Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

It took two hours, four tantrums and two bars of chocolate to untangle and wash his hair. The screams were so terrible that Rupert had to remove him from the dormitory. The novices were in raptures over Xav’s lustrous black curls. Sister Mercedes looked thunderous. She had spent her life in the prison of being ugly; what right had Rupert to raise Xavier’s hopes of escape?

The days slid by, the rains continued. They’d have to build an ark soon. Taggie made heroic efforts not to scratch her spots which were crusting over and beginning to drop off. Every night she bombarded Rupert with questions about Bianca, poring over the polaroids he brought her, but beyond telling her Bianca had drunk all her bottles, put on a couple of ounces, cooed and slept, there was little of interest to report. Instead, he found himself talking about Xav who was still shoving him away one moment, clinging and tearful the next.

‘I took him a teddy bear this morning, he totally ignored me and it all day. He still hasn’t forgiven me for untangling his hair but when I went he yelled his head off.’

This had upset Rupert more than he cared to admit.

But the next morning when he arrived at the convent, Xav babbled with incomprehensible joy, frantically waving his little hands, trying to express himself.

‘He’s happy,’ smiled Sister Angelica. ‘He refused to be parted from the bear even in the bath.’

As Bianca was asleep, Rupert gathered up a purring Xavier and carried him across to the delapidated convent school where Sister Angelica, to the counterpoint of rain dripping into several buckets, was telling the children the legend of El Dorado, the Indian ruler, who had coated himself in gold dust before bathing. In homage, his subjects had tossed gold and precious stones, mostly emeralds, into the lake after him. Later the name El Dorado was given to an equally legendary region of fabulous riches.

Many of the Spanish Conquistadores, explained Sister Angelica, men who looked like Senor Campbell-Black, blushing slightly, she pointed at Rupert, had died from shipwreck and starvation when they sailed across the oceans in search of the riches of the lake. Many more Colombian Indians, she pointed to Xav, had been butchered in the process.

‘The pursuit of gold,’ she added gravely, as she shut the book, ‘will never bring happiness. The only El Dorado is found in your hearts.’

Rupert, who’d always pursued gold relentlessly, and who had been wondering what Sister Angelica’s legs were like beneath her white robes, raised a sceptical eyebrow.

Wandering out of the classroom, he passed a pile of wooden madonnas, roughly carved in the convent workshop, waiting to be sold in the market. Examining one he was startled to find it opening to reveal a hollowed inside. Jesus, what a country: even the nuns were smuggling coke. As no-one was looking, he slid the madonna into his inside pocket.

Having lunched yet again on rice and herbal tea, any minute he’d turn into a bouquet garni, Rupert realized it had stopped raining. Salvador had invited him out to his house in the country to try out a couple of horses. Suddenly desire to escape from Bogotá poverty and squalor became too much for him. As Sister Mercedes was out, no doubt terrorizing the poor, Rupert persuaded Sister Angelica to let him take Xavier along too, strapping him into the child seat in the back of the Mercedes.

After the rain, every blade of grass and leaf of jungle tree glittered in the sunlight like distilled emeralds. Xav gazed in wonder at towering dark grey mountains, brimming rivers, rainbows arched like limbo-dancing Josephs. He was even more excited by the fat piebald cows and the sleek horses, knee deep in the lush, rolling savannah round Salvador’s beautiful white colonial house.

Salvador, who was sleeker than a Brylcreemed otter, was seriously rich. A Monet, a Picasso and a Modigliani hung on the drawing-room walls. Suntanned girls in bikinis decorated the swimming-pool. Sweeps of orchids grew everywhere like bluebells.

‘You like?’ he asked Rupert proudly.

‘Of course, it’s beautiful.’

‘You should come in on that cocaine deal.’

‘I have to keep my nose clean rather than running,’ said Rupert, unhitching Xav from the child seat. ‘I’ve got a lot of dependants. Anyway, I can’t cope with this country, everything’s crooked, the police, the government, the customs men, even the nuns. How d’you live with it?’

Salvador shrugged. ‘We have a popular song in Colombia, if you dance with the devil, you must know the right steps.’

He was appalled by Xav.

‘You said you were adopting lovely little girl.’

‘We are. Just brought Xav along for the ride.’

Salvador lifted Xav’s chin, looking in distaste at the crossed eyes and the purple birthmark lit up by the sun, and shook his head.

‘How old is he?’

‘Nearly two.’

‘Better buy him a pair of crutches for his second birthday, then he can beg in the street. He hasn’t a chance once the nuns kick him out. Pity someone didn’t give him a karate chop at birth.’

After that Rupert decided not to buy any of Salvador’s horses. But if he hadn’t resolved to switch to the flat, he would have been sorely tempted by a dark chestnut mare. Leaving a trail of silver spray, he let her have her head across the drenched green savannah, forgetting everything in the dull thud of hooves and the feel of a fit, beautiful horse beneath him. He was away for so long Xav had worked himself into a frenzy.

‘Little runt seems quite attached to you,’ said Salvador in surprise. ‘Probably the only good thing that’ll ever happen to him.’

‘Come on then.’ Leaning down, Rupert lifted Xav up in front of him and set off again.

He expected terror as he broke into a canter and then a gallop, but was amazed to hear screams of delighted crowing laughter, and the faster he went, the more Xav laughed.

Red-Indian blood coming out, thought Rupert, reflecting bitterly and briefly once again on his son Marcus who was terrrified of everything, particularly horses.

As they returned to the house for tea and rum punches, three Borzois swarmed out to meet them. Rupert missed his dogs terribly. He had been very upset to find a drowned puppy in the gutter outside the hotel that morning. He’d probably grown so attached to Xav, he told himself firmly, because he regarded him as a surrogate dog. And he was a brave little boy; when one of the girls in bikinis took him for a swim in the pool, after an initial look of panic in Rupert’s direction, he screamed with delight again.

‘He’s a sweet kid,’ admitted Salvador, as Xavier tucked into one of Colombia’s more disgusting delicacies, cheese dipped in hot chocolate. ‘But he’s still too bloody ugly.’

On the way home, Rupert was held up by horrific traffic jams, a solid blockade of lorries belching out fumes, a bus had overturned tipping glass over the road, and a van was being checked by the police. Xav, however, slept through the whole thing. With a pang Rupert noticed the beauty of his left profile now his black combed curls fell over his forehead and his birthmark was hidden.

As Rupert walked into the convent, he was confronted by a jibbering Sister Mercedes, who snatched Xav away like a female gorilla scooping up her baby. How dare Rupert kidnap one of the children? He had seriously jeopardized his chances of adopting Bianca. How dare he raise expectations, she shouted, as a terrified Xav screamed and sobbed as he was dragged away.

Rupert flipped, all thought of behaving well for Bianca’s sake forgotten. Sister Mercedes’ squawks, in fact, were purely academic. There was no real likelihood of Rupert and Taggie being turned down. All the official documents were now stamped and, in private chats with Maria Immaculata, Rupert had agreed to donate a large sum to repair the school. He had also had enough of Sister Mercedes.