Riders (3 page)

Next moment, Sir William was hurrying across the room to welcome the two judges, Malise Gordon and Miss Squires, who, on a tight schedule, had only time for a quick bite. Malise Gordon, having accepted a weak whisky and soda, refused to follow it with any wine. He took a small helping of salmon but no potatoes, not because he was worried about getting fat, but because he liked to practice asceticism. An ex-Cavalry officer, much medaled after a good war, Colonel Gordon not only farmed but also judged at shows all around the country during the summer, and was kept busy in the winter as the local master of fox hounds. He was inclined to apply army discipline to the hunting field to great effect and told people exactly what he thought of them if they talked at the covert side, rode over seeds, or left gates open. In addition to these activities, he played the flute, restored pictures in his spare time, and wrote poetry and books on military history. Just turned fifty, he was tall and lean with a handsome, hawklike face, high cheekbones, and dark hair hardly touched with gray.

That is easily the most attractive man in the room, thought Molly Maxwell, eyeing him speculatively as she accepted Colonel Carter’s heavy pleasantries, and let her laugh tinkle again and again round the room. Malise Gordon was now talking to Sir William’s wife, Lady Dorothy. What an old frump, thought Molly Maxwell. That dreadful fawn cardigan with marks on it and lace-up shoes and the sort of baggy tweed skirt you’d feed the chickens in.

As an excuse to be introduced to Malise, Molly got up and, wandering over to Lady Dorothy, thanked her for a delicious lunch.

“Absolutely first rate,” agreed Colonel Carter, who’d followed her.

“Would you like to see around the garden?” said Lady Dorothy.

Malise Gordon looked at his watch.

“We better go and supervise the junior jumping,” he said to Miss Squires.

“Oh, my daughter’s in that,” said Molly Maxwell, giving Malise Gordon a dazzling smile. “I hope you’ll turn a blind eye if she knocks anything down. It would be such a thrill if she got a rosette.”

Malise Gordon didn’t smile back. He had heard Molly’s laugh once too often and thought her very silly.

“Fortunately, jumping is the one event in which one can’t possibly display any favoritism.”

Colonel Carter, aware that his beloved had been snubbed, decided Malise Gordon needed taking down a peg.

“What’s the order for this afternoon?” he asked.

“Junior jumping, open jumping, then gymkhana events in ring three, then your show in ring two, Carter.”

A keen territorial, Colonel Carter was organizing a recruiting display which included firing twenty-five pounders.

“We’re scheduled for seventeen hundred hours,” snapped Colonel Carter. “Hope you’ll have wound your jumping up by then, Gordon. My chaps like to kick off on time.”

“I hope you won’t do anything silly like firing off blanks while there are horses in the ring,” said Malise brusquely. “It could be extremely dangerous.”

“Thanks, Dorothy, for a splendid lunch,” he added, kissing Lady Dorothy on the cheek. “The garden’s looking marvelous.”

Colonel Carter turned purple. What an arrogant bastard, he thought, glaring after Malise’s broad, very straight back as he followed Miss Squires briskly out of the drawing room. But then the cavalry always gave themselves airs. Earlier, at the briefing, Malise had had the ill manners to point out that he thought a horse show was hardly the place to introduce a lot of people who had nothing better to do with their afternoons than play soldiers. “I’ll show him,” fumed Colonel Carter.

Outside, hackney carriages were bouncing around the ring, drawn by high-stepping horses, rosettes streaming from their striped browbands, while junior riders crashed their ponies over the practice fence. By some monumental inefficiency, the organizers of the show had also ended up with three celebrities, who’d all arrived to present the prizes and needed looking after.

Bobby Cotterel, Africa’s owner, had originally been allotted the task, but at the last moment he’d pushed off to France, and such was the panic of finding a replacement that three other celebrities had been booked and accepted. The first was the Lady Mayoress, who’d opened the show and toured the exhibits and who had now been borne off to inspect the guides. The second was Miss Bilborough 1970, whose all-day-long makeup had not stood up to the heat. The third was a radio celebrity, with uniformly gray hair and a black treacle voice named Dudley Diplock. Having played a doctor in a long-running serial, he talked at the top of his voice all the time in the hope that the public might recognize him. He had now commandeered the microphone for the junior jumping.

