Riders

48

Back in November that same year, Helen Campbell-Black sat in James Benson’s waiting room, flipping through the houses for sale in Country Life, and idly wondering how much Penscombe was worth. Glancing at her gold watch, she decided there wasn’t really time before her appointment to rush to the john for yet another quick cleanup. It seemed ludicrous, after having two kids, that she was still desperately embarrassed by anything down there. She shifted slightly on the leather sofa. The irritation was really awful and not helped by her worrying about it all the time. Outside the waiting room, a group of starlings, ravenous after a week of hard frosts, were jostling each other around the bird table. A thrush darted forward, warily grabbing a crust that had fallen on the starched white grass and carrying it off to the safety of a nearby ash tree. Helen admired his speckled breast and bright eyes. How odd that the bird and the complaint between her legs should have the same name.

What a beautiful woman, thought the nurse, as she showed Helen into the consulting room. If there was one patient likely to make Dr. Benson flout the Hippocratic oath, it was she. He always insisted on seeing Helen on the last appointment before lunch, so he could spend more time with her. And although he was supposed to be a friend of the husband’s, he never referred to him in any other way than as “that shit Campbell-Black.”

This morning’s examination did nothing to revise Dr. Benson’s opinion, but as he ushered Helen back to her chair his face was as bland as ever.

“I’m afraid you haven’t got thrush,” he said. “It’s the clap.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The clap. Gonorrhea.”

For a second he thought she was going to faint.

“What!” she gasped.

“Gonorrhea,” he said gently.

“But I can’t have, I mean, I haven’t, I wouldn’t sleep with anyone but…” her voice trailed off.

“I’m sure not, but, whatever you’ve heard to the contrary, it really isn’t caught from lavatory seats.”

“So in fact…” she began.

“When did you last have intercourse with Rupert?”

She tried to pull herself together, trying to remember. “About a fortnight ago.”

“That was probably it, although it could have lain dormant longer. Don’t worry. It’s easy to cure.”

Helen started to cry. Benson went to the cupboard and poured her a large gin and tonic, even adding ice and lemon. It was several minutes before she could bring herself to drink it, as though she were terrified of contaminating the glass. Benson yearned to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he could still hear his secretary typing outside and, with four children at public school, he could ill afford to jeopardize a brilliant career.

“I can’t believe it,” Helen said in a choked voice. “I feel so polluted, and where can Rupert…?”

“Have got it from?” Benson shrugged. “Some passing scrubber on a trip abroad.” Then, seeing the anguish in her face. “You know — far from home, missing you, needing to celebrate a victory. Won’t have meant a thing to him. He’d better come and see me the moment he gets back. He’ll have to be off sex for a bit, too.”

“I can’t believe it,” Helen said again, gazing into space, shaking violently.

Benson was surprised. He only saw a reaction like this when he told parents their children had some fatal disease or had to break the news to a patient that they had cancer.

“You’ll need a course of penicillin injections. Nothing to worry about.” He turned to his desk. “And I’m going to give you tranquilizers and some sleeping pills to tide you over the next few days. Cheer up. It happens to the best people.”

“I feel so contaminated,” whispered Helen. “How could Rupert do it?”

“Probably didn’t know. Come on, we’ll organize the jabs and then I’ll buy you lunch.”

“No,” Helen leapt up, cringing away from him, “I couldn’t force myself on anyone, knowing this.”

Helen had to wait until late the following night to confront Rupert, although the entire household was aware something was up. The grooms, Mrs. Bodkin, Charlene the nanny, all knew that Mrs. C-B had gone off to see handsome Dr. Benson and had returned white-faced, had locked herself in her bedroom, and had given way to hysterical sobbing.

“Didn’t touch any lunch or dinner,” said Charlene. “Didn’t even come and say good night to the children.”

“Might be a hysterectomy, might be cancer of the womb,” said Mrs. Bodkin, in excitement.

“Might be another baby,” said Dizzy, “Which means she can’t walk out on His Nibs for another nine months.”

“If it is, I’m off. I’m not looking after three children,” said Charlene. “What d’you think it’d be like working in public relations?”

