Riders (89 page)

“Didn’t know Helen came from Paris,” said Ivor, in surprise.

Everyone laughed, which for a moment eased the tension.

“There’s a marvelous concert at the Hollywood Bowl tomorrow,” Helen said to Malise, “and tomorrow they’re doing
Hamlet
in Russian. I’d love to go.”

“Count me out,” said Rupert. “Why not
Black Beauty
in Urdu? The only use for the Hollywood Bowl is to be sick in it.”

Fen resisted the temptation to giggle.

“There’s a very naughty movie on at the Rialto,” said Suzy, who, irritated to find she’d been ousted from her place next to Jake, wanted to get back in on the action. “Why don’t we all go tomorrow night?”

“My wife is not interested in sex,” said Rupert flatly.

Jake had been watching Rupert for some time. His eyes narrowed and his right hand played idly with the knife he’d been given to cut the cake.

“I’m not surprised,” he said, “being married to you.”

Rupert looked up. There was a long embarrassed pause. Then Fen said desperately, “Ivor and I are going on a tour of movie stars’ homes tomorrow. We’re going to see Rudolph Valentino’s grave, and…” Rupert put a hand on her arm. “Shut up, darling,” he said softly. “Jake was talking.”

“Why don’t you give her a break for a change?” said Jake.

“What kind do you suggest, a broken jaw, perhaps?”

There was another awful pause.

“Just because you rode like a costive chimpanzee today,” said Jake “and screwed up the chances of the best horse in the class, you don’t have to take it out on her.” He was quivering like a leopard about to spring.

“Oh dear,” drawled Rupert. “We have grown in status since we won our silver medal this afternoon, haven’t we?”

“Shut up,” yelled Jake.

“Been at the human growth hormone, have we?” taunted Rupert. “Little man has had a happy day and is now making a big big night of it. Gypsy, my arse! You’re just a little suburban creep whose mother screwed around so much she couldn’t remember who your father was.”

Jake picked up the knife.

“No,” thundered Malise.

Suddenly the whole restaurant had gone quiet.

“You little creep,” said Rupert gently. “The only thing I’d use you for is to measure my tennis net.”

Helen leapt to her feet, knocking over her wineglass.

“Stop it,” she screamed. “Just because you’re jealous as hell of Jake, you have to spoil everything.”

“St. Georgia to the rescue,” said Rupert.

“I’m going,” said Helen. “Thank you, Malise, I’m real sorry, everyone,” and she fled out of the restaurant, a shimmering column of gold, cannoning off tables, blinded by tears.

“Aren’t you going to cut that cake?” said Griselda.

Rupert caught up with Helen outside the restaurant. They stood side by side, not speaking, while the doorman conjured up their car. Helen was amazed that Rupert could be so charming, when Michael Caine stopped on the way out and asked them to a party the following night.

“Shut up,” he snarled on the journey back when she asked him to drive slower. “Let me get home in one piece. Then we’re going to do some straight-talking.”

At the Eriksons’ house the servants had gone to bed. Drunk though Rupert was, he managed to switch off the burglar alarm, before going into the drawing room and pouring himself a glass of neat whisky. Helen walked towards the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“Bed. I’ve had enough of you for one day.” Careful, she told herself, careful. But all those things that Malise and Fen had said earlier about Tory and not rocking the boat had only made her more desperate.

“Come here,” said Rupert.

It was not a voice to disobey. Rupert once again had that curiously dead expression on his face that always heralded trouble.

She removed her gold high heels, which would impede a quick getaway, and sank into the white warmth of Suzy’s sumptuous fake-fur sofa.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she said in a low voice. “I guess they had a celebration dinner for you when you won your bronze.”

“Hey, wait a minute. You’ve got very protective about Jake Lovell lately, haven’t you? Embracing him when he came out of the ring, sticking up for him this evening. What’s going on?”

Helen took a deep breath, aware that she was pushing a huge boulder towards the edge of a cliff and that any minute it might roll over, crushing innocent people in its path.

“What’s going on?” repeated Rupert.

One of Helen’s combs had fallen out of her hair, which flopped forward over her face. Looking at the golden tanned face and the shimmering gold body and the mass of shining hair, Rupert suddenly thought she had never looked so desirable—almost wanton—despite her terror.

“You’re looking very good. As I said earlier, you’re looking much too good. Don’t tell me you’ve got yourself a man at last?”

“Yes, I have,” said Helen, goaded.

“Who is it?”

“Jake,” whispered Helen, “Jake Lovell.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Jake Lovell!” Rupert began to laugh, totally without mirth. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve been having it off with that pathetic little cripple?”

