Riders

52

Helen sent Charlene and the children out for a picnic the following afternoon so she could talk to Jake without being overheard. But gradually as the minutes ticked by, she felt her happiness subsiding like a tire with a slow puncture. Three, four, five, six, struck the grandfather clock in the hall. It was no longer afternoon. The children came home, tired and fractious and, sensing her sadness and inattention, played up even more. Helen looked at the chaos of toys lying around the nursery, counting “he loves me, he loves me not” as she put them away. The last piece of Lego was back in its box, and came to “he loves me not.” Jake must have gone off her. Perhaps Tory had kicked up a fuss when he got home and he’d decided the whole thing wasn’t worth the hassle.

The evening passed with agonizing slowness. She couldn’t settle to anything. She was appalled how suicidal she felt. She couldn’t have got that hooked that quickly. This is only the beginning, he’d told her. A small dark stranger has entered your life. How could he hurt her like this? How could he reduce her to such ridiculous uncertainty and despair?

At midnight she took the dogs out for a last walk. As if to mock her, it was the most perfect evening, with a gold, almost full moon, with a hazy halo of apricot pink. Along the edge of the wood the huge Lawson cypresses rose like cathedral spires, taking on an almost sculptured quality. As she walked across gray, shaven lawns, past silent statues, the last of the daffodils gave a flicker of light. The reflection of the moon in the lake was rippled first by a wakeful carp, now by Badger drinking. Her shadow was tall and very black on the lawn. It was so light she could see the blue and green stones in her engagement ring. Was there after all to be no small escape, no respite from her marriage?

Despairing, she turned back. Glancing up at the golden, lit-up windows of her bedroom she could see the rose and yellow silk curtains of the huge four-poster in which she would soon lie alone. As she came into the house the telephone was ringing. After midnight, so it must be Rupert. He never had any sense of time. Steeling herself, she picked up the receiver.

“Helen! Can you talk? It’s Jake.”

She burst into tears. It was a minute before he could get a word in. “Hush. I’m sorry, pet. Please don’t cry; it breaks me up. I couldn’t ring before. Hardy cast himself this afternoon. Had the most frightful colic. The vet’s been here since two o’clock. He’s just finished operating. He’d swallowed a nail and we thought we’d lost him.”

“Oh God, that’s awful. Is he going to be okay?”

“He’s still out like a light; but the vet reckons he’ll pull through.”

“I’m so sorry. You must have been frantic.”

“I couldn’t get to a telephone. It’s in the tackroom and the vet and Fen were in Hardy’s box next door the whole time. Look, I can’t talk long; the vet’s still here, but I must see you tomorrow, if only for five minutes.”

“It’ll be hard for you to get away if he’s still sick. I’ll come over your way.”

“That would help and, pet, please don’t cry anymore.”

They met the next day, literally for a quarter of an hour.

Jake looked desperately tired; he hadn’t been to bed. Hardy was very shaky on his legs, he said, but well enough to bite the vet that morning, so it looked as if he would pull through. Watching his face as he talked about the horse, Helen felt deeply ashamed. He really loves him, she thought, as Rupert was incapable of loving a horse; in fact, anything. Last night he must have suffered just as much as she had waiting for him to ring, and she’d greeted him with hysterics.

They walked through the beech woods, breathing in the wild garlic, Wolf bounding ahead and Jake picking up the bluebells the dog had knocked over so Helen could take them home for a few more days of life.

They sat on a fallen log. Helen hung her head, clutching the bluebells. She’d put her hair up today. Jake slowly took out every hairpin so it cascaded down her back in a shining red mass.

“Don’t put it up anymore. It reminds me of what you were like before I started to”—he paused—“to know you.”

Then he said more briskly, “Look, we’ve got to get one thing straight. You’ve been married to a show jumper for quite long enough to know that things happen with horses, that it’s impossible even to say I’ll turn up or telephone at a particular time with a hundred percent certainty.”

“I know,” she said in a trembling voice, “but I’ve got so little self-confidence.”

