Riders

5

The drinks’ parties on Monday and Tuesday were bad enough for Tory. But the dance on Wednesday was a nightmare. At the dinner party beforehand, some sadist had seated her next to Rupert Campbell-Black. On his right was a ravishing girl named Melanie Potter, whom all the girls were absolutely furious about. Melanie had upstaged everyone by turning up, several weeks after the season began, with a suntan acquired from a month in the Bahamas.

Rupert had arrived late, parking his filthy Rolls-Royce, with the blacked-out windows, across the pavement. He then demanded tomato ketchup in the middle of dinner, and proceeded to drench his sea trout with it, which everyone except his hostess and Tory thought wildly funny. Naturally he’d ignored Tory all the way through dinner. But there was something menacing about that broad black back and beautifully shaped blond head, a totally deceptive languor concealing the rampant sexuality. She wondered what he would have done if she’d tapped him on the shoulder and told him she was the owner of an £800 horse.

Then they went on to the dance and she somehow found herself piled into Rupert’s Rolls-Royce, driving through the laburnumand lilac-lined streets of Chelsea. She had to sit on some young boy’s knee, trying to put her feet on the ground and all her weight on them. But she still heard him complaining to Rupert afterwards that his legs were completely numb and about to drop off.

The hostess was kind, but too distraught about gate-crashers to introduce Tory to more than two young men, who both, as usual, danced one dance, then led her back and propped her against a pillar like an old umbrella, pretending they were just off to get her a drink or had to dance with their hostess. Thinking about Jake nonstop didn’t insulate her from the misery of it all. It made it almost worse. Obviously it was impossible that he should ever care for her. If no one else wanted her, why should he? Feeling about as desirable as a Christmas tree on Twelfth Night, she was sitting by herself at the edge of the ballroom when a handsome boy sauntered towards her. Reprieve at last.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“Oh, yes, please,” said Tory.

“If no one’s using this,” he said, “could I possibly borrow it?” and, picking up the chair beside her, he carried it back across the room and sat down on the edge of the yelling group around Rupert Campbell-Black. As soon as they got to the dance, Rupert had abandoned his dinner party and, taking Melanie, had gone off to get drunk with his inseparable chum, Billy Lloyd-Foxe, who was in another party. Now he was sitting, cigar drooping out of his handsome, curling mouth, wearing Melanie’s feather boa, while she sat on his knee, shrieking with laughter, with the pink rose from his buttonhole behind her ear.

Later Billy Lloyd-Foxe passed Tory on the way to the lavatory and on the way back, struck by conscience, asked her to dance. She liked Billy; everyone did; she liked his turned-down eyes and his broken nose and his air of life being a little bit too much for him. But everything was spoilt when Rupert and Melanie got onto the floor: Rupert, his blue eyes glittering, swinging Melanie’s boa round like the pantomime cat’s tail, had danced around behind Tory’s back, pulling faces and puffing out his cheeks to look fat like Tory and make Billy laugh.

Tory escaped to the loo, shaking. She found her dinner party hostess’s daughter repairing her makeup and chuntering with a couple of friends over the effrontery of Melanie Potter.

“Her mother did it on purpose. What chance have any of us got against a suntan like that? She turned up at the Patelys’ drinks’ party wearing jeans. Lady Surrey was absolutely livid.”

At that moment Melanie Potter walked in and went over to the mirror, where she examined a huge love bite on her shoulder and tried to cover it with powder.

“You haven’t got anything stronger, have you?” she asked Tory.

Humbly, Tory passed her a stick of Erace.

“Oh, how marvelous; that’s amazingly kind. You were on Rupert’s other side at dinner, weren’t you?” she added, wincing as she blotted out the red oval of tooth marks. “Isn’t he a sod? I’ve just emptied a bucket of ice over him for biting me.”

She handed back the Erace to Tory and combed her platinum blond hair more seductively over one eye. “He and Billy are taking me to Tramps now; why don’t you come too? David Bailey’s going to be there. Rupe wants him to photograph me.”

And when Tory refused, insisting she was going home now because she had a headache, she only just persuaded Melanie not to make Rupert give her a lift home.

Unfortunately, Tory found a taxi all too easily. When she got back to the flat, which Molly Maxwell had borrowed from a friend for the summer, it was only eleven-thirty. She found her mother and the colonel on the sofa. The colonel was wearing a lot more lipstick than her mother.

