Jilly Cooper - Riders

That is easily the most attractive man in the room, thought Molly Maxwell, eyeing him speculatively as she accepted Colonel Carter’s heavy pleasantries, and let her laugh tinkle again and again round the room. Malise Gordon was now talking to Sir William’s wife, Lady Dorothy. What an old frump, thought Molly Maxwell. That dreadful fawn cardigan with marks on it and lace-up shoes and the sort of baggy tweed skirt you’d feed the chickens in.

As an excuse to be introduced to Malise, Molly got up and, wandering over to Lady Dorothy, thanked her for a delicious lunch.

“Absolutely first rate,” agreed Colonel Carter, who’d followed her.

“Would you like to see around the garden?” said Lady Dorothy.

Malise Gordon looked at his watch.

“We better go and supervise the junior jumping,” he said to Miss Squires.

“Oh, my daughter’s in that,” said Molly Maxwell, giving Malise Gordon a dazzling smile. “I hope you’ll turn a blind eye if she knocks anything down. It would be such a thrill if she got a rosette.”

Malise Gordon didn’t smile back. He had heard Molly’s laugh once too often and thought her very silly.

“Fortunately, jumping is the one event in which one can’t possibly display any favoritism.”

Colonel Carter, aware that his beloved had been snubbed, decided Malise Gordon needed taking down a peg.

“What’s the order for this afternoon?” he asked.

“Junior jumping, open jumping, then gymkhana events in ring three, then your show in ring two, Carter.”

A keen territorial, Colonel Carter was organizing a recruiting display which included firing twenty-five pounders.

“We’re scheduled for seventeen hundred hours,” snapped Colonel Carter. “Hope you’ll have wound your jumping up by then, Gordon. My chaps like to kick off on time.”

“I hope you won’t do anything silly like firing off blanks while there are horses in the ring,” said Malise brusquely. “It could be extremely dangerous.”

“Thanks, Dorothy, for a splendid lunch,” he added, kissing Lady Dorothy on the cheek. “The garden’s looking marvelous.”

Colonel Carter turned purple. What an arrogant bastard, he thought, glaring after Malise’s broad, very straight back as he followed Miss Squires briskly out of the drawing room. But then the cavalry always gave themselves airs. Earlier, at the briefing, Malise had had the ill manners to point out that he thought a horse show was hardly the place to introduce a lot of people who had nothing better to do with their afternoons than play soldiers. “I’ll show him,” fumed Colonel Carter.

Outside, hackney carriages were bouncing around the ring, drawn by high-stepping horses, rosettes streaming from their striped browbands, while junior riders crashed their ponies over the practice fence. By some monumental inefficiency, the organizers of the show had also ended up with three celebrities, who’d all arrived to present the prizes and needed looking after.

Bobby Cotterel, Africa’s owner, had originally been allotted the task, but at the last moment he’d pushed off to France, and such was the panic of finding a replacement that three other celebrities had been booked and accepted. The first was the Lady Mayoress, who’d opened the show and toured the exhibits and who had now been borne off to inspect the guides. The second was Miss Bilborough 1970, whose all-day-long makeup had not stood up to the heat. The third was a radio celebrity, with uniformly gray hair and a black treacle voice named Dudley Diplock. Having played a doctor in a long-running serial, he talked at the top of his voice all the time in the hope that the public might recognize him. He had now commandeered the microphone for the junior jumping.

Fen felt her stomach getting hollower and hollower. The jumps looked huge. The first fence was as big as Epping Forest.

“Please, God, let me not have three refusals, let me not let Dandelion down.”

“Oh, here comes Tory,” she said as Jake helped her saddle up Dandelion. “She went to a dance last night but I don’t think she enjoyed it; her eyes were awfully red this morning.”

Jake watched the plump, anxious-faced Tory wincing over the churned-up ground in her tight shoes. She didn’t look like a girl who enjoyed anything very much.

“Did you have a nice lunch? I bet you had strawberries,” shrieked Fen, climbing onto Dandelion and gathering up the reins. “I’m just going to put Dandelion over a practice fence.

“This is my sister, Tory,” she added.

Jake looked at Tory with that measure of disapproval he always bestowed on strangers.

“It’s very hot,” stammered Tory.

“Very,” said Jake.

There didn’t seem much else to say.

Fortunately, Tory was saved by the microphone calling the competitors into the collecting ring.

“Mr. Lovell, I can’t get Stardust’s girths to meet, she’s blown herself out,” wailed Patty Beasley.

Jake went over and gave Stardust a hefty knee-up in the belly.

Fen came back from jumping the practice fence. Immediately Dandelion’s head went down, snatching at the grass.

“You pig,” squealed Fen, jumping off and pulling bits out of his mouth. “I just cleaned that bit. Where’s Mummy?” she added to Tory.

“Going over the garden with Lady Dorothy,” said Tory.

“She must be bored,” said Fen. “No, there she is over on the other side of the ring.”

Looking across, they could see Mrs. Maxwell standing beside Sally Ann Thomson’s mother, while Colonel Carter adjusted her deck chair.

“Colonel Carter stayed last night,” said Fen in disgust. “I couldn’t sleep and I looked out of the window at about five o’clock and saw him go. He looked up at Mummy’s bedroom and blew her a great soppy kiss. Think of kissing a man with an awful, droopy mustache like that. I suppose there’s no accounting for tastes.”

“Fen,” said Tory, blushing scarlet. She looked at Jake out of the corner of her eye to see if he was registering shock or amusement, but his face was quite expressionless.

“Number Fifty-eight,” called out the collecting ring steward.

A girl in a dark blue riding coat on a very shiny bay mare went in and jumped clear. Some nearby drunks in a Bentley, whose boot groaned with booze, hooted loudly on their horn.

“How was her ladyship’s garden?” asked Colonel Carter.

“I think I was given a tour of every petal,” said Molly Maxwell.

“You must have been the fairest flower,” said the colonel, putting his deck chair as close to hers as possible. “My people used to have a lovely garden in Hampshar.”

The radio personality, Dudley Diplock, having mastered the microphone, was now thoroughly enjoying himself.

“Here comes the junior champion for Surrey,” he said. “Miss Cock, Miss Sarah Cock on Topsy.”

A girl with buckteeth rode in. Despite her frenziedly flailing legs the pony ground to a halt three times in front of the first fence.

“Jolly bad luck, Topsy,” said the radio personality. “Oh, I beg your pardon, here comes Miss Sarah Cock, I mean Cook, on Topsy.”

A girl on a heavily bandaged dappled gray came in and jumped a brisk clear round.

Next came Sally Ann Thomson.

“Here’s my little girl,” said Mrs. Thomson, pausing for a moment in her discussion of hats with Mrs. Maxwell. “I wonder if Stardust will go better in a running martingale.”

Stardust decided not and refused three times at the first fence.

“We really ought to buy her a pony of her own,” said Mrs. Thomson. “Even the best riders can’t do much on riding-school hacks.”

Mrs. Maxwell winked at Colonel Carter.

Round followed round; everyone agreed the standard was frightful.

“And here we have yet another competitor from Brook Farm Riding School: Miss Patty Beasley on Swindle.”