Riders

14

Nearly two years later Helen stood in the middle of her bedroom at Penscombe, tearing her hair and trying to decide what she should pack for Rome and then Madrid. She and Rupert would be away for nearly three weeks, so she would need at least three cases to carry all the different clothes for sightseeing, swimming, sunbathing, watching Rupert in the ring, and for the string of parties and dinners which always coincided with international shows abroad. She had started a hundred lists, then scrumpled them up.

But even clothes littering every available surface couldn’t detract from the beauty of the room with its high ceilings, huge Jacobean four-poster, old rose walls, pale yellow and pink silk striped curtains, and fluffy amber carpet. On the dressing table and beside the bed were great bunches of yellow irises. The general effect of a sunrise provided the perfect foil for Helen’s coloring. Or so the woman from House and Garden had said last week when she came down to photograph the house and the dramatic changes Helen had made to it.

On the primrose yellow silk chaise longue lay a copy of this month’s Vogue, with a photographic feature on the new beauties. Most beautiful of them all was undoubtedly Mrs. Rupert Campbell-Black, showing Helen, huge-eyed, swan-necked, her Titian hair spread by a wind machine, Rupert’s diamonds gleaming at her ears and throat. Also on the chaise longue were guidebooks for Rome and Madrid and Italian and Spanish phrase books. Helen took her trips abroad very seriously, sightseeing and trying to learn as much of the language as possible. Beside the books lay Helen’s journal. It was the same dark green notebook she’d had in Regina House. She was ashamed that since she’d married Rupert she’d filled in less than a half of it, only sketchily recording events in what had certainly been the most exciting years of her life. But she’d been so busy living, she didn’t seem to have had much time to write about it.

She remembered the day Rupert had asked her to marry him. In the afternoon she’d been sitting in the stands with Doreen, Humpty Hamilton’s even fatter, bouncier wife, mother of two children, watching Rupert and Humpty jump in a class. Helen, delirious with happiness, couldn’t resist telling Doreen she was engaged. Doreen Hamilton was delighted at the news and promptly bore Helen off to the bar for a celebration drink, then offered her a word of advice.

“If you marry a show jumper,” she said, “involve yourself in his career as much as possible and travel with him as much as you can, even if it means sleeping in lorries, or caravans, or frightful pokey foreign hotels. And if he suddenly rings up when you’re at home and says come out to Rome, or drive down to Windsor, or to Crittleden, always go — at once, even if you’ve just washed your hair and put it in curlers, or you’ve just got the baby to sleep. Because if you don’t, there’ll always be others queuing up to take your place.”

Helen, cocooned in the miracle of her new and reciprocated love for Rupert, was unable to imagine him loving anyone else, or any girl queuing up for fat little Humpty, but she had heeded the advice and gone with Rupert to as many shows as possible. Not that this involved much hardship; his caravan was extremely luxurious and when they went abroad Rupert insisted on staying in decent hotels or with rich jet-set friends who seemed to surface, crying welcome, in every country they visited. But it meant she always had to look her best.

Going to the window, with its rampaging frame of scented palest pink clematis, she gazed out across the valley, emerald green from weeks of heavy rain, remembering the first time she’d seen the house. Rupert and Billy, having both won big classes on the final day of the Royal Plymouth, decided to stay on for the closing party that night. After intensive revelry, Rupert suddenly turned to Helen and said, “I think it’s time you had a look at my bachelor pad,” and they loaded up the horse box and set out for Gloucestershire, Rupert driving, Helen sitting warm between the two men. “An exquisite sliver of smoked salmon between two very old stale pieces of bread,” said Billy.

Helen went to sleep and woke up as they drove up the valley towards Penscombe. The sun had just risen, firing a denim blue sky with ripples of crimson and reddening the ramparts of cow parsley on either side of the road. Suddenly the horses started pawing the floorboards in the back and Mavis and Badger, who were sprawled across Billy’s and Helen’s knees in the front, woke up and started sniffing excitedly.

