Well Groomed (28 page)

‘I know it’s an ugly-looking bugger,’ he enthused, ‘but you have to admit, it has character in spades.’

‘Ace of spades, perhaps.’ Tash was certain it was a potential death-trap.

Niall seemed to have bought the rarest and tattiest one in West Berkshire – possibly the country, Tash suspected, from the odd looks she received whilst driving it. His purchase was not as lovingly and immaculately restored as the advert had promised. With its dull red paintwork and splitting, dusty leather upholstery, it looked more like an ancient mini-cab than a design classic; when first getting into the driver’s seat, Tash expected to catch a whiff of chicken biryani or doner kebab, and to look in the rear-view mirror at a nauseous drunk asking to be taken to Camden Palace via a cashpoint. Niall enthused about the ground-breaking hydraulic system, the exaggerated lines, the gloriously Thunderbirds dash, the throaty cough of the engine. Gazing at the car, he was terrifyingly like Jeremy Clarkson on Ecstasy. Tash only wished that he occasionally looked at her like that.

Some of Niall’s enthusiasm had initially rubbed off on her, however. She was immensely grateful for the gift, if slightly embarrassed by his generosity.

‘Call it an engagement ring,’ he’d said, and kissed her on the nose.

Tash supposed she was the only girl with an engagement ring that was bigger than she was, and which could do ninety downhill with the wind behind it. Or which fell apart quite so regularly.

In the three days since she had taken delivery of the DS, it had broken down twice, refused to start numerous times and failed to brake on one alarming occasion. And, as it was such a complicated ‘design classic’, there was only one mechanic within a fifty-mile radius who would touch it. The local garage threw up their arms in horror when Gus towed it to them. They had then gathered around the low-slung car like builders around a brazier, afraid to get too close yet magnetically drawn towards the red monster.

‘You don’t see many of those,’ they’d clucked admiringly, as though gawping at a page three model. Then, after a good nose under the bonnet and a few circuits around the chassis, they’d refused to touch it.

Instead, Tash had waded through the Yellow Pages to discover that the only expert in classic Citroëns lived the other side of Reading and cost over one hundred pounds to call out. She had called him out several times already. Niall’s present was proving extremely expensive to run and Tash was now quashing the ungrateful wish that he’d just bought her an old Fiesta run-around. Or a ring.

Two days later, Tash and Snob competed in their first trials of the season. They were held at the very grand country seat of an impoverished Gloucestershire landowner who was an old family friend of Hugo’s. As such, Hugo occasionally boxed up his novices and drove them down the M4 to pound around the trials course during his spring training schedule. This was done on the understanding that Hugo would not be competing on the same horses at the trials, and that a case of claret would arrive on the landowner’s doorstep as a thank you. In fact, Hugo always competed the same horses at the trials, and had won at least one section each year.

This year he surpassed himself by winning three of the four sections that day. His two top horses – Bodybuilder and Surfer – were already as fit as Grand National contenders, their muscles packed as tightly as fish in a Spanish trawler’s net beneath the muted gloss of their clipped coats. The vast, athletic Bodybuilder was looking so unbeatable that he was instantly an odds-on favourite for Badminton. Seventeen hands of barely controlled black power, he had been with Hugo since he was a two year old and they possessed an almost telepathic understanding. Watching them was a hypnotic experience – the fluid, balletic grace and control of their dressage belied the titanic explosion of energy which took place later across country as they smoked over the muddy, pitted fields of the estate like medieval heralds trying to stop a battle.

Equally, Surfer – a nervy, ribby liver-chestnut with the worried eyes of a battered wife and a wiry, twisting ability to jump anything, however bad the stride – wiped all the competition aside in his own class. He was almost as impressive as Bodybuilder, but it was the big, unruly black thug whom Hugo really adored. Some of his more churlish, resentful rivals claimed that the bad-tempered black horse was the only thing in the world Hugo loved more than himself.

‘Probably because they have so much in common,’ sighed Lucy Field, a top female rider who knew Hugo of old. ‘They’re both mad, bad, and dangerous to say no to.’

‘Hugo was offered three million for that horse before the last Olympics,’ Kirsty told her proudly. ‘But he turned it down flat.’

There were mass grumblings amongst the eventing community that Hugo dominated so much of the day’s action, but it was generally agreed that, despite the advantage he held, he was on cracking form.