“Don’t you dare call him that!”

“A cripple,” Rupert went on, “a warped gypsy cripple. Doing our bit for the disabled, are we? It figures, I suppose it made you feel good. A pound in the collection box on Sunday, a day a month for the NSPCC, hawking a slit tin up and down the high street once a year for the Distressed Gentlefolk, and leaping into bed with a cripple. Mrs. Campbell-Black does so much for charity. You bet she does!”

“You’re revolting,” screamed Helen. “Pulling everything down to your own disgusting level.”

“It appears to be you who’ve done the pulling.”

“Even at a time like this, all you can do is to make jokes.”

“Oh, believe me, baby, I don’t think this is funny.”

“I love him,” sobbed Helen, putting her face in her hands, “and he loves me.”

Rupert filled up his glass. Then in an almost calm voice that made Helen’s blood run cold, he said: “How long has this been going on?”

“Since February, when Marcus was hospitalized. I was worried stiff. Jake came in to see the consultant about his leg. He was very caring and supportive. I sure needed it after the Kenya trip.” She looked up at him. He stared back, as though daring her to go further. Helen dropped her eyes first.

“So that’s why you’ve been hanging around the circuit like a bitch on heat. How extraordinary. I was barking up quite the wrong tree, thinking you’d be turned on by Janey, wasn’t I? Never guessed your particular buzz would be a crippled dwarf.”

“Jake is not a dwarf,” screamed Helen. “He’s five foot seven.”

“You’ve measured him, have you—all over?”

For a few seconds he paced up and down the room, trying to calm the rage that kept boiling up inside him.

“And you had to pick the one man who’s always been out to get me. Remember when he tried to kill me before the World Championship? He doesn’t give a stuff about you. He just wants to score off me.”

“He doesn’t. He wants to marry me.”

The boulder was over the cliff now, crashing down, gathering force.

“Marry you?” said Rupert, genuinely amazed. “How?”

“As soon as he can get a divorce.”

“And he’s going to leave that fat, rich cow for you?”

“Yes,” sobbed Helen. If she said it, it must be true.

“And presumably that night when I came back from Dinard and he was there jawing about healing breaches and team solidarity, he’d merely come to fuck you—I beg your pardon—make love with you?”

Helen lost her temper. “Yes, he had. What about you and Podge, and Dizzy and Marion, and Samantha Freebody, and the one that gave me clap, not to mention all the others? You’ve never been faithful to me for one minute.”

“Oh, yes, I was,” said Rupert, “until you got involved with that sniveling child and refused to come abroad with me. He doesn’t give a stuff about you,” he went on. “Why did he nearly kill me at Disneyland for saying Tory was fat? Why was he on the telephone to her the moment he won that medal? You’re not going to break up that marriage. Anyway, what’s so special about him?”

“He’s a better rider,” screamed Helen, leaping to her feet, “and he’s much better in bed.”

The next moment Rupert had hit her across the room. Then he picked her up and hit her again, so that she collapsed sobbing across the glass table, spilling Rupert’s whisky over the white sofa.

“And what the fuck are you going to live on? He’s got no money. He can’t give you anything but Lovell, baby.”

“He’s got the Boyson sponsorship,” croaked Helen.

“He had,” said Rupert, gathering up his car keys. “That was on the condition he kept his nose clean. It’s pretty murky now.”

“Where are you going?” whispered Helen through lips which were already beginning to swell up.

“To find your lover and beat him up till he sees stars and stripes. Then I’m going to string him from the Hollywood sign by his precious medal ribbon.”

“No!” screamed Helen, “No, please!”

But Rupert had gone. Next moment she heard the crunch of his car roaring off towards Los Angeles.

Trembling like a palsied dog she ran to the telephone, and after several false starts managed to get through to the Olympic village. One of the security guards answered. No, they couldn’t possibly wake Jake in the middle of the night. He’d gone to bed and he was sharing a room with two weight lifters, both of whom had a competition tomorrow and needed their sleep. There was a “Do not disturb” sign on the door.

“Please,” sobbed Helen. “It’s his wife. I must talk with him. There’s been a terrible accident.”

The security man hummed and hawed. “Okay, I’ll go and wake him.”

It seemed an eternity as she stood watching the remains of the whisky drip onto the oyster carpet, before Jake picked up the telephone.

“Tory, darling, what’s the matter? Are you okay? Is it one of the kids?” Helen could hear the terrible anxiety in his voice, which made her cry all the more.

“No, it’s not Tory, it’s me, Helen. It was the only way I could have them fetch you.” She was so hysterical it was a minute before he could discover what she was trying to say.