Rupert got back from Hamburg about nine o’clock. He realized something was up when Helen didn’t come down and say hello, although far off were the days she’d charged down the stairs to fling herself into his arms. He dumped his case in the kitchen.

“All dirty washing,” he said to Charlene, who had positioned herself at the kitchen table, it being the best place to hear any excitement, and was reading the Daily Mail and eating a yogurt.

“Look what I bought for Tab,” said Rupert, proudly producing an exquisite German doll in national costume. “According to the instructions on the box she does almost everything except say ‘Oooh’ at the moment of orgasm.”

“Beautiful,” said Charlene. “What did you get Marcus?”

“Sweets,” said Rupert blandly. “I must have left them in the lorry. I suppose I better give them to him in the morning.”

“Bastard,” Charlene said to herself.

“Where’s Helen?”

“In her room.”

“She all right?”

“Not in carnival mood.”

“Know what it’s about?”

“She’s been a bit jumpy all week. Went to see Dr. Benson yesterday and came back in a frightful state.”

“Oh dear,” said Rupert pouring himself a large whisky, “I’d better go and see her.” Then his eye was caught by a recipe on the corkboard in Helen’s writing entitled: How to make Prawns and Kiwi fruit in Pernod-flavored Mayonnaise. Getting out his fountain pen, he wrote “Oh, please don’t.”

Charlene giggled, so Rupert proceeded to tell her how his new horse Rock Star had gone. “He really is world class. If I can’t get a gold with him I might as well retire.”

When he went upstairs an hour and several whiskies later, he found the bedroom door locked.

“Let me in.”

“Go away,” screamed Helen.

“I’ll break the door down, or shoot it out if you’d prefer.”

After a long pause she unlocked it.

“Christ, you look as if a train’s hit you.” He’d never seen her so gray.

“I went to James Benson yesterday.”

“So I hear. Are we expecting quads?”

“Don’t you dare be flip,” she hissed. “I’ve got gonorrhea.”

“Really,” drawled Rupert, his dark blue eyes suddenly taking on that opaque look. “You must be more careful who you leap into bed with in future.”

“Stop it, stop it,” screamed Helen. “You know perfectly well I haven’t slept with anyone but you.”

“I don’t know that at all,” said Rupert coldly. “I see little enough of you, and your extreme reluctance to come on any of my trips abroad would rather suggest the contrary.”

“You bastard,” yelled Helen. “You caught it from one of your disgusting whores.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve got absolutely no proof. I’ve certainly got the clap. I was treated for it in Hamburg — those German clinics are like Sainsbury’s on a Saturday morning — but I caught it from you.”

“Don’t put that number on me. I’ve never looked at another man since I married you.”

“What about Dino Ferranti?” said Rupert softly. “He’s been in England for six weeks. Rumor has it he spends most of his nights on away fixtures.”

“I haven’t been near Dino or anyone else,” said Helen. “You gave it me and you know it. I’m leaving you and I’m taking the children.”

“You can take Marcus,” yelled Rupert, “but if you lay a finger on Tab, I’ll fight you in every court in this country.”

This was the final straw. Maddened, Helen tried to lash out at him, but Rupert dodged back and only the ends of her long colorless nails caught his cheek. The next moment the door opened.

It was Marcus, red hair ruffled, eyes huge with terror, pajama top falling off.

“Thtop thouting, Daddy, please thtop thouting.”

Tabitha toddled in after him, wearing only the top half of her pajamas, nappy discarded.

“Daddy, Daddy,” she squealed in delight, running towards him, “Daddy home,” then seeing blood on his face, “Daddy got a hurt.”

“Poor Daddy’s indeed got a hurt,” said Rupert, pulling a couple of tissues out of the box on Helen’s dressing table to stem the bleeding. Then, gathering Tab up in his arms, he walked out of the room. “I’m beginning to think you and Badger are my only fans.”

