Riders

4

Sunday started badly for Tory Maxwell. Unable to sleep, she had heard the floorboards outside her room creaking as the colonel crept out at dawn. But he was back by twelve-thirty, spruced up in clean clothes, mustache brushed, and bearing a bottle of gin, and he and Molly Maxwell sat out on the terrace drinking dry martinis while Tory cooked the lunch.

“As I have to fork out so much for this cookery and typing course,” said Molly, “I might as well make use of her.”

“What a charming garden,” said the colonel.

“The lawn needs mowing,” hinted Molly Maxwell. “But I seem to have so little time this summer.”

The white sauce for the cauliflower went lumpy because Tory was trying, at the same time, to read a piece in one of the color supplements on deb’s delights. The piece included a profile of Rupert Campbell-Black. After three years in the Blues, he was now too busy making a name for himself as a show jumper to go to many deb parties, but whenever he did he caused a rumpus.

“You can say that again,” sighed Tory, adding more milk to the sauce. She had been a victim of Rupert’s bitchy asides on numerous occasions. He had got that blank stare of complete indifference to perfection. The sight of his cold, arrogant face looking out at her made her feel quite sick. Particularly as her mother thought he was absolutely charming and kept nagging Tory to ring him up and make sure he’d got the invitation and was coming to Tory’s drinks’ party.

Tory was dreading the party. She didn’t think anyone would come and she was sensitive enough to realize that, although some of the fathers and the young men flirted with her mother, the mothers thought her pushy and jumped up.

At one-thirty, although Fen still wasn’t back from the stables, they started lunch. Colonel Carter carved. Conditioned by wartime austerity, he cut very thin slices. Tory noticed he touched her mother’s hand when he passed her a plate. She knew they found her presence a strain. Her mother found fault with everything. The white sauce was too lumpy and thin, the meat overdone, and the roast potatoes soggy. Molly, who wanted the colonel to think she had an appetite like a sparrow, pushed hers to the side of her plate.

“I don’t mean to nag,” she said to Tory, “but one day you’ll get married and have to cook for some chap, and he’ll expect decent grub.”

Some hope, thought Tory. As she cleared away in an excess of misery, she ate the two roast potatoes her mother had rejected and two more left in the dish. When her mother came in, weighed down by the gravy boat, as an excuse to powder her nose in the kitchen mirror, Tory had to swallow frantically.

Halfway through the pudding, when Molly was grumbling that the meringue was just like toffee, Fen walked in with a filthy face and hands and the same shirt she’d been wearing the day before, so triggering off a storm of reproof which Fen accepted with equanimity. The colonel droned on about bridge.

“Jolly good roast potatoes,” said Fen. “Are there any more?”

“There were two in the dish,” said Molly.

Tory blushed. “I threw them away.”

“I bet you ate them,” snapped Molly. “Really, Tory. D’you want to look like a house for your drinks party?”

“Did you have a good ride, Fenella?” asked Colonel Carter.

“Not very,” said Fen. “Jake was in a foul temper.”

“Nothing new,” said Molly. “Would you like some Stilton, Bernard?”

“Hardly surprising,” said Fen, glaring at Colonel Carter. “Africa might have been ruined for life.”

“Shut up,” snapped her mother.

“Malise Gordon dropped in to see if Africa was all right, but Jake says both he and Sir William are after her. It’s a rotten shame. Jake’s worked so hard on her; no one gets her going better than he does. And he’s got the most awful lot to take out this afternoon — fat grown-ups who can’t ride, and in this heat, they’ve booked for a whole two hours. I’m going back to help him after lunch.”

“You are not,” said Molly Maxwell firmly. “You spend too much time hanging round that place. You’re coming out to eat with the Braithwaites.”

“Whatever for?” wailed Fen.

“Because they asked us.”

“Tory as well?”

“No. Tory’s got to do her homework and write her thank-you letters.”

“It’s not fair. I loathe Melanie Braithwaite. She’s a drip and she’s not my age.”

Molly Maxwell insisted on taking Fen with them, as otherwise she would have had to go back to the colonel’s house on the way home and spend an hour in bed with him. That was the tiresome thing about men, she thought. They always wanted bed all the time and she so much preferred the flirting and the wining and dining.

Tory watched Fen, scrubbed and mutinous in a new dress, being dragged off to the Braithwaites. She then wrote five thank-you letters in her round, careful hand, and then accepted four more invitations. Being fat and plain and no threat to prettier girls, and because many of the debs’ mothers had known and liked her father, she was asked to quite a lot of parties. Each one spelled disaster.

