Jilly Cooper: Appassionata

‘Oh thank you, she’s so beautiful,’ sobbed Taggie.

It was as instinctive as one of his brood mares nuzzling and suckling a new-born foal. Suddenly Rupert didn’t need that cocaine hit after all.

Seeing the look of pride and triumph on his face, Maria Immaculata mopped her eyes. Sister Angelica was openly crying as she dabbed Joy behind her ears. Only Sister Mercedes looked as though her big end had gone.

‘There, I mustn’t monopolize her, you must hold her,’ Taggie turned to Rupert.

But Rupert was only happy because Taggie was overjoyed. To him, Bianca was just a blob. In fact the only baby he’d ever liked had been his daughter Tabitha.

Perhaps Bianca sensed this, because when she was handed over to him she went absolutely rigid, screamed, and even regurgitated milk over his blazer, until Sister Angelica, laughing, removed her.

Meanwhile a dazed Taggie was hugging Maria Immaculata. ‘I know it’s only the beginning and she’s not remotely ours yet, but thank you,’ she mumbled. Then, turning to a still, stony faced Sister Mercedes, she settled just for clasping her hand.

‘You’ve all been so kind, oh may I hold her again?’

‘Would you like to give Bianca her bottle?’ asked Maria Immaculata, then, ignoring Sister Mercedes — to hell with the raffle — added: ‘I think this calls for a glass of brandy all round. I do hope you’ll be comfortable in the hotel Sister Mercedes has chosen for you. It is very convenient, only three kilometres from the convent.’

To Rupert, the Red Parrot was Sister Mercedes’ revenge — a two-storey, cockroach-ridden version of the hair shirt. Having acceded to Rupert’s demands for double beds and air-conditioning over the telephone, the landlord, Alberto, whose tight, grease-stained grey vest displayed tufts of stinking, black armpit hair, showed them into a room where the double bed wouldn’t have accommodated two anorexic midgets. The air-conditioning consisted of wire netting over the window, an electric fan which distributed the dust and the swarms of insects, and a gap along the top of the walls to let in the blare of the television sets in neighbouring rooms. Outside the rickety balcony was about to collapse beneath the weight of two parched lemon trees in terracotta tubs, and traffic roared both ways up and down what had been described as a ‘quiet one-way street’. It was only when Taggie looked round for water to relieve the parched lemon trees, that they realized the nearest bathroom was twenty yards down the corridor.

Seeing that Rupert was about to blow his top, Taggie said soothingly that Alberto couldn’t be that bad.

‘Did you see those sweet little hamsters running round his office?’

Rupert hadn’t got the heart to tell her they were on tonight’s menu along with another Colombian delicacy: giant fried ants.

‘The only consolation,’ he said, crushing a second cockroach underfoot, ‘is that the Press will never dream of looking for us here. Tomorrow we’ll move somewhere else.’

‘I don’t think we can. Alberto just told me he’s Sister Mercedes’ brother.’

But they were so tired and relieved they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms in one tiny bed.

The next morning, Taggie, shrugging off any jet lag, was back at the convent, blissfully happy to be looking after Bianca and helping Sister Angelica with the other orphans. Having dropped her off, Rupert returned to the Red Parrot and spent half the morning on the telephone checking up on all his horses, including his best one, Penscombe Pride, who had happily recovered from a nasty fall in the Rutminster Gold Cup.

Rupert also tried to cheer up his favourite jockey, Lysander Hawkley, who was suicidal because his old horse Arthur had collapsed and died within a whisker of winning the Gold Cup, and because the girl he loved, Kitty Rannaldini, was showing no signs of leaving her fiendish husband.

‘No Arthur and no Kitty, Rupert, I don’t think I can stand it.’

Afterwards Rupert visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bogotá. As a former government minister, he wanted to see how many strings he could pull, and how much red tape he would have to cut through to enable them to take Bianca back to England.

He lunched with a polo friend, a sleek, charming playboy called Salvador Molinari, who offered him a cocaine deal.

‘You know so many reech people, Rupert.’

The deal would have sorted out all Rupert’s problems at Lloyds. Regretfully, he refused.

‘I’ve got to behave myself, Sal, until we’ve got Bianca safely home.’

Later, in the Avenida Jiminex, Rupert bought some cheap emeralds from a dealer for Taggie, his daughters, Perdita and Tabitha, and Dizzy, his head groom. In Bogotá, beside the dark-haired, dark-eyed Colombians, Rupert was as flashily conspicuous as a kingfisher. Leaving the dealers, he was stopped by a policeman, pretending to be doing an official search, who then tried to make off with Rupert’s Rolex and his wallet. Being still high from a cocaine hit at the dealers’, Rupert knocked the policeman across the street, leaving him minus two front teeth, and went off and bought a gun and a money belt.

On the way to pick up Taggie, the taxi broke down. Having asked Rupert to give him a push, the driver proceeded to drive off with Rupert’s briefcase, containing the emeralds and all the adoption papers and medical reports, stamped both in Petty France and by the Ministry in Bogotá.

As Rupert proceeded to shoot the taxi’s tyres out with his new gun, two more policemen smoking joints on the pavement, totally ignored the incident. Retrieving his briefcase, finding excellent use for all the Colombian swear words he’d learnt on the flight over, Rupert went off and hired a bullet-proof Mercedes, which made him half an hour late picking up Taggie, which in turn resulted in a sharp dressing-down from Sister Mercedes.

Taggie, she said, had been worried and Rupert had missed a chance to bath and feed Bianca. Rupert tried not to look relieved. As the old monster waddled off to fetch Taggie, he reflected that in a battle with his bullet-proof Mercedes, Sister Mercedes would win hands down.

Taggie reeled out in manic mood.

‘Oh Rupert, she’s so sweet, she’s wearing one of the dresses we brought, and she drank all her bottles, and Sister Angelica said she cried much less today, and I’m sure she smiled at me, although it was probably wind. And Sister Mercedes was really friendly and sat next to me at lunch.’

‘Mercedes Bent,’ said Rupert.

After a surprisingly good dinner at the Red Parrot, of shell-fish stew and mango-and-guava ice cream, enhanced by a bottle of Chilean Riesling, they were just drinking to little Bianca, when Taggie turned green and lurched upstairs. Glued to the only lavatory on the landing, Niagara at both ends, she threw up and up and up into a bucket until she was only producing yellow froth and specks of blood. A local doctor, summoned by a demented Rupert, said it was only altitude sickness and prescribed rest.

In the morning, when Mother Immaculata popped in with a bunch of roses from the convent garden and a bottle of water flavoured with lemon-juice and sugar, she was happy to report back to the nuns that never had she seen a husband more devoted or worried than Rupert.

By the evening Taggie was delirious, raging with fever, too ill to be moved as various doctors supplied by Salvador trooped in and out. Trusting none of them, Rupert was onto James Benson, his doctor in Gloucestershire.

‘I don’t give a fuck if it’s three o’clock in the morning, I want you out here.’

‘Give it another twenty-four hours, altitude sickness often takes this form.’

‘You’ve given her the wrong jabs, you overpaid clown.’

Upstairs, he could hear Taggie screaming. ‘I’ll ring back.’