Riders Read online

  Dressing later before he set out for the show, Jake transferred the crushed and faded yellow tansy flower from the bottom of his left gum boot to his left riding boot. Tansy warded off evil. Jake was full of superstitions. The royal gypsy blood of the Lovells didn’t flow through his veins for nothing.

  2

  By midday, a blazing sun shone relentlessly out of a speedwell blue sky, warming the russet stone of Bilborough Hall as it dreamed above its dark green moat. To the right on the terrace, great yews cut in the shape of peacocks seemed about to strut across the shaven lawns, down into the valley where blue-green wheat fields merged into meadows of pale silver-green hay. In the park the trees in the angelic softness of their new spring growth looked as if the rain had not only washed them but fabric conditioned them as well. Dark purple copper beeches and cochinealred may added a touch of color.

  To the left, the show ring was already circled two deep with cars, and more cars in a long gleaming crocodile were still inching slowly through the main gate, on either side of which two stone lions reared up clenching red and white bunting between their teeth.

  The headscarf brigade were out in full force, caught on the hop by the first hot day of the year, their arms pale in sleeveless dresses, silk-lined bottoms spilling over shooting sticks, shouting to one another as they unpacked picnics from their cars. Hunt terriers yapped, labradors panted. Food in dog bowls, remaining untouched because of the heat, gathered flies.

  Beyond the cars, crowds milled round the stalls selling horsiana, moving aside to avoid the occasional competitors riding through with numbers on their backs. Children mindlessly consumed crisps, clamored for ices, balloons, and pony rides. Fathers hung with cameras, wearing creased lightweight suits smelling of mothballs, wished they could escape back to the office, and, for consolation, eyed the inevitable hordes of nubile fourteen-year-old girls, with long wavy hair and very tight breeches, who seem to parade permanently up and down at horse shows.

  Bilborough Hall was owned by Sir William Blake, no relation to the poet, but nicknamed “Tiger” at school. Mingling with the crowds, he gossiped to friends, raised his hat to people he didn’t know, and told everyone that in twenty years there had only been one wet Bilborough show. His wife, a J.P. in drooping tweeds and a felt hat, whose passion was gardening, sighed inwardly at the ground already gray and pitted with hoof marks. Between each year, like childbirth, nature seemed to obliterate the full horror of the Bilborough show. She had already instructed the undergardener, to his intense embarrassment, to go around with a spade and gather up all the manure before it was trodden into the ground.

  “Oh, there you are, William,” she said to her husband, who was genially trying to guess the weight of a piglet. “People are already arriving for luncheon; we’d better go and do our stuff.”

  Down by the horse lines, Jake Lovell, tying up a weedy gray pony more securely, was slowly reaching screaming point. The family of the unspeakably hopeless Patty Beasley (none of whom had ever been on a horse) had all turned up in jodhpurs. Sally Ann Thomson’s frightful mother hung around the whole time, talking at the top of her voice, so all the other competitors turned around and laughed at her.

  “It doesn’t matter about winning, dear,” she was now telling Sally Ann. “Competing and having fun is all that matters.”

  Bloody rubbish, thought Jake. They all sulk if they’re not placed.

  After Sally Ann’s pony had bolted with her, and Patty Beasley’s cob had had a kicking match with the priceless winner of the under 13.2 showing class, causing loss of temper on all sides, Jake had refused to let any of the children ride their ponies until the jumping in the afternoon. He had nearly had a mutiny on his hands.

  “Why can’t I do some practice jumps on Syrup?”

  “Why can’t I ride Stardust over to get an ice cream?”

  “Oh, Snowball’s trodden on my toe.”

  “How d’you rate Sally Ann’s chances in the junior jumping?” asked Mrs. Thomson, sweating in an emerald green wool suit.

  “Nonexistent,” snapped Jake.

  “Joyce Wilton said Sally Ann was the best little horsewoman in Surrey.”

  “Can Patty enter for the potato race?” asked Mrs. Beasley.

  “If she wants to waste her money, the secretary’s tent’s over there.”

  Sally Ann’s mother returned to the attack: “We’ve paid for the pony all day.” (Mrs. Wilton charged £12 a gymkhana.) “My little girl should be able to ride as much as she likes.”