I’m like a terrible first night, but first nights are lucky enough to fold, while I have to flop on forever, she said to herself.

Letters finished, she started on her homework, gazing at a page of shorthand until the heavy and light lines swam before her eyes.

“We are in receipt of your favor, yours faithfully, yours truly,” she wrote.

Oh, she’d be faithful and true to Jake. Then she wrote “Jake” in shorthand, the dark backward sloping J and light horizontal K on the line, with two little commas underneath to show it was a proper name. Then she wrote “Lovell”; it was the same sign as Lovely. He was lovely, too. She tried to visualize his face, but she could only picture his body and a blur. She felt impossibly restless. The telephone interrupted her daydreams; perhaps by a miracle it might be him, but it was only her mother saying that the Braithwaites wanted to play bridge and had pressed them to stay on for an early supper, so they’d be home at about ten, and could Tory do Fen’s packed lunch and see that she had a clean tunic and leotard for tomorrow? Poor trapped Fen, thought Tory.

The evening stretched ahead of her. Jake would be back from his ride now and settling the horses. The longing became too much for her. She’d nip down to the stables on the excuse that Fen might have left her whip behind.

Quickly, she washed her hair. Her mother liked it drawn back from her forehead, but today she was jolly well going to let it flop loose. If only she had a slimming black dress, but her mother said she was too young and anyway she couldn’t go down to the stables dressed as though for a funeral. Ponchos were fashionable; as if they covered all the spare tires; but when they slid down on the shoulders they showed her bra straps, and if she didn’t wear a bra she flopped all over the place. If only she had a waist, she could wear a long skirt to cover her fat legs, but it made her look like a barrel. In the end she gave up and wore a navy blue T-shirt outside her jeans. Her hand was shaking so much she couldn’t do up the clasp of her pearls, so she left them off. In a fit of loathing, she drenched herself in her mother’s scent and, as it was drizzling slightly, borrowed her mother’s white trench coat, with the belt trendily done up at the back. It didn’t matter if it didn’t meet over her bust.

As she passed the church, people were coming out of Evensong, putting up umbrellas. On the village green, cricketers huddled disconsolately into the pavilion, hoping the apricot glow on the horizon meant that the rain was about to stop and they could finish their game.

The Brook Farm Riding School tackroom was overcrowded but very tidy — saddles and bridles occupying one wall, food bins another, and medicines, principally Jake’s gypsy remedies, yet another. Room had also been found for a few faded rosettes and old calendars. The order book was open. Sunday, full of bookings, had been crossed off. Monday was comparatively empty, except for a group of children who wanted to ride after school. Jake sat on a rickety chair, cleaning a bridle and reading the color supplement piece on Rupert Campbell-Black. The bastard was obviously going to make it in show jumping, just when Jake’s world seemed to be falling apart, throwing him straight down to the bottom of the ladder, without even being within clutching distance of the first rung. The two-hour ride had really taken it out of him; his head was pounding and every muscle in his body felt bruised by the fall yesterday.

After a night’s rest and Jake’s marshmallow ointment, Africa’s lameness had nearly gone. Mrs. Wilton had gloatingly told him of Malise’s interest that morning and Sir William had just rung again. No one could do anything about it, as Bobby Cotterel was in France till the end of the week, but it was only a matter of time.

He heard a step and, looking up through the dusty cobwebbed window, saw Fen’s fat sister approaching. That was all he needed. Now she was stopping to comb her hair. Then her great blushing face, like a dutch cheese, appeared round the door.

“Yes?” he said bleakly.

“Did, I mean, I was wondering,” she stammered, “if Fen left her whip here?” The feebleness of the excuse made her blush even more. “It was — er — one our grandmother — gave her for Christmas, so she was worried.”

“I haven’t seen it. She’s so scatty, she probably dropped it on the way home.”

How pinched and dark under the eyes he looked, thought Tory, the red check shirt and the black hair only emphasizing his pallor. Sympathy overcame her shyness. “I’m so sorry about people wanting to buy Africa. Fen told me.”

Jake nodded. She shifted from one foot to another and Jake was enveloped in a waft of Molly’s scent, which did not evoke happy memories.

“Is her leg better?”

“She’s all right.”

Why was she hanging round like a great blancmange? Getting up, he ran the sponge under the tap and plunged it into the saddle soap, adding: “The whip — it isn’t here.”

