Jilly Cooper - Riders

“I miss the sight of their fires at twilight, with that marvelous smell of rabbit stew, and the gaudy washing on the line, and the shaggy horses and silent, lean dogs. They knew a thing or two, those dogs.”

Jake didn’t say anything, but felt an emotion, almost love, stronger than he had ever felt for another human being.

“How long were you with the gypsies?”

“Three years. Then I was picked up by the police and put in an orphanage.”

“Can’t have been much fun.”

“It was better than prep school. The kids were less vicious. They even accused me of having a posh accent.”

They walked back across the burnt lawn.

“We need rain badly. And what about this horse Tory appears to have bought?”

When he spoke about Africa, his face took on a tinge of color.

“She’s just the best horse I’ve ever ridden; she’s got so much potential and such a lovely nature.”

“Are you sure you don’t love her more than Tory?”

Jake thought for a minute, frowning, then he said: “I’m not sure, but if I take care of Tory as well as I look after Africa she won’t do too badly. Anyway, she couldn’t be worse off than she is at the moment with that bitch of a mother. She’ll have a nervous breakdown if she has to go to many more of those smart parties. It’s like putting a carthorse in a hack class, then beating it if it doesn’t win.”

“And I gather Molly has a new boyfriend, some colonel?”

“He’s a jerk; they don’t want Tory.”

“Why are they so reluctant to let her go, then?”

“Molly likes something to sharpen her claws on. Tory’s her cat-scratching board.”

She bent down to pull a bit of groundsel, then asked Jake to uproot a thread of bindweed that was toppling a lupin.

“It’s hell getting old. I can only prune sitting down now. And what’s in it for you?” she asked.

“I couldn’t marry her if she weren’t rich. I’ve got to get started somehow. And I think Tory and I could make each other happy. Neither of us has ever really had a home before.”

That was the nearest he was going to get to placating her.

“Aren’t you banking too much on that horse being a winner? She might break a leg tomorrow.”

“I’ll get more horses. This is only the beginning. To make it work as a show jumper, you’ve got to have at least half a dozen top horses and novices coming on all the time. The gypsies taught me how to recognize a good horse, and I can ride them, and I’ve got patience.”

“Let’s go and watch the three-thirty,” said Granny Maxwell.

Mal le Maison was second, Whirlwind Courtship nowhere. That’s torn it, thought Jake. At that moment, Tory came in with a tray.

“Are you ready for tea yet, Granny?”

“Put the tray down on this table in front of me, thank you, and sit down. I have something to say to you both.”

For a minute she looked at them both with speculative eyes.

“I’m not going to give you any money. Young people should get along by themselves. Tory has a considerable income and you’ll soon save enough to buy and sell a few horses.”

Jake’s face was expressionless. That was that. His hopes crashed.

“I’ve no intention of breaking the trust,” Granny Maxwell went on, picking up the blond peke and rolling it onto its back, “until I see if you’re capable of making Tory happy. In three years’ time, she’ll get the money anyway. However…”

Jake stiffened, fighting back hope, as with maddening deliberation Granny Maxwell poured tea into three cups, and went into a long “would anyone like milk, sugar, or lemon” routine, and then handed out plates, and asked whether anyone would like a sandwich.

“However,” she repeated, “Mr. Binlock is retiring to a cottage in the middle of June, which means the Mill House at Withrington — that’s about twenty miles north of here — will be empty. You can have that.”

Tory turned pale. “But Granny, it’s got stables and fields,” she stammered.

“Exactly, but it’s tumbledown and very damp. I hope you haven’t got a weak chest,” she added to Jake, “but it’s yours if you want it.”

“Oh, Granny, darling,” said Tory, crossing the room and flinging her arms round her grandmother.

“Don’t smother me, child, and there’s no need to cry. And as you don’t appear to have any transport, I’ll buy you a decent horse box for a wedding present.”

Jake shook his head. “I can’t believe it,” he said.

“There’s one condition,” Granny Maxwell went on with a cackle of laughter. “That the first time you appear at Wembley, you buy me a seat in the front row. I’m a bored old woman. In time, if you do well, I might buy a couple of horses and let you ride them for me.”

“If you really are going to buy us a horse box,” said Jake, “I’d better learn to drive properly and take a test.”

Six long months after she arrived in London in 1972, Helen Macaulay met Rupert Campbell-Black. Born in Florida, the eldest daughter of a successful dentist, Helen was considered the brilliant child of the family. Her mother, a passionate Anglophile and the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, was constantly reminding people of her English ancestry. In fact, a distant connection had come over, if not on the Mayflower, perhaps by the next boat. Mrs. Macaulay glossed over this fact and from an early age encouraged the young Helen to read English novels and poetry and admire all things English. Later, Helen majored in English Literature at the University of Tampa, where she was confidently expected to get a brilliant degree.

Deeply romantic on the one hand, Helen was also repressed by the rigid respectability of her family. The only proof that her parents had ever copulated at all were the four Macaulay daughters. Helen had never heard her mother and father row, or seen either of them naked. Her mother, who always insisted on women doctors, never mentioned sex, except to imply that it was degrading and wicked. Neither of her parents ever told her she was beautiful. Work to keep sin at bay, feel guilty if you slack, was the Macaulay motto.

Until she was nineteen, Helen never gave her parents a moment’s trouble. She worked at school, helped her mother in the house, never had acne or gained weight, and never answered back. At Tampa, at the beginning of the seventies, however, she came under the influence of the women’s movement — anathema to her mother, who believed a woman’s place was in the home. Her mother did, however, support the feminists’ view that a woman should never allow herself to be treated as a sex object, nor be admired for her body rather than her mind.

To her parents’ horror, Helen started getting caught up in student protest movements, demonstrating against the Vietnam war and joining civil rights marches. Even worse, she came home on vacation and said disparaging things about Richard Nixon. But far worse was to come. During her third year, Helen flunked out with a nervous breakdown, pregnant by her English professor, Harold Mountjoy.

Heavily married, but accustomed to the easy conquest of female students, Harold Mountjoy was quite unprepared for the torrent of emotion he unleashed in Helen Macaulay. It was Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, Charlotte Brontë and her professor all over again. Except that Helen was a beauty. Only a tremendous earnestness and dedication to study had kept her on the straight and narrow so long at Tampa. On campus she was known as the fair Miss Frigidaire. Harold Mountjoy set about defrosting her. Seeing her huge hazel eyes fixed on him, like amber traffic lights, during lectures he should have read caution. Instead, one day after class, he kept her back to answer a complicated question on Browning’s “Paracelsus.”