“I know that,” he said, putting his hand under her chin and forcing it upwards. “And I want to give some back to you, but only if you give me a chance and realize from the start that if I ever don’t ring you, or don’t turn up, it’s because I can’t. Even though I was demented with worry over Hardy last night, a hundred times I nearly risked it and picked up the phone, which would have been madness, because any minute Tory could have picked it up in the kitchen. It’s difficult enough for us to find time to see each other without complicating things. All right, end of lecture, I’m not going to kiss you because I must have smoked a hundred cigarettes in the last twenty-four hours and I don’t want to put you off even before we’ve got started.”

“You couldn’t, truly you couldn’t.” She threw herself into his arms, half crying, half laughing.

He held her for a long time, not speaking, just stroking her hair. Then he said, “I’m off to the Bath and Wells tomorrow for three days. Why don’t you drive over? We could have dinner.”

“That would be just lovely.”

“Or I could book a room in one of the nearby hotels.”

He felt her stiffen.

“I don’t know.”

How could she explain that he was so desperately important to her that she couldn’t bear him to go off her so soon? She knew he would, once he realized how hopeless she was in bed.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know you well enough.”

He laughed. “There’s no more satisfying way of getting to know someone better.”

He rang the next day to tell her the name of the hotel and what time he thought he’d get there. He didn’t mean to bully her, but he felt privately it was vital to bed her as soon as possible. Not just because he wanted her like hell, but because he felt he’d never make any real progress in restoring her self-confidence until he got to grips with her particular hang-ups. On several occasions he’d heard gossip that she was frigid. He didn’t believe it. Frigid was a gross oversimplification, a term often used scornfully by men about women who no longer loved them physically. He believed Helen had been very badly frightened, but was not frigid.

He wished he could spend hours in her box, talking to her, soothing her, making her feel secure. But he had so little time. If he was going to be picked for Los Angeles he couldn’t let up for a second. And so he insisted on her meeting him that night at the hotel.

Helen sat alone in her bedroom at dusk. There was no wind. Outside, sheep were calling to lambs, baby house martins under the eaves were squeaking peremptorily for their parents to catch insects more quickly. The white cherries shone luminous in the half-light. The rank, peasant smell of wild garlic in the wood threatened to extinguish the sweet, delicate scent of the pink clematis, which swarmed round the bedroom window. Her pink track shoes were yellow with buttercup pollen, from wandering aimlessly through the fields all afternoon blowing dandelion clocks. This time tomorrow, she thought, I’ll be in bed with Jake.

She had never been so frightened in her life. She wished she could pray, but how could she ask God to help her be better in bed with someone who wasn’t her husband. She still hadn’t planned her alibi for tomorrow night. Charlene was already going out, so she’d have to ask one of the grooms to babysit. Always before, she’d left a telephone number where she could be reached, but she could hardly give them the number of the Nirvana Motel. And how was she going to smuggle her suitcase out to the car? She’d have to send the children out for yet another picnic.

Even worse, she’d been sitting on her bed, trimming her bush with nail scissors, when Charlene had walked in with some ironed clothes and Helen had hastily to pretend she was cutting her toenails. Anyway, what was the point of trimming her bush when the thing it covered was the trouble? Over and over again, Rupert’s words came back to haunt her: “You’re just like a bloody frozen chicken. Every time I put my hand in there I expect to pull out the giblets.”

And she was so thin now, it would be like going to bed with an Oxfam ad. She had a blinding headache so she took some of Jake’s medicine. Gradually the pain eased and she felt calmer. Maybe if he could cure her head, he could melt the ice of her frigidity as well.

But it was as if some malignant fate were at work. Just as she was leaving Penscombe the following day, she discovered she’d got her period. She’d been so preoccupied, she’d completely forgotten she was due.

She glanced at her watch. It was too late to ring Jake at the show. She could ring the Nirvana Motel and leave a message saying she couldn’t make it, but that left her with the appalling prospect of not seeing him. She’d have to go, perhaps have a quick drink — he wouldn’t want her in this state — and then come home.