‘Better than bloody ever,’ Gus sighed as he watched Hugo collecting a vast blue and red rosette from a terrified local mayoress whose court shoes had firmly plugged her into the soft ground beside the twitching, hot-headed Bodybuilder.

Tash sat grumpily in the cab of the Lime Tree horse-box, swigging lukewarm tea from a plastic beaker and nursing her pride. Overexcited, overfresh and stronger than ever this year, Snob had towed her around the course at full throttle, finally dispensing with her services at the lake which he had decided to steer around instead of pound through. Tash had not actually fallen in the water but into the thick quagmire of mud and hoof marks on the take-off side, coating herself with mud so that she now looked like Will Carling after a particularly hefty tackle from Jonah Lomu.

‘You were right to retire him.’ Penny clambered into the box beside her. ‘He went totally through the bit – I’ve never seen you struggling so much to hold him.’

Tash slouched into the ragged seat and gnawed uneasily at a cuticle.

‘D’you think I’ll be able to bring him back?’

‘Well,’ Penny looked sceptical, ‘we could try him in a different bit again.’ She didn’t sound very hopeful.

‘But . . .’

‘We’ll see.’ Penny patted her muddy leg. ‘It’s early days. Lots of schooling ahead, I think.’

Tash knew that Penny wasn’t optimistic. It had happened many times before to her and other female eventers – a bold, boisterous horse who was simply too strong for his rider. As they matured and grew in confidence, so they tested their strength in an enthusiastic battle to go faster and get ahead, thinking that now they were so good at it, they could dictate the pace. Changing bits and schooling endlessly could help to a certain extent, but often the only way to cure the problem was to sell the horse to a bigger, stronger male rider. And Tash knew exactly who was waiting in the Angel Gabriel wings as far as Snob was concerned.

She listlessly helped Ted rug and boot up Snob and the other horses ready to be boxed up to travel back to the farm.

‘You not coming with us then?’ He watched as she untangled a pile of thick woollen bandages. ‘I wanted you to cut my hair again tonight.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m driving up to Scotland to see Niall.’ She wrinkled her nose at the prospect. ‘He can’t get away from filming, so he wants me to go there instead – meet everyone.’

‘Lucky you,’ he sighed enviously. ‘I’d love to meet Juliet Richards.’

‘Funny, I don’t feel quite the same enthusiasm.’ Tash scratched Snob’s nose. She’d far rather go back home with the Lime Tree team, have a bath and get some sleep so that she could start some flat-work with Snob at first light the next day.

Thinking this, she scratched a muddy leg dispiritedly and wished she could freshen up.

If she had asked, Tash was certain that Hugo’s landowner friend would have been only too willing to let her use one of his huge, chilly bathrooms. But she was too proud, and very eager to avoid Hugo’s gloating presence right now. Instead, she made valiant attempts at a flannel wash in the living quarters of the horse-box but, as it was a one-day event, Ted hadn’t filled the box’s water supply up fully, and what was there was icy cold. Her progress was further hampered by Gus, Penny and Ted thundering in and out of the box to collect pieces of tack, schedules, jumpers and, when it started raining, their waxed jackets.

Finally, as the last horse was clattering into the box behind her, Tash gave up trying to get herself any cleaner. Her face was now pretty much mud-free, although her hair was looking suspiciously ratty and her finger-nails were lined with grit.

Listening to the horses shifting and blowing on the other side of the wooden partition, Tash threw on the velvet trouser suit that Niall liked and jumped out just as the ramp was heaved up with a clank.

‘Are you sure you’ll be all right in that car?’ Gus looked anxiously at the now very muddy red Citroën which had caused much hilarity amongst other eventers that day.

‘Fine – it was pretty good on the way here. And I’m now a member of the AA.’

‘Stands for Anxiously Awaiting, in your case.’ Penny kissed her on the cheek. ‘Have a great time – give our love to the old bugger.’

‘Thanks.’ Tash could feel homesickness and trepidation already curling her toes and twisting her stomach into a knot of anxiety.

She and the car both bumped their way out of the parking field, unwilling to tackle the journey ahead.

