Riders (80 page)

“I’ll put up with anything,” said Helen, in a trembling voice. “I just thought you’d gone off me.”

Jake laughed. “You’re like Macaulay, desperate for reassurance.”

“That’s the difference between us,” said Helen slowly. “My marriage is absolute purgatory. Yours is perfectly okay. We’re batting from different strengths.”

There was a pause. Jake was too truthful to disagree with her.

“Shall I fly out to Lucerne?” she asked with a sudden surge of hope.

“No, I don’t want any distractions.”

And with that she had to be content.

Rupert rang the following evening. He was halfway to Lucerne.

Rocky, he said, had won the Grand Prix on the Saturday.

“How’s Fen getting on?” asked Helen.

“Disastrously. I can’t think why Malise doesn’t pack her off back to junior classes. Mind you, he’s really gone off his head now. He’s just sent for Jake Lovell. ‘Jake Lovell,’ I said to him, ‘couldn’t get a jump in a brothel.’ ”

Lucerne was a show of mixed fortunes for Jake. Macaulay, who hadn’t flown since Jake brought him half-starved back from the Middle East four years before, obviously thought he was being taken back to the stone quarries and completely freaked out on the flight. Sweating as though in the highest fever, his huge body quivering with terror in the tiny crate, his anguished eyes imploring Jake not to desert him, he reminded his master of nothing so much as Helen. It took all Jake’s skill and patience to stop him kicking the plane out.

Arriving in Lucerne, Macaulay was pathetically pleased to see such old friends as Fen, Sarah, and Malise. He was further comforted to see Desdemona in situ, and dragged Jake halfway across the yard to check if it were really her. Touching her nose, exchanging breaths, Macaulay was still rigid with disbelief. Only when Desdemona reached up to rest her roan face against his still sweating neck, protective and defensive, did he begin to relax. But he never really recovered his form all week.

Bearing in mind that there would be a punishing flight to the Olympics and Macaulay was not all that sound in the wind, and a clean-winded horse was essential for the Los Angeles smog, Jake, after long discussions with Malise, decided to pull him out of the contest. He was heartbroken. Most of all he had wanted to win a medal on Macaulay, but his horses always came first, and Jake was not prepared to put the big fellow through the traumas of another plane journey. He’d already made plans to box him home.

Which meant everything rested on the sleek but irritably twitching gray shoulders of Hardy, who was magnificent on his day, but perfectly capable of carting Jake or kicking every fence out if he so chose. In Lucerne, after a sulky start, he came second in two classes, and jumped an exemplary clear in the first round of the Nations’ Cup. In the second he put in a dirty stop at the water, leaving Jake sitting in the exquisite model lake with a stream of expletives on his lips and a bridle in his hand, while Hardy cavorted round the ring like Tinkerbell, refusing to be caught. Having learnt to duck out of his bridle, Hardy suddenly decided what fun it was, and did exactly the same thing in a speed class the following day.

All this provided wonderful fuel for Rupert, who proceeded to put the boot in on every occasion. Although Fen got very hot under the collar and snapped back at Rupert, Jake refused to rise. He got a quiet satisfaction from the thought of how much better he’d been riding Rupert’s wife at home, and a further laugh when the post arrived one morning and Rupert actually handed him an envelope containing a passionate love letter from Helen. Thank goodness, she’d had the foresight to type the envelope and post it in London.

Finally, Hardy put a muzzle on all his critics by coming second to Ludwig in the Grand Prix. But all in all, Jake did not feel the week’s adventures had enhanced his Olympic prospects.

After Lucerne, it was back to the Royal in Birmingham, then out to Aachen, then more shows in England and finally Crittleden at the end of July, after which the team would be announced.

All this made Jake very uptight and, although he missed Helen appallingly, he had plenty to occupy his mind. Helen, on the other hand, had nothing. She thought about Jake obsessively. It was as if he was the same television program permanently in front of her eyes. His face haunted her dreams. At night she tossed and turned, longing for his hands on her body.

She had even convinced herself that Jake would make a much better father for the children, particularly Marcus. Rupert had come home from Lucerne and taken both children to the fair. Here he had insisted on riding on all the most frightening things. Tabitha adored every minute of it. Marcus was absolutely terrified and ended up being sick on the top of the big wheel, soaking not only Rupert’s trousers but the couple immediately below them, who took it in very bad part. Rupert returned home in a blazing temper, with Marcus white and shaking and Tabitha in high glee telling everyone what had happened. That evening Marcus had his worst asthma attack ever.

As Helen soothed him to sleep in the early hours of the morning, she found under his pillow one of the little dogs with a ruff from the circus Jake had given him.

“Want to see Dake again,” murmured Marcus slowly. “Like Dake very much.”

“Oh so do I, darling,” sighed Helen.

A week later Janey gave birth to a beautiful, dark-haired boy who weighed seven pounds and happily looked exactly like Billy. They called him Christopher William, soon abbreviated to Christy, and both parents absolutely doted on him.

Watching Billy in his newfound role as an adoring father, Helen brooded all the more on Rupert’s lack of interest in Marcus.

On the other hand, she had reason to be grateful to little Christy. As a devoted godmother, she was provided with the perfect alibi. Afternoon or evening, she merely had to tell Charlene she was popping along to see Janey and the new baby. Then, having dumped a bunch of flowers and a glossy magazine and cooed for two minutes, she could rush off to see Jake.

