Riders (58 page)

Fen, eyes tight shut, was slightly moving her lips.

“What are you doing?” asked Dino.

“Asking God to help Jake,” said Fen, not opening her eyes.

“Rather unfair to Jake,” said Dino. “I guess he can do it by himself.”

Malise suddenly turned to Driffield. “For Christ’s sake, stop selling that horse and come and watch this.”

Alone in the ring, it was as though Jake was in another world. He was conscious only of the joy of riding this beautiful, beautiful horse, thinking he could clear the stands, even the Eiffel Tower, on her. He turned for the water.

“Come on lieberlen, or dummkopf, I forget which it is.”

Clara took a great leap, happy to have an expert on her back. Jake was aware of the blue water going on forever and the anxious, upturned faces of the photographers. But he found the perfect stride and was safely over. The crowd couldn’t forbear a cheer, then shushed themselves. The three elements of the combination, then the huge triple and he was home. Overcome with nerves, he made Clara take off too early at the first element. She only just cleared it, so he turned her to the left at the next element, giving her room for an extra stride and placing her perfectly at the last element.

He was over.

“Magic riding,” raved Malise. “Oh, come on, Jake.”

Unable to restrain itself the crowd broke into a huge roar. The triple seemed to rush towards him. He lifted the mare up and up. The poles flew beneath him.

That’ll do, he thought in ecstasy. I’m World Champion.

All around the thunderously cheering arena, Union Jacks were waving as he rode out of the ring, patting the gallant mare over and over again.

“He won,” screamed Fen, hugging Tory and then flinging her arms round Dino and kissing him.

Dino, taking advantage, kissed her back. “That’s almost worth only coming third,” he said.

All the British team, except Rupert, were going mad with excitement. Malise and Colonel Roxborough were throwing their hats in the air. Jake came out of the ring and slid off Clara into Tory’s arms. For a second they clung to each other, not speaking. He could feel her hot tears on his cheek and the thunder of congratulatory hands raining down on his back.

A magnum of champagne was thrust into his hands. He opened it and soaked everyone around, then they all had a swig.

There was no sign of Malise or Rupert. They were closeted with a member of the international jury, Rupert shouting in only too fluent French and Malise trying to pacify him. But there was no case, said the Frenchman. There was nothing in the rules about not putting in a difficult horse. Macaulay plainly hadn’t liked Rupert, but he’d behaved with all the other riders, and Snakepit certainly hadn’t been an easy ride for anyone, except Jake. Jake was undeniably the winner and they’d better get on with the presentation. Muttering that he was going to report Jake to the BSJA, Rupert stormed out of the tent.

“Where are you going?” said Malise.

“Not back into the ring to get the booby prize,” snarled Rupert.

“My dear boy,” said Malise gently, drawing him aside, “I’m sorry. It was bad luck. You’ve had a great disappointment and probably a very frightening experience.”

“Balls,” said Rupert. “I’ve been robbed.”

“You must have beaten Macaulay severely for him to go for you like that.”

“He was my horse. What fucking business is that of anyone’s?”

“The RSPCA for a start, and the FEI, not to mention the BSJA. It won’t do your image any good, nor will a lot of emotive stuff about selling Macaulay to the Middle East, and him starving and ending up in the stone quarries.”

“If you believe that story.”

“I do,” said Malise, “and it could ruin you. The press are longing to get you, and you know what the English are like about cruelty to animals. It’ll take a lot of guts, but go back into the ring and keep your trap shut. Bet you’ll get a lot of marks.”

Back came the bands, but this time the four horses were too tired to be disturbed by the drums and the cymbals. Ludwig shook Jake by the hand. “Well done, my friend, well done.”

“Clara was the best-trained horse. You should have won it,” said Jake.

“You fought back from a terrible start; zat is more important.”

Dudley Diplock ran up to Jake. “Seuper, absolutely seuper,” he cried, giving Macaulay a wide berth. “Can I interview you immediately after the presentation?”

