Riders (25 page)

“And I’m quite confident you’ll be able to do it,” said Billy happily.

The stables were built of the same honey-colored stone as the house, the doors painted the same dark blue Rupert had chosen on the color chart in church on their first date. Horses looked out inquisitively, eager for any diversion. Brick red geraniums bloomed in blue and white striped tubs. There was not a blade of straw or a speck of dust anywhere. In the center was a circle of grass beautifully mown round an ancient mulberry tree. It was like a toy stable.

Billy introduced her to the junior grooms, Susie and Janis, two more pretty shapely blondes. Tracey and Marion, having the afternoon off, had collapsed into bed, Marion, Helen suspected, to cry her eyes out. She hadn’t addressed a word to Rupert since she heard he was getting married.

Billy led her into the tackroom, which was beautifully kept. The tack was dark and gleaming, the bits shining, every inch of wall lined with rosettes. Helen breathed in the smell of leather, linseed oil, saddle soap. “But I don’t understand,” she said. “It’s as neat as a new pin here. Why is the house such a mess?”

Billy shrugged. “This is where the action is. If I were you I’d move into Macaulay’s box. At least you’d get clean straw and regular meals.”

After a good night’s sleep, Helen felt more able to cope. Next day she went back to Regina House and the office. Despite Rupert’s outraged protests, she felt she ought to get things straight and tidy up. Nigel, when he heard she was going to marry Rupert, was even more outraged.

“You’d think Rupert was General Franco or Oswald Mosley,” she grumbled.

“Jolly nearly,” hissed Nigel. “I’m ashamed of you, Helen.”

The next day the IRA blew up a shop and then a hamburger bar in London, not far from Helen’s office. Rupert was at a show in the West Country, but he was on to Helen immediately.

“Are you all right, darling? Christ, I’ve been worried. Look, I’m not leaving you in London anymore. You must move in at once. I can’t bear another night away from you.”

“But what am I going to do with myself all day?”

“You can organize my life.”

“Can I redecorate your house?”

“If it makes you happy, as long as you let me burn your entire wardrobe, and promise never to buy any more clothes without my coming too. I haven’t got a show next Monday,” he went on. “I thought we might get married.”

And so they were married at Gloucester Registry office. Helen wore a gray silk suit chosen by Rupert. Billy and Humpty were witnesses.

They set off to Yorkshire on their honeymoon, staying in an old pub in the middle of the moors. On the Tuesday Rupert went to look at a horse which he decided not to buy. On Thursday he said he was fed up with the pub and knew a better one over the Pennines.

As they were driving there Helen suddenly noticed AA signs and advertising posters: “The great Lancashire show starts today.” She said idly to Rupert, “Is Billy going?”

“Yes,” said Rupert, leaning across and kissing her, “and so are we.”

When they reached the show, there were Billy and Tracey looking sheepish, and Marion looking bootfaced, and, surprise surprise, Mayfair and Macaulay and Rupert’s riding clothes. Helen looked down at the huge unusual ring of sapphires and emeralds which Rupert had given her as an engagement ring and remembered what Doreen Hamilton had said about being a show jumper’s wife, and laughed instead of cried.

“Darling Mother,” she wrote home that evening, “I got married on Monday. My husband is called Rupert Campbell-Black. He is real handsome and very famous in England, because he is a stadium jumping star. In England it is called show jumping, and a big sport rather like baseball. He has the most beautiful stately home near Shakespeare’s birthplace, you will just go crazy about it. It is so old, and the village he lives in looks as though none of the houses have been touched since Elizabeth Ist’s day. I enclose photographs of the house and of Rupert. I know you wanted me to get married in Florida and in white, Mother, but I promise you I am truly truly happy. I never believed being in love could be like this. Rupert had a very traumatic childhood, I’m surprised he hasn’t been in analysis for years, but he is very normal. His mother lives in the Bahamas and is on her third husband, and his father is on his fourth wife.

“I haven’t met them yet. But soon I’m going to meet Rupert’s old Nanny, who is really the person who brought him up, and gave him security. He thinks the world of her. I’m going to make him happy. I love him so much I long to have you meet him, but the summer is Rupert’s busy time. At the moment he is at shows all the week and at weekends, but I promise the first weekend we get free, we’ll fly out and see you. All love, Helen.”