During the Royal show, she and Jake were able to snatch an afternoon together. Leaving Rupert safely competing in a couple of classes, Jake left Birmingham and drove the eighty odd miles over to Penscombe. Charlene had taken the children to a birthday party, so they had the house to themselves.

Jake was very jumpy. He hated making love to Helen on Rupert’s territory. He thought of the Mill House with its damp, peeling paint, torn wallpaper, and messy, homely rooms which had suffered eight years of wear and tear from children and animals. Then he looked at this ravishing house, and the green valley, and the tennis court, and the swimming pool, and the garden in its rose-scented midsummer glory. The blatant perfection of the whole thing depressed him. And yet, overwhelming all this was his desperate need to see Helen again, and again, though he hated to admit, the buzz of actually making love to her in Rupert’s huge four-poster. He was amazed how passionate and totally uninhibited she’d become.

“I never thought I’d like it that way,” she said. “The only problem with
soixante-neuf
is that neither of you can tell the other how marvelous it is while you’re doing it.”

“Let’s do it straight next time, so you can,” said Jake.

“Bighead,” said Helen, rolling onto her front.

Lying on top of her, Jake slowly returned to earth, kissing her freckled shoulders, gently nibbling the lobes of her ears.

Helen, who’d buried her face in the pillow, said in a muffled voice, “Jake—I love you.”

There was a long pause, a horse whinnied from the valley, a dog barked in the distance. Then Jake said, “I love you, too.”

Lying beside her, smoking a cigarette, not worrying about the smell of tobacco because Rupert wasn’t due back until the following day, he said, “I’ve never said that to anyone in my life before.”

“Not even to Tory?”

He shook his head.

“Why did you marry her, then?”

“Because she was rich and she bought me my first horse.”

“Didn’t you love her at all?”

“Not in the way I love you. As I said, she’s been a very good wife, but we’re all inclined to take her for granted. Dino brought her out. He really bothered with her, and she adored him.”

“Dino was also very fond of me,” said Helen, her face suddenly sulky. Jake sat up and looked down at her, grinning.

“I do believe you’re jealous of Tory.”

Then, seeing the pain and misery in her eyes, he pulled her into his arms. Clinging to him fiercely like a child begging for a bedtime story to ward off the terrors of darkness, she said, “Tell me about the gypsies.”

He settled her into the crook of his arm.

“Well, if a woman’s unfaithful to her lover he cuts off her ear or her nose, or scars her cheeks, so you’d better be careful. If your wife’s unfaithful you tie her to a cartwheel and thrash her, or shave her head.”

“Golly,” said Helen nervously, “how primitive.”

“Then if you want to marry a girl you send her a spotted handkerchief. If she’s wearing it next time you meet her, you know she’s willing to marry you.”

Helen was amazed how much it hurt her to ask, “Did you give one to Tory?”

“Yes. It was very cheap, red cotton. All I could afford at the time. She still keeps it in her jewel case, but it’s terribly faded.”

He looked at his watch. “Christ, I must go.”

“Oh, please not.”

“I’ve got a class at seven. I’ve got to walk the course and it’ll take me an hour to get back in the rush-hour traffic. I’ll have to drive like hell as it is.”

“Am I jeopardizing your career?”

“Yes,” he said, kissing her.

Next minute the doorbell pealed and the dogs went into a frenzy of barking.

“Christ, who’s that?”

Helen snuggled up to him. “Lie still. It might go away.”

The doorbell rang again, the barking increased.

Naked, Helen crept down the passage and, hidden by the clematis which swarmed over the spare room window, peered out. A minute later she was back in her bedroom, giggling. Jake was already getting dressed.

“All I can see is a straw hat.”

“Well, you’d better go and redirect it,” said Jake.

Wrapping herself in a big rust-colored towel, Helen went downstairs.

In the doorway she found two elderly women fanning themselves. One was carrying a camera.

“We thought for an awful moment you were out,” said the first, who was wearing the straw hat.

“I was in the bath,” said Helen. “Can I help you?”

“We’ve come to interview you for
Loving Mother
magazine. Miss Taylor here,” the woman in the straw hat waved in the direction of the woman with the camera, “is going to take the pictures.”

“Oh, my goodness.” Helen froze with horror. She remembered they’d rung and made an appointment weeks ago, and Jake must have rung straightaway afterwards and she’d forgotten to put it in the diary. Suddenly she could feel Jake’s sperm trickling down her legs and backed away hastily, ramming her legs together, hoping they couldn’t smell all the sex and excitement.

“You’d better come in,” she said weakly. “You must forgive me. I had a panic getting Rupert off to a show this morning,” she lied. “Usually, I’m so punctilious about these things.”

Miss Crabtree gave a jolly laugh. “Oh, the needs of the great man must take preference.” She stepped into the hall. “What a lovely home.”

Helen’s mind was racing. How the hell was she going to smuggle Jake out? Then she had a brainwave. “Come onto the terrace; the view’s so lovely. Would you like a drink?”

Miss Crabtree consulted her watch. “Well, it’s only half-past four. We’d love a cup of tea.”

“Of course. A cup of tea.” Helen fled into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and rushed up the backstairs, half-hysterical with laughter and terror. She found Jake dressed and trying to make his cigarette butt disappear down the loo.

“Have you got rid of them?”

“No; they’ve come to interview me about being a devoted wife and mother.”

Jake grinned. “They’d better come and interview me.”

“Shut up. I’ve got them safely on the terrace. You steal out by the back door.”

Tugging on a dress and a pair of pants, she flung her arms around his neck. “Ring me this evening.”