“Ouch,” said Billy as Badger stepped heavily across him. “Get off my crotch. Why the hell don’t you get his claws cut, Rupe?”

Helen looked across the valley at the honey gold house leaning back against its pale green pillow of beech trees.

“What a beautiful mansion,” she gasped. “I wonder who lives there?”

“You do,” said Rupert. “That’s your new home,” and he and Billy laughed to see how speechless she was.

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “It’s so old and so beautiful. It’s a stately home.”

“You may not find it quite so splendid when you get close to,” said Rupert, slowing down as they entered the village.

He took the lorry straight round to the stables, where Marion and Tracey, who’d driven home the night before with the caravan, were waiting to unload the horses. Leaving Billy to check everything was all right, Rupert whipped into the house, collected a bottle of champagne and two glasses, and took Helen out on the terrace.

Below them lay the valley, drenched white with dew, softened by the palest gray mist rising from the stream that ran along the bottom. On the opposite hillside, the sun was filtering thick biblical rays through the trees, which in turn cast long powder blue shadows down the fields. And, sauntering leisurely down one of these rays like horses of the dawn, came three of Rupert’s sleek and beautiful thoroughbreds, two grays and a chestnut. Tossing their heads, they broke into a gallop and careered joyously down the white valley, vanishing into the mist like a dream.

Leaning on the stone balustrade on the edge of the terrace, Helen gazed and gazed. Behind her the wood was filled with bluebells; thrushes were singing out of a clump of white lilacs to the left. Badger, after the long journey, wandered around lifting his leg on bright yellow irises, before happily plunging into the lake.

“It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” she breathed. “You’re not a closet earl or anything, are you? I feel like King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid.”

“King who?” asked Rupert, hitching a hip onto the lichened balustrade and edging open the champagne with his thumbs. The cork flew through the air, landing in a rosebush.

“Is it all yours?”

“As far as that village on the right.” He filled a glass and handed it to her.

“Anyway it’s yours too now, darling, every inch of it.”

Looking up, she saw he was smiling. Even an eighth of an inch of blond stubble, and a slight puffiness round the wickedly sparkling eyes, couldn’t diminish his beauty.

“Just as every single inch of you belongs to me from now on,” he added softly.

Then she realized it was not King Cophetua he reminded her of, but the Devil tempting Christ in the wilderness, saying, “All this will I give you.”

Just for a second she had a premonition of unease. Then Rupert chinked his glass against hers and, draining it, said, “Let’s go to bed.”

“We can’t,” stammered Helen. “What will everyone think?”

“That we’ve gone to bed,” said Rupert.

Upstairs he pulled the telephone out, but didn’t bother to lock the door.

“Well, at least I’m going to draw the curtains,” said Helen.

“I wouldn’t,” said Rupert.

But the next minute she’d given the dark red velvet a vigorous tug and the whole thing descended, curtain rail and all, on her head in a huge cloud of dust. In fits of laughter, Rupert extracted her.

“I told you not to pull it!” Then, seeing her hair covered in dust, “My God you’ve gone white overnight. Must be the effect of saying you’ll marry me.”

He pulled her into the shade of the great ancient four-poster and began unbuttoning her shirt. Next minute she leapt out of her skin as the door opened. But it was only Badger, dripping from the lake, trying to join them in bed.

“Basket,” snapped Rupert. “And you might bloody well shut the door,” he added, kicking it shut.