Fen felt her stomach getting hollower and hollower. The jumps looked huge. The first fence was as big as Epping Forest.

“Please, God, let me not have three refusals, let me not let Dandelion down.”

“Oh, here comes Tory,” she said as Jake helped her saddle up Dandelion. “She went to a dance last night but I don’t think she enjoyed it; her eyes were awfully red this morning.”

Jake watched the plump, anxious-faced Tory wincing over the churned-up ground in her tight shoes. She didn’t look like a girl who enjoyed anything very much.

“Did you have a nice lunch? I bet you had strawberries,” shrieked Fen, climbing onto Dandelion and gathering up the reins. “I’m just going to put Dandelion over a practice fence.

“This is my sister, Tory,” she added.

Jake looked at Tory with that measure of disapproval he always bestowed on strangers.

“It’s very hot,” stammered Tory.

“Very,” said Jake.

There didn’t seem much else to say.

Fortunately, Tory was saved by the microphone calling the competitors into the collecting ring.

“Mr. Lovell, I can’t get Stardust’s girths to meet, she’s blown herself out,” wailed Patty Beasley.

Jake went over and gave Stardust a hefty knee-up in the belly.

Fen came back from jumping the practice fence. Immediately Dandelion’s head went down, snatching at the grass.

“You pig,” squealed Fen, jumping off and pulling bits out of his mouth. “I just cleaned that bit. Where’s Mummy?” she added to Tory.

“Going over the garden with Lady Dorothy,” said Tory.

“She must be bored,” said Fen. “No, there she is over on the other side of the ring.”

Looking across, they could see Mrs. Maxwell standing beside Sally Ann Thomson’s mother, while Colonel Carter adjusted her deck chair.

“Colonel Carter stayed last night,” said Fen in disgust. “I couldn’t sleep and I looked out of the window at about five o’clock and saw him go. He looked up at Mummy’s bedroom and blew her a great soppy kiss. Think of kissing a man with an awful, droopy mustache like that. I suppose there’s no accounting for tastes.”

“Fen,” said Tory, blushing scarlet. She looked at Jake out of the corner of her eye to see if he was registering shock or amusement, but his face was quite expressionless.

“Number Fifty-eight,” called out the collecting ring steward.

A girl in a dark blue riding coat on a very shiny bay mare went in and jumped clear. Some nearby drunks in a Bentley, whose boot groaned with booze, hooted loudly on their horn.

“How was her ladyship’s garden?” asked Colonel Carter.

“I think I was given a tour of every petal,” said Molly Maxwell.

“You must have been the fairest flower,” said the colonel, putting his deck chair as close to hers as possible. “My people used to have a lovely garden in Hampshar.”

The radio personality, Dudley Diplock, having mastered the microphone, was now thoroughly enjoying himself.

“Here comes the junior champion for Surrey,” he said. “Miss Cock, Miss Sarah Cock on Topsy.”

A girl with buckteeth rode in. Despite her frenziedly flailing legs the pony ground to a halt three times in front of the first fence.

“Jolly bad luck, Topsy,” said the radio personality. “Oh, I beg your pardon, here comes Miss Sarah Cock, I mean Cook, on Topsy.”

A girl on a heavily bandaged dappled gray came in and jumped a brisk clear round.

Next came Sally Ann Thomson.

“Here’s my little girl,” said Mrs. Thomson, pausing for a moment in her discussion of hats with Mrs. Maxwell. “I wonder if Stardust will go better in a running martingale.”

Stardust decided not and refused three times at the first fence.

“We really ought to buy her a pony of her own,” said Mrs. Thomson. “Even the best riders can’t do much on riding-school hacks.”

Mrs. Maxwell winked at Colonel Carter.

Round followed round; everyone agreed the standard was frightful.

“And here we have yet another competitor from Brook Farm Riding School: Miss Patty Beasley on Swindle.”