Tory went to her room and as quietly as possible cried herself to sleep. She woke, as she had on the last four mornings, with a terrible sense of unease — that her mother would find out about Africa.

She came home in the evening to babysit and went up to her room to change and have a bath. It was still ludicrously hot.

“Don’t use all the water,” called out her mother. Through the crack in the door Tory could see her lying on her peach chintz counterpane, rigid under a face pack.

Tory was undressed down to her bra and panties, and hoping, as she’d hardly eaten since her evening with Jake, that she might have lost a bit of weight, when she heard the telephone ring and her mother answering it in a self-consciously seductive voice: “Hello.” Then, more matter-of-fact, “Oh hello, Mrs. Wilton, how are you?”

There was a long pause, then Molly said, “No, it couldn’t possibly be her. Tory’s terrified of horses. Maxwell’s quite a common name, you know. Well, just wait while I shut the door.”

Tory felt as though icy water was being dripped slowly down her spine. She was tempted to climb out of the window down the clematis; instead she got into bed, pulled the duvet over her head, and started to shake.

Five minutes later her mother barged in, ripping the bedclothes off the bed. She was still wearing her face pack like some malignant mime of catastrophe. At first she was so angry she couldn’t get the words out.

“Did you or did you not ring up Bobby Cotterel on Sunday and buy Africa?” she sputtered.

“I don’t know what you mean,” mumbled Tory.

“Don’t lie to me; who put you up to it?”

“No one. It’s my money. Why shouldn’t I buy a horse if I want to?”

“And I can’t afford to buy little Fen a little pony.” Molly spat out the “little.” “Get up, you fat lump.” She reached forward and tugged Tory to her feet by her hair.

“It was that little swine, Jake Lovell, wasn’t it?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“ ’Course it was.” Molly Maxwell was shaking Tory by the shoulders until she thought her head would snap off. “He’s obsessed with that horse, spends all his time on it. But he won’t much longer,” she added, her eyes suddenly lighting up with venom. “Mrs. Wilton’s just given him the sack.”

“Oh, no,” said Tory, aghast. “It was nothing to do with him. I rang Bobby Cotterel. I did everything myself.”

“Why?” hissed Molly, powder from her drying, cracking face pack drifting down to the floor. “You’ve got a crush on that boy. I saw you mooning over him on Saturday at the show. That’s why you’ve been such a colossal flop at all those dances, not trying with all those suitable young men, because you’ve got hot pants for some common stable boy. Well, you won’t get him by buying him expensive presents.”

Tory couldn’t bear to look at her mother anymore, the hideous contrast with the twitching, disintegrating white face and the angry red turkey neck. She gazed down at her mother’s feet, noticing the newly painted scarlet nails, cotton wool keeping each toe apart.

“He’s a friend,’ she sobbed. “Nothing more.”

“Well, he’s not having Africa. He’s going back.”

“He’s a she and she’s not.”

“Sir William and Colonel Gordon are both prepared to top your offer. I’m going around to see Bobby Cotterel to make him tear up that check.”

Molly pictured herself, in a new dress, rather low cut, driving up to Bobby Cotterel’s house and pleading with him.

“My daughter’s not responsible for her actions.”

And Bobby Cotterel, who she suspected was between marriages, would pour her a stiff drink and comfortingly say, “Tell me all about it, preferably over dinner.”

She was brought back from her reverie by Tory sobbing. “It’s my money and I can do what I like with it.”

“And how are you going to look after a horse?” hissed Molly. “It can’t live in the potting shed, and now Jake Lovell’s lost his job, he’ll be moving on.”

Tory was in such despair she hardly heard her mother’s tirade about all the expense and trouble she’d gone to to give Tory a season until, catching sight of her face which resembled a dried-up riverbed, in the mirror, Molly realized she had better get her pack off. Tugging open the door, she found Fen, who’d been listening avidly at the keyhole and nearly fell into the room on top of her. Fen gave a giggle and, waving in time with a half-eaten frozen lolly, started singing: “My mother said that I never should play with the gypsies in the wood.”

“Shut up,” screeched Molly. “It’s your fault too for always hanging round the stables. You’re not going down there tonight. Go to your room, do your homework, and don’t talk to Tory. I must ring Bernard. I can’t possibly go out and play bridge after all this.”