“Steady, pet. Calm down. Tell me what’s the matter.”

“Rupert knows everything. He’s suspected us for ages.” That wasn’t true, but somehow it made a better story. “We gave ourselves away this evening. He’s on his way to the village.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No—yes—well a little. I’m okay, but he says he’s going to kill you.”

As though in a dream, Jake watched a group of English cyclists, drunk and stark naked except for their security chains, being humored very kindly along the passage by some security guards. For a wild second he wondered whether to seek asylum. There were enough guards on duty even in the middle of the night to protect him from a regiment of Ruperts. But then Rupert would probably go back to Arcadia and kill Helen.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean to shop you. I was so frightened.”

“Sweetheart, you must keep calm.” It was as though he was speaking to a child and watching himself in a black and white film, cushioned by drink, yet curiously sober. This wasn’t happening to him.

“Are you still wearing that gold dress? Okay. Well, get out of it and change into some day clothes. Pack a case, put in clothes to last you for a few days, bring your passport, bankers’ and American Express cards, dark glasses, and as much spare cash as you can get your hands on. I’ll come and fetch you.”

“Jake, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, but hurry.”

Rupert stormed into the Olympic village twenty minutes later, and was held up by a further ten-minute hassle with the guards, because he was, if not completely drunk, obviously in a very wild, excitable state. Finally they let him through and he proceeded to search every room on the third floor, until he found Jake’s. The weight lifters, trying to get their beauty sleep, were not amused to be roused by Rupert, roaring around the room, searching under beds, in the shower, even in the fridge.

Then he looked in Jake’s chest of drawers. His passport and washing things had gone, and all his clothes, except his red coat, his breeches, white shirts, ties, and boots, which still hung in the wardrobe. On the chest of drawers were framed photographs of Tory and the children. It was as though he’d left the most important part of his life behind.

R
upert returned to the Eriksons’ house to find all the lights blazing and the place full of cops. Suzy and Albie, coming in tight and finding doors opened, chairs knocked over, whisky spilt, Helen’s room ransacked and the alarm unset, had promptly assumed that they’d been burgled. Rupert ran upstairs, took in the chaos of clothes, jewels, and papers. All his spare cash had gone. He went back to the drawing room.

“There’s only been one burglary in this house. Jake Lovell’s walked off with my wife.”

“Are you sure?” said Suzy in amazement. “He didn’t seem remotely keen on her.”

“He’s a better actor than she is,” said Rupert. “It’s been going on since February. We’ve just had true confessions time.” He looked at the carpet and the sofa. “Sorry about the whisky.”

He was very pale, which gave the suntan an almost green tinge, but seemed totally in control.

“Annunciata seems to have pushed off, too,” said Albie, wandering into the drawing room and pulling off his tie.

“Oh, no,” said Suzy, far more upset by that than by Helen’s departure. “I’ve got fourteen people for lunch tomorrow.”

“Only thirteen without Helen,” said Rupert grimly.

After the police had gone he told them what had happened. In a way their flip, brittle approach helped him to cling onto his sanity.

“I must say she has been looking sensational since Jake arrived in L.A.,” said Suzy, “and she got mad whenever he talked to me. I’m sorry, Rupert. Being bored with your wife doesn’t necessarily mean you want someone else to take her off your hands, particularly when it’s your worst enemy.”

She was amazed Rupert was so calm. She found it rather chilling. Perhaps he was still in shock.

Then he said, “Can I use your telephone to ring a few people? It’ll be midday Tuesday morning in England now.”

“Of course,” said Suzy. “Go into the study.” She was dying to discuss the whole thing with Albie.

Hell-bent on vengeance like an army scorching the earth, Rupert rang Amanda Hamilton in Scotland. Fortunately, perhaps, he got Rollo and explained what had happened. Rollo was most sympathetic and fully appreciated that Jake and Helen might try to seize the children. He said it would be perfectly all right for Charlene to fly up to Scotland with Marcus and Tab until Rupert got back from L.A.

“I’m awfully sorry,” Rollo said again. “Have a word with Amanda.”

Even thousands of miles away Rupert could almost hear Rollo putting his hand over the receiver while he briefed his wife.

Amanda sounded extremely shocked. “Darling, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

“Fine,” said Rupert, “but they could have timed it better, with the team competition on Sunday. The press are going to have a field day. That’s why I want to get Tab,” he paused, “and Marcus, of course, out of the way.”

“Did you know yesterday? Was that why Rocky jumped so badly?”

“No,” Rupert interrupted her. “That was my fault.”