Swindle trotted dejectedly into the ring, rolling-eyed and thin-legged, like a horse in a medieval tapestry. Then, like a car running out of petrol, she ground to a halt in front of the first fence.

Jake raised his eyes to heaven.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

Swindle’s third refusal was too much for Patty’s father, who’d bought breeches specially to attend the show. Rushing across the grass he brandished a shooting stick shouting, “Geron.” Terrified, Swindle rose like a stag from the hard ground and took a great leap over the brush fence, whereupon Patty fell off and burst into tears.

“Another competitor from Brook Farm Riding School eliminated,” said Dudley Diplock.

“Teach them to fall off there, don’t they?” said a wag.

The crowd guffawed. Jake gritted his teeth. He was aware of Tory standing beside him and, sensing her sympathy, was grateful.

“It’s your turn next,” said Jake, going up to Fen and checking Dandelion’s girths. “Take the double slowly. Everyone else has come round the corner too fast and not given themselves enough time. Off you go,” he added, gently pulling Dandelion’s ears.

“Please, God, I’ll never be bad again,” prayed Fen. “I won’t be foul to Sally Ann or call Patty a drip, or be rude to Mummy. Just let me get round.”

Ignoring the cries of good luck, desperately trying to remember everything Jake had told her, Fen rode into the ring with a set expression on her face.

“Miss Fenella Maxwell, from Brook Farm Riding School,” said the radio personality. “Let’s have a round of applause for our youngest competitor.”

The crowd, scenting carnage, clapped lethargically. Dandelion, his brown and white patches gleaming like a conker that had been opened too early, gave a good-natured buck.

“Isn’t that your little girl?” said Mrs. Thomson.

“So it is,” said Molly Maxwell, “Oh look, her pony’s going to the lav. Don’t horses have an awful sense of timing?”

The first fence loomed as high as Becher’s Brook and Fen used her legs so fiercely, Dandelion rose into the air, clearing it by a foot.

Fen was slightly unseated and unable to get straight in the saddle to ride Dandelion properly at the gate. He slowed down and refused; when Fen whacked him he rolled his eyes, swished his tail, and started to graze. The crowd laughed; Fen went crimson.

“Oh, poor thing,” murmured Tory in anguish.

Fen pulled his head up and let him examine the gate. Dandelion sniffed, decided it was harmless and, with a whisk of his fat rump, flew over and went bucketing on to clear the stile, at which Fen lost her stirrup, then cleared the parallel bars, where she lost the other stirrup. Rounding the corner for home, Dandelion stepped up the pace. Fen checked him, her hat falling over her nose, as he bounded towards the road-closed sign. Dandelion, fighting for his head, rapped the fence, but it stayed put.

I can’t bear to look, thought Tory, shutting her eyes.

Fen had lost her hat now and, plaits flying, raced towards the triple. Jake watched her strain every nerve to get the takeoff right. Dandelion cleared it by inches and galloped out of the ring to loud applause.

“Miss Fenella Maxwell on Dandelion, only three faults for a refusal; jolly good round,” coughed the microphone.

“I had no idea she’d improved so much,” said Tory, turning a pink, ecstatic face towards Jake.

Fen cantered up, grinning from ear to ear.

“Wasn’t Dandelion wonderful?” she said, jumping off, flinging her arms round his neck, covering him with kisses, and stuffing him with sugar lumps.

She looked up at Jake inquiringly: “Well?”

“We could see half the show ground between your knees and the saddle, and you took him too fast at the gate, but not bad,” he said.

For the first time that day he looked cheerful, and Tory thought how nice he was.

“I must go and congratulate Fen,” said Mrs. Maxwell, delicately picking her way through the dung that Manners had not yet gathered.

“Well done, darling,” she shrieked in a loud voice, which made all the nearby horses jump. “What a good boy,” she added, gingerly patting Dandelion’s nose with a gloved hand. “He is a boy, isn’t he?” She tilted her head sideways to look.

“Awfully good show,” said Colonel Carter. “My sister used to jump on horseback in Hampshar.”

Mrs. Maxwell turned to Jake, enveloping him in a sickening waft of Arpège.