“Want to bet?” said Fen, as her mother went into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Immediately they heard the ping of the telephone, followed at intervals by other pings.

Molly couldn’t get through to Bobby Cotterel but, if she couldn’t get him to tear up the check, there was always the possibility of reselling Africa to Sir William or Malise.

That had possibilities, too, she reflected. She’d like to meet Sir William again and for Malise Gordon she still had the hankering of the summarily rejected. She saw herself with less makeup and a higher neckline than for Bobby Cotterel, and Malise’s hawklike face softening, as he took her hand, saying: “When I first met you at Bilborough, I thought you were just a lovely face.”

After all, Colonel Carter hadn’t popped the question; it would be good to make him jealous.

As Tory predicted, the colonel talked her mother into going out for dinner.

“Bernard’s friends have gone to a lot of trouble cooking and they’d be so disappointed if we cried off at the last moment,” she told Tory coldly, as if she was making a supreme effort to go out. Not that she’d enjoy a second of it, with all this worry (as well as Bernard’s friends’ cooking) on her plate.

Tory was still sitting on her bed, in her bra and panties, as if turned to stone.

“Do you hear me, Tory? I’m putting you on your honor not to talk to Fen and not to telephone anyone or put a foot outside the house while I’m away.”

She said it three times, but she wasn’t sure it had registered.

Jake sat in the tackroom, chain-smoking, and watching the moon peering in through the window. Round and pink, with turned-down eyes in an anxious chubby face, it reminded him of Tory. Poor kid, he hoped that cow of a mother wasn’t giving her too bad a time. He’d like to have got in touch with her to find out the score, but he didn’t dare ring the house. Africa was much better; he’d turned her out for a few hours and just laid down thick clean straw in her loose box next to the tackroom. He was just going to fetch her when he heard a step outside, and Tory came timidly through the door. Christ, she looked all blotchy like a swede that’s been beaten up by the frost. The next minute, she was sobbing in his arms.

“I’m so sorry I got you sacked.”

“Doesn’t matter. I was going to leave anyway. Plenty more fishwives in the sea.”

“But you haven’t anywhere to go.”

“Mrs. Wilton can’t chuck me out till she’s found someone else; she’s too idle, and it’s too late to put an ad in Horse and Hound this week, so I’ve got a bit of time. Did your mother give you a hard time?”

Tory nodded. “She’s determined to give Africa back, or sell her.”

She was shaking so violently, Jake sat her down on the rickety chair and made her a strong cup of coffee with four tablespoons of sugar. She didn’t normally take sugar, but she found the sweetness comforting.

Jake lounged against the food bin, watching her.

“Look,” he said, dropping his half-smoked cigarette down the sink, “why did you buy me that horse?”

Tory lowered her eyes. “Because I like you,” she whispered.

Jake took her hands, which felt damp and chilled.

“How much?” he said gently.

Tory glanced up. He was so beautiful with his thin watchful face and his glinting earrings.

“Oh, so very much,” she said.

And suddenly, like a horse that’s been locked up in a stable for a long time and sees the door opening onto a huge field of clover, the idea that he’d been battling against all week overwhelmed him. A rich wife, that’s what he needed. Not very rich, but enough to buy him a few horses and give him a start, so he could get to the top and wipe that self-satisfied smile off Rupert Campbell-Black’s face.

And rather in the way a swimmer holds his nose and plunges into the water and finds it pleasantly warm, his arms were suddenly full of Tory. She was kissing him, sucking at him like a great vacuum cleaner — Christ, she’d pull his teeth out soon — and her arms had him in a vise and the huge friendly breasts were pressing against him.

“Oh, Jake, oh, Jake.”

Without fumbling, he undid the buttons of her dress and switched off the light, and they were on the bed of deep clean straw, with the light of the moon now filtering in through the skylight. He unfastened her bra and the splendid breasts overflowed, soft and sweet-swelling, like a river bursting its dam.

For a small, slight man, Jake was sexually well endowed, but he spent enough time fingering a spot which Tory afterwards discovered was her clitoris, and she was so slippery with longing that she hardly felt any pain after that first sharp thrust inside her. She’d always heard it was awful the first time, but despite the scratching of the straw on her bare back she felt only ecstasy.

