The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous (85 page)

    hill.

    'This is where you fork right for the final run in,' explained Rupert. 'And the horse sees the crowd in all its yelling glory for the first time. Paddywack lost the race here last year. His head came up, he saw the crowd and Jimmy Jardine felt him coming back. Pridie passed him and it cost Jimmy the race, so keep a hold of Arthur.'

    'Arthur loves crowds. He'll accelerate if he gets this

    far.'

    This is a tricky fence,' said Rupert as they rounded the bend into the home straight. 'If you go flat out, you'll turn over; take a pull and you lose momentum; jump it wide and you'll lose a few vital yards that could cost you the race. Bluey'll be taking the paint off the rails. From now on, if Arthur's still on his big feet, it's a chance of surviving home.

    'Bluey's so experienced, he'll be on automatic pilot now, but you're likely to tense up with nerves and miss a vital gap. If Bluey comes to a bottleneck, he just pushes his way through, freeze for a second and you've had it, and if youcome up on the inside, even Bluey'll squeeze you out.'

    Glancing at Lysander's vacant stare, the shadows under his eyes, the pale translucent skin not even tinged with pink by the lashing rain, Rupert was worried he'd pushed him too hard.

    'What have I just said?'

    'That even a mate like Bluey will try and squeeze Arthur out.'

    'Good boy. For eleven thousand pounds in his pocket, any jockey will kill his mother. All that matters from here is to get your whip out and your head down and go like hell. You'll hear a roar like you've never heard, you'll ride into a tunnel of yelling faces, and you'll think the post will never come, but don't let up till you're past the post. When you hear Tab screaming with relief in the stable-lads' stand, you'll know you're OK.'

    'Thank you, Rupert.' Lysander felt overwhelmed with gratitude that Rupert should take the whole thing so seriously. 'We won't let you down.' Then, as an ambulance screeched by, 'When I was at the dentist's the other day, I popped into a solicitor's and made a will. It's in my bedroom drawer. If I don't come back, I'd like Tab to have Arthur, and you to have Jack. He's had such a ball since he's been at Penscombe.'

    'As long as you leave Tiny to Rannaldini,' said Rupert.

    Rannaldini had a household staying for the Rutminster, including the chairman of the board of the New World Phil, a squat, jolly businessman called Graydon Gluckstein, whom he was determined to impress. As a result Kitty had hardly had a moment to think. Having bought a Donald Duck good-luck card for Lysander, she had torn it up. It was immoral to send it if she were trying to save her marriage. Having not been allowed to see The Scorpion, she hadn't realized the connection between Rupert and the pale, watchful jockey, Isaac Lovell, whom Rannaldini had singled out to wrestle with The Prince of Darkness. He had dropped in for a drink last night.

    'All that matters is that you annihilate Bluey Charteris and Penscombe Pride,' she heard Rannaldini saying as he shut the door on them both.

    Kitty longed to look her best on the day of the race, but as she'd been wracked with morning sickness worse than Danny, and the rain that suited Arthur only crinkled the hair she'd blow-dried straight, there wasn't much hope.

    Although Rutminster was only fifteen miles away, Rannaldini insisted on ferrying his party, which also included Hermione and Bob, Meredith and Rachel and Guy and Georgie, by helicopter. Terrified of throwing up over the dove-grey suede upholstery, Kitty pleaded last-minute shopping in Rutminster for the celebration party the utterly confident Rannaldini was planning for that evening, when everyone would drink Krug out of the Rutminster Cup.

    Having bought some home-made pate and a side of smoked salmon from a delicatessen in the High Street, Kitty drove past the russet houses of the Close, peering out behind their fans of magnolia grandiflora, and, parking her car, popped in to the cathedral.

    The numbers of the hymns were up for Palm Sunday tomorrow. In a side chapel, pinned to a green baize screen, Kitty noticed children's drawings of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on donkeys even more outlandishly shaped than Arthur.

    Would the baby inside her, which could so easily be Lysander's, one day draw pictures like that? she thought despairingly, as she sunk to her knees on a faded crimson hassock.