  Jake’s head throbbed with the effort of filtering out conversation. The clamor went on, deafening, shrill, and demanding. He might as well get a job as a nanny. No wonder sheepdogs had nervous breakdowns. No wonder mothers battered babies and babies battered mothers. He wanted to turn off the din, like the wireless, and lie down in the long lush grass by the river and go to sleep.

  His eye ran over the row of bored, depressed-looking ponies standing on three legs, tails swishing ineffectually against the flies, occasionally flattening their ears at one another. They’re trapped like me, he thought.

  His face became less frosty as he came to little Fenella Maxwell, standing on a bucket, replaiting the long-suffering Dandelion’s mane for the third time. She was a good kid. Surprisingly she wasn’t spoilt by her bitch of a mother, who would be guzzling champagne up at the big house with the nobs by now.

  His eyes softened even more when they came to rest on Africa. Not dozing like the ponies, she looked around with her huge eyes, taking everything in, reassuring herself constantly that Jake was still there.

  The prospect of the open jumping and the risk he was running made him steadily more sick with nerves. He lit another cigarette.

  Next time a huge horse box drew up, a groom got out, unfastened the ramp, and led out a beautifully plaited-up gray, sweating in a crimson rug with dark blue binding. A girl wearing a white shirt, a black coat, skintight breeches, and long black boots walked over and looked the horse over critically. She had a haughty pink and white face. Jake thought how attractive some women looked in riding clothes, the austerity and severity of the uniform contrasting with the wild wantonness beneath. He imagined her long thighs threshing in ecstasy, while the hat, tie, and haughty pink and white face remained primly in place. He imagined laying her on a bed of straw, as tempting as a newly made bed.

  As if aware of Jake’s scrutiny, she turned around. Jake looked away quickly, determined not to give her the satisfaction of knowing she was being fancied.

  “Lavinia!” A handsome dark boy, white teeth gleaming in his suntanned face, pulled up his huge chestnut horse beside her.

  “Christopher. Hello. I thought you were in Marbella.”

  “Just got back.”

  “Come and have a dwink.” She couldn’t say her Rs. “Mummy’s parked the car by the collecting wing.”

  “Love to.” He rode on.

  Bloody upper classes, thought Jake, all making so much bloody noise. He was fed up with wearing a cheap riding coat and thirdhand boots that were already killing him. He wanted a horse box, and a groom whisking out different horses like a conjurer producing colored handkerchiefs, and a tackroom wall papered with red rosettes, and a beautiful pink and white girl asking him respectfully how many strides there were between the gate and the rustic poles.

  A shrill piping voice brought him back to earth.

  “I’ve bought you an ice cream,” said Fenella Maxwell. “You ought to keep up your strength. Oh, look, they’re bringing out the jumps for the junior jumping. I know I’m going to let Dandelion down. Mummy and Tory’ll miss it if they don’t stop stuffing themselves.”

  Inside Bilborough Hall, Tory Maxwell, Fenella’s elder sister, looked up at a large Rubens, in which a huge pink fleshy Venus was being pursued by half the satyr population of Ancient Greece, while adoring cherubs arranged her rippling pearl-strewn hair. She’s much fatter than me, thought Tory wistfully. Why wasn’t I born in the seventeenth century?

  She had huge gray e
yes and long, straight, light brown hair, which her mother insisted she wore drawn back off her forehead and temples and tied in a bow on the crown of her head. A style which made her round, pleading, peony red face look bigger than ever. She was tallish and big-boned, with a huge bust that bounced up and down as she walked. However she stood on the scales, she weighed eleven stone.

  She’d just got the curse, which made her feel even fatter, and, however many layers of Erace she put on, a large red spot on her chin glowed through like a lighthouse. She was getting hotter and hotter, but she couldn’t take off the jacket of her red suit because the skirt was fastened precariously by a safety pin. Her ankles had swelled and, having kicked off her tight shoes, she wondered if she’d ever be able to get back into them again. She wondered if she’d ever been more miserable in her life. Then, with a stab of pain, she remembered last night’s dance and decided she was comparatively blessed.