Tory gazed at her feet, twisting a button on Mrs. Maxwell’s mac. Then she noticed what he was reading.

“Oh, there’s Rupert Campbell-Black. Horrible man.”

Jake looked up, slightly more accommodating. Tory blushed again.

“I’m sorry. Is he a friend of yours?”

There was a pause.

“I hate his guts,” said Jake.

“Oh, so do I,” said Tory. “He’s so vicious and contemptuous and, well, bloody-minded. How did you come across him?”

“We were at school together.”

Tory looked amazed.

“Prep school,” added Jake. “I was a day boy. Mum was the cook, so the headmaster let me in free.”

“Oh, goodness, he must have been an absolutely poisonous small boy.”

Taking a nail, Jake pushed out the saddle soap that had got stuck in the cheek-strap holes.

“Poisonous,” he agreed. “He made Eichmann look like a fairy godmother.”

“He’s so rich,” said Tory, “that lots of mothers are after him, but he’s only after one thing.”

“What’s that?” said Jake, to embarrass her.

Tory swallowed. “Well, bed and things. He’s awfully promiscuous.” She pronounced it promise-kew-us. “And he never answers invitations; just rolls up with his current girlfriend and leaves after half an hour if he’s bored. He let off thunderflashes at Queen Charlotte’s. Lady Surrey was livid.”

“He obviously hasn’t changed,” said Jake. “I should have thought Harrow or the army might have knocked it out of him.”

“I think it made him worse,” sighed Tory. “He gets a little gang of cronies round him and manages to be even nastier.”

Nothing unites people like a good bitch. Jake let her rattle on as he put the bridle together again and hung it up. Then he went to reapply Africa’s poultice. Tory followed him, longingly watching the tender way his hands ran over the mare, caressing her polished shoulder and her sleek veined legs. Africa nuzzled him, breathing through her velvet nostrils with love and trust.

“She’s so beautiful,” said Tory wistfully.

The swelling had practically disappeared. Jake redid the bandages and readjusted her summer rug. He wished Tory would buzz off and leave him alone to nurse his misery. As he came out of the stable, shutting the door behind him, the rain stopped. He looked at her round, anxious face, her clean flopping hair and enormous bosom straining against the dark blue T-shirt. There was kindness in her eyes. He looked at his watch.

“Let’s go and have a drink.”

Tory looked at him stupidly.

“A drink,” he repeated mockingly. “The pubs are open. You’re eighteen, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course I am. Gosh, thanks awfully.”

As they walked to the pub, Jake noticed the hawthorns were rusting slightly but still smelt like fresh soap, and the wet, hot nettles gave off a heady blackcurrant scent. The cricketers were running out onto the pitch, anxious to get all the game they could into the last half hour.

It was the first time Tory had been taken by a man into a pub; in fact, the first time a man had voluntarily asked her out at all. My first date, she thought excitedly. An old woman was buying Guinness and putting it in a black canvas bag. In the corner, two men with sun-reddened faces, their wives wearing white cardigans and lots of cheap jewelry, had decided to break their journey on the way back to London and were drinking Pimm’s. What on earth was she going to drink? She hated beer, her mother said gin and orange was common, and she knew Buck’s Fizz involved champagne, which was expensive. Her mind was a complete blank. She looked desperately around.

“I’d like a Pimm’s,” she said.

Jake sighed. He’d hoped she’d drink something cheap, like cider, or better still, orange juice. That meant he’d have to have beer instead of the double whisky he so badly needed.

Tory sat down, the furry moquette of the bench seat scratching her thighs. The pub was cool and dark and restful inside; the side door had been fastened back, and outside was a little garden full of wallflowers and irises and pale pink clematis scrambling over some rustic poles.

At first, the conversation was very stilted, but after a couple of Pimm’s, Tory’s tongue was loosened and suddenly, like a washing machine that’s been tugged open halfway through its cycle, everything came gushing out. What a disaster she was at dances, how she hated her finishing school, how ghastly Colonel Carter was, and how she couldn’t get on with her mother.

“Mummy likes Fen, because she’s pretty and funny and because she’s so young, but I’m an embarrassment to her and living proof that she’s over forty-five.”

“She made you go to all these dances because she’s looking for a husband,” said Jake. “D’you think she’s found one?”

“Oh, I hope not,” said Tory. “He’s so phony. He was hanging a picture for Mummy the other day and hit his thumb with the hammer and,” she went even redder, “he said booger instead of bugger.”

