Riders

37

All runs of luck come to an end. After a brilliant March, in which he swept the board in Antwerp, Dortmund, and Milan, Jake rolled up for the Easter meeting at Crittleden, a course which had never really been lucky for him since Sailor’s death. It had rained solidly for a fortnight beforehand and the ground was again like the Somme.

In the first big class, Macaulay, who was probably a bit tired and didn’t like jumping in a rainstorm, slipped on takeoff at the third element of the combination. Hitting the poles chest on, he somersaulted right over. Jake’s good leg was the padding between the ground and half a ton of horse. Spectators swear to this day that they could hear the sickening splinter of bones. Without treading on Jake, Macaulay managed to scramble to his feet immediately and shake himself free of the debris of wings and colored poles. Most horses would have galloped off, but Macaulay, sensing something was seriously wrong, gently nudged his master, alternately looking down at him with guilt and anguish, and then glancing over his shoulder with an indignant “Can’t you see we need help?” expression on his mud-spattered white face.

Humpty Hamilton reached Jake first.

“Come on, Gyppo, up you get,” he said jokingly. “There’s a horse show going on here.”

“My fucking leg,” hissed Jake through gritted teeth, then fainted.

He came around as the ambulance men arrived. Normally a loose horse is a nuisance at such times, but Macaulay was a comfort, standing stock-still, while Jake gripped onto his huge fetlock to stop himself screaming, looking down with the most touching concern. He also insisted on staying as close as possible, as Jake, putty-colored and biting through his lip in anguish, was bundled into an ambulance.

Fen took one look at the casualty department at Crittleden Hospital and rang Malise, who was in London.

“Jake’s done in his good leg,” she sobbed. “I don’t think a local hospital should be allowed to deal with it.”

Malise agreed and moved in, pulling strings, getting Jake instantly transferred to the Motcliffe in Oxford, where the X-rays showed the kneecap was shattered and the leg broken in five places. The best bone specialist in the country was abroad. But, realizing the fate of a national hero rested in his hands, he flew straight home and operated for six hours. Afterwards, he told the crowd of waiting journalists that he was reasonably satisfied with the result, but there might be a need for further surgery.

Tory managed to park the children, and arrived at the hospital, out of her mind with worry, just as Jake came out of the theater. For the first forty-eight hours they kept him heavily sedated. Raving and delirious, his temperature rose as he babbled on and on.

“Were any of his family in the navy?” said the ward sister, looking faintly embarrassed. “He keeps talking about a sailor.”

Tory shook her head. “Sailor was a horse,” she said.

“When can I ride again?” was his first question when he came around. Malise was a great strength to Tory. It was he and the specialist, Johnnie Buchannan, who told Jake what the future would be, when Tory couldn’t summon up the courage.

Johnnie Buchannan sat cautiously down on Jake’s bed, anxious not in any way to jolt the damaged leg, which was strapped up in the air.

“You’re certainly popular,” he said, admiring the mass of flowers and get-well cards that covered every surface of the room and were waiting outside in sackfuls still to be opened. “I haven’t seen so many cards since we had James Hunt in here.”

Jake, his face gray and shrunken from pain and stress, didn’t smile. “When can I ride again?”

“Look, I don’t want to depress you, but you certainly can’t ride for a year.”

“What?” whispered Jake through bloodless lips. “That’ll ruin me. I don’t believe it,” he went on, suddenly hysterical. “I could get up and discharge myself now.” He tried to rise off the bed and remove his leg from the hook, gave a smothered shriek, and collapsed, tears of pain and frustration filling his eyes.

“Christ, you can’t mean it,” he mumbled. “I’ve got to keep going.”

Malise got a cigarette from the packet by the bed, put it in Jake’s mouth, and lit it.

“You nearly lost the leg,” he said gently. “If it hadn’t been for Johnnie, you would never have walked again, let alone ridden. Your other leg, weakened by polio, would never have been able to support you on its own. You’ve got to get your good leg sound again.”

Jake shook his head. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s just that it’s my living. This’ll ruin me.”

“It won’t,” said Johnnie Buchannan. “If it knits properly, you’ll be out of here in five or six months and can conduct operations from a wheelchair at home. If you don’t play silly buggers, and take the physio side of it seriously, you could be riding again this time next year.”

Jake glared at them, determined not to betray the despair inside him. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “All right, there’s not much I can do. You’d better tell Fen to turn all the horses out. They could use the rest.”

“Isn’t that a bit extreme?” said Malise.

“No,” said Jake bleakly. “Who else can ride them?”