After Rupert had come, with that splendid driving flourish of staccato thrusts which reminded Helen of the end of a Beethoven symphony, he fell into a deep sleep. Helen, lying in his arms, had been far too tense and nervous of interruption to gain any satisfaction. Looking around the room, she took in the mothy fox masks leering down from the walls, the Munnings and the Lionel Edwards, and surely that was a Stubbs in the corner, very much in need of a clean. All the furniture in the room was old and handsome, but it too was desperately in need of a polish, and all the chairs and the sofa needed reupholstering. There were angora rabbits of dust on top of every picture, and sailors could have climbed up the rigging of cobwebs in the corners. Judging by the color of the bed linen, it hadn’t seen a washing machine for weeks. Helen began to itch and edged out of Rupert’s embrace. She was touched to see a copy of War and Peace by the bedside table. At least he was trying to educate himself. Writing “I love you” in the dust, she wandered off to find a bathroom.

She found the john first, and was less touched to find a framed photograph on the wall of Rupert on a horse, being presented with a cup by Grania Pringle. Along the bottom Grania had written, “So happy to mount you — love Grania.” That’s one for the jumble sale, thought Helen, taking it off the wall.

The bathroom made her faint. A great white bath, standing six inches off the ground on legs shaped like lion’s paws, was ringed with grime like a rugger sweater. Above it, a geyser on the wall spat out dust and then boiling water. The ceiling was black with dirt, the paint peeling like the surface of the moon. On another beautiful chest of drawers, which was warping from the damp, stood empty bottles, mugs, and two ashtrays brimming over with cigarette stubs.

Having found a moderately clean towel and spent nearly an hour cleaning the bath, she had one herself, then set out to explore the house, finding bedroom after bedroom filled with wonderful furniture, carpets, and china, with many of the beds recently slept in but not made. At the end of the passage she discovered a room which was obviously Billy’s. On the chest of drawers was a large photograph in a frame of Lavinia Greenslade, and an even larger one of Mavis. There were glasses by the bed and drink rings on everything.

A bridle hung from the four-poster. There were sporting prints on the wall and more framed photographs of horses jumping, galloping, standing still, and being presented with rosettes. On the chest of drawers was a pile of unopened brown envelopes and more overflowing ashtrays.

Descending the splendid staircase with a fat crimson cord attached to the wall to cling on to, she admired a huge painting of Badger in the hall. Underneath it two Jack Russells were having a fight. She found a pair of Springer Spaniels shut in the drawing room. Every beautiful faded chair and sofa seemed to be upholstered in dog hair. On the wall was a large lighter patch where a painting had been sold. The rest of the walls were covered, among other things, by a Romney, a Gainsborough, a Lely, and a Thomas Lawrence. Next door, behind the inevitable wire cages, was the library. No wonder Rupert was indifferent to culture; it was all around him, to be taken for granted. For a minute, looking at more cobwebs and dust, she thought she’d strayed into Miss Haversham’s house.

Then she trod on something that squelched.

“Oh my God,” she screamed.

“What’s the matter?” asked Billy, coming through the door, holding a pile of entry forms and a checkbook.

“One of those damned dogs has gone to the bathroom in the living room.”

She couldn’t understand why Billy laughed so much.

“It’s not funny,” she said. “I’ve never seen such a dump. Doesn’t anyone ever clean it? It’s an arachnophobe’s nightmare. Marion and Tracey must be the most awful slobs to let it get into such a state.”

“Suppose it is a bit of a mess,” said Billy apologetically. “But we’re not in the house much during the day and one never notices dust at night. We had a char. She wasn’t very good, but Rupert kept her on because she made him laugh. He said she had charisma. Then he came back and found her in one of the spare room beds drinking gin with the electric blanket on. After that even he had to sack her, so we haven’t had anyone for about six weeks.”

“Doesn’t look as though you’ve had anyone for six years,” said Helen, scraping her shoe on the gravel outside.

“Come and look at the stables; that should cheer you up. Is Rupert asleep?”

Helen nodded.

“I know it’s a mess,” he said, putting his arm through Helen’s and leading her across the lawn, passing overgrown shrub roses that hadn’t seen a pruner in years and pink scented peonies collapsing on the grass. “But we’re so frightfully busy, we haven’t really got time to organize the house. That’s why Rupert desperately needs a wife,” he went on, squeezing her hand. “Not only are you the most adorably beautiful girl we’ve ever seen, but we really need you to look after us.”