“Now I know why it’s called a loose box,” said Jake, extracting himself and wiping her with a handful of hay from the rack.

“Any minute Africa’ll wander in and say, who’s been sleeping in my bed,” said Tory with a giggle.

“Not much sleeping,” said Jake.

He rested his head on her breasts. Actually she was much less fat without her clothes on; rather splendid, in fact.

“I didn’t hurt you too much?”

“No, no. It was lovely.”

“And you do like me?” he said.

Tory nodded in the dark, then kissed him passionately, adoringly uncritical, like a dog greeting a returning master.

“Enough to marry me?”

Tory gasped, and stopped kissing him.

“I know I can make big money out of horses, once I get started,” Jake said. “I just need a break.”

“I’ll help you,” said Tory in excitement. “I’ve got £5,000 a year.” Admittedly a lot of that had gone on Africa and been given to her mother for new clothes and the cocktail party. But if she married Jake, she wouldn’t have to go to her own cocktail party or to any more dances.

Five thousand a year, thought Jake. That must mean at least £100,000 in the bank. If only he could get his hands on that, they could buy a place and a dozen horses.

“We’ve got to find somewhere to live,” he said. “There’s no point in getting anywhere too small. We need stables and at least fourteen acres; the house needn’t be big.”

“I could paint it,” said Tory.

“And I could build the jumps,” said Jake.

She could feel him hot with excitement beside her.

“The only trouble is that I’ve only got about £1,500 in the bank at the moment. That won’t buy us a house, and everything else is tied up in trust till I’m twenty-one.”

Back came the black gloom, the pit, the despair; the stable door was locked and bolted on him again. It wasn’t going to be any good after all. Jake slumped back on the straw.

Then he realized that Tory was full of plans to break the trust.

“The capital’s mine. After all, Daddy left it to me. It’s just sitting there, and there’s a whole lot more to come when Granny dies.”

It was as though she was talking about having a good crop of runner beans in the garden and another crop coming up in a few months.

“I can’t just take your money,” he said.

“Of course you can,” she said. “I’m only crying because I’m so happy. We’ll go and talk to Granny Maxwell. She’ll help us.”

They tried to keep their visit to Granny Maxwell secret. Tory arranged to go and see her the following Saturday. Alison, the stable girl, would lend them her car to drive up to Warwickshire. Molly, however, distrusting Tory’s almost too passive acquiescence, guessed something was up and intercepted a letter from Tory to Jake which fell out of Fen’s pocket on the way to the stables.

The letter spoke of them marrying, as well as the visit to Granny Maxwell, and the scenes that followed were terrible. Molly’s hysteria knew no bounds. How could Tory be ungrateful and stupid enough to throw herself away on this penniless, illegitimate nobody? In fact, Molly suddenly realized that she would no longer have her daughter as an unpaid babysitter, cook, cleaner, shopper, and errand runner. She would have no one on whom to vent her rage, to grumble to and about, no one so easy to cadge money off. She was in danger of losing her whipping boy and she didn’t like it one bit.

She dispatched a reluctant Colonel Carter to have a blimp-to-man talk with Jake. But, as Jake saw the colonel as that monster who’d nearly destroyed Africa, the meeting wasn’t a success. “Dumb insolence” were the colonel’s words for it. “Fellow just gazed out of the window and read the paper upside down. Anyway, how can you expect a chap who wears earrings and hair over his collar to see reason?” Molly felt the colonel had failed her. Malise Gordon would have had much more success.

In the face of Tory’s intransigence, Molly buried her pride and rang Granny Maxwell, her ex-mother-

in-law, whom she’d always hated and suspected of plotting against her.

“Yes, I can see he doesn’t sound very suitable,” said Granny Maxwell, “but I prefer to judge for myself. Tory is bringing him down to meet me on Saturday.”

And Molly, for once curbing the fountain of invective surging up inside her, felt silenced and snubbed.

Fen, although horrified at dropping the letter, was thoroughly overexcited by the whole thing.

“I wish I was old enough to marry him. You are lucky, Tory. Have you mated with him yet? I can’t think why Mummy minds so much about his being intermediate.”

