Riders (55 page)

Rupert didn’t turn his head. “You heard.”

“Yes, I heard.” Jake’s eyes glittered like deadly nightshade berries, his face ashen against the tousled black hair.

“You leave her alone, you bastard.”

“You’re hardly in a position to call me that. At least my parents were married to one another, in church too, unlike yours.”

“Rupert,” exploded Malise.

“You leave my parents out of this,” hissed Jake. “I’m warning you—keep away from her.”

“Why?” drawled Rupert. “Have you got the hots for her? If you read your prayer book you’d realize that sort of thing’s very frowned on. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife’s sister and all that.”

The next moment, Jake had grabbed Rupert’s shirt collar with one hand and snatched up the bread knife from the side table with the other.

Jerking Rupert towards him, he held the knife against Rupert’s suntanned neck.

“Keep your foul mouth shut,” he gritted. “If I catch you putting one of your filthy fingers on her, I’ll run this through you, you fucking sadist,” and very slowly he drew the blade across Rupert’s throat. No one moved, no one spoke. Everyone’s eyes were mesmerized by the knife blade glinting in the candlelight.

Then Helen gave a strangled sob.

“Jake,” said Malise quietly, “give me that knife.”

“It’s all right, Colonel Gordon,” said Jake, without looking in his direction. “This time it’s a warning, Rupert, but you heard me: you stay away from her. Next time you won’t get off so lightly.”

He threw the knife down so it fell across Fen’s red wine stain, giving an illusion of spilt blood, then limped out of the restaurant.

“Are you all right?” gasped Helen.

Rupert sprang to his feet, ready to give chase. But Malise was too quick. Leaping up, he blocked Rupert’s path.

“No,” he said sharply. He might have been speaking to a rabid dog about to pounce. “Stay—here. It was
all
your fault.”

Rupert looked at him incredulously.

“That man has just tried to kill me.”

“There’s a simple remedy to that,” said Malise. “Don’t wind him up.”

“Bloody bad form,” said Colonel Roxborough. “Fellow can’t hold his drink. Let’s have some brandy. Think we all need it.”

“I want some crêpes suzette,” said Driffield.

Rupert sat down, his face absolutely still.

Malise looked round. “None of this is to go any further than this table. We don’t want the press getting hold of it. Rupert was simply taking trouble to be nice to Fen; she overreacted because she’s protective about Macaulay. Jake overreacted because he’s protective about both her and the horse. Isn’t that true, Tory?”

Blushing scarlet, Tory mumbled that Jake was probably uptight about the final and she better see where’d he got to, and, thanking Malise for a lovely dinner, she stumbled out of the restaurant, knocking over a chair as she went.

“Tory the elephant packed her trunk and said good-bye to the circus,” said Rupert.

Fen didn’t stop running until she got to the stables. It was dark now, a huge full moon with a smudged apricot pink face gazed down at her reproachfully. How could she have let herself go like that?

She went straight to Macaulay’s box. He was enchanted to see her and nuzzled her pockets inquiringly as she sobbed into his solid black neck. “Oh, Mac, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t dump on you when you’ve got so many worries of your own, but I’m in such a muddle. I should never have said all those awful things. Malise’ll never pick me for the team now.”

Gradually her sobs subsided as Macaulay stood in silent, titanic sympathy.

“You’re such a duck,” she said in a choked voice. “Please buck that pig off the day after tomorrow.”

She heard a step outside. Jake, Malise, Rupert? She couldn’t talk to anyone. She melted into the dark of the box behind Macaulay. The top half-door was stealthily opened. Behind Macaulay’s stalwart frame she couldn’t see who it was. Then she heard the sound of something hitting the water bucket. Then the door was shut and bolted.

“Hell.” She was locked in for the night.

Next minute the ever-greedy Macaulay had shot towards the door and she heard the sound of munching. Desperately she snatched the bucket from him.

“No, darling, you mustn’t eat it. We don’t know what it is.”

Snorting with exasperation, Macaulay pursued her around the box.

Suddenly the top half of the door was opened again.

