheered in amazed excitement. As they hit race-day traffic, more and more people started laughing and waving to see little Pridie so close.

  ‘Like the Pope in his Popemobile,’ giggled Tab.

  ‘I’ve backed that horse in the 3.15, so get a move on,’ said a man in a Jaguar drawing alongside them at some traffic-lights. ‘What are you two doing for dinner tonight?’

  ‘Someone’s bound to tell Daddy,’ said Tab despairingly.

  ‘He nearly killed Lysander for forgetting Mr Sparky’s bridle last week,’ said Dizzy, drawing the attention of the man on the gate to the green trainer’s badge on the windscreen.

  ‘If only Lysander weren’t so lush,’ sighed Tab. ‘D’you think there’s any hope for me?’

  ‘Doubt it,’ said Dizzy, bumping over the muddy track, ‘seems so set on this Kitty, he’s determined to practise being faithful.’

  ‘My brother Marcus only practises the piano for eight hours a day. Oh, thank God! There’s Dad’s lorry.’

  Ahead, beside horse boxes belonging to Martin Pipe and Jenny Pitman, was parked the familiar dark blue lorry with RUPERT CAMPBELL-BLACK in large letters on the side. Stamping could be heard from within. With the cough and viruses about, Rupert preferred to leave horses in the lorry which was about as luxurious inside as the Ritz.

  ‘If we can reload Pridie, we might get away with it,’ said Dizzy, leaping out.

  ‘Oh, hell, there’s Lysander,’ muttered Tab. ‘Have you got a comb and some blusher, Dizz?’

  Leaning against Rupert’s lorry as white and elongated as a piece of spaghetti tested on a wall, Lysander was chatting to Penscombe Pride’s champion jockey, Bluey Charteris. Tough as hell — you couldn’t kill him with a machine-gun — Bluey worked hard and played hard.

  ‘Hi, Tab,’ called out Lysander. ‘You got here quickly. We’ve only just arrived. Not a bush unleapt behind.’ He patted his concave belly. ‘Bluey’s giving me a few tips.’

  Tab trotted a skittishly leaping Penscombe Pride right up to Lysander’s nose.

  ‘Who the hell’s this?’ she said accusingly, as Pridie whickered and left white dribble on Lysander’s blue overcoat.

  ‘It’s Pridie.’ Lysander scratched his head. ‘How did he get out?’

  ‘You forgot to load him, you asshole.’

  ‘Omigod!’ Lysander looked from Bluey to Tab in horror, then started to giggle. ‘How did he get here?’

  ‘Dizzy’s trying to hide the trailer.’

  ‘Kerrist!’ The grin was wiped off Bluey Charteris’ swarthy, cadaverous features as he shot round the horse, feeling his legs. ‘You fuckwit, Lysander.’

  ‘He liked the fresh air — like a day at the seaside,’ said Tab.

  ‘And what’s Rupert going to say?’ demanded Bluey.

  ‘Say about what?’

  Everyone jumped. It was Rupert in a pale brown overcoat, with a dark brown velvet collar, and with a brown trilby tipped over his Greek nose. With him was Taggie, ravishing as ever in a pale grey trench coat, shiny black boots and a scarlet beret, and Freddie Jones, the electronics billionaire, who had red hair and a jaunty smile and was the most popular owner in the yard. Rupert never minded Freddie dropping in.

  ‘’Allo, Pridie,’ Freddie greeted his very famous prize winner with affection.’

  ’Allo, Tab, ’allo, Lysander. Gather you’ve got your first race in a minute. What is it?’

  ‘Maiden hurdle,’ said Lysander, starting to shake.

  ‘Lysander’s principal hurdle is a married woman,’ said Rupert acidly. ‘What the hell’s Pridie doing out of the lorry?’

  ‘He sweated up. We were just walking him out.’ Tabitha returned her father’s blue-eyed stare blandly. ‘He does look well, doesn’t he?’