The heatwave continued, making the long drive up to Warwickshire sweaty and unpleasant. The sun blazed down on the top of the car, until Tory longed to escape down some woodland glade or picnic in a field by a winding river. The white chestnut candles lit up the valley, the bluebells making an exquisite contrast to the saffron of the young oaks. Cow parsley rampaged along every verge, but Jake was not interested in scenery. He seemed to find Alison’s car difficult to drive and kept grinding the gears and stopping in fits and starts. Probably hasn’t had much practice, thought Tory, watching his bitten-nail hands clenching the wheel. He answered all her questions in monosyllables, so she fell silent. She was dreading the meeting with her grandmother, who could be very rude and difficult. She couldn’t see Jake getting on with her if he was in this mood. And if she won’t help us, thought Tory in panic, perhaps he won’t want to marry me after all. Then again, what did she know about this strange taciturn young man with whom she was hoping to spend the rest of her life? At least she’d shed nine pounds since she met him, and now could get easily into a size sixteen skirt.

Dozing, then waking up, she realized they’d just gone through Cirencester. She looked at the map. “Aren’t we a little off course?”

“No,” said Jake curtly, putting his foot on the accelerator.

Climbing to the top of a very steep hill, he pulled into the side of the road, saying: “Get out for a minute.”

They had a magical view across the valley to where a golden-gray manor house lay dreaming against its pillow of beech woods. In front was lush, stream-laced parkland dotted with big bell-shaped trees, under which horses sought the shade, swishing their tails against the flies. To the left, a good deal of building and excavations were going on. But here, one large flat field had been left unplowed; on it every kind of colored jump was set up. Jake studied the place at length through binoculars.

“Where are we?” asked Tory. The last signpost had been buried in cow parsley.

“Penscombe.” Jake suddenly looked drawn, a muscle was flickering in his cheek. “Rupert Campbell-Black’s place.”

Going back to the car, he scooped all the rubbish off the floor and from the ashtrays, which brimmed with cigarette butts, and tipped it over the wall into Rupert’s land. One of the workmen, looking across, shook his fist at their departing car.

“Serves him right,” said Tory with a giggle. But when she looked at Jake she saw he was not smiling.

Tory’s grandmother lived sixty-five miles on in an equally beautiful but more sheltered position. Gabled and russet, the house peered out from its unkempt mane of Virginia creeper like a Yorkshire terrier.

A troupe of pekes and pugs came yapping round the side to welcome them. Despite the beauty of the day, they found Granny Maxwell sitting in the drawing room, watching racing on the television. She was also trying to read Horse and Hound, Somerville and Ross, and a gardening book at the same time, with three pairs of spectacles hanging round her neck like trapezes. She had a strong face, broad-browed, hook-nosed, the peaty-brown eyes glittering imperiously beneath their black brows, the wrinkles deeply etched round the wide mouth. On her head she wore a gray-green curly wig, slightly askew and held on with sticky tape.

“You’re wearing your nightgown, child,” she said, looking at Tory’s floating white dress. “I like your blue pants.”

Then she held out a wrinkled, black-nailed hand to Jake.

“I assume this is Mr. Wrong,” she added, with a cackle of laughter.

“Granny,” said Tory, blushing.

Jake grinned.

“Sit down, sit down; no, not in that chair,” she said, as Jake was almost bitten by an ancient, rheumy-eyed Jack Russell already sprawled on it.

All the other pekes and pugs lay at her feet snuffling and panting. She wore an ancient cardigan, a lace shirt, obviously for the second or third day, and a tweed skirt with a droopy, descending hem.

She and Lady Dorothy must go to the same tailor, thought Jake. But aquamarines and diamonds flashed on the grimy hands as she talked, and the pearls round her neck were each as big as a mistletoe berry.

“I suppose you want a drink; young people drink at the most extraordinary hours these days. There are some tins of iced beer in the fridge, Mr. Lovell. Unless you’d like something stronger? Then, go and get them, Tory.”

The room had the glorious, overcrowded look resulting from an exodus from a larger country house. Jake’s hands rested on the rough carved mane of a lion. The carpet was the blurred pink and green of an Impressionist painting.

As Tory went out, Granny Maxwell studied Jake, who was surreptitiously looking at the horses circling at the start. At least he didn’t fidget.

“Epsom,” she said, handing him the paper, “I’ve had a bet in this race. Any tips for the three-thirty?”

Jake glanced at the runners.