“Who is it?” she said in terror.

“What the hell are you doing here?” said Jake.

“Talking to Mac.”

“Disturbing his beauty sleep more likely. You okay?” he added more gently.

“Yes, but look what someone’s put in his box.” She held up the bucket.

Jake lit a match and then whistled. “Jesus Christ!”

“What is it?”

“Beet, unsoaked,” he said grimly. “Someone’s trying to nobble him.”

“Rupert,” said Fen.

Jake shook his head. “He’s still in the restaurant. Might be one of his supporters, but I don’t think it’s Rupert’s form. Too easily traced, and he’s just longing for a chance to make me look silly in the final. More likely some Kraut fanatic or one of the Yanks. Brits don’t knobble Brits. All the same, we’ll have to take turns to sleep outside the box. I’ll stay here tonight. You go back and share our double bed with Tory.”

“You ought to get a decent night’s sleep.”

“I’m so bloody tired, I’d sleep on a bed of nails.”

Back in their hotel, still wearing a pale gray silk petticoat, Helen Campbell-Black removed her makeup with a shaking hand, turning her head to catch different reflections in the three-sided mirror. Rupert was already in bed, watching a tape of Clara jumping on the hired video machine. Every so often he froze the film so he could study the angle of Ludwig’s body or the position of his hands. Each fence was played over and over again. Then he got up and strolled naked across the room, changing the tape to one of Dino jumping President’s Man in Florida. The horse was young and inexperienced, giving each fence at least a foot, because he hadn’t yet learnt to tuck his legs under him. Manny, as Dino called him, would need much more riding in the final. Rupert could see Dino carefully positioning him at each fence. Pity there wasn’t any film of Hopalong jumping Macaulay.

As Helen picked up a different jar to remove the makeup round her eyes, she caught a glimpse of Rupert in the mirror, with his back to her. He must have lost ten pounds. He’d always had a marvelous physique, but now he was fined down to a leaner, even more muscular hardness. He seemed to burn with excess energy and restlessness. I must be married to the most desirable man in the world, she thought despairingly, so why do I feel so undesiring? Since the affair with Podge, she’d tried so hard to make advances, to be more imaginative, but it was as though he pressed the freeze button on her each time, turning her to stone, robbing her of any spontaneity.

Was he attracted to Fen, she wondered, or had he just been baiting Jake? She knew Jake pulling a knife wouldn’t put him off in the least. Malise had dismissed the incident as a drunken brawl, but she was frightened by the obsessive black hatred in Jake’s eyes.

She delayed getting into bed as long as possible, praying that Rupert might fall asleep. But when she finally came out of the bathroom, he had turned off the television and was lying on the bed, looking at the latest photographs of the children she’d brought from England. He flipped past the ones of Marcus with hardly a glance, but examined every angle of Tab’s sweet pink face. Perhaps Tab would be the one female in his life he could love unstintingly without despising her or himself.

“Take your nightdress off,” he said, without even looking up.

Helen sighed and complied.

Rupert pulled her towards him, not even bothering to kiss her. I’ll be so dry inside, she thought in panic, and he’s so huge it’s going to hurt. Instinctively her mind and her body went rigid. His cock reminded her suddenly of the gray stone gargoyles jutting, hard and ugly, out of the walls of the cathedral.

“What’s the matter?” Rupert prised her legs open with his hand.

“Jake pulling that knife, I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“What aspect of it?” he said mockingly. “Were you turned on by such a macho display on Jake’s part, or the thought of being a rich widow?”

“Oh, stop it,” sobbed Helen.

“Or were you jealous of Fen?”

“She’s only a child,” gasped Helen, as his fingers moved up inside her. “It’s not fair.”

“To her or you?” said Rupert. “Look, do you honestly think I’m going to chat up a fat pustular schoolgirl for any other reason than to rile Hopalong Chastity? And I certainly succeeded. None of the Lovell contingent’ll get any sleep tonight.”

“And what about Macaulay?”

“You never bothered about him when I had him. Any solicitude after he’s sold on seems a bit out of place.”