Rupert rode in last. The crowd gave him almost the biggest cheer in sympathy. He was handsomer than Robert Redford, he had jumped three spectacular clears, and certainly most of the women in the audience had wanted him to win.

Jake rode forward, leaving the other riders lined up behind him, and removed his hat as the band played the National Anthem. His hair was drenched with sweat and there was a red ring on his forehead left by his hat. In a daze, he was given an assortment of rosettes, so you could hardly see Macaulay’s white face for ribbons. There was also a purple sash, which clashed with Jake’s scarlet coat, and a huge laurel wreath for Macaulay’s neck, which he tried to eat. Then, to Jake’s intense embarrassment, one beautiful girl in matching green suits after another came up and presented him with prize after prize: a gold medal, a Sèvres vase, a Limoges tea set, a silver tray, a magnum of champagne, an enormous silver cup and, finally, a check for £10,000.

There was nothing except one rosette and much smaller checks for the others.

“Can’t we each have one of those girls as consolation prizes?” said Dino.

Even when Prince Philip came up and shook him by the hand, Jake was too euphoric even to be shy and managed to stumble a few sentences out. Aware that the place was swarming with photographers and television cameras, Macaulay resolutely stuck his cock out and refused to put it in again.

“Just like Rupert,” said Fen.

As Jake came out of the ring, he was cornered by Dudley Diplock. “May I personally shake Macaulay by the hoof. How the hell did you get him to do it?” he added, lowering his voice. “I’ve been waiting ten years for someone to give that shit Campbell-Black his comeuppance. The whole show-jumping world will club together and give you a medal.”

Gradually it was dawning on Jake that most people seemed more delighted Rupert had lost than that he had won. After the television interview with Dudley, which was not very articulate but so full of euphoria and gratitude to Macaulay and Tory and all the family and Malise, that it charmed everyone. Malise joined them. Neither he nor Jake were demonstrative men, but for a second they hugged each other.

“You were brilliant,” said Malise in a strangely gruff voice. “Sorry I didn’t get to you earlier but I’ve been with Rupert. He wanted to object.”

“Nothing to object about,” said Dudley.

“Quite,” said Malise. “But that’s never deterred him in the past. Fortunately, they weren’t having any of it. But he has been badly humiliated, so I think the less crowing about that side of it the better. Come on,” he added to Jake, “everyone’s waiting to talk to you.”

“Who?”

“The world’s press, for a start.”

“I want to ride Mac back to the stable. I’ve got nothing to say to them. I won. Isn’t that enough?”

Malise looked at him. Was there a flicker of pity in his eyes? “It won’t have had time to sink in,” he said, “but things are never going to be the same again. You’re a superstar now, a world beater. You’ve got to behave like one.”

On the way, they passed Helen Campbell-Black; she was crying. Both Malise and Jake hoped that Rupert wasn’t going to take it out on her. As they fought their way into the crowded press tent, euphoric English supporters, stripped to the waist, including Humpty, Ivor Braine, and Driffield, were already getting plastered.

“Fucking marvelous! You beat the bugger,” said Driffield, thrusting a glass into Jake’s hand, while Ivor overfilled it with champagne.

“Three cheers for the champion,” said Humpty. “Hip-hip-hooray.” Everyone joined in. The noise nearly lifted the roof off.

“Lovell for prime minister,” yelled an ecstatic British supporter. Opening another magnum, he sprayed the entire press conference with champagne.

Jake was carried shoulder-high to the table with the microphones. He collapsed into a chair and was bombarded with questions. He answered the foreign ones through an interpreter.

He was extremely happy, he said, but very, very tired. One didn’t sleep much before a championship. He’d won because he was very lucky. Macaulay was a great horse, perhaps not in the class of any of the other horses, but he had been rested all year. Clara was the best-trained horse. She didn’t knock down a single fence, she ought to get a special prize.

Everyone was still clamoring for information about Macaulay.

