Riders (71 page)

For a second Dino’s hand clenched on her shoulder. Then he looked around the room at the posters of Snoopy and the china horses and Lester the teddy bear and the pajama case in the shape of a camel, and then at the tattered photograph of Billy Lloyd-Foxe in the leather case.

“You’re still a kid, aren’t you?” he said bitterly. “I guess you’re just about adult enough to sleep with an old teddy bear like Billy Lloyd-Foxe.”

“Bastard,” hissed Fen, and the next moment she’d slapped Dino’s face very hard. “Just shut up about Billy.”

Dino shrugged. “And you resort to blows like a kid. Unfortunately, I happen to be a grown-up boy. I had my twenty-first birthday five years ago and I’ve got the appetites of a normal guy. If you think I’m going to remain celibate while you keep putting another battery in the stupid torch you’re carrying for Billy you’ve got another think coming.”

“It’s not a stupid flashlight,” screamed Fen. “You’re just like Rupert and Jake. None of you understand the meaning of the word love.”

“All I can promise,” said Dino, “is that I want you more than any girl I’ve ever met, but I’m a hedonist, not a medieval knight keeping myself pure for some unobtainable lady love, nor do I like sleeping alone. The central heating in this house leaves a lot to be desired. So if you won’t put out I’m going to find my entertainment someplace else.”

And with that he left her. The next minute she heard his car door bang and the crunch of wheels on the gravel.

Bursting into tears, she threw herself down on the already sodden bed.

T
he next few days were awful. Fen and Dino hardly exchanged a word. Fen got up before dawn. Dino changed his routine, got up after lunch, and spent his evenings working the horses in the indoor school. It seemed impossible in such a small house that they could avoid meeting. Dino was polite but unsmiling; he no longer mobbed her up.

On Friday morning Fen, Dino, Louise, and Sarah were due to get up at 3.30 A.M. for a four-thirty departure for a show in Amsterdam. On the Thursday before that, the
Sunday Express
sent a photographer and a reporter down to the Mill House to interview Fen. In the evening she had to go to a dinner at the Savoy, where she was being nominated for one of the Sporting Personality of the Year awards. The organizers were sending a car for her, which, at the end of the evening, would whizz her back to Warwickshire to catch three hours sleep before leaving for Amsterdam.

The
Sunday Express
reporter was a charming middle-aged roué, who thought Fen was gorgeous and buttered her up to mountainous heights in the hope of possible indiscretions. After lunch cooked by Tory, the photographer took pictures of Desdemona and Macaulay from flattering angles, as they were still a bit podgy from their six weeks’ rest, later photographing the yard and the house and the kitchen, with Tory cooking at the Aga and Fen pretending to fill in entry forms against a background of rosettes.

“I’m thinking of getting a secretary to cope with all my fan mail,” said Fen, who’d had three glasses of wine at lunch.

“I’m not surprised,” said the
Express
reporter. “Every little girl in England dreams of being like you.”

“I hope to Christ they don’t behave like her,” said a voice, and Dino wandered in, unshaven, yawning, bloodshot-eyed, and poured himself a large whisky.

“Is that your breakfast?” snapped Fen.

“No, the first one was my breakfast,” said Dino. “Hi,” he added to the reporter, and wandered off in the direction of the stables.

“That’s Dino Ferranti, isn’t it?” asked the reporter, refilling Fen’s glass. “Good-looking bloke, despite the stubble. More like a rock star. He your latest?”

“Hardly,” snapped Fen, “He’s working with Jake. Honestly, if I were cast away on a desert island I’d rather be propositioned by a gorilla!”

“You’d be wasting your time,” said Dino, coming back into the room. “Gorillas are mostly gay. Anyone seen this week’s
Horse and Hound
?”

“And don’t bloody eavesdrop,” said Fen, “Let’s go into the sitting room. We’ll be more private.”

It was already dark when she waved them good-bye. Outside, the lorry was waiting, already filled with petrol, water, and human and equine supplies. She’d better step on it. The car was picking her up at five-thirty. Sitting at the kitchen table she found Dino, Tory, and Sarah checking the list of what they were taking to Amsterdam. Fen looked at her message pad—ATV,
Woman’s Own,
and Malise Gordon had rung. Picking up the telephone, she suddenly noticed black fur all over her pale pink angora jersey, which was drying on a towel on the edge of the Aga.

“Bloody hell,” she said, dropping the receiver back on its cradle.