Jake hadn’t even brushed his hair before he came out, but it fell into place automatically. Tory ached to touch it. She felt as if someone had bewitched her, as if she was drowning and there was no coming up even for the third time. In a panic, she noticed he’d finished his drink. She’d been reading about Women’s Lib and someone called Germaine Greer. It was all right for women to buy drinks these days. She got a fiver out of her bag and handed it to Jake.

“Go on,” she said with a giggle, “we’re all equal.”

Jake shrugged and went to the bar. The cricketers had finished their game and flocked into the pub, and the barmaid was serving them with huge jugs of beer to pass around, so it was a few minutes before Jake got served. Tory sat in a haze of happiness; the longer he took, the longer they’d have. She looked at him slumped against the bar. He was so thin beside the beefy cricketers; she wished she could feed him up; she was sure he wouldn’t grumble about overdone beef and soggy potatoes. On the door near the Ladies’, a group of men were playing darts. Oh, dear, Cupid had scored a double top, straight into her heart.

Jake returned with the drinks and a packet of crisps.

“I don’t know why I’ve been telling you all these things,” said Tory. “You’re the one who needs cheering up. But you’re such a good listener.”

“I get plenty of practice. When you’ve got to take stupid women on long rides you develop a listener’s face. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re listening.”

Tory’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” she said humbly, starting to eat the crisps. “I didn’t mean to bore you.”

“You haven’t,” he said irritably.

“Who taught you to ride?” she asked.

“My father. He put me on a pony almost before I could walk.”

“How long ago did he die?” said Tory.

“I don’t know that he’s dead.”

Tory looked startled.

“He was a gypsy. He met my mother when he was hop-picking on part-time work. Her father was the keeper at the big house. He tried to settle down with my mother and get a steady job, but it was like caging a lark. One day, the wanderlust became too strong, so he walked out when I was about eight years old.”

“You must have missed him.”

“I did.” The third pint of beer had loosened his tongue and the world seemed a more hospitable place.

“So did my mother. She cried a lot, behind locked doors, and my grandfather went through all the photograph albums cutting my father’s picture out of the family groups.”

“So you might suddenly bump into him one day?”

“I doubt it,” said Jake, although he never passed a gypsy encampment or a fairground without having a look.

“Was he very good-looking?”

“My mother thought so. Two years after he left she waved me off to school and said she’d be in to cook the school dinner later. Then she put some cushions in front of the gas oven and that was that. All I remember is that all the masters and boys were particularly put out because we were supposed to be having treacle pudding that day.”

He suddenly glared at Tory, whose eyes had filled with tears. What the hell was he telling the soppy cow all this for? He hadn’t talked about his mother for years.

Tory couldn’t bear it. He’d lost his mother and his father and now he was going to lose Africa.

“Do you think Bobby Cotterel will really sell her?” she asked.

“ ’Course he will; doesn’t give a damn about her. He was grumbling the other day because Mrs. Wilton was threatening to put up the livery fees.”

The pub was filling up now and becoming noisy and clamorous. Tory looked at an obscene, pink pile of sausages, greasily glinting under a cover on the bar. How lovely to see food and for once not feel hungry.

“What will you do if Africa goes?”

“Get another job.”

“Around here?”

“No, up north probably. I doubt if Mrs. Wilton will give me a reference.”

“Oh, you mustn’t,” said Tory, aghast. “I mean — it’s so cold up north. I must go to the loo.”

She had difficulty negotiating the way to the Ladies’, cannoning off tables and cricketers like a baby elephant.

Oh, hell, thought Jake, as she narrowly missed a flying dart, she’s pissed.

Tory collapsed onto the loo and realized with the shock from the cold slab under her bottom that the seat cover was still down. She lifted it up. If I can manage to go on peeing for over twenty seconds, Jake will take me out again, she said to herself. By wriggling she made it last for twenty-two.

When she found she had put her bag in the basin and washed her hands over it, she realized she was very tight. She couldn’t bear Jake to go away. She pressed her hot forehead against the mirror. “Gypsy Jake,” she murmured to herself.

Then it became plain that she must buy Africa. She had the money. Jake could pay her back, or she could be the owner and he the jockey. She had visions of herself in a big primrose yellow hat, leading Africa into the winner’s enclosure with two mounted policemen on either side. She was a bit hazy about what went on in show jumping. She looked in the telephone directory, but there was no Bobby Cotterel. He must be ex-directory; but the Mayhews had had the house before Bobby Cotterel. She spent ages finding the M’s. They did come after L, didn’t they? Oh God, the page was missing, No, it was the first number on the next page. Sir Edward Mayhew, Bandit’s Court. Her hand was shaking so much she could hardly dial the number.