    'Please, please, dear God,' pleaded Kitty, 'let him get round, I don't care if he wins. Just let him come back safe, he's so brave and reckless.' Surely it wasn't adultery to pray for someone's safety? Through the clear-glass lattice window to her right, fringes of rain were falling out of dark purple clouds on to the palest green leaves, just emerging from the chestnut trees.'Rain's good for Arfur, God, but please don't let him slip.'

    Beside her lay the stone effigy of Robert, Lord Rutminster, who died in the crusades. He had pudding-basin hair and his nose broken off, but he was flanked by stone angels, with a little dog like Jack at his feet. Kitty ran a finger down his pale battered translucent face.

    Oh, let angels ride on Lysander's shoulders, too. Wiping away the tears, she quickly lit a candle for him. Walking towards the door, she saw a man standing beneath the tattered colours of the local regiments. He looked vaguely familiar, so she smiled, then went absolutely scarlet as she realized the last time she'd seen him she'd been in her bra and knickers, bopping in the rain. As she scuttled out, however, she looked round.

    'Good luck,' she stammered.

    'Good luck, Kitty,' said David Hawkley.

    Any comfort she might have felt evaporated as Clive slid forward out of nowhere to open the door of the Mini to take her to the races.

    Rutminster racecourse on the final day of the meeting had never been fuller. Anticipating victory for Rupert, who was a huge local hero, and forgetting the recession, the multitude were drowning their sorrows. Penscombe Pride would get them out of trouble, pay their mortgage arrears, their poll tax and their daughter's wedding. As the beautiful little bay with his bright questing eyes and his zig zag blaze, who had never fallen in his life, or lost in his last eight races, strutted round the paddock like a bantam cock, no-one would have thought he carried top weight and the expectation of hundreds of thousands of punters. Ten-deep, they gathered round the rails to admire him.

    He was followed at a respectable distance by The Prince of Darkness, who was a hand bigger. He looked magnificent with his blood-red rug rolled back to show rippling muscle worthy of a black middle-weight champion. But his evil eye rolled and his jaws strained against his muzzle and everyone kept clear of his hoofs because he could lash out with all four of them.

    Of the thirty other runners, the most serious contenders were Camomile Lawn, a fleet chestnut mare so flashy Tab said she ought to wear an ankle bracelet, Male Nurse, a stocky brown gelding who jumped and stayed well, Yummy Yuppy, the handsome dark bay who had fallen last year, Blarney Stone, who had won the Irish Grand National, Paddywack, who was third to Penscombe Pride and The Prince of Darkness last year and Fraulein Mahler, Rannaldini's second horse, whom Lysander had ridden into the lake last summer.

    A ripple of delighted laughter ran through the crowd as Arthur entered the paddock. A hand bigger than any other horse, shambling round like a great circus elephant, his coat gleaming like an iceberg, he was plainly delighted at the attention he was causing. The crowd, particularly the men, admired his slim blond stable-girl with her exquisite bone structure and arrogant eyes, and, seeing RC-B on Arthur's new blue rug, made the connection and nodded

    wisely. 'That horse couldn't win if it started last week,' yelled

    a wag on the steps.

    'Don't be so fucking sure,' yelled back Tabitha.

    The crowd roared, in no doubt now that she was Rupert's daughter, and they were delighted when Georgie Maguire, ravishing in a suit of grass-green silk, sheltered by a pink peony-patterned umbrella gave Tab the two-hundred-pound prize for the best turned-out horse.

    Up in the private boxes, after excellent lunches, the rich and sometimes famous and their satellite freeloaders looked down on the runners. The noisiest, most glamorous, throng inhabited the Venturer Television box. They included Freddie Jones, Pridie's co-owner, as plump and as jolly as his writer wife, Lizzie, and Taggie's parents, Declan and Maud O'Hara, who hadn't forgiven Rupert for his crack about Arthur staying longer than she did.

    Billy Lloyd-Foxe, Rupert's old show-jumping crony, whowas doing the commentary for Venturer, and his wanton, blond wife, Janey, who was covering the race for the Daily Post, and finally Ricky France-Lynch, polo captain of England, who'd had Lysander's ponies at livery, and his adorably pretty, painter wife, Daisy, who was busy sketching everything in sight.