For a workaholic like Jake, worse almost than the pain was the inactivity. Lying in bed hour after hour, he watched the leaves slowly breaking through the pointed green buds of the sycamores and the ranks of daffodils tossing in the icy wind, and fretted. He had no resources. He was frantically homesick, missing Tory, the children, Fen and the horses, and Wolf the lurcher. The anonymity of the hospital sickeningly reminded him of the time when he had had polio as a child and his mother seldom came and visited him, perhaps feeling too guilty for never bothering to have him inoculated.

For a fastidious, reserved, and highly private person, he couldn’t bear to be totally dependent on the nurses. He was revolted by the whole ritual of blanket baths and bedpans. Lying in the same position, his leg strapped up in the air, he found it impossible to sleep. He had no appetite. He longed to see the children, but with the hospital eighty miles from home, it was difficult for Tory to bring them often; and when she did Jake was so ill and tired and weak he couldn’t cope with their exuberance for more than a few minutes, and was soon biting their heads off. He longed to ask Tory to come and look after him, but he was too proud, and anyway she had her work cut out with the children and the yard.

The Friday morning after the accident, Fen had been to see him. Such was his despair, he had been perfectly foul to her and sent her away in tears. Wracked with guilt, he was therefore not in the best of moods when Malise dropped in during the afternoon, bringing three Dick Francis novels, a biography of Red Rum, a bottle of brandy, and the latest Horse and Hound.

“You’ve made the cover,” he told Jake. “There’s an account of your accident inside. They say some awfully nice things about you.”

“Must think I’m finished,” said Jake broodingly. “Thanks, anyway.”

“I’ve got a proposal to make to you.”

“I’m married,” snapped Jake.

“It’s about Fen. If you’re grounded, why don’t you let her jump the horses?”

“Don’t be bloody ridiculous. She’s too young.”

“She’s seventeen,” said Malise. “Remember Pat Smythe and Marion Coakes? She’s good enough. What she needs is international experience.”

“I don’t want her overfaced. Anyway she’s daffy. She’d forget her own head if I wasn’t there to tell her what to do.”

“It’s not as though your horses were difficult,” said Malise. “Macaulay dotes on her. She’s ridden Laurel and Hardy, and Desdemona’s been going like a dream.”

“No,” said Jake, reaching for a cigarette.

“What is the point? You’ve brought all those horses up to peak fitness and you’ve got two grooms who need wages. Why throw the whole thing up and just lie here worrying yourself sick about money? Let her have a go. She’s your pupil. You taught her. Haven’t you got any faith in her?”

Jake shifted sideways, giving a gasp of pain.

“Pretty grim, huh?”

Jake nodded. “Can you get me a drink?”

Malise poured some brandy into a paper cup.

“It’ll give you an interest. She can ring you every night from wherever she is.”

“And where’s that going to be?”

Malise poured himself a drink, to give himself the courage to answer. “Rome. Then she can fly back for the Royal Windsor, then Paris, Barcelona, Lucerne, and Crittleden.”

“No,” said Jake emphatically.

“Why not?”

“Too young. I’m not letting a girl her age abroad by herself, with wolves like Ludwig, Guy, and Rupert around.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her. I’ll personally see she’s in bed, alone, by eleven o’clock every night. She needs a long stint abroad to give her confidence.”

“How’s she getting to Rome? In Rupert’s private jet, I suppose.”

“Griselda Hubbard’s got a lorry which takes six horses. She can easily take two or three of yours.”

“Griselda Hubbard,” said Jake, outraged. “That’s scraping the barrel.”

“Mr. Punch has turned into rather a good horse,” said Malise.

“But not with Grisel on him. Fen’s far better than her.”

“Exactly,” said Malise. “That’s why I want to take her.”

* * *

Back at the Mill House, Fen was battling with blackest gloom and trying to cheer up Macaulay. It was nearly a week since Jake’s fall, but the horse still wouldn’t settle. He wouldn’t eat and at night he walked his box. Every time a car came over the bridge, or there was a footstep in the yard, he’d rush to the half-door, calling hopefully, then turn away in childlike disappointment. Since Jake had rescued Macaulay from the Middle East they hadn’t been separated for a day. Fen had tried to turn him out with the rest of the horses, but he’d just stood shivering by the gate in his New Zealand rug, yelling to be brought in again. Poor Mac, thought Fen, and poor me too. She’d thought about Dino Ferranti so often since the World Championship, hoping so much that she’d bump into him on the circuit this summer. And now Jake had ordered the horses to be turned out, and there’d be no going abroad, and she’d be stuck with taking Desdemona to a few piffling little local shows that Jake considered within her capabilities.