Jake said carefully that he’d always liked the horse, and when Rupert sold the horse on, he’d tracked him down and bought him.

“Did you deliberately put him in to sabotage Rupert?” asked
Paris Match.

Jake caught Malise’s eye. “Of course not. I’d no idea how he’d feel about Rupert.”

“Did you know Rupert had sold the horse because he was vicious?” asked Joanna.

Jake looked up, the somber black eyes suddenly amused. “Who’s vicious?” he said. “Rupert or the horse?”

Everyone laughed.

Later a celebratory party went on until four o’clock in the morning, but Rupert and Helen gave it a miss and flew home.

Soon all that was left of the World Championship was a few wheel tracks and a bare patch at the corner of the collecting ring, where all week ecstatic grooms had snatched up handfuls of grass to reward their successful charges, as they came out of the ring.

A
week after the riders came back from the World Championship, Billy went up to London to speak at the Sportswriters’ Association Lunch. If they’d known I was going to be dropped, they probably wouldn’t have asked me, he thought wryly. Janey needed the car to go shopping (“Only food from the market; it’s so much cheaper,” she added quickly), so she dropped Billy off at the station. He couldn’t face
Horse and Hound;
it’d be too full of the World Championship, so he bought
Private Eye,
which always cheered him up, except when they were foul about Rupert. As he sat on the station platform, he turned to Grovel. He read a marvelous story about a member of the Spanish Royal family’s sexual perversions, and another, even more scurrilous, about a trade union leader and a pit pony. Then his heart stopped beating. The next story began:

“Ex-slag-about-Fleet Street, Janey Henderson, sacked for the size of her expenses, is now trying to write a book about men. Despite encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, Janey felt the need for further research and recently returned from four days in Marbella with loathsome catfood tycoon Kevin Coley. Meanwhile her amiable husband, Billy Lloyd-Foxed (as he’s known on the circuit), is forced to turn a blind drunk eye. Coley is his backer to the tune of £50,000 a year.”

Billy started to shake. It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t—not Janey. She’d always laughed at Kev.
Private Eye
got things wrong; they were always being sued. He read it again. The words misted in front of his eyes. He didn’t even hear the train come in. The ticket collector tapped him on the shoulder. “You want this one, don’t you, Billy?”

“Yes, no, I don’t know. No, I don’t.”

Running, pushing aside the people coming off the train, he rushed out of the station, flagging down the first taxi. “Take me home.”

“All right, Mr. Lloyd-Foxe.”

No one was there. Janey was still out shopping. He pressed the LR button on her telephone to find out the last number she’d rung. It was Kevin Coley’s, at the head office. Hating himself, he looked in her top drawer. Janey had started a letter which she’d crumpled up.

“Darling Kev, I won’t see you today, so I’m writing. God, I miss you, I’m just coming down to earth after Marbella. Can’t you think of somewhere nice and far to send Billy?”

He gave a moan of horror. His legs were trembling so much he could hardly stand. The bottle clattered against the glass and the whisky spilt all over the carpet. He drained it neat in one gulp, then he ran all the way to Rupert’s. He found him in the yard, selling a horse to an American.

One look at Billy’s face and Rupert said to the buyer, “Sorry, I’ve got to go. If you’re interested in the horse, give me a ring later.” Then, putting a hand on Billy’s shoulder, he led him inside.

As soon as the drawing room door was shut behind them Billy said, “Did you know Janey was being knocked off by Kevin Coley?”

“Yes.”

“How the hell?”

“Helen saw them lunching together in Cheltenham, and Mrs. Bodkin’s been chuntering. And Mrs. Greenslade said in Les Rivaux that she saw them coming off a plane.”

“It’s all over
Private Eye.
Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought Janey’d come to her senses,” said Rupert, pouring him a large drink. “Christ, if you’d have told Helen every time I’d had a bit on the side, she’d be back in America. Probably doesn’t mean a thing to Janey. She’s just a bit bored.”