“Thanks,” said Helen. “So in fact I’m really marrying two riders, four grooms, thirty horses, a million dogs, and a stable cat. I feel like Milly in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. But it’s such a beautiful house, and it could be made so gorgeous.”

“And I’m quite confident you’ll be able to do it,” said Billy happily.

The stables were built of the same honey-colored stone as the house, the doors painted the same dark blue Rupert had chosen on the color chart in church on their first date. Horses looked out inquisitively, eager for any diversion. Brick red geraniums bloomed in blue and white striped tubs. There was not a blade of straw or a speck of dust anywhere. In the center was a circle of grass beautifully mown round an ancient mulberry tree. It was like a toy stable.

Billy introduced her to the junior grooms, Susie and Janis, two more pretty shapely blondes. Tracey and Marion, having the afternoon off, had collapsed into bed, Marion, Helen suspected, to cry her eyes out. She hadn’t addressed a word to Rupert since she heard he was getting married.

Billy led her into the tackroom, which was beautifully kept. The tack was dark and gleaming, the bits shining, every inch of wall lined with rosettes. Helen breathed in the smell of leather, linseed oil, saddle soap. “But I don’t understand,” she said. “It’s as neat as a new pin here. Why is the house such a mess?”

Billy shrugged. “This is where the action is. If I were you I’d move into Macaulay’s box. At least you’d get clean straw and regular meals.”

After a good night’s sleep, Helen felt more able to cope. Next day she went back to Regina House and the office. Despite Rupert’s outraged protests, she felt she ought to get things straight and tidy up. Nigel, when he heard she was going to marry Rupert, was even more outraged.

“You’d think Rupert was General Franco or Oswald Mosley,” she grumbled.

“Jolly nearly,” hissed Nigel. “I’m ashamed of you, Helen.”

The next day the IRA blew up a shop and then a hamburger bar in London, not far from Helen’s office. Rupert was at a show in the West Country, but he was on to Helen immediately.

“Are you all right, darling? Christ, I’ve been worried. Look, I’m not leaving you in London anymore. You must move in at once. I can’t bear another night away from you.”

“But what am I going to do with myself all day?”

“You can organize my life.”

“Can I redecorate your house?”

“If it makes you happy, as long as you let me burn your entire wardrobe, and promise never to buy any more clothes without my coming too. I haven’t got a show next Monday,” he went on. “I thought we might get married.”

And so they were married at Gloucester Registry office. Helen wore a gray silk suit chosen by Rupert. Billy and Humpty were witnesses.

They set off to Yorkshire on their honeymoon, staying in an old pub in the middle of the moors. On the Tuesday Rupert went to look at a horse which he decided not to buy. On Thursday he said he was fed up with the pub and knew a better one over the Pennines.

As they were driving there Helen suddenly noticed AA signs and advertising posters: “The great Lancashire show starts today.” She said idly to Rupert, “Is Billy going?”

“Yes,” said Rupert, leaning across and kissing her, “and so are we.”

When they reached the show, there were Billy and Tracey looking sheepish, and Marion looking bootfaced, and, surprise surprise, Mayfair and Macaulay and Rupert’s riding clothes. Helen looked down at the huge unusual ring of sapphires and emeralds which Rupert had given her as an engagement ring and remembered what Doreen Hamilton had said about being a show jumper’s wife, and laughed instead of cried.

“Darling Mother,” she wrote home that evening, “I got married on Monday. My husband is called Rupert Campbell-Black. He is real handsome and very famous in England, because he is a stadium jumping star. In England it is called show jumping, and a big sport rather like baseball. He has the most beautiful stately home near Shakespeare’s birthplace, you will just go crazy about it. It is so old, and the village he lives in looks as though none of the houses have been touched since Elizabeth Ist’s day. I enclose photographs of the house and of Rupert. I know you wanted me to get married in Florida and in white, Mother, but I promise you I am truly truly happy. I never believed being in love could be like this. Rupert had a very traumatic childhood, I’m surprised he hasn’t been in analysis for years, but he is very normal. His mother lives in the Bahamas and is on her third husband, and his father is on his fourth wife.