A rather attractive journalist whom she’d met at Olympia had rung up that afternoon and asked her if she’d like to sail over to Cherbourg for a party on the Saturday night. She’d had to refuse, just as she kept having to refuse dates and parties because there was always some crisis cropping up with the horses. And now Jake was in hospital, she had ten times as much responsibility. She’d been up all last night with Hardy, who, having gorged himself on the spring grass, suddenly developed a violent attack of colic. Brought into the stable, he had promptly cast himself and been so badly frightened when he couldn’t get up that Fen had had to call out the vet. It was some compensation that morning that a recovered Hardy, instead of taking his usual piece out of her, had butted her gently with his head and then licked her hand in gratitude.

Added to this, Jake had been perfectly bloody when she’d visited him in hospital. She knew he was depressed or he wouldn’t have been so awful, but sometimes it was difficult to make allowances. And, finally, it was Sarah, the new groom’s third night off that week. She was very good at her job, Sarah, and extremely attractive, with long black hair which never got greasy and a flawless creamy skin which never got spots. She was also quite tough. She had turned down a job with Guy de la Tour because it was underpaid. At his stable you were expected to work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, the only compensation was being screwed by Count Guy when he felt like it. Instead she had taken a job with Jake.

“Your brother-in-law,” said Sarah, “may be moody, and prefer four-legged creatures to anything on two legs, but at least he pays properly and gives you plenty of evenings off.”

Not if you’re family, he doesn’t, thought Fen gloomily, as she watched Sarah, tarted up to the nines, drive off to a party in her pale blue sports car.

Once again, Fen repeated Dino’s words, “There is more to life than the inside of a tack-cleaning bucket!” She was fed up with bloody horses. She wanted some fun.

A delectable smell of chicken casserole drifted out from the kitchen. Looking at her watch, she was surprised to see it was half-past nine. Inside, she found Tory stacking up a pile of envelopes. She had spent the evening canceling shows and wondering which bills to pay first.

“Poor lovie, you look shattered,” she told Fen. “Let’s have a drink before dinner.”

“Can we afford it?” said Fen, looking at the bills.

“I think so,” said Tory. “At the moment, anyway. It just infuriates me that, having paid for all that foreign stabling in advance, we won’t be able to use it.”

Having opened a bottle of red wine and filled two glasses, Fen slumped in the armchair by the Aga. Although it was the end of April it was still cold. Wolf, the lurcher, who was missing his master even more than Macaulay, leapt onto Fen’s lap for comfort.

“Poor old boy,” said Fen, cuddling his shivering, shaggy body.

“How’s Mac?” said Tory, draining the broccoli.

“Still off his feed. His whole routine’s been disrupted. Ouch,” she screeched, as Wolf, hearing the sound of a car on the gravel, leapt off her knees, scratching her thighs with his long claws. Next moment, he was through the back door and had rushed off, barking frantically, into the yard.

“Who the hell could that be?” said Fen.

“Wolf obviously knows him,” said Tory. “He’s stopped barking.”

“May I come in?” said Malise.

“Oh hell,” muttered Fen, “he’ll think we’ve eaten and stay gassing for hours.”

“Hello,” said Tory, blushing with her usual shyness. “You’ve come at the right time. We’ve just opened a bottle.” She filled up another glass.

Malise sat down at the long scrubbed table, enjoying the warmth, admiring the children’s paintings and the newspaper photographs of the horses on the corkboard, alongside this year’s already substantial number of rosettes for which there was no longer space in the tackroom. He looked at the pile of envelopes.

“You’ve been busy.”

“Canceling shows,” said Tory. “Hoping we might get some of our money back. Why don’t you stay for supper?” she stammered. “We’ve got masses.”

“I’m sure there isn’t enough,” said Malise.

“Tory always cooks for five thousand and it’s always marvelous,” said Fen.

Malise suddenly realized he hadn’t eaten all day.

“Well, it’d be awfully nice.”

“It’s only chicken,” said Tory apologetically.

“I’ll get it out,” said Fen. Typical Tory, she thought, as she got four huge baked potatoes and a large blue casserole out of the oven.

“Nice kitchen,” said Malise as he put butter in his baked potato. “How’s Macaulay?”

“Devastated,” sighed Fen. “He even misses shows. Every time the telephone goes in the tackroom, he starts cantering around the field.”

“This is excellent, Tory,” said Malise. “I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. By the way, I’ve just been to see Jake.”

“Oh, how kind. How was he?”

“Pretty miserable still; frustrated, bored.”

“And still in a lot of pain?” asked Tory.

“Yup, but at least I gave him something to take his mind off his leg. You’d better get the horses in tomorrow, Fen. He’s agreed you can jump them.”

“Poor Jake,” said Fen. “I drove over to see him this morning. He looked awful. What did you say?” She stopped with a piece of carrot on the way to her mouth.

“He’s going to let you ride the horses.”

“Where?” stammered Fen.

Malise laughed. “Rome, Paris, Windsor, Barcelona, Crittleden, Lucerne, just for starters.”

