Jilly Cooper - Riders

Alarmed by her calmness and refusal to accept the facts, the doctor gave her a sedative. It was not that Jake wouldn’t leave her, she kept saying, but he’d certainly never leave the horses, or the children, particularly in the middle of the Olympics. It was a belief she had to cling on to.

Malise, however, rang at ten o’clock. “I’m afraid we know nothing more at this end. What I imagine happened was that Jake and Helen may have walked out together; at least that’s what she told Rupert. Tempers flared. Rupert was absolutely livid at not getting the gold. He’d been simply poisonous all evening, threatening to beat Helen up. She appealed to Jake for help and he probably felt he ought to remove her somewhere safe until Rupert cooled down.”

Malise, reflected Tory, as the truth began to sink in, sounded like a gynecologist telling her she’d got a stillborn baby.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” he went on. “I’m convinced he’ll come back for the team event.”

But Jake did not come back. The Games were into their second week. The public was slightly bored with tales of derring-do and mega-achievement; they wanted a good scandal. Rupert, his beautiful American wife, and her romantic gypsy lover were the perfect answer.

“For just a handful of silver she left him,” quipped the New York Times.

Everyone who knew Jake and Rupert rekindled the old feud. Jake had been bullied at school by Rupert and had got his revenge twenty-two years later by trouncing Rupert at the Olympics and then running off with his wife.

It was the same in L.A. as at the Mill House. Once the Los Angeles Times had led on Helen’s row with Rupert and her running off with Jake, the reporters were everywhere. Like some horror army of killer ants, they crept through seemingly locked doors, through windows, haunting the Olympic village, the Eriksons’ house, the stables, and the exercise rings.

Fen, as their prime target, had been absolutely knocked sideways by the news.

“I must go to Tory,” she pleaded with Malise on the Wednesday morning. “She sounds absolutely terrible now it’s really sunk in. The English papers are crucifying Jake. I can’t leave her to face it on her own. Let me fly home.”

“You can’t,” said Malise, surveying his shambles of a team. “Unless Jake comes back you’ll have to jump Hardy.”

Everywhere Fen went, people were bad-mouthing Jake. Everywhere, the press swooped on her. Every time she worked Hardy the exercise ring was crowded with photographers and curious onlookers.

Rupert was far less vulnerable. First, he was holed up in Suzy’s house, which was electric-fenced and burglar-alarmed to the teeth. Secondly, you didn’t try and interview a man-eating tiger. Rupert was in the kind of eruptive mood that kept even the press at a distance.

“Jake was just doing his bit for Britain,” he told Billy on the telephone. “Unfortunately in this case, the bit happened to be Helen. Extraordinary. For seven years she never looked at another man. Then, according to Dizzy, for the last five months no one’s been able to see her ears for skirt.”

“He sounds terrible,” Billy told Janey as he came off the telephone. “Do you think I ought to fly out there? The Beeb have offered to pay my fare and give me a fat fee if I’ll help Dudley do the commentary for the team competition.”

“No, you ought not,” snapped Janey. “Rupert’s had it coming to him for years. I am not going to be left alone with Christy when he’s so little…nor,” she added to herself, am I going to let you loose in L.A. with Fenella Maxwell.

Twenty-four hours limped by with no sign of Jake. On Thursday morning Fen was working Hardy in one of the big exercise rings. Normally the German team should have been using the ring at this time but they’d willingly swapped over with the British to fox the press and give Fen the chance of a little privacy. It was nearly ten o’clock and the sun was already scorching down. Hardy, missing Jake, was edgy and miserable. He had received so much adulation on Monday and Tuesday morning. Now, suddenly, no one wanted to admire the horse whose master had disgraced a nation.

As she slowly cantered him around on the left rein, Fen pondered the horrors of the last two days. Rumors seethed. Jake and Helen had been sighted in England, in all parts of America, on a flight to Bermuda. Jake had grown a mustache, was wearing a false beard. Helen had dyed her hair, blond, brunette, even cut it all off. Last night Malise had made another stiff-upper-lipped plea on television for Jake to come back: “We will jump as a team and conduct ourselves like gentlemen.”

“Is he referring to Griselda?” said Rupert.

Rupert still keeps up the stream of flip remarks, thought Fen, allowing no one to see his black despair and utter humiliation. Malise seemed terribly upset, too. Fen herself had been in tears all night. She wished she could help Tory. Bloody Helen Campbell-Black, she thought savagely, not even able to hold off until after the Games.

Fen’s hair was wringing wet beneath her hat, as was her T-shirt. The reins slipped between her damp hands. Suddenly she was overwhelmed by longing for Dino. She had never needed him more. She could have lain down and slept for a year in his arms. But she musn’t think of Dino or Helen; it only upset her. She must keep calm and psych herself into the right frame of mind for Sunday. Perhaps by some miracle Jake would come back.

“Oh, Hardy, where’s your master?” she sighed.

In the distance she could see the German team riding down from the stables in a cloud of dust to take over. She must make herself scarce before the press turned up. This afternoon, she thought wearily, she had to take Ivor to Disneyland again.

Catching her not concentrating, Hardy gave a whinny and a great whicker of joy and carted her across the ring.

“For God’s sake, you disobedient bugger,” yelled Fen, hauling ineffectually on his mouth, “where the bloody hell d’you think you’re going?”

Hardy ground to a halt. Fen glanced up and gasped. For there, holding Hardy’s dark blue sweat rug, tall and golden as a Lombardy poplar in autumn, stood Dino Ferranti.

“Hi, Hardy baby,” he drawled, putting up a not altogether steady hand to stroke the dappled face. “I’m real glad you haven’t forgotten me, just as I’m real glad your mistress’s language is a lousy as ever.”

Dino had had a long and very trying nine months, but everything was compensated for when he looked up and saw the expression of incredulous, bewildered delight on Fen’s face, the expression on which left him in absolutely no doubt about how she felt.

“You’ve gone blond again,” she muttered.

“I know. I didn’t seem to score with gray hair.”

“Oh, Dino, Dino,” she cried, and tumbled off Hardy into his arms. He kissed her so fiercely she had no doubt of his feelings towards her.

“Oh, I love you,” she bleated incoherently. “I’ve missed you. I’ve been so so miserable.”

“Me, too,” he groaned. “Oh Christ, darling, we’ve been so dumb.”

As he held her tight, she could feel how much he was trembling and how his ribs protruded beneath the blue denim shirt.

“You’ve got so thin,” they both said simultaneously, and then started to laugh. Next moment Fen’s laughter had turned to tears.

“It’s so awful.”

“I know. I’m real sorry, sweetheart.” He took her face in his hands, kissing her forehead and her nose and the tears spilling out of her eyes before he found her mouth again.

“No, no,” she protested, when at last he freed her. “It was so awful for you about Manny. Did you get my letter?”

“There was so much mail and I was so unglued I didn’t even get around to looking at it until yesterday. Hell, I needed you so badly. But I guess I couldn’t handle seeing you again in case you were still mad at me, or didn’t feel the way I did. So I chickened out and went home to lick my wounds. Then I heard about Helen and Jake buggering off. I figured you might need me as much as I needed you. Right? So here I am.”