Niall’s hotel was an isolated old hunting lodge beside a small loch. Tash and the design classic had considerable difficulty winding their way around the perilously narrow, precipice-sided lanes towards it in the dark. At one point, they nearly flattened a sheep that wandered across the road in front of them, vacuous eyes a luminous blue in the headlamps.

‘Like Hugo’s,’ Tash muttered malevolently as she swerved to avoid it.

The car had drunk three tankfuls of petrol on the journey and it was almost three in the morning by the time Tash turned into the broad drive in front of the lodge. She was drained, haggard, freezing cold and shaking from drinking so much service station coffee to keep herself awake. But even so she drew a breath and widened her eyes as she took in the beauty of the place. Set against an oil-spill sky and pitted steel loch, backed up by an anthracite-black forest, it was staggering in its splendour – a higgledy-piggledy medley of pillars, turrets and mullions which should have looked ridiculously twee and faux-Burns. It didn’t. Floodlit so that it shone like an old steel blade in the night, it was gloriously real, powerful and slightly frightening.

It was also locked.

Despite the bright floodlights outside, there was only the gloomiest of glows from within, one low-watt bulb in a deep lobby. Tash tapped tentatively on the door and then gave up from nerves. The place seemed absolutely secure and sound asleep.

Huddling her shoulders against the cold, she searched in the dark for a bell. There was none. She wandered around the side of the building, walking straight into a tangled flowerbed from which she had considerable trouble extricating herself. Beyond that she could just make out the expanse of a tufted lawn leading to a stone wall, beyond which stretched the menacing black gleam of the loch.

On the other side of the crumbling lodge, a cloistered stone walkway ran alongside tall mullioned windows through which Tash could just make out a deserted, darkened dining room. Gnarled wooden railings to her right separated her from the loch, from which an icy wind bit into her skin.

She came to an abrupt halt as a chunky, low stone wall appeared from nowhere in front of her, jabbing her in the stomach and blocking her path like the steel of a turnstile. Beyond it appeared to be a cluster of balconies belonging to luxurious bedrooms in the hotel, cluttered with wrought-iron furniture and squat pots of alpine plants. From one, a cigarette end glowed.

Tash froze with sudden, shivering excitement. Someone was smoking a cigarette outside in the freezing cold at three in the morning. There was only one insomniac she knew who would do that.

‘Niall?’

Cigarette jettisoned into the loch, he bounded across the walls that separated them, wearing only a pair of cotton underpants and an enormous greatcoat, its collar turned up against the wind.

‘I thought you weren’t coming.’ He closed his damp woollen arms around her and clutched her desperately, a glacially cold cheek pressed to hers.

Tash hugged him back and, despite the vast, scratchy coat, could feel just how skinny he had become recently.

It was only when she coaxed him back into his room that she registered how plastered he was too.

Abstractedly she was taking in the ancient, baronial grandeur of the room, the vast, dark four poster bed, the hunting prints, the velvet curtains as heavy as Medusa’s hair. But she barely noticed them as she watched Niall reel around the room, knocking into furniture and tripping over his own unbalanced feet as he fought to welcome her in the manner he drunkenly deemed fit – with a large measure of malt.

‘I really don’t want any.’ Tash tried to dissuade him from his lurching search, desperate to make him sit down and look at her for the first time in weeks.

‘Oh – fine.’ He reeled on the spot for a few seconds before wandering over to the bed and sitting on it. ‘Good journey?’

‘Long.’ Tash perched beside him as he flopped back on to the bed, one idle hand reaching out to stroke her leg as he gazed, unfocused, at the velvet canopy before closing his eyes.

‘That’s good,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ve got a six o’clock start tomorrow.’

The next moment he was asleep.

Having taken off his shoes and covered him with the quilt, Tash went back outside through the double windows and climbed across several private balconies to fetch her bag from the car.

When she came back into the room, he was curled into a tight knot, the quilt creased and wound around him like a tubigrip. When she tried to slip inside it too, he stiffened his back and arched away.

Feeling utterly rejected, Tash passed a sleepless night on a baronial settee, covered with a blanket she found in the vast wardrobe. It was almost five in the morning when, stiff and riddled with shivers from the cold, she crawled into bed alongside Niall, curling up against him for warmth. He was so still and leaden, it was like trying to cuddle a corpse. Absolutely exhausted, Tash free-fell into deep sleep.