Fen opened her mouth and shut it again. Then she turned to Tory. “Is this true?”

Tory laughed and hugged her. “If Malise says so, it must be.”

“But we can’t afford it.”

“Of course you can. You’ll be jumping as a member of the British team, so those expenses’ll be paid, and if I’m anything to go by, you’ll be in the money very soon.”

Fen looked at him incredulously. “Thank you,” she said in a choked voice. Then, jumping to her feet and falling over Wolf, she ran out into the yard, muttering that she must go and tell Macaulay.

“Oh, please, God, forgive me,” she prayed as she buried her face in Macaulay’s neck, “I didn’t mean it when I said I wanted to give up show jumping.”

The following day, Fen loaded up Macaulay in the trailer and drove to Oxford. Without asking anyone’s permission she unboxed him in the Woodstock Road and rode him across the emerald green, billiard-table-smooth hospital lawn and, cavalierly trampling a bed of dark red wallflowers underfoot, banged on the window of Jake’s room.

Jake, sunk in the depths of gloom, thought he was hallucinating when the great white face with the white eye peered through the glass at him. Fortunately it was a slack period. Matron was at lunch, patients were resting, and comely Sister Wutherspoon, who was a show-jumping fan, pushed Jake’s bed so it was flush to the opened window. The reunion touched everyone. At first Macaulay couldn’t quite believe it, pressing his face against Jake’s shoulder, whickering in ecstasy, then licking his pajama jacket and his face with a great, pink, stropping tongue. For a minute Jake couldn’t speak, but at last his face took on some color as he fed Macaulay a whole pound of grapes and a bar of chocolate and an apple. Word soon spread round the hospital. A crowd of nurses had soon gathered in the room to pat and even take photographs of the World Champion, thrilled to see the delight on Jake’s face. They had all been worried about his slow recovery and his black depression. In the middle, the matron walked in and everyone melted away. Fortunately, she was also a show-jumping fan.

“We really don’t allow visitors out of hours, Mr. Lovell, but I suppose we can make an exception in Macaulay’s case.”

After twenty minutes, Fen put Macaulay back in the trailer and came back to talk to Jake, thanking him over and over again for letting her go, promising to ring him every night.

“When are you off?”

“Friday morning. Grisel’s collecting me.”

She saw him again once before she left, on the way home from a day trip to London. He was so busy giving her last-minute instructions, he didn’t notice she never took the scarf from her head.

“Rome’s tricky,” he said. “You’ll find the fences coming off the corners very fast, and at dusk the trees around the arena throw shadows across the poles, which make it very easy to make mistakes. Macaulay’s eyesight’s not brilliant. If you’re in any doubt, don’t jump him. You won’t like Rome: lots of wops with machine guns pinching your bottom. Don’t carry money or your passport in your bag, the muggers are frightful, and put any winnings in the hotel safe at once.”

“If there are any,” said Fen in a hollow voice.

“I gather Billy Lloyd-Foxe is back in the team, too,” said Jake. “If you have any problems, go to him rather than Malise. He has to ride the horses. He knows what he’s talking about.”

* * *

“I’ve been very wicked,” said Fen, when she got back to the Mill House three hours later and found Tory in the kitchen darning Fen’s lucky socks. “I’ve bought three pairs of trousers, three shirts, two dresses, and a bikini. I promise I’ll win it all back. And I passed a poster of Janey Lloyd-Foxe in the tube, telling me to read her column every week, so I drew a mustache on her and wrote ‘bitch’ underneath.”

“I hope no one saw you,” said Tory in alarm. “Let’s see what you bought.”

“And I went to the hairdresser,” said Fen casually. “I covered it up with a scarf, because I thought Jake might freak out. It’s gone a bit flat.”

She removed the scarf. Tory just gaped at her. Fen had gone out that morning with dark mouse hair trailing almost to her waist. Now it was streaked white blond and no longer than two inches all over her head. Tendrils curled round her face and down to a point at the nape of her neck. She had been on a crash diet for the last ten days since she heard about the trip, and now weighed no more than eight stone. As a result of so many salads, the spots had gone for good, the new hairstyle emphasized the emerging cheekbones, the brilliant, slanting, aquamarine eyes, and the long slender neck.

“I’m sorry,” Fen hung her head, “but I thought it would be easier to keep like this.”

Certainly it won’t be easier to keep men at a distance, thought Tory. Malise was going to have his work cut out as a chaperone. Suddenly, with a flash of equal pain and pleasure, she realized that Fen was no longer a child, a little sister. Almost since this morning she’d grown up into a beauty.

“It’s gorgeous,” she said in awe. “The hair’s heaven.”

Fen grinned with relief. “Griselda won’t be able to keep her hands off me!”