“Hello,” said a brusque voice.

She was so surprised she couldn’t speak.

“If that’s burglars,” said the voice, “I’m here plus fifteen guard dogs and you can fuck off.”

Tory gasped. “No, it isn’t,” she said. “Is that Mr. Cotterel?” She must speak very slowly and try to sound businesslike.

Jake, having finished his glass of beer and ordered a large whisky, gazed at his reflection, framed by mahogany and surrounded by upside-down bottles in the mirror behind the bar. Totally without vanity, he looked in mirrors only for identity. He had spent too many Sundays at the children’s home, with scrubbed face and hair plastered down with water in the hope of charming some visitor into fostering or adopting him, to have any illusions about his attractiveness.

“Come here often?” said the barmaid, who worked in the pub on Sunday to boost her wages and in the hope of finding a new boyfriend.

“No,” said Jake.

He glanced at his watch. Tory had been away for nearly a quarter of an hour now. He hoped the stupid cow hadn’t passed out. He’d need a forklift truck to carry her home. He went out to look for her. She was standing by the telephone in the passage with her shoes off.

“That’s fine,” she was saying in a careful voice.

If Bobby Cotterel had not come back a week early from the South of France because it was so expensive, and been promptly faced with a large income-tax bill, he might not have been in such a receptive mood. Africa troubled his conscience, like his daughter’s guinea pig, whose cage, now she’d gone back to boarding school, needed cleaning out. He was not an unkind man. This girl sounded a “gent,” and was so anxious to buy Africa for four times the price he’d paid for her, and he wouldn’t have to pay any commission to Mrs. Wilton.

“The livery fee’s paid up for another three weeks,” he said.

“I’ll take that over,” said Tory.

“No, I’ll be happy to stand it to you, darling.”

“Can we come round and give you the check now?”

“Of course. Come and have a drink, but for Christ’s sake don’t tell anyone I’m back.”

Tory had had her first date, and been called darling and invited for a drink by Bobby Cotterel.

She turned towards Jake with shining eyes.

If she lost a couple of hundredweight, she’d be quite pretty, he thought sourly. What the hell had she got to look so cheerful about?

“You okay?”

“Wonderful. I’ve just bought Africa.”

“Whatever for? You don’t like horses.”

“For you, of course. You can pay me back slowly, a pound a week, or we can go into partnership. I’ll own her, you can ride her.”

A dull red flush had spread across Jake’s face.

“You’re crazy. How much did you pay?”

“I offered eight hundred and he accepted. He’s just had a bill for his income tax. I said we’d take the check around now, before Mrs. Wilton starts blabbing about Sir William and Malise Gordon.”

“Have you got that amount in the bank?”

“Oh, yes, I got £5,000 on my birthday, and lots of shares.”

“Your mother’ll bust a gut.”

“Hooray,” said Tory.

“She’ll say I got you plastered.”

“No, you did not. I did it all off my own bat, like those cricketers in the bar.”

She cannoned off a hatstand as she went out of the door.

Jake was finding it impossible to clamber out of the pit of despair so quickly. He might at least say thank you, thought Tory.

They walked to Bobby Cotterel’s house and handed over the check. Armed with a receipt, he walked her home, both of them following the white lines in the middle of the road. Half-shafts of moonlight found their way through the beech trees on either side of the road, shimmering on their dark gray-green trunks. Fortunately the house was still dark.

“Oh good,” said Tory, “I can put back Mummy’s mac before she finds out it’s missing. I’m going to London tomorrow. I’ve got two awful drinks’ parties, then a dance on Wednesday, but I’ll be home on Thursday. Mummy and Colonel Carter are going out to dinner. I’ve got to babysit. Perhaps you could come around, after they’ve gone out, and we can decide what to do.”

“I think it may be a bit more problematical than that,” said Jake.

He took the key, opened the door for her, and turned on the hall light. Oh God, thought Tory miserably, there was Fen’s whip lying on the hall table, beside a wilting bowl of pink peonies. Jake turned to her, a slight smile touching his lips. Was it contempt, or pity, or mockery?

“Thank you very much,” he said, and was gone.

Fighting back her disappointment that he hadn’t attempted to kiss her, Tory then reflected that she would probably have tasted of onion-flavored crisps.