He took her then. Helen lay back, quite unable to participate. It was over in a couple of minutes and she was certain he’d been thinking about Fen.

Tense and miserable, she knew she should drop the subject, but she couldn’t help warning Rupert to stay away from Fen. Jake was obviously unbalanced about her. When he didn’t answer, she thought he was really taking in what she said. It was five minutes before she realized he was fast asleep.

Rupert was right. None of the Lovell contingent slept. Fen, lying on one edge of the bed, couldn’t stop thinking about Rupert. “My only love sprang from my only hate,” she whispered to herself, as Helen had five years earlier. Tory lay on the edge of the other side. She was worried about Jake. A row like that was the last thing he needed before the final. She felt even more guilty that she was suddenly racked with jealousy of Fen, her baby sister, who was growing more beautiful every day. Rupert, who had never treated Tory with anything but contempt, had really taken the trouble to chat up Fen, and she too had seen the black hatred in Jake’s face when he held that knife to Rupert’s throat. She tried to tell herself that Jake was fiercely protective of anything he owned, particularly his family. She tried to suppress the thought that Jake was falling in love with Fen.

Jake, after an hour’s deep sleep, was woken by the barking of the Rotweiller guarding Ludwig’s horses. Hatred of Rupert, churning around and around in his head, prevented him dropping off again. Next morning, despite all Malise’s stipulations, the story of the knife was all around the showground.

Grooming the horses next day, Fen found she had never been the recipient of so much chatting up. The public flowed by to get a glimpse of a possible future champion. Suddenly, every German, American, and English groom or rider seemed to have time to stop and gossip, and ask her how she and Macaulay were getting on, what he was like to ride, what sort of temperament he had. Watching the Lovell children swarming all over him, they could be excused for thinking he was as mild as an old sheep.

Dino Ferranti rolled up about midday.

“Hi,” he said.

“Buzz off,” said Fen, applying the body brush with more vigor.

“That is a cute horse, and you sure have a cute ass when you’re grooming him. How’s he feeling today?”

“Just fine,” snapped Fen.

“I really like him. Jake’s smart; doesn’t jump him that often, does he? Pulls him out for the big event. I never heard of him before this week.”

Fen turned, pink from exertions and anger. “Don’t smarm over me just because you want information about Mac. I’m not telling you anything about him.”

“Honey, you’re overreacting. I admire your boss. How’d you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

“No, thanks.”

“We won’t mention Macaulay once, right. I just need an attractive girl to help me relax.”

“Why should I help you relax? You’re the opposition.”

He really is attractive, she thought reluctantly, lounging against the door, with that wide untroubled smile and the marvelously relaxed, elongated body.

He shook his head. “You ought to get out. There’s more to show jumping than the inside of a tack-cleaning bucket. You ought to have some fun. Anyway,” he added slyly, “I am just dying to hear what happened last night. Did Jake really pull a bread knife on Rupert? You must be the most fought-over girl in France.”

“Shut up,” said Fen, blushing to the roots of her sweating hair. “I don’t want to discuss it. Now, please go away.”

Later in the day all the finalists tried to relax. Leaving Helen to visit the house in which Proust spent his childhood, Rupert went racing with Count Guy and Lavinia, and had three winners, which seemed a good omen. The copy of the
Evening Standard,
specially flown in for Patric Walker’s horoscope, also predicted Scorpios would have an exciting and successful weekend. So he felt he could legitimately relax. The German team swam and sunbathed together. The Americans took a plane to Paris and went sightseeing. Jake took Tory, Fen, Tanya, and the children for a picnic in the Brittany countryside, finding a perfect place shaded by a glimmering silver poplar copse by the side of a meandering river. Tory and Tanya slept, the children swam and made daisy chains with Fen. Jake wandered off with binoculars, reveling in the wildflowers and butterflies. He found a very rare orchid, stocked up on the medicine cupboard, and also, to his joy, discovered a clump of tansy, so he had a fresh lucky sprig to put in his left boot for tomorrow.