Helen, with a superhuman effort, pulled herself together. “Daddy has cut himself shaving,” she told Marcus. Everyone loved everybody, she went on. She was absolutely fine. Anything to ward off an asthma attack. But thin mucus was trickling from his nose, a sure sign that one was on the way. He was having difficulty in breathing. Oh God, it was her fault for locking herself in her room and not coming to say good night. He must have heard her crying.

“Relax, Marcus, please.”

Soon she had laid him facedown across her lap, tapping his frail ribs with cupped hands to force the mucus out of the bronchial tubes as the physiotherapist had taught her. He had swallowed so much phlegm, eventually he threw up all over her and the carpet. By the time she had got him to bed and calmed him down, read him a story and cleaned up the mess, it was long after midnight.

The light was on in Rupert’s dressing room. On the bed she found Rupert fully dressed, stretched out fast asleep with the sleeping Tab in his arms. Photographs of Rock Star were scattered all over the bed and the floor. In their blond beauty and their carefree abandonment, they were so alike. When Helen tried to take Tab back to her own bed the child went rigid in her sleep and clung on, so Helen left them.

Back in her bedroom, she wearily took a couple of sleeping pills and tried to think rationally about her marriage. She was trapped, trapped, trapped. She longed to leave Rupert, but where could she go? Certainly not home to her parents. The tensions of those two months in Florida last summer had put paid to that, and how could she ever afford Marcus’s colossal medical bills in the States? And if she walked out, taking the children, they would have to give up so much: Penscombe, the valley, the swimming pool, the camp up in the woods, the tennis court, the horses, the skiing, the jet-set existence, the fleet of servants, not to mention the library and the pictures, which they would probably appreciate later. All this for life in a one-bedroom flat. Janey at least had a career and could support herself; Helen had nothing. Her novel, to be honest, was merely a series of jottings. She poured everything out in her journal, sometimes leaving it around in the hope that Rupert might read it, and realize how unhappy she was. But he only read Dick Francis and Horse and Hound. Maybe he was as unhappy as she was and only bullying Marcus to work off his frustrations.

Yet she was only twenty-seven. Was this emotional dead end really all there was to life? Admittedly there were times of comparative contentment when Rupert was away, which was, after all, eleven months of the year, interspersed with periods of desperation like the present one, when he humiliated her publicly by chasing other women, and now giving her the clap.

She was only twenty-seven. She longed for love but, having been married to Rupert for six and a half years, she felt she had become what he kept telling her she was: boring, prissy, brittle, and frigid. He had so sapped her self-confidence that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to hold another guy. She knew she attracted people like Malise, Dino, and James Benson, but was sure they would all lose interest once they got her into bed.

Zonked by sleeping pills, Helen didn’t come down until eleven o’clock the next day. She found Marcus guzzling German chocolates, sweet papers everywhere.

“Where did you get those from?” she said furiously.

“Daddy bought them for me.”

Helen went storming into the tackroom. “You’ve given Marcus candy.”

“You’re always reproaching me for not giving him presents. The one time I remember, I get it in the neck.”

“You know the kids aren’t allowed candy except after lunch. How can I raise them when you spend your time undermining my authority?”

“What authority? Producing a whining, sickly little milksop.”

“That’s because he’s terrified of you.”

The marriage limped on for a few more weeks. Helen continued to paint the house different colors, spending a fortune on wallpaper and fabrics. “One day I’m going to wake up and find I’ve been completely reupholstered in Laura Ashley,” grumbled Rupert.

As Dr. Benson had predicted, Helen and Rupert recovered from the clap. Rock Star continued to sweep the board and provide a powerful new interest for Rupert, achieving almost a walkover at the Olympia Christmas show.

The following Sunday, the last before Christmas, Janey and Billy lay in bed reading the papers.

“Christ,” said Janey. “Have you seen this?”

“Hell,” said Billy. “D’you think it’s true?”

“I’m sure, and checked for libel, or they wouldn’t risk it. Helen’s going to do her nut.”