Rupert’s meeting with Helen’s parents didn’t take place until August and was not a success. The plan was that Helen should fly direct to Florida and Rupert, having looked at some horses in Kentucky, should join her a couple of days later. As it was in the middle of the show-jumping season, Helen explained, he would be able to stay only for the weekend before flying back to Europe for the Dublin Horse Show, where, having been forgiven at last by Malise, he had been picked to jump for Great Britain, but at least it would give her parents the chance to meet him.

Arriving home, Helen was appalled to find her mother had arranged a full-scale wedding party, with three hundred guests to meet Helen’s handsome English husband, with even a minister coming to the house to perform a service beforehand, in which the happy couple would be blessed.

“I just don’t feel you’re married after a registry office ceremony,” said her mother.

“Rupert’ll absolutely freak out,” protested Helen. “He hasn’t brought a cutaway, or even a dinner jacket.”

“He can always hire one, or borrow one from Father,” said her mother.

With a growing feeling of apprehension, Helen watched the preparations. In fact, her mother was so well organized that on Friday afternoon she and her four daughters were able to slip down to the beach below their house for a couple of hours’ sun. Helen’s three sisters, all lithe and beautiful, awaited Rupert’s arrival that evening with intense excitement. They were amazed at the change in Helen. She looked so beautiful and happy, and so much more self-assured.

“Look at that dreamy yacht,” said Esme, the younger sister, as a big boat with bright blue sails crowded with bronzed, half-naked people tacked close to the shore. The next moment one of them had jumped ship. Wading through the shallows carrying a case, he turned as he reached the sand and, brandishing it, shouted, “Thanks for the lift.”

“Are you ready for that?” said Milly, the second sister, in wonder.

“It’s Rupert,” gasped Helen.

He was as blond and as brown as a beach boy, and he was wearing nothing except a rather small United States flag draped round his loins.

“Jesus,” said Claudia, the third sister.

“Don’t swear, Claudia,” said Mrs. Macaulay.

Helen hurtled down the beach, flung her arms round Rupert’s neck, and only just stopped the American flag tumbling to half-mast.

“Darling, we were expecting you tonight.”

“I got a lift with some chums. I missed you.”

On Palm Beach, home of the beautiful, he was still the most beautiful of all.

“Mother, this is Rupert,” said Helen.

Mrs. Macaulay was vain enough not to be very pleased at having to meet her new son-in-law when she was scarlet and sweating from the heat. She would have preferred to have parted the wisteria on the terrace, welcoming him in a pretty dress, hair newly set, makeup light but perfect. But she knew one must behave like a lady at all times, so she radiated graciousness.

“Hi, Rupert,” she said, holding out a hand slippery with suntan oil and trying not to look at the American flag. “I’m so pleased to welcome you as our son. I hope you’ll call me Mother.”

Rupert, in fact, never managed to call her anything. He didn’t even kiss her; both felt it would have been too sweaty an embrace. He looked at her handsome, rigid, determined face with the graying red hair. He took in the well-controlled figure in its skirted bathing dress, he noticed the gold cross hanging between the crepey breasts, and he shuddered and vowed he would never let Helen get like that. Mrs. Macaulay averted her eyes and noted Rupert was not wearing a wedding ring. Father must find him one before tomorrow.

“I’m not going to hire a morning coat,” snapped Rupert, when at last he and Helen were alone in their bedroom, “nor am I going to be blessed by some Yankee poofter. We were married in England; that’s enough for me.”

“Hush, darling, they’ll hear you, and it’s worth it for all the wedding gifts.”

“Not if you look at them closely. Six magazine racks, two sets of monogrammed highball glasses, twelve egg coddlers, a dozen staghorn steak knives. Jesus! Two sets of glasses with polo players on. Polo, I ask you.”

“Oh, that was darling Great-Aunt Grace. Doesn’t know the difference between show jumping and polo. She was doing her best. There’s a lovely dinner service, and some beautiful cachepots, and glass. The problem is how to get them all home.”

