Jilly Cooper - Riders

“Penscombe.” Jake suddenly looked drawn, a muscle was flickering in his cheek. “Rupert Campbell-Black’s place.”

Going back to the car, he scooped all the rubbish off the floor and from the ashtrays, which brimmed with cigarette butts, and tipped it over the wall into Rupert’s land. One of the workmen, looking across, shook his fist at their departing car.

“Serves him right,” said Tory with a giggle. But when she looked at Jake she saw he was not smiling.

Tory’s grandmother lived sixty-five miles on in an equally beautiful but more sheltered position. Gabled and russet, the house peered out from its unkempt mane of Virginia creeper like a Yorkshire terrier.

A troupe of pekes and pugs came yapping round the side to welcome them. Despite the beauty of the day, they found Granny Maxwell sitting in the drawing room, watching racing on the television. She was also trying to read Horse and Hound, Somerville and Ross, and a gardening book at the same time, with three pairs of spectacles hanging round her neck like trapezes. She had a strong face, broad-browed, hook-nosed, the peaty-brown eyes glittering imperiously beneath their black brows, the wrinkles deeply etched round the wide mouth. On her head she wore a gray-green curly wig, slightly askew and held on with sticky tape.

“You’re wearing your nightgown, child,” she said, looking at Tory’s floating white dress. “I like your blue pants.”

Then she held out a wrinkled, black-nailed hand to Jake.

“I assume this is Mr. Wrong,” she added, with a cackle of laughter.

“Granny,” said Tory, blushing.

Jake grinned.

“Sit down, sit down; no, not in that chair,” she said, as Jake was almost bitten by an ancient, rheumy-eyed Jack Russell already sprawled on it.

All the other pekes and pugs lay at her feet snuffling and panting. She wore an ancient cardigan, a lace shirt, obviously for the second or third day, and a tweed skirt with a droopy, descending hem.

She and Lady Dorothy must go to the same tailor, thought Jake. But aquamarines and diamonds flashed on the grimy hands as she talked, and the pearls round her neck were each as big as a mistletoe berry.

“I suppose you want a drink; young people drink at the most extraordinary hours these days. There are some tins of iced beer in the fridge, Mr. Lovell. Unless you’d like something stronger? Then, go and get them, Tory.”

The room had the glorious, overcrowded look resulting from an exodus from a larger country house. Jake’s hands rested on the rough carved mane of a lion. The carpet was the blurred pink and green of an Impressionist painting.

As Tory went out, Granny Maxwell studied Jake, who was surreptitiously looking at the horses circling at the start. At least he didn’t fidget.

“Epsom,” she said, handing him the paper, “I’ve had a bet in this race. Any tips for the three-thirty?”

Jake glanced at the runners.

“I’d have a fiver on Mal le Maison.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t chosen Marriage of Convenience. Or how about Fortune Hunter?” she added maliciously. “He’s a hundred to one.”

Jake looked at her steadily.

“I’ll stick with Mal le Maison,” he said flatly. “And if I wanted to pick an outsider, I’d choose Whirlwind Courtship.”

“You haven’t known Tory long, have you?”

“Not very long, but I like outsiders.”

At least he’s not frightened of me, thought Granny Maxwell; that in itself is a novelty. Old and bored and waiting for death, she was aware that her family only came to see her when they were in financial trouble. She sometimes felt she was only kept alive by feuds and tyranny.

Tory came back with the cans of beer and a glass, and was immediately sent up to talk to Mrs. Maggs, who was sorting out the hot cupboard.

“She’s made you lardy cake and gingerbread men for tea. She thinks you’re still eight. You look very tired, child,” she added in a gentler voice, “and you’ve lost a lot of weight.”

She turned to Jake. “Bring your glass of beer and let’s walk round the garden,” she said, struggling to her feet. She walked very stiffly and had to be helped over the step. One hip was obviously very painful.

“Rheumatism,” she explained. “It’s difficult to be a very nice old woman when everything hurts.”

Having picked several heads off a coral pink geranium, she set off along the herbaceous border. It was the most glorious, over-packed garden; peonies jostled with huge Oriental poppies, lupins, and irises. Catmint, not yet out, stroked their legs as they passed.

The pack of dogs, some on three legs, panted after them grumbling and yapping.

“This is what I call a beautiful garden,” said Jake.

“As opposed to what?”

“To Tory’s mother’s. All the flowers seem to stand in their own patch of earth there, in serried ranks. Thou shalt not touch.”

“Like a park,” said Granny Maxwell.

A bird flashed by, yellow as laburnum.

“Yellowhammer,” said Granny Maxwell.

“Golden oriole, I think,” said Jake. “Very rare in these parts; it must be the heat.”

Suddenly a jaunty mongrel with a tight brindle coat came bounding across the lawn and was greeted by much yapping and every sign of delight by the pack, particularly a little blond peke, who wagged her tail and kissed him. Granny Maxwell turned to Jake.

“We used to call them ‘butcher’s dogs’ in my day, because they followed the butcher’s van. Owners get very fussed when mongrels try to mate with their pedigree dogs. I imagine that’s why my daughter-in-law is making such a fuss about you. I made a fuss when my son threw himself away on Molly. Her father was a hairdresser. Remember that, if you ever think about her.”

“I try not to,” said Jake.

“She never got over being the toast of Hong Kong.”

“Now she’s the sliced bread of Bilborough.”

Mrs. Maxwell gave a cackle of laughter.

“Tell me about yourself. You had polio as a child?”

He nodded. “When I was six I was in the hospital for eighteen months, learning to walk again. It left me with a wasted leg.”

“And a raging desire to prove yourself, presumably,” said Granny Maxwell dryly. “And your father was a gypsy?”

Juke nodded.

“My mother’s family tried to resettle him, but he missed the wandering life and the horses. He was a genius with horses. So he pushed off soon after I came out of the hospital.”

“And your mother committed suicide. You blamed yourself for that, I suppose?”

“I think she was let down by some chap who she took up with after my father left, but I didn’t know that at the time.”

“What happened after she died?”

“The school where I went free as a day boy made me board. I hated it, so I ran away and joined a group of gypsies. They taught me all I know, to poach and to look after horses and train dogs. There was an old grandmother there; she taught me about all the medicines she’d learnt from her great-grandmother.”

He took Granny Maxwell’s arm and guided her down some stone steps to a pond filled with irises and marsh marigolds. She caught her breath at the pain.

“An infusion of the leaves of Traveler’s Joy works wonders for rheumatism,” he said. “I’ll make you some up to try, or if you prefer, you can carry the skin of a dead frog against your skin.”

Granny Maxwell watched the dogs lapping out of the pond. The mongrel got into the water, drinking, paddling, and making a lot of splashing.

“I always feel very badly about the gypsies,” she sighed. “It’s one of the great unnecessary tragedies of progress. They should never have been forced into compounds to settle and sell scrap metal. But it’s always the same story today of harassment from the police and from farmers. Before the war they always used to park in our fields for the seasonal piecework. My father often kept them employed from March until Christmas.