The Campbell-Blacks were having roast beef for Sunday lunch. Rupert was just carving second helpings when he was called away to the telephone. Helen cleared away the children’s plates, helping them to apple pie and cream, and then settled down with the Sunday papers to wait until Rupert came off the telephone. She glanced at the one on the top of the pile. It was an awful rag, but you had to read it. Some starlet named Samantha Freebody was naming her loves on page six, the little tramp. Helen read about the antics of several deviant vicars and lascivious witches, then turned to page six and froze, for there, confronting her, was a large picture of Rupert lying on a beach in bathing trunks, eyes narrowed against the sun, glass in his hand, palm trees in the background.

“One of my most thrilling affairs,” Samantha Freebody had written, “was with international show-jumping ace Rupert Campbell-Black. I was filming in Portugal and he came out for five days as part of the British show-jumping team. We met at a party. I was swept off my feet by his blond, blue-eyed good looks, and his air of tremendous self-confidence. He’d had a good win in the show ring that day and, having met me, was keen to keep on riding all night. At first I resisted his advances; I didn’t want to appear cheap. But a tide of champagne and euphoria swept us down to the beach and at two o’clock in the morning we made passionate love under the stars, until the warm waves washed over us. For the rest of the five days we were inseparable, loving each other all night. By day I would go and watch him in the ring. After five days we decided to end our idyll. He had other shows to go on to; I had to finish my movie. He was married, his wife expecting her second baby. It was only fair to give him back to her, but I really enjoyed the novelty of our naughty, racy lovemaking.”

“Can I get down?” said Marcus for the second time.

“May I?” said Helen automatically, getting up and lifting Tab out of her high chair. “Go and watch television, darlings.”

Upstairs she locked herself in the loo and threw up and up and up. Rupert was waiting as she came out.

“What on earth’s the matter? You sound like Jake Lovell before a big class.”

“Look at this,” croaked Helen, handing him the paper.

Rupert skimmed through it without a flicker of expression. “Load of rubbish; don’t believe a word of it.”

“The dates tally. You were in Portugal just before I had Tab.”

“Just ignore it,” said Rupert. “That girl’s publicity mad.”

“I don’t understand you,” screamed Helen. “You go berserk if anyone criticizes the way you ride.”

“I ride for a living. That’s what matters. I don’t fuck for a living.”

“Could have fooled me. She obviously does.”

“I wonder how much she got,” said Rupert, picking up the paper again.

“Aren’t you even going to sue?”

“What’s the point?” Rupert shrugged. “If you leave mud to dry, you can brush it off. What did you do with the roast beef? I want a second helping.”

“You can honestly eat having read that?” said Helen, appalled. “And how am I supposed to cope? Mothers sniggering at the playgroup. Mrs. Bodkin, Charlene, and the grooms all talking their heads off.”

“I’m sure they’ll enjoy it enormously.”

“How can I ever hold my head up in the village shop again?”

“Ask them to deliver,” said Rupert.

Matters were not improved a week later when a leading columnist in the Sunday Times took Samantha Freebody to the cleaners for naming names.

“How must Rupert Campbell-Black’s unfortunate wife and children feel?”

The answer was much, much worse. Everyone who hadn’t seen the original piece rushed off to the library to read it. A couple of days later Janey rang up Rupert to wish him a Happy New Year.

“And for God’s sake hide Private Eye,” she went on. “You’ve been nominated White’s Shit of the Year.”

“Thank God it’s 1980 now,” said Rupert. “Apart from buying Rocky, 1979 hasn’t been the greatest of years.”

In the evening Rupert found Helen in the drawing room writing letters. He wished she wouldn’t always wear her hair up these days, like a confirmed spinster.

“Applying for a new husband?” he said.

Helen gritted her teeth and didn’t answer.

Rupert crossed the room, and kissed the nape of her white neck. “I’m sorry I gave you the clap and went to bed with Samantha Freebody. I am totally in the wrong. There is absolutely no excuse. But the more you reject me and take no part in what I do, the worse it becomes. Come on, get up.”

The sudden unexpected overture totally disarmed her.

“There, there,” he said, drawing her against him, “it’s all right. Shall we have another try? I’m going to cancel the next two shows and take you abroad. Charlie Masters has offered us his house outside Nairobi. We can lie in the sun and I’ll give you the honeymoon you never had.”