Then he rang his secretary, Miss Hawkins, and told her to put a red alert on all banker’s cards, Access and American Express, to order the bank to stop all checks and to close all Helen’s accounts at Peter Jones, Harrods, Hatchards, and Cavendish House in Cheltenham. Anyone at home, he said, particularly Charlene and Mrs. Bodkin, or any of the grooms or the gardeners, would be fired if they spoke to the press.

He went back into the drawing room with a grim smile on his face. “That should clip their wings.”

“I suppose I’ll have to wait till morning to try and trace Annunciata,” said Suzy petulantly. “I expect she’s moved in with that frightful boyfriend.”

Annunciata, in fact, was fed up with working for Suzy, fed up with the long hours, the untidyness (Suzy just stepped out of her clothes) and the meals demanded at all hours. She never knew how many people to cater for.

It was only a summer job anyway and she’d hardly had time to see any of the Games, not even Mr. Lovell winning his silver. After being woken up by the frightful row between Mr. and Mrs. Campbell-Black, Annunciata had crept upstairs and heard the whole thing, including hearing Rupert hitting Helen and storming off into the night, and a hysterical Helen ringing Jake Lovell. Annunciata had then appeared and asked Mrs. Campbell-Black if she needed any help with packing.

“She even wanted to know if we had any tissue paper,” Annunciata told her beady American boyfriend on the telephone. “She was very frightened but she still remembered to take the hot tongs and heated rollers and her hair dryer.”

The beady American boyfriend, deducing that Rupert would come roaring back to the house in a towering rage, advised Annunciata to move out pronto. After all, it was only a summer job and he was cute enough to realize that here was a story which, if Annunciata lived up to her name, and related to a newspaper, would save her having to work for several years.

Tory, after the victory celebrations, fell into bed at five in the morning, but still couldn’t sleep for happiness. After all that struggle, Jakey had got his silver. She’d never seen him as happy as he’d been at the press conference. And now, with the Boyson sponsorship, he’d be able to have the horses he wanted; he and Fen wouldn’t have to work quite so hard and he’d have more time with the children, which he’d always longed for, and they wouldn’t have to scrimp and worry all the time about where the next penny was coming from. She didn’t even feel tired when she had to get up at seven and take the sleepy, grumbling children to school. All day, people kept ringing up to congratulate her and Jake. Flowers and telegrams arrived constantly. The village was in a state of total euphoria, already planning the Welcome Home celebrations.

Tory watched clips of Jake’s silver four times on breakfast television, and in Olympic roundup,
and
played it back on the video, as she washed up all the glasses from last night. She didn’t bother with lunch. She’d been on a diet and had lost ten pounds since Jake left.

Singing at the top of her voice, she went to collect the children. Jake would be getting up soon, she thought fondly, with a terrible hangover.

On balance, she’d decided not to fly to L.A. By the time she’d got everything organized it would be Friday. Then, after a night flight, there’d be only half a day before the team event. Then they’d be coming home again. There’d be other occasions.

Her mother had rung up and Tory’d been so happy she’d forgotten to be cool with her. After all, it was a long time since Colonel Carter had taken Revenge away. Surely yesterday’s medal proved Jake was the greater rider than Rupert?

She even found time to go and give Macaulay two apples and tell him about his master’s great triumph. Housework could go by the board today. It was a beautiful September afternoon. Just a touch of wind ruffled the millpond and the hanging green willow curtains.

The children were very fractious when she picked them up from school. Darklis had lost one shoe, but at least it was better than two, she said. Isa had been beaten up in the playground for boasting about his father. Tory sent them off to watch television. Suddenly as she was cutting the fat off the lamb chops for their supper, she felt very tired. She’d have a large vodka and tonic when she’d put the children to bed. Then perhaps Jake would ring. Another wave of happiness overwhelmed her.

Then she heard the noise of argument from the sitting room. Isa, to Darklis’s rage, had switched on Ceefax over
The Sullivans
so that he could see the Olympic results.

“Mummy,” screamed Darklis. “Isa’s hitting me.”

“Stop it, Isa,” yelled Tory.

“I always get the blame,” shouted Isa. “Mummy, come quickly. There’s something about Daddy.”

Shoving the chops under the grill, Tory ran into the sitting room.

“Silver medalist Jake Lovell,” she read over the soothing tones of
The Sullivans,
“has disappeared from the Olympic village. Not seen since last night, he is alleged by the
Los Angeles Times
to have gone off with Helen Campbell-Black, wife of Rupert Campbell-Black, a fellow member of the British team and a bronze and silver medalist in 1976.”