“With one bounder, she was free,” said Billy miserably. “She’s been so cheerful in the last three weeks. She was so down before, I thought it was because the book was going well. It must have been Kevin. What the hell do I do?”

“Punch him on the nose.”

“I can’t, at £50,000 a year. Very expensive bloody nose.”

“Find another sponsor.”

“Not so easy. I’m not the bankable property I was two years ago.”

“Rubbish. You’re just as good a rider. You’ve just lost your nerve.” Rupert looked at his watch, “Aren’t you supposed to be making a speech in London?”

Billy went white, “I can’t.”

“You bloody well can. Don’t want to go ratting on that. They’ll say you’ve really lost your nerve. I’ll drive you up.”

Billy somehow survived the lunch and making his speech. Paranoid now, he imagined all the audience there looking at him curiously, wondering how he was coping with being cuckolded. The journalist in the front row had a copy of
Private Eye
in his pocket.

Even worse, that evening he and Janey had to go to some dreadful dance at Kev’s golf club in Sunningdale. Billy didn’t say anything to Janey. He had a faint hope, as he had when he was a child, that if he kept quiet and pulled the bedclothes over his head, the nasty burglar might assume he was asleep and go away. Janey, he noticed, didn’t grumble at all about going, as she would have done once, and looked absolutely ravishing in plunging white broderie anglaise.

She was easily the most beautiful woman in the room. All the men were gazing at her and nudging Kev for an introduction. Billy wondered how many of them had read
Private Eye,
and proceeded to get drunk.

Enid Coley was made of sterner stuff. Having tried to fill up Janey’s cleavage with an orchid and maidenhair fern wrapped in silver paper, which Janey rudely refused to wear, she waited for a lull in the dancing. Then she walked up to Janey, holding a glass of wine as though she was going to shampoo her hair, and poured it all over Janey’s head.

“What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” demanded Billy.

“Ask her what
she’s
been doing,” hissed Enid. “Look in my husband’s wallet, and you’ll see a very nice picture of your wife. Since you’ve been away she’s been seducing my husband.”

“Shut up, you foul-mouthed bitch.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. If you weren’t so drunk all the time, you might have done something to stop it.”

Taking Janey, dripping and speechless, by the hand, Billy walked straight out of the golf club. It was not until they were ten miles out of Sunningdale that she spoke. “I’m sorry, Billy. When did you know?”

“I read
Private Eye
at the station.”

“Oh, my God. Must have been terrible.”

“Wasn’t much fun.”

“Beastly piece, too. I wasn’t sacked. I resigned. Kev, in fact, was rather chuffed. He’s never been in
Private Eye
before.”

Billy stopped the car. In the light from the streetlamp, Janey could see the great sadness in his eyes.

“Do you love him?”

“I don’t know, but he’s so macho and I’m so weak. I guess I need someone like him to keep me on the straight and narrow.”

“He’s hardly been doing that recently,” said Billy. “Look, I love you. It’s
my
fault. I shouldn’t have left you so much, or let us get into debt, or been so wrapped up in the horses. It must have been horrible for you, with no babies, and struggling to write a book on no money. I’ll get some money from somewhere, I promise you. I just don’t want you to be unhappy.”

On Monday, Kevin Coley summoned Billy. “I’ve had a terrible weekend. I haven’t slept a wink for worrying,” were his opening words.

“I’m so sorry. What on earth’s the trouble?” asked Billy.

“I knew I had to break the news to you that I can’t go on sponsoring you. My only solution is to withdraw.”

“Pity your father didn’t do that forty years ago,” said Billy.

Kevin missed the joke; he was too anxious to say his piece. “The contract runs out in October and I’m not going to renew it. You haven’t won more than £3,000 in the last six months. I’m losing too much money.”

“
And
fucking my wife.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Then I tried to hit him,” Billy told Rupert afterwards, “but I was so pissed I missed. He’s talking of sponsoring Driffield.”