“I’d have a fiver on Mal le Maison.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t chosen Marriage of Convenience. Or how about Fortune Hunter?” she added maliciously. “He’s a hundred to one.”

Jake looked at her steadily.

“I’ll stick with Mal le Maison,” he said flatly. “And if I wanted to pick an outsider, I’d choose Whirlwind Courtship.”

“You haven’t known Tory long, have you?”

“Not very long, but I like outsiders.”

At least he’s not frightened of me, thought Granny Maxwell; that in itself is a novelty. Old and bored and waiting for death, she was aware that her family only came to see her when they were in financial trouble. She sometimes felt she was only kept alive by feuds and tyranny.

Tory came back with the cans of beer and a glass, and was immediately sent up to talk to Mrs. Maggs, who was sorting out the hot cupboard.

“She’s made you lardy cake and gingerbread men for tea. She thinks you’re still eight. You look very tired, child,” she added in a gentler voice, “and you’ve lost a lot of weight.”

She turned to Jake. “Bring your glass of beer and let’s walk round the garden,” she said, struggling to her feet. She walked very stiffly and had to be helped over the step. One hip was obviously very painful.

“Rheumatism,” she explained. “It’s difficult to be a very nice old woman when everything hurts.”

Having picked several heads off a coral pink geranium, she set off along the herbaceous border. It was the most glorious, over-packed garden; peonies jostled with huge Oriental poppies, lupins, and irises. Catmint, not yet out, stroked their legs as they passed.

The pack of dogs, some on three legs, panted after them grumbling and yapping.

“This is what I call a beautiful garden,” said Jake.

“As opposed to what?”

“To Tory’s mother’s. All the flowers seem to stand in their own patch of earth there, in serried ranks. Thou shalt not touch.”

“Like a park,” said Granny Maxwell.

A bird flashed by, yellow as laburnum.

“Yellowhammer,” said Granny Maxwell.

“Golden oriole, I think,” said Jake. “Very rare in these parts; it must be the heat.”

Suddenly a jaunty mongrel with a tight brindle coat came bounding across the lawn and was greeted by much yapping and every sign of delight by the pack, particularly a little blond peke, who wagged her tail and kissed him. Granny Maxwell turned to Jake.

“We used to call them ‘butcher’s dogs’ in my day, because they followed the butcher’s van. Owners get very fussed when mongrels try to mate with their pedigree dogs. I imagine that’s why my daughter-in-law is making such a fuss about you. I made a fuss when my son threw himself away on Molly. Her father was a hairdresser. Remember that, if you ever think about her.”

“I try not to,” said Jake.

“She never got over being the toast of Hong Kong.”

“Now she’s the sliced bread of Bilborough.”

Mrs. Maxwell gave a cackle of laughter.

“Tell me about yourself. You had polio as a child?”

He nodded. “When I was six I was in the hospital for eighteen months, learning to walk again. It left me with a wasted leg.”

“And a raging desire to prove yourself, presumably,” said Granny Maxwell dryly. “And your father was a gypsy?”

Juke nodded.

“My mother’s family tried to resettle him, but he missed the wandering life and the horses. He was a genius with horses. So he pushed off soon after I came out of the hospital.”

“And your mother committed suicide. You blamed yourself for that, I suppose?”

“I think she was let down by some chap who she took up with after my father left, but I didn’t know that at the time.”

“What happened after she died?”

“The school where I went free as a day boy made me board. I hated it, so I ran away and joined a group of gypsies. They taught me all I know, to poach and to look after horses and train dogs. There was an old grandmother there; she taught me about all the medicines she’d learnt from her great-grandmother.”

He took Granny Maxwell’s arm and guided her down some stone steps to a pond filled with irises and marsh marigolds. She caught her breath at the pain.

“An infusion of the leaves of Traveler’s Joy works wonders for rheumatism,” he said. “I’ll make you some up to try, or if you prefer, you can carry the skin of a dead frog against your skin.”

Granny Maxwell watched the dogs lapping out of the pond. The mongrel got into the water, drinking, paddling, and making a lot of splashing.

“I always feel very badly about the gypsies,” she sighed. “It’s one of the great unnecessary tragedies of progress. They should never have been forced into compounds to settle and sell scrap metal. But it’s always the same story today of harassment from the police and from farmers. Before the war they always used to park in our fields for the seasonal piecework. My father often kept them employed from March until Christmas.