“ ‘And I will heal me of my grievous wound,’ ” quoted Helen sadly.

“Grievous womb?” demanded Rupert. “You been to see Benson again?”

Helen shook her head, smiling faintly.

“That’s better,” said Rupert. “It seems an awfully long time since you smiled.”

“What about the children?”

“They’re not coming,” said Rupert firmly, “nor are the dogs; just you and me on our own. And I’ll start off tonight by taking you out to dinner.”

The doorbell rang. It was Janey. Billy had gone to some evening show in Warwickshire and she was at a loose end.

“Come and have a drink,” said Rupert. “Helen and I are having a rapprochement.”

“About time,” said Janey.

She was full of gossip and in high good humor. Evidently Fenella Maxwell had gone into a complete decline since Dino Ferranti had walked out. Fen didn’t seem very good at holding men, she added with satisfaction. Janey had lapsed in her resolution to give up drink while she was pregnant, but at least she had cut down and was only drinking wine.

Helen could hardly believe her ears half an hour later when she heard Rupert saying to Janey, “Why don’t you come out to dinner with us?” She went upstairs and sat on her bed in a rage for ten minutes. Then she steeled herself to be tolerant. After all Janey was on her own.

Downstairs, she found Tabitha had invaded the drawing room, reducing the place to chaos. Every ornament had been moved, Janey’s handbag had been upended and a flotsam of bus tickets, old telephone numbers, pens, defunct mascara wands, and dirty combs lay scattered over the floor. Then she started screaming for sweets and for Daddy to read her a story. On being told Daddy was going out, the screaming redoubled. Picking her up under one arm, Rupert took her upstairs for Charlene to sort out.

“That child is more destructive than a JCB,” said Janey, reloading her bag. “Don’t ever worry that Rupert will leave you for another woman. No stepmother would take on that monster.”

Helen was appalled how pleased she was because Janey was bitching about Tab.

Rupert hadn’t bothered to book, but as usual the best table in the restaurant was rustled up straightaway. Everyone was staring and nudging: “Look who’s just walked in. It is, isn’t it? He’s even better in the flesh.” Helen wished she had washed her hair.

“Where are you going for your second honeymoon?” asked Janey.

“Kenya,” said Helen.

“Some golfing friends of my parents have just gone there on safari. They’re called Dick and Fanny, can you imagine!”

Janey could always make Rupert laugh, thought Helen, with a stab of envy.

“Have you heard the latest Samantha Freebody story?” Janey went on, squeezing lemon on her smoked salmon. “What’s the difference between Samantha Freebody and a KitKat?”

“What?” asked Rupert.

“You can only get four fingers in a KitKat.”

Rupert howled with laughter, and Helen, although blushing furiously, joined in.

“Billy bumped into her at the opening of some sports center last night,” Janey went on. “He was going to cut her dead when she accosted him and said: “You’ve got a hole in your jersey!” and Billy replied quick as a flash, “You’ve got a hole between your legs, but the difference between us is I don’t write about my hole all over the papers.” She’s so publicity mad, the old slag heap, Billy says she’d turn up for the opening of an envelope.”

Somehow by bringing the whole awful business into the open, Janey was making things much better, thought Helen. Now she was attacking Rupert.

“You’re a monster to Helen. You treat her appallingly.”

“I don’t remember you treating Billy all that well in the past,” said Rupert coldly.

“That was only once. I just needed to prove that Billy was really the only man for me. I’m with him for keeps now.”

Janey was being real nice, thought Helen, so upfront and supportive. It was such a novelty to be talked about and defended and argued over that Helen drank more than usual.

While they were having coffee she went to the loo.

“All right?” they both said solicitously when she came back.

“Rupert’s just suggested that Billy and I fly out to join you in Kenya for one of the weeks,” said Janey.

“But, but, I thought it was supposed to be a honeymoon,” stammered Helen.

Rupert didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“All honeymoons should be spent in duplicate,” said Janey. “Helen and I’ll come if you and Billy promise not to talk about horses.”