  During the weekdays she was at a finishing school in London, learning to cook, to type, and to arrange flowers by ramming bits of rhubarb into chicken mesh. By night she practiced the art of wallflower arrangement, going to drinks’ parties and dances, and trying to appear as though she belonged to one of those chattering, laughing groups of debs and their admirers. Occasionally, hostesses took pity on her and brought up wilting, reluctant young men who talked politely or danced one dance, then drifted away.

  The more miserable she got, the more she ate. But never at dances, never in front of her mother. She would wait for everyone to go out or to bed, then wolf three bowls of cornflakes swimming in heavy cream. Yesterday, she’d eaten a whole box of chocolates, which had been given to her mother by an admirer, and then had to rush out to the shops to buy another box to replace it before her mother got back.

  Why couldn’t she be like Fen, and have something like horses to be interested in passionately and keep her nose out of the trough? Why did she have to stay inside on this lovely day when she wanted to be outside, picnicking with Fen and Jake? At the thought of Jake, dark-faced and unpredictable, whom she had never spoken to, her stomach felt weak, her mouth dry. Oh Jake! At night she wrote him long passionate letters which she always tore up. Small men were supposed to like big girls; look at D. H. Lawrence and Stanley Spencer. Perhaps having no parents, and being brought up in a children’s home, he might be looking for a mother figure, but he didn’t seem to be showing any signs so far.

  Tory’s mother, Molly Maxwell, had enjoyed her lunch enormously. She was delighted to be asked. Colonel Carter, who had accompanied her, had enjoyed himself, too. It had been fun being able to introduce him to Sir William, and they’d got on well talking about the war. She combed her hair surreptitiously; Gerald had done it beautifully this week. Why was Tory hanging round like a wet blanket? Sir William’s sons were there. All of them Old Etonians, nice looking and so suitable, and Tory hadn’t addressed a word to any of them all through lunch, just sitting like a pig, and taking a second helping of pudding when she thought her mother wasn’t looking.

  “Poor Molly,” she could imagine people saying, “poor Molly to be saddled with such a lump.”

  “No, I won’t have any more wine, thank you, Sir William.” She didn’t want to get red in the face. Her new, silk-lined dress and jacket in periwinkle blue was most becoming. This afternoon she’d probably take the jacket off; her arms were still slender and already turning brown.

  She was really enjoying Tory doing the season. “Jennifer’s Diary,” this week, had described her as the chic and most attractive mother of Tory Maxwell. At least one deb’s delight and several fathers had declared themselves madly in love with her. And now Colonel Carter was getting really keen and sending roses twice a week.

  To top everything, last night she had heard two young bloods discussing Tory.

  “Wonder if it would be worth marrying her for her money,” said the first.

  “I’d certainly marry her for her mummy,” said the second. “Molly Maxwell is absolutely gorgeous.”

  Molly thought that was too amusing for words.

  Molly was a bit short of cash at the moment. Her rather stolid husband had paid her a great deal of alimony, but when he inconveniently died, he had left all his money, unaccountably, in trust for Tory. That was another grudge; what did Tory want with an income of £5,000 a year?

  Tory looked across at her mother. I’m the fruit of her womb, and I hate her, hate her, hate her, she thought, for her ankles slender as a gazelle’s, and her flexible high insteps, and thin Knights-bridge legs, and her painted malicious face, and her shrill clipped voice, not unlike Fen’s! Look at Sir William bending over her.

  “No, really,” Molly was saying, “is it by Ferneley? How fascinating. No, do tell me.”

  And that dreadful Colonel Carter, Colonel Bogus more likely, handsome as an aging movie star, matinee-idling about, a cliché of chauvinism, his large yellow teeth gleaming amicably beneath his graying mustache, as he blamed even the weather on the Socialists.

  “No, my younger daughter Fen’s riding,” Molly was saying to Sir William. “She’s absolutely horse-mad; up first thing mucking out, never get her to wear a dress. Oh, I see you take The Tatler, too; not for the articles really; but it’s such fun to see which of one’s chums are in this week.”

  “No, not my only child,” Tory could hear her mother going on. “There’s Tory over there; yes, she’s more like her father…Yes, just eighteen…Well, how kind of you to say so. I suppose I was rather young when I got married.”

  “Mustn’t monopolize you,” said Sir William, getting up from his chair and noticing Colonel Carter hovering. “Come and sit down, Carter; can’t say I blame you.”