It was so hot, she wore only a yellow sleeveless dress, yellow sandals, and a white silk scarf to keep her hair from tangling. As she drove very fast to meet him, she was so wracked with stomach cramps she hardly noticed the beautifully green bosky evening or the cow parsley frothing along the verges, or the smell of wild garlic, stronger than ever, like some rampant Dionysian presence pursuing her.

Waiting for Jake, she sat trembling in the hotel foyer, trying to make herself look as inconspicuous as possible. Pretending to read the evening paper, the hall porter watched her idly. You could always tell the first time they came here, he thought, they never stopped fiddling with their hair, squirting on perfume, glancing in their hand mirrors, then fearfully up at the door. Suppose he didn’t turn up; supposing someone they knew walked in. He’d even seen wives sitting here waiting for their lovers when their husbands walked in with someone else. He had another look at Helen. This one was a looker, all right, but she’d go through the ceiling with nerves in a minute. Oh, now she’d dropped her bag all over the floor. He moved forward to help as Helen fell on her knees, frantically scrabbling up banker’s cards, keys, loose change, lipsticks, and stray Lillets. At that moment, Jake sauntered through the door, his coat slung over his shoulder. He looked suntanned and happy and not remotely embarrassed.

“Hello, darling,” he said, pulling her to her feet, and kissing her on the cheek. “Did the babysitter arrive? I’ve had the most bloody day at the office. And I’m afraid my father rang to say he wants to come and stay next week.”

Just like any other married couple, thought Helen in admiration, and she had great difficulty not giggling when he signed them both in as Mr. and Mrs. Driffield.

“No, we’ll manage,” he said to the porter when he offered to carry their cases up to the fourth floor, adding in an undertone as they got into the lift, “I’m buggered if I’ll tip him for nothing.”

When he opened his case in the bedroom, all it contained was a toothbrush, toothpaste, a bottle of gin, and a large bottle of tonic.

“I think that covers all eventualities,” he said, as he fetched two glasses from the bathroom. Then, seeing the expression of misery on her face, he put them down on the dressing table and took her in his arms, trying to still the desperate trembling.

“Pet, please, you look as if you’re going to the electric chair.”

Helen burst into tears. It was some seconds before she could speak, and then he spoke for her. “You’ve got the curse.”

“How d’you know?” she said incredulously.

“I knew you had it coming. All week you were very edgy, and the day before yesterday your breasts were swollen and you had huge circles under your eyes. Fen always says just before the curse is the only time she has decent boobs.”

Helen was amazed that he should be so observant. Smoothing her hair very gently behind her ears, he removed her earrings. “Now, will you please stop crying. We don’t have to do a thing if you don’t want to.”

He poured half and half gin and tonic into the glasses and handed her one. “You got a pain?”

She nodded.

“Well gin’s the best for that. Take a big slug of it. Come on, lie down,” he said, removing her yellow high-heeled sandals. “Just relax. We’ve got hours.” He lay down beside her, draining half his drink.

“You don’t have to stay,” Helen stammered. “You might not want to — if there’s no sex.”

For a second his face blackened. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? D’you honestly think I only want you for sex?”

“I don’t know. It’s all Rupert wants.” Somehow the words spilled out before she could stop them.

“How many times,” he said wearily, “do I have to remind you, I’m not Rupert?”

“I know you’re not,” she said in a trembling voice, “but it wouldn’t make any difference if you were, or if I didn’t have a period. I’m no good to you. I’m hopeless at sex. I’m frigid.”

“Who said so?”

“Rupert did. He says I’m simply not interested in it.”

“Not interested in him, you mean.”

Despite the heat he could feel the gooseflesh on her arms. She was still shuddering violently, her teeth chattering.

He reached for her glass, making her take a big gulp, and then a second and a third.

“Come on, now, tell me all about it.” Then it all came pouring out — the humiliations, the taunts, Rupert’s always insisting on sex whenever he came home, despite the endless infidelities, then the clap and, finally, Samantha Freebody.

“That’s not all, is it?” said Jake. “What happened in Kenya?”

“How’d you know anything happened?” whispered Helen.

“Second sight. Come on. We can’t afford to have any secrets.”

He made her take another slug of gin.

“I can’t talk about it,” she whispered.