Tory looked up, alarmed. “What’s the matter?”

“My pink jersey. I’ve got to take it tomorrow and you can’t even keep the bloody cats off it.”

Dino looked up from a pile of horses’ health papers.

“Pack it in,” he said softly. “Tory’s cooked lunch for your press admirer, which you haven’t even had the manners to thank her for. She’s done all our ironing for tomorrow and seen everything’s back from the cleaners, as well as providing enough food for us for a month. She doesn’t actually have the time to police your pale pink sweater,” he really spat out the P’s, “against marauding tomcats.”

Fen lost her temper. “I ran this bloody yard single-handed for five months and now I don’t get any proper backup,” she screamed, and stormed out of the kitchen. Ten minutes later she was back with dripping hair: “Who’s been using my hair dryer?”

“I did,” said Tory apologetically, “on Darklis.”

“Well, you’ve fused it. How am I expected to dry my hair?”

“Why don’t you go stick your head in the oven,” said Dino, “and preferably don’t light the gas! You’re getting much too big for your £500 boots. We all know you’re England’s answer to show jumping and the role model for the entire schoolgirl population, and we’re fed up with it. You know perfectly well you wouldn’t speak to Tory like this if Jake was here.”

“
Were
here,” screamed Fen, “
were
here. ‘If’ takes the subjunctive,” and she stormed out of the room again.

“Oh, dear,” said Tory, in distress, gazing at the last orange rays of sunset. “Oh, dear, oh, dear.”

Fen was in such a rage that she went off to London without saying good-bye to anyone. She wore a black, backless taffeta dress she’d bought in Paris the previous summer and never worn, with high-heeled black shoes, black stockings, and Dino’s necklace at her throat. As she walked into the predinner drinks party, which was choc-a-bloc with every sporting celebrity, commentator, and journalist you could imagine, a few heads turned in her direction. She drifted over to Dudley Diplock, propped up against the fireplace, who was already three-parts cut, and gave the room the benefit of her back view. The dress was so low it almost gave her a cleavage at the back. When she turned around five minutes later, everyone was gaping at her. It was one of those evenings when her looks really worked, perhaps because she was giving off such wanton promise, or because she longed to forget Dino and everything at home.

“What does F stand for?” asked a famous tennis player.

“Fuckable,” said Fen sweetly, “and it’s spelt out in emeralds and pearls.”

“You can say that again,” said the tennis player as everyone laughed.

Soon the journalists were hovering round her. They kept asking her about Billy and Dino, but she cracked back that she was married to her career and had no intention of getting a divorce. She had a good deal to drink and had some difficulty negotiating even the short walk into the dining room. She found herself sitting between a famous footballer with permed blond hair and a fake suntan, named Garry, and an Olympic shotputter whose arm muscles bulged through his dinner jacket, whose stomach folded over the table, and who lifted Fen above his head to loud cheers when she complained she couldn’t see the Princess.

The first course, because most people were in some sort of training, was Parma ham and melon, which Garry the footballer thought too outré for words.

“You got a boyfriend?” he asked Fen.

“Nope.”

“Fort as much. Riding an ’orse is a substitute for sex.”

“What an original thing to say,” said Fen politely, molding her uneaten roll into pellets and chucking them at Dudley.

“Stands to reason. Funny thing, most of them look like ’orses, but you don’t.”

“You’re talking garbage,” said the shotputter.

“Why don’t you come home with me?” said Garry the footballer. “Wife’s staying with her mother. I’d give you more fun than an ’orse.”

“You reckon?” said Fen.

Suddenly all the flashbulbs exploded as the photographers clustered round a late arrival, a tall, dark, very broad-shouldered man wearing a dirty bomber jacket, a dark blue shirt, no tie, jeans, and sneakers. He was extremely good-looking in a brutal, suntanned, heavy-eyelidded way, and appeared not remotely embarrassed to be the only man in the room not wearing a dinner jacket. The plane from Rome was late; he hadn’t had time to change.

At the sight of him the convoy of waitresses, rushing in like some musical comedy act, nearly dropped the massive oblong silver plates of beef they were bearing aloft. One comely brunette was so excited she gave the shotputter five slices of beef as she gazed entranced. Others dived for the kitchen and within seconds, six plates of Parma ham and melon were pressed on the new arrival from all sides, followed by several very large glasses of Bacardi and soda, which he lined up in a row in front of him, laughing all the while, showing beautiful big white teeth with several gold fillings. In the mat of black chest hair hung a gold St. Christopher medal.