    By ghastly irony, Rannaldini's box was bang next door, and Rannaldini ignored them icily. But he couldn't stop Freddie Jones gossiping to Larry about the way the recession had stymied the electronics business, nor Meredith and Hermione, radiant in squashy blond furs, casting covetous eyes at Rupert, nor the chairman of the New World Phil, who was enjoying the hospitality more than the horses, gazing at Taggie, who echoed Rupert's colours in a dark blue suit with an emerald-green turban, and whose navy-blue-stockinged legs were longer than any of the horses'.

    'I fancy Male Nurse,' said Meredith, taking his eyes off Rupert for a second to study his racecard.

    'That figures,' said Guy. 'I fancy Busty Beauty.'

    That figures, too, thought Georgie.

    Georgie didn't care, because she'd had glorious sex with Guy that morning, because people had shoved Hermione aside to mob her and get her autograph when she'd arrived at the course, and because she'd been asked to present the turn-out prize, and because down below on the grass, watching his son go round the paddock, looking aloof and Byronic, stood David Hawkley. They had just managed to avoid the Press and snatch a blissful two minutes together behind the hot dog stand.

    Why, therefore, was she so upset when she caught Guy giving Julia's friend, Daisy France-Lynch, a discreet wave? Had Ricky and Daisy had cosy foursomes with Julia and Guy?

    'Oh, look,' Meredith broke into her reverie. 'Rannaldini and divine Rupert have both come into the paddock. Very dirty of Rannaldini to have raked up Isa Lovell. Perhaps Rupert will challenge him to a duel.'

    Weighed out, dressed in his black, white and brown colours, Lysander huddled in the jockeys' changing room, trying to keep down half a cup of sweet tea. His knees were knocking, his mind a blank. He couldn't remember any of Rupert's instructions. Around him jockeys hid their nerves in hectic skylarking. Rushing to the lavatory when he arrived, he had found a note pinned to the door in Bluey's handwriting: 'This bog is reserved for Lysander Hawkley for the next two hours,' and smiled feebly, but he couldn't join in. All he could think was that he might see Kitty again in a minute, but she was probably too frightened of horses to venture into the paddock, and he mustn't let Rupert, Tab and Arthur down. At least this morning's shaving cuts had stopped bleeding.

    As tense as a sprung trap in the woods, Rupert didn't hear a word Freddie Jones was saying as he waited for Isaac Lovell to come out with the other jockeys. He was trying to be rational, but in his head he was back in 1980, with Isa's father, Jake, winning his silver, and Rupert coming nowhere on the most expensive show-jumper in

    the world.

    There was that shit Rannaldini in his black astrakhan coat and poor little Kitty looking as bombed as a stuffed fox in a glass case. And there, Rupert gave a hiss, was Isa Lovell, a couple of inches taller than Rannaldini, but with the same dark gypsy stillness as his father -which always captivated women and horses. For a second Rupert's eyes met Isa's, then slid away, as he felt all the old black murderous churning. 'He is a little squit,' whispered Taggie. Squeezing her hand until she winced, Rupert was relieved when the other jockeys spilled out as if from a conjurer's coloured handkerchief into the paddock. The safety pin holding Lysander's high black collar had come undone. Taggie refastened it. Like Arthur, he towered over his rivals, but he was thinner than any of them. Even his brown-topped boots were loose.Like Scarlett O'Hara being laced into her stays, Arthur groaned as his girths were tightened.

    'It's all right, darling,' Tabitha kissed him on his whiskery nose. 'Tomorrow you'll be turned out to get fat and eat as much grass as you like.'

    Having seen Bluey safely mounted on Pridie, Rupert came over to give Lysander a leg up. Indignant at being ignored by his master, who was desperately scanning the private boxes for a glimpse of Kitty, Arthur deliberately stood on Lysander's toe.

    'Fucking hell, Arthur, after all I've done for you!' Lysander gathered up the reins.

    'Stop looking for Mrs Rannaldini, or I'll put you in blinkers,' chided Rupert, checking Arthur's girths. 'Now take it slowly, although you haven't got much option on Arthur, and remember no black power salutes until you're ten yards past the post, and don't forget-But Lysander never heard what he was going to say because Arthur, who never forgot a hand that fed him, had given his great Vesuvius whicker and carted his master and Tab, hauling helplessly on his lead rope, across the paddock to lay his great hairy face against Kitty's and start eating her racecard.