“I miss the sight of their fires at twilight, with that marvelous smell of rabbit stew, and the gaudy washing on the line, and the shaggy horses and silent, lean dogs. They knew a thing or two, those dogs.”

Jake didn’t say anything, but felt an emotion, almost love, stronger than he had ever felt for another human being.

“How long were you with the gypsies?”

“Three years. Then I was picked up by the police and put in an orphanage.”

“Can’t have been much fun.”

“It was better than prep school. The kids were less vicious. They even accused me of having a posh accent.”

They walked back across the burnt lawn.

“We need rain badly. And what about this horse Tory appears to have bought?”

When he spoke about Africa, his face took on a tinge of color.

“She’s just the best horse I’ve ever ridden; she’s got so much potential and such a lovely nature.”

“Are you sure you don’t love her more than Tory?”

Jake thought for a minute, frowning, then he said: “I’m not sure, but if I take care of Tory as well as I look after Africa she won’t do too badly. Anyway, she couldn’t be worse off than she is at the moment with that bitch of a mother. She’ll have a nervous breakdown if she has to go to many more of those smart parties. It’s like putting a carthorse in a hack class, then beating it if it doesn’t win.”

“And I gather Molly has a new boyfriend, some colonel?”

“He’s a jerk; they don’t want Tory.”

“Why are they so reluctant to let her go, then?”

“Molly likes something to sharpen her claws on. Tory’s her cat-scratching board.”

She bent down to pull a bit of groundsel, then asked Jake to uproot a thread of bindweed that was toppling a lupin.

“It’s hell getting old. I can only prune sitting down now. And what’s in it for you?” she asked.

“I couldn’t marry her if she weren’t rich. I’ve got to get started somehow. And I think Tory and I could make each other happy. Neither of us has ever really had a home before.”

That was the nearest he was going to get to placating her.

“Aren’t you banking too much on that horse being a winner? She might break a leg tomorrow.”

“I’ll get more horses. This is only the beginning. To make it work as a show jumper, you’ve got to have at least half a dozen top horses and novices coming on all the time. The gypsies taught me how to recognize a good horse, and I can ride them, and I’ve got patience.”

“Let’s go and watch the three-thirty,” said Granny Maxwell.

Mal le Maison was second, Whirlwind Courtship nowhere. That’s torn it, thought Jake. At that moment, Tory came in with a tray.

“Are you ready for tea yet, Granny?”

“Put the tray down on this table in front of me, thank you, and sit down. I have something to say to you both.”

For a minute she looked at them both with speculative eyes.

“I’m not going to give you any money. Young people should get along by themselves. Tory has a considerable income and you’ll soon save enough to buy and sell a few horses.”

Jake’s face was expressionless. That was that. His hopes crashed.

“I’ve no intention of breaking the trust,” Granny Maxwell went on, picking up the blond peke and rolling it onto its back, “until I see if you’re capable of making Tory happy. In three years’ time, she’ll get the money anyway. However…”

Jake stiffened, fighting back hope, as with maddening deliberation Granny Maxwell poured tea into three cups, and went into a long “would anyone like milk, sugar, or lemon” routine, and then handed out plates, and asked whether anyone would like a sandwich.

“However,” she repeated, “Mr. Binlock is retiring to a cottage in the middle of June, which means the Mill House at Withrington — that’s about twenty miles north of here — will be empty. You can have that.”

Tory turned pale. “But Granny, it’s got stables and fields,” she stammered.

“Exactly, but it’s tumbledown and very damp. I hope you haven’t got a weak chest,” she added to Jake, “but it’s yours if you want it.”

“Oh, Granny, darling,” said Tory, crossing the room and flinging her arms round her grandmother.

“Don’t smother me, child, and there’s no need to cry. And as you don’t appear to have any transport, I’ll buy you a decent horse box for a wedding present.”

Jake shook his head. “I can’t believe it,” he said.

“There’s one condition,” Granny Maxwell went on with a cackle of laughter. “That the first time you appear at Wembley, you buy me a seat in the front row. I’m a bored old woman. In time, if you do well, I might buy a couple of horses and let you ride them for me.”

“If you really are going to buy us a horse box,” said Jake, “I’d better learn to drive properly and take a test.”