Tory thought she must be dreaming. It couldn’t be true. They’d made some mistake. Jake had only rung her last night and told her he loved her. There was a moth bashing against the television screen.

“What does it mean, Mummy?” asked Isa. “Where’s Daddy gone?”

“Nowhere, darling,” said Tory in a strange voice. “It’s some mistake. Daddy wouldn’t do that.”

She canceled the Ceefax titles with the norm button then, after a few seconds, switched on the Ceefax Olympic report again.

“Mummy,” complained Darklis. “I want to watch
The Sullivans
.”

“Silver medalist Jake Lovell,” Tory read again, “has disappeared from the Olympic village.”

It was a few seconds before she realized that the telephone was ringing. She rushed to answer it. It must be Jake to say it was a hideous mistake.

“Mrs. Lovell?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the
Sun
newspaper here.” It was that thickened voice again with which they announced trouble or asked difficult questions. “Just wondered if you’ve got anything to say about your husband running off with Helen Campbell-Black.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Tory, and slammed down the receiver.

The telephone rang again. It was the
Mirror
with the same question. Then it was the
Sun
again. Tory took the receiver off the hook. She started to shake violently.

“Mummy, Mummy, the oven’s on fire.” Darklis, having wandered into the kitchen in search of a biscuit, found the neglected chops ablaze under the grill. The frozen peas had boiled down to a green scum.

“Mummy, Mummy,” yelled Isa, starting to cry, “they’re talking about Daddy.”

Martin Bell, gazing sternly out of the television screen, his light brown curls whipped by the Los Angeles breeze, was confirming that Jake had indeed disappeared from the Olympic village; so had Helen Campbell-Black from the house in Arcadia, where she had been staying with her husband. According to the
Los Angeles Times,
whose reporter had interviewed the maid, Helen had left after a row with Rupert, directly after a dinner at Ma Maison restaurant, held to celebrate Jake’s silver medal. Malise Gordon, the British chef d’equipe, had appealed to Jake to return for the team competition.

Tory was brought back to earth by the doorbell. It was a neighbor, Mrs. Irvine.

“I heard it on the radio,” she said. “I’m so sorry for you. I’ll get the children’s supper and answer the telephone. You’ll not want to be bothered.”

“I’m sure it’s some mistake,” said Tory.

“The poor little soul didn’t seem to have taken it in,” Mrs. Irvine told her husband later, “so I got the doctor.”

At that moment the doorbell went. It was the local stringer for the
Daily Mail.
After that they came like locusts, with their long-range cameras, trying to get in through the front door, the back door, even the windows, swarming through the village, attempting to bribe grooms, neighbors, trades people, desperate for information.

Tory tried to put a call through to L.A., but all lines were engaged.

It’s a bad dream, she kept telling herself. Jake wouldn’t go off like that, not when he’d asked her to come out to L.A., not with the team event on Sunday, which meant almost more to him than the individual, and which he knew meant infinitely more to Malise.

Alarmed by her calmness and refusal to accept the facts, the doctor gave her a sedative. It was not that Jake wouldn’t leave her, she kept saying, but he’d certainly never leave the horses, or the children, particularly in the middle of the Olympics. It was a belief she had to cling on to.

Malise, however, rang at ten o’clock. “I’m afraid we know nothing more at this end. What I imagine happened was that Jake and Helen may have walked out together; at least that’s what she told Rupert. Tempers flared. Rupert was absolutely livid at not getting the gold. He’d been simply poisonous all evening, threatening to beat Helen up. She appealed to Jake for help and he probably felt he ought to remove her somewhere safe until Rupert cooled down.”

Malise, reflected Tory, as the truth began to sink in, sounded like a gynecologist telling her she’d got a stillborn baby.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” he went on. “I’m convinced he’ll come back for the team event.”

But Jake did not come back. The Games were into their second week. The public was slightly bored with tales of derring-do and mega-achievement; they wanted a good scandal. Rupert, his beautiful American wife, and her romantic gypsy lover were the perfect answer.

“For just a handful of silver she left him,” quipped the
New York Times.

Everyone who knew Jake and Rupert rekindled the old feud. Jake had been bullied at school by Rupert and had got his revenge twenty-two years later by trouncing Rupert at the Olympics and then running off with his wife.

It was the same in L.A. as at the Mill House. Once the
Los Angeles Times
had led on Helen’s row with Rupert and her running off with Jake, the reporters were everywhere. Like some horror army of killer ants, they crept through seemingly locked doors, through windows, haunting the Olympic village, the Eriksons’ house, the stables, and the exercise rings.