  ‘I’d better get changed,’ said Lysander, anxious to escape interrogation.

  Fortunately Rupert was sidetracked by the arrival of Mr Pandopoulos, leering in a massive belted camel-hair coat, together with Hopeless’s owner, Marcia Melling, wafting Joy.

  ‘Hallo, Rupert,’ she said petulantly, leaving crimson lipstick on both sides of his face. ‘I’m a bit choked. You’ve put a complete novice on Hopeless.’

  ‘This is Lysander,’ said Taggie quickly.

  ‘Oh, oh, oooo.’ Suddenly Marcia looked as delighted as a large bear let loose in Barbara Cartland’s larder. ‘My word, aren’t you tall for a jock? Lysander, d’you say? Mystic Meg said only this week that luck would come from a man whose name began with L.’

  ‘Meg’s brilliant,’ Lysander smiled weakly. ‘How d’you do? Must go,’ and he fled to the changing-room lavatories.

  ‘What a charming, intelligent face,’ said a bemused Marcia.

  ‘Hasn’t he?’ said Rupert. ‘Makes a battery hen look like Stephen Hawking.’

  In the same race as Lysander Bluey Charteris was riding a brilliant five year old called Turkish Hustler, whom Rupert had brought off the flat and who was odds-on favourite. Hopeless was 100-1. ‘Lives up to her name,’ said Timeform succinctly.

  The crowds hanging over the paddock railings, studying their racecards and Sporting Life, laughed at Hopeless. Even wearing the thick blue rug with the initials RC-B on the side, which generally inspired terror in the most phlegmatic bookie, Hopeless looked like a child dressing up in her mother’s overcoat.

  Lysander, weighing-out in the tiny chair beside the huge red clock, discovered he’d lost three pounds overnight, which was nice and light for Hopeless and meant he hadn’t anything left to throw up. He had spent last night pouring over videos of Hopeless’s earlier races. An inexperienced horse, she was not used to being in front and weaved all over the place. He must keep her straight and behind Turkish Hustler to the last moment. He wished he could wear his Donald Duck j
ersey instead of Marcia’s olive-green colours, which he supposed matched his face. He’d got to be brave for Kitty’s and Arthur’s sake. Even if he were only placed, it would help notch up his quota of races needed to qualify for the Rutminster.

  In the paddock, Taggie put her coat round his shuddering shoulders as Rupert gave him last-minute instructions.

  ‘Start slowly. She’s most unlikely to last the distance, and build up,’ he added finally. ‘And I’d get down to the start as early as possible. She gets upset if horses come thundering past her.’

  Rupert wants her out of the paddock as quickly as possible, poor old Hopeless, thought Lysander indignantly. We’ll show him.

  Rupert turned to Bluey who was eyeing a redhead in a group clustered round the second favourite.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you anything, Bluey. Just sit on his back. Let’s go and have a drink,’ he added to Freddie. ‘This race is a foregone conclusion.’

  ‘I put two pounds on Hopeless,’ said Tab.

  Rupert was busy discussing viewing figures with Freddie, who was also a director of Venturer, when he heard the flat, patrician voice of the course commentator echoing round the ground.

  ‘And Hopeless jumped that extremely well, and is moving up to join the leaders.’

  Running to the balcony, choking on a turkey sandwich, Rupert looked through his binoculars at the shimmering garland of colours’ moving above the rails and the centipede of frantically galloping legs below, as they came to the second hurdle from home.

  Hopeless was in fourth place, making it look really easy and Lysander was riding beautifully, his hands almost touching the horse’s flickering orange ears, urging her on, his body moving with her like a lover’s, encouraging her every inch of the way.

  Only a grey gelding and a fence were between Hopeless and the finishing post as she caught up with Turkish Hustler and Bluey.

  Together they cleared the last hurdle.

  ‘Hang on. You’re going a bit quick. Don’t want to wear her out,’ called across Bluey. ‘There’s a long run up.’