“Go on. It’ll help, I promise.”

So she told him, often crying so hard he couldn’t hear the words, about the foursome with Billy and Janey.

“Afterwards, Rupert made me feel as though I’d let him down, paid him the ultimate insult by not joining in. I couldn’t. I’m simply not made that way.”

Jake tipped her head back, swept the sodden hair away from her forehead, and dried the tears with his handkerchief.

She heaved a long sigh. “I’m so sorry to bore you.”

Jake held her tightly. “Poor baby, poor poor little baby. You did end up in the wrong yard, didn’t you?”

Her yellow dress had no zip, so Jake was able to slide it off over her head, before laying her back on the counterpane.

“Still got the pain?”

“A little.”

“I’ll bring you something for that next time. The gin’ll start working soon.”

Beneath the coffee-colored silk petticoat, he could feel her stomach muscles tightly knotted. But gently, as he stroked them with those magic hands that could calm the most frightened horse, she began to relax. She was so tired, after nights of not sleeping, that the singsong voice and the stroking hands and the gin were making her drowsy. Almost before she knew it, he had slid off her petticoat and unhooked her bra. Then he was kissing her mouth and, almost in spite of herself she was kissing him back, gently at first, then more and more fiercely, and still his hand continued to stroke her belly.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured.

“I’m so thin.”

“No, you’re perfect.”

After Tory’s bulk, he found Helen’s fragility incredibly erotic. For once he felt like a great hunk of man, all-powerful by comparison.

And she looked so unbelievably touching, with her damp cheeks and wide yellow eyes smudged with mascara, and her hair falling in a long red tangle over one shoulder. As he kissed her again, his hand slid downwards, caressing all the time, circling the pubic hair then sliding under the pants to find the clitoris, stroking it with the utmost delicacy. Helen tensed and then relaxed.

She’s not frigid, he thought in triumph. Slowly, slowly like a moth emerging from a chrysalis, she seemed to yield to him. Then she gave a deep sigh of contentment.

After a minute she opened her eyes and smiled.

“Frigid, eh?” he muttered into her hair.

“That was so lovely,” she gasped.

“Wasn’t it?” He grinned down at her, looking absurdly pleased with himself.

“But you haven’t had any sex at all,” she said, suddenly distressed.

“Doesn’t matter. I can wait till next time. It’ll be worth waiting for.”

The unselfishness, the insight, the kindness put the seal on her love for him.

“That was the most wonderful sex I’ve ever had,” she said.

“For me, too,” he said, kissing the hollows of her throat.

Three days later, he had her for the first time in a meadow on the edge of Bifield woods, near the old gypsy encampment, where his forefathers must often have taken his foremothers. A heavy shower of rain had flattened the grass for them and dispersed the regiments of insects, but it was still very hot. Their lovemaking was rapturous. They fitted together perfectly and despite anything he might say to the contrary to Helen, Jake experienced a feeling of pure triumph: that this was Rupert’s wife lying beneath him and reduced to a quivering jelly of ecstasy. Once again he had succeeded where Rupert had failed.

Meanwhile, in Rome, at almost the same time, Rupert Campbell-Black was experiencing an almost identical moment of triumph, as he lay on top of Amanda Hamilton for the first time. Rock Star had had a glorious double clear in the Nations’ Cup, making up for Fenella Maxwell’s indifferent form and clinching the victory for Great Britain. Today, Amanda was actually missing the final of the men’s doubles in order to play mixed singles with him. Full-breasted, narrow-hipped, long-legged, her body was superb for a woman of forty. Only a slight creping on thighs and breastbone betrayed her age. Her string of pearls was still round her neck. In out, in out, superbly in control, Rupert drove her towards orgasm.

Suddenly her face contorted with concentration, then she gave a cry of ecstasy.

“At last.”

“My darling,” said Rupert, smiling tenderly.

“I’ve suddenly worked it out,” said Amanda. “It was your cousin, Charlie Cameron, who was married to Rollo’s niece-in-law, Antonia Armitage. Before she was married to him, she was Antonia Luard.”

If it had been any other woman, Rupert would have hit her.