  Next moment, Sir William was hurrying across the room to welcome the two judges, Malise Gordon and Miss Squires, who, on a tight schedule, had only time for a quick bite. Malise Gordon, having accepted a weak whisky and soda, refused to follow it with any wine. He took a small helping of salmon but no potatoes, not because he was worried about getting fat, but because he liked to practice asceticism. An ex-Cavalry officer, much medaled after a good war, Colonel Gordon not only farmed but also judged at shows all around the country during the summer, and was kept busy in the winter as the local master of fox hounds. He was inclined to apply army discipline to the hunting field to great effect and told people exactly what he thought of them if they talked at the covert side, rode over seeds, or left gates open. In addition to these activities, he played the flute, restored pictures in his spare time, and wrote poetry and books on military history. Just turned fifty, he was tall and lean with a handsome, hawklike face, high cheekbones, and dark hair hardly touched with gray.

  That is easily the most attractive man in the room, thought Molly Maxwell, eyeing him speculatively as she accepted Colonel Carter’s heavy pleasantries, and let her laugh tinkle again and again round the room. Malise Gordon was now talking to Sir William’s wife, Lady Dorothy. What an old frump, thought Molly Maxwell. That dreadful fawn cardigan with marks on it and lace-up shoes and the sort of baggy tweed skirt you’d feed the chickens in.

  As an excuse to be introduced to Malise, Molly got up and, wandering over to Lady Dorothy, thanked her for a delicious lunch.

  “Absolutely first rate,” agreed Colonel Carter, who’d followed her.

  “Would you like to see around the garden?” said Lady Dorothy.

  Malise Gordon looked at his watch.

  “We better go and supervise the junior jumping,” he said to Miss Squires.

  “Oh, my daughter’s in that,” said Molly Maxwell, giving Malise Gordon a dazzling smile. “I hope you’ll turn a blind eye if she knocks anything down. It would be such a thrill if she got a rosette.”

  Malise Gordon didn’t smile back. He had heard Molly’s laugh once too often and thought her very silly.

  “Fortunately, jumping is the one event in which one can’t possibly display any favoritism.”

  Colonel Carter, aware that his beloved had been snubbed, decided Malise Gordon nee
ded taking down a peg.

  “What’s the order for this afternoon?” he asked.

  “Junior jumping, open jumping, then gymkhana events in ring three, then your show in ring two, Carter.”

  A keen territorial, Colonel Carter was organizing a recruiting display which included firing twenty-five pounders.

  “We’re scheduled for seventeen hundred hours,” snapped Colonel Carter. “Hope you’ll have wound your jumping up by then, Gordon. My chaps like to kick off on time.”

  “I hope you won’t do anything silly like firing off blanks while there are horses in the ring,” said Malise brusquely. “It could be extremely dangerous.”

  “Thanks, Dorothy, for a splendid lunch,” he added, kissing Lady Dorothy on the cheek. “The garden’s looking marvelous.”

  Colonel Carter turned purple. What an arrogant bastard, he thought, glaring after Malise’s broad, very straight back as he followed Miss Squires briskly out of the drawing room. But then the cavalry always gave themselves airs. Earlier, at the briefing, Malise had had the ill manners to point out that he thought a horse show was hardly the place to introduce a lot of people who had nothing better to do with their afternoons than play soldiers. “I’ll show him,” fumed Colonel Carter.

  Outside, hackney carriages were bouncing around the ring, drawn by high-stepping horses, rosettes streaming from their striped browbands, while junior riders crashed their ponies over the practice fence. By some monumental inefficiency, the organizers of the show had also ended up with three celebrities, who’d all arrived to present the prizes and needed looking after.

  Bobby Cotterel, Africa’s owner, had originally been allotted the task, but at the last moment he’d pushed off to France, and such was the panic of finding a replacement that three other celebrities had been booked and accepted. The first was the Lady Mayoress, who’d opened the show and toured the exhibits and who had now been borne off to inspect the guides. The second was Miss Bilborough 1970, whose all-day-long makeup had not stood up to the heat. The third was a radio celebrity, with uniformly gray hair and a black treacle voice named Dudley Diplock. Having played a doctor in a long-running serial, he talked at the top of his voice all the time in the hope that the public might recognize him. He had now commandeered the microphone for the junior jumping.