“Who’s that?” said the shotputter.

“Enrico Mancini,” said Fen. “The fastest driver on earth.”

“Certainly be’aves like it,” said Garry disapprovingly. “I don’t like racing drivers. Fink they’re God’s gift. Not much skill in driving around and around the same track.”

He’s coarser looking than Rupert, thought Fen, watching Enrico Mancini joking with a couple of television commentators, but he behaves with the same certainty that he owns the earth. He was forking up Parma ham very fast now, his eyes raking the room for crumpet or cronies.

“Lovely beef,” said Fen. “I don’t know how they cook it on such a large scale.”

She took a big slug of red wine and, looking across at Enrico Mancini, found he was staring at her. Christ, he was taking the skin off her face. She looked hurriedly away, then glanced back five seconds later. He was still staring, gazing with peculiar intensity through a pot of yellow chrysanthemums. Her beef had lost all its appeal. She took another slug of wine. Putting her elbow on the table, it slid off as though it was greased. When she looked back again he’d moved the flowers and was smiling at her, lounging lazily in his chair. Then he blew her a kiss. Fen blushed, then found herself smiling.

“Eat up your beef, Fenella,” said the footballer. “You’ll never get to Los Angeles that way.”

“No, thanks, I’m full,” said Fen, putting her knife and fork together.

“Shame to waste it,” said the weightlifter, forking up the slices of beef. Dudley Diplock swayed over to have a chat, launching into a long story about Colonel Roxborough.

“How wonderful,” said Fen after five minutes, when it was obvious some response was expected.

“I said he’d had a stroke,” said Dudley.

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry. I misheard you. Who did you say?”

“Colonel Roxborough. But he’s expected to pull through.”

Fen could see Enrico Mancini writing a note on the back of a place card.

“I reckon you’ve got a good chance of getting the woman’s award tonight,” said Dudley.

“How dreadful for the family,” said Fen, who thought they were still on Colonel Roxborough’s stroke.

“The award, Fen! If you do, we’ll have a chat straight to camera immediately afterwards. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Dudley,” said Fen. Her glass seemed to be full again and someone had brought her a large brandy and the pretty brunette waitress, with some disappointment, Fen thought, was handing her a card.

On the back of Enrico Mancini’s place card was written, “Will you come out with me afterwards?”

Fen looked up. Enrico was still staring at her with that knowing, speculative, supremely confident smile. He raised his eyebrows. Fen shook her head, mouthing: “I can’t.”

“Black or white,” said the waitress.

“White. No, sorry, I mean black.”

“Must go to the toilet,” said the footballer.

Fen had broken off some frosted grapes and was putting them in her bag, wrapped in a paper napkin, for Darklis and Isa, when she felt a warm hand traveling the length of her back, lasciviously fingering her spine.

“There is no such word as ‘can’t,’ ” said a husky Latin voice. Spinning around, she saw Enrico had taken the footballer’s seat.

He had eyes the color of black treacle and an incredibly sensual mouth shaped rather like a car tire. I wonder if he changes it after three laps when it gets worn out with kissing, thought Fen with a giggle.

“Why d’you laugh?” he said softly, “I don’t find you funny.”

“I don’t find you funny either,” stammered Fen. “I’m just nervous.”

“With good cause,” said Enrico. “You won’t escape. I have wanted you for a very long time.”

“About an hour,” said Fen, looking at her watch.

“No, no, I see you on television in May in Rome with Desdemona, when you beat my friend Piero Fratinelli. His father makes my car. Then later you fall off Macaulay and got on again with the concussion. I said I must meet this girl. She is not only beautiful but brave. I am more attracted by courage than beauty in a woman. You and I will be magnificent in bed.”

“You saw me in Rome?” said Fen, amazed.

“Of course. That ees the only reason I come here tonight. They told me you’d be here. Shall we go?”

“We can’t,” said Fen.

His eyebrows were so black and his hair so thick and his face so strong and commanding. Oh, heavens, thought Fen in panic, how can I not go to bed with him?

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s a bit rude, before the speeches and the awards.”

“I will give you my own personal award,” said Enrico, staring at her breasts. “Much better than some stupid prize.”

“Besides I’ve got to go straight back to Warwickshire at eleven o’clock. I’m leaving for Amsterdam at four-thirty.”

Enrico looked at his massive digital watch, pressing knobs. “How many miles?”