Jilly Cooper - Riders

“Let’s be positive,” Molly was going on. “I’m pleased to see you’ve lost a lot of weight. You may be looking quite frightful, but at least you’ve got a waist, and even ankles now. But you really shouldn’t have let yourself go like that. Can’t blame Jake pushing off, really. You never tried to hold him.

“However, Bernard and I have a plan. We’re going to send you to a health farm for a week. There’s a special offer for one in Harper’s this month. No, I won’t take no for an answer. We’ve filled in the form and sent it off. You can have it as an early Christmas present.”

Tory was obviously not going to offer her another glass of sherry, so Molly helped herself. She wondered if the child was quite right in the head at the moment.

“Cheer up,” she said. “You’re only twenty-eight. If you smarten yourself up, you might easily get another man. One of your own class this time.”

After her mother had gone, Tory sat down and cried and cried. Wolf sat at her feet, raking her knee with his paw, licking her face, desperately trying to comfort her.

Eventually she responded to his sympathy. She had to go up to the village to buy brown sugar for the chutney, and afterwards she’d take him for a walk. She couldn’t be bothered with lunch. As she got her coat and purse, the telephone rang. But it was for Hannah, who took it in the tackroom.

Going out into the yard Tory met Hannah, standing on one leg. Her boyfriend, she explained, had got tickets for the Rolling Stones concert that night. Of course she must go, said Tory. If Hannah gave the horses their final feed Tory would check them last thing to see everything was all right.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” said Hannah.

“I’ll be fine,” Tory reassured her. “It’ll be rather peaceful to have the house to myself.”

She didn’t need a lead for Wolf anymore. Since Jake had gone he never left her heels, waiting outside the village shop for her, with an anxious expression on his pointed brindle face. As she came out of the baker’s, the low afternoon sun shone directly into her eyes. Suddenly she gave a gasp of excitement. Across the road a black-haired man was watching them. Then she felt a desperate thud of disappointment. It was very like him — but it was not Jake. Wolf, however, gave a bark of joyful recognition and shot across the road into the path of an oncoming lorry. The passers-by, watching in horror, couldn’t be sure if it was the dog or the girl crouched over him who was screaming.

Everyone was very kind. They recognized poor Mrs. Lovell. A man offered her a lift to the vet, but Wolf died on the way. He licked Tory’s hand and gave a last thump of his shepherd’s crook tail, as if to apologize for deserting her, too, and his head fell back.

The vet drove Tory home, and dug a grave for Wolf beside Sailor and various of the children’s guinea pigs and hamsters, and buried him in his blanket with his old shoe. He didn’t like what he saw. Tory was shivering uncontrollably; there was no color in her cheeks; her clothes hung off her. She insisted on making him a cup of tea, but forgot to put any tea in the pot and didn’t even notice that she’d handed him just hot water and milk.

“It was Jake’s dog,” she kept saying. “I should have had him on a lead.”

“Now, you’re not going to be by yourself?” asked the vet.

“No, no, the others’ll be back soon.”

Hannah, going off at dusk, her thoughts full of her boyfriend and the Rolling Stones, wondered if she ought to ring Dino and Fen in London. Tory was just sitting at the kitchen table, twisting a drying-up cloth, gazing unseeingly at a mountain of chopped onions.

“Honestly, I’m perfectly okay,” she said. “Sarah’ll be back first thing and I’ve got an awful lot of chutney to make.”

At nine o’clock, Tory checked the horses. They were all dozing or lying down. She gave Macaulay an apple and a cuddle and then shut all the top doors. Then she took a flashlight and looked at Wolf’s grave.

“You’re lucky,” she said. “You won’t miss him anymore.”

Life without Jake, she reflected, wasn’t worth a farthing. A far thing. Nothing could be further away now than he was. She was useless as a mother, no good as a human being. If she wasn’t there, Jake could come home with Helen when Dino and Fen went to America and take over the yard.

The note took her hours to write, her mind was working so slowly. She screwed up several drafts and chucked them in the bin. In the top of Jake’s chest of drawers in the bedroom, under the lining paper, she found the key to the poison cupboard. Back in the tackroom, she had to stand on a chair to open it. What a choice awaited her. Like Jake asking her what she wanted to drink the first time he’d taken her to a pub. There was henbane, used by Dr. Crippen, and hemlock water dropwort, which Jake often used as a poultice for horses with sore backs. Deadly poison it was, but it also paralyzed you, leaving your mind clear to the end. She couldn’t cope with that. Then there was deadly nightshade, or belladonna as it was called. A more appropriate name for Helen than herself. Jake had once told her that there was enough poison in that bottle to kill off a dozen Campbell-Blacks, with all their phenomenal strength. It should be enough for her. She took down the bottle.

Next morning Jake walked towards the social security office to have another crack at getting some dole. It was totally against his nature, hustling or wheedling for money — but things were getting desperate. A conker fell at his feet. Automatically he picked it up and was about to put it in his pocket for Isa. Then he realized there was no point and savagely hurled it across the car park.

“Hello, Jake,” said a voice.

Wary of rejection, he turned, frowning. But it was Tanya, his old groom, now married and wheeling a baby in a carriage. Jake knelt down to admire the child, picking up his little hands, tickling his ribs to make him laugh. He’d always been sweet with kids, thought Tanya. He must miss his own terribly, his swarthy face gray, his eyes deeply shadowed. The cotton jacket and jeans were far too thin for a bitter cold morning.

“He’s beautiful,” he said, reluctantly getting to his feet.

“I’m sorry about Wolf,” she said.

“What about him?” said Jake, suddenly tense.

“Oh, God, perhaps I shouldn’t have told you. Hannah rang me. He was run over yesterday afternoon.”

An hour later Jake got back to the bedsit to find Helen painting her nails and not in a good mood. She had just read in the Daily Mail that her husband had joined the Tory Party and was expecting to be given a safe seat at any minute. Tory, Helen reflected bitterly, was not her favorite word at the moment. She thought so even less when she saw Jake’s face.

“What’s the matter?” she asked in alarm.

“I’ve got to go home.” She winced at the word. “There’s been an accident.”

“Oh, God, not one of the kids?”

“No, Wolf.”

“Wolf? Is that a horse?”

“No, the dog. He was run over yesterday.”

“A dog?” said Helen incredulously. “A dog! You’re going back just for that? I could appreciate it if it was a child.”

“Wolf was like a child to Tory.” And to me, he wanted to add.

Helen looked at him in bewilderment. It was all part of this hideous conspiracy between the English and their animals.

“I simply don’t get it,” she said. “You refuse to go back when Malise appeals to you over and over again to jump for your country, then you scuttle home because some goddam dog’s been run over. I just don’t understand you.”

There was a pause.

“How long will you be?” she asked. “I suppose you’ll want the car.”