“We’ll have to hire a plane and hope it crashes on takeoff.”

Helen giggled, but she felt defensive about her parents and their friends. If only he would behave for the wedding, she knew everyone would love him. Rupert went moodily to the window.

“God, I miss Badger. Why don’t your parents have a dog? I am not going through with this party. If I do I’ll wear a suit.”

“All right,” said Helen soothingly. “But please, darling, be nice just this once. Mother’s been arranging it for weeks and Milly’s going to sing “What Is Life to Me Without You.” Mother’s been coaching her for weeks, and Dad’s even been out and bought himself an Ascot and some striped pants. All you’ve got to do is show up and be polite.”

Rupert behaved rather well during the service. Later everyone crowded onto the lawn, and after champagne had been drunk for an hour or so, the most distinguished male relation rose to praise Helen, and to welcome Rupert to the family. Afterwards there was a pause.

“Speech, speech,” shouted all the relations and friends and the large sprinkling of Mr. Macaulay’s patients, flashing their beautifully capped teeth. Rupert, wearing a dark suit and not wearing the wedding ring his father-in-law had pressed on him that morning, rose to his feet.

“My heart is in my mouth at this wonderful party,” he said charmingly, “but as my Nanny always told me not to talk with my mouth full, I’m not going to say anything, except to thank Mr. and Mrs. Macaulay. I could tell jokes about gay Irish dentists, but I don’t think my father-in-law would like that. Thank you all for your wonderful presents,” and with that he quietly slid under the table.

“But you weren’t even drunk,” said Helen, still furious, as their plane took off for England.

“I know, but I was bored. I’m sorry, darling, but the only relations I like are sexual relations.”

“And you’ve left Aunt Martha’s paintings behind.”

“I know,” said Rupert. “I was terrified they might frighten the dogs.”

Rupert’s parents both wrote Helen delightfully vague letters. Rupert’s mother sent her a diamond brooch with a broken clasp, Rupert’s father a jar of caviar. Both promised they’d be over sometime—probably when they want to borrow money, said Rupert—and wished them every happiness.

Helen’s meeting with Rupert’s old Nanny was hardly more successful.

“What shall I wear?” she asked Billy beforehand.

“A skirt with horizontal stripes. All Nanny cares about is good childbearing hips.”

Nanny’s cottage in Wiltshire had been bought and furnished by the Campbell-Black family. They had filled it with pieces from their various houses which were far too large. It was an obstacle race to get across the sitting room. Nanny, almost the largest thing in the cottage, stood six feet tall, with big ears, a whiskery seamed face, a boxer’s jaw, and shrewd, tough little brown eyes like Henry VII. She was wearing a shiny high-necked navy blue dress with a white collar, which gave the impression of a uniform. Although it was a very hot day, she was watching fireworks on a black and white television with the central heating at full blast and none of the windows open. Perhaps years of Campbell-Black austerity and indifference to the cold had unhinged her, thought Helen. Every surface in the room was covered in photographs of babies in long white dresses. The only others were of Rupert at every stage of his career, as a solemn blue-eyed baby, at St. Augustine’s, Harrow, in the Blues, and, mostly, of him show jumping. Otherwise there was no evidence that she was remotely pleased to see him.

She hardly thanked him for the half-dozen bottles of her favorite, disgustingly sweet sherry that he brought her. Pouring out three glasses, she gave much the smallest to Helen.

“Isn’t Helen beautiful?” said Rupert.

Nanny looked Helen up and down and sniffed. “Very beautiful face,” she said.

“She’s got a beautiful figure too,” protested Rupert, laughing. “I know you’d have only been happy if I’d married some Flanders mare producing sons every eight months.”

Nanny snorted and proceeded to tear Rupert off a strip for hell-raising in Paris and getting arrested at Plymouth and getting married without a proper wedding. Rupert accepted it with amazing mildness.

“I’m sorry we didn’t ask you to the wedding; we didn’t ask anyone. I couldn’t face all my stepparents muscling in on the act. And my mother would have been bored to have been reminded of all her weddings.”