“Oh, well,” said Rupert, “I suppose one good turd deserves another.”

Winning the World Championship had transformed Jake Lovell into a star overnight. Wildly exaggerated accounts of his gypsy origins appeared in the papers. Women raved about his dark, mysterious looks. Young male riders imitated his deadpan manner, wearing gold rings in their ears and trying to copy his short, tousled hairstyle. Gradually he became less reticent about his background and admitted openly that his father had been a horsedealer and poacher and his mother the school cook. Sponsors pursued him, owners begged him to ride their horses. His refusal to turn professional, his extreme reluctance to give interviews (I’m a rider, not a talker) all enhanced his prestige. The public liked the fact that his was still very much a family concern, Tory and the children helping out with the horses. Fen, under Malise’s auspices, won the European Junior Championship in August, and, although still kept in the background by Jake, was beginning to make a name for herself.

Most important of all, Jake had given a shot in the arm to a sport that, in Britain, had been losing favor and dropping in the ratings. The fickle public like heroes. The fact that Gyppo Jake had trounced all other nations in the World Championship dramatically revived interest in show jumping.

Wherever Jake jumped now, he was introduced as the reigning World Champion, which was a strain, because people expected him to do well, but also increased his self-confidence. For the rest of the year, and well into the spring, he and Macaulay stormed through Europe like Attila the Hun, winning every grand prix going. Two of his other novices, Laurel and Hardy, had also broken into the big time. Laurel, a beautiful, timid, highly strung bay who started if a worm popped its head out of the ground in the collecting ring, was brilliant in speed classes. Hardy, a big cobby gray, was a thug and a bully, but had a phenomenal jump. Both were horses the public could identify with.

But it was Macaulay they really loved. While other riders changed their sponsors and were forced to call their horses ridiculous, constantly changing names, Macaulay remained gloriously the same, following Jake around without a lead like a big dog, nudging whoever presented the prizes and responding with a succession of bucks to the applause of the crowd.

In November, Jake was voted Sportsman of the Year. Macaulay came to the studios with him and exceled himself by sticking out his cock throughout the entire program, treading firmly on Dudley Diplock’s toe, and eating the scroll that was presented to his master. For the first time, the public saw Jake convulsed with laughter and were even more enchanted.

Enraged by his humiliation in the World Championship, and the appalling publicity he received over selling Macaulay to the Middle East, Rupert decided to up sticks for a couple of months. Loading up six of his best horses, he crossed the Atlantic and boosted his morale by winning at shows in Calgary, Toronto, Washington, and Madison Square Garden.

Helen had always sighed wistfully that her parents had never had the opportunity to get to know their grandchildren. Rupert took her at her word. Flying the whole family out, plus the nanny, he dumped them in Florida with Mr. and Mrs. Macaulay, while he traveled the American circuit and “enjoyed himself,” as Mrs. Macaulay pointed out sourly. Staying with her parents with the two children shattered one of Helen’s illusions. Even if things got too bad with Rupert, she could never run home to Mummy anymore. The whole family were glad to get back to Penscombe in November.

Two weeks after Rupert left for America, Billy had gone on a disastrous trip to Rotterdam, where he had fallen off, paralytically drunk, in the ring and sat on the sawdust, laughing, while one of his only remaining novices cavorted round the ring, refusing to be caught. The English papers had been full of the story. Billy got home to find that Janey had walked out, taking all her clothes, her manuscript, Harold Evans and, worst of all, Mavis. Billy had stormed drunkenly round to the flat, where she was living with Kev, and tried to persuade her to come back. She had goaded him so much, and become so hysterical, that finally he’d blacked her eye and walked out with Mavis under his arm.

A week later he received an injunction from Janey’s solicitors accusing him of violent behavior and ordering him to stay away. Next day, The Bull, who’d been lackluster and off form for weeks, had a blood test. Not only was he anemic but had picked up a virus, said the vet, and should not be jumped for three months.