“I haven’t met them yet. But soon I’m going to meet Rupert’s old Nanny, who is really the person who brought him up, and gave him security. He thinks the world of her. I’m going to make him happy. I love him so much I long to have you meet him, but the summer is Rupert’s busy time. At the moment he is at shows all the week and at weekends, but I promise the first weekend we get free, we’ll fly out and see you. All love, Helen.”

Rupert’s meeting with Helen’s parents didn’t take place until August and was not a success. The plan was that Helen should fly direct to Florida and Rupert, having looked at some horses in Kentucky, should join her a couple of days later. As it was in the middle of the show-jumping season, Helen explained, he would be able to stay only for the weekend before flying back to Europe for the Dublin Horse Show, where, having been forgiven at last by Malise, he had been picked to jump for Great Britain, but at least it would give her parents the chance to meet him.

Arriving home, Helen was appalled to find her mother had arranged a full-scale wedding party, with three hundred guests to meet Helen’s handsome English husband, with even a minister coming to the house to perform a service beforehand, in which the happy couple would be blessed.

“I just don’t feel you’re married after a registry office ceremony,” said her mother.

“Rupert’ll absolutely freak out,” protested Helen. “He hasn’t brought a cutaway, or even a dinner jacket.”

“He can always hire one, or borrow one from Father,” said her mother.

With a growing feeling of apprehension, Helen watched the preparations. In fact, her mother was so well organized that on Friday afternoon she and her four daughters were able to slip down to the beach below their house for a couple of hours’ sun. Helen’s three sisters, all lithe and beautiful, awaited Rupert’s arrival that evening with intense excitement. They were amazed at the change in Helen. She looked so beautiful and happy, and so much more self-assured.

“Look at that dreamy yacht,” said Esme, the younger sister, as a big boat with bright blue sails crowded with bronzed, half-naked people tacked close to the shore. The next moment one of them had jumped ship. Wading through the shallows carrying a case, he turned as he reached the sand and, brandishing it, shouted, “Thanks for the lift.”

“Are you ready for that?” said Milly, the second sister, in wonder.

“It’s Rupert,” gasped Helen.

He was as blond and as brown as a beach boy, and he was wearing nothing except a rather small United States flag draped round his loins.

“Jesus,” said Claudia, the third sister.

“Don’t swear, Claudia,” said Mrs. Macaulay.

Helen hurtled down the beach, flung her arms round Rupert’s neck, and only just stopped the American flag tumbling to half-mast.

“Darling, we were expecting you tonight.”

“I got a lift with some chums. I missed you.”

On Palm Beach, home of the beautiful, he was still the most beautiful of all.

“Mother, this is Rupert,” said Helen.

Mrs. Macaulay was vain enough not to be very pleased at having to meet her new son-in-law when she was scarlet and sweating from the heat. She would have preferred to have parted the wisteria on the terrace, welcoming him in a pretty dress, hair newly set, makeup light but perfect. But she knew one must behave like a lady at all times, so she radiated graciousness.

“Hi, Rupert,” she said, holding out a hand slippery with suntan oil and trying not to look at the American flag. “I’m so pleased to welcome you as our son. I hope you’ll call me Mother.”

Rupert, in fact, never managed to call her anything. He didn’t even kiss her; both felt it would have been too sweaty an embrace. He looked at her handsome, rigid, determined face with the graying red hair. He took in the well-controlled figure in its skirted bathing dress, he noticed the gold cross hanging between the crepey breasts, and he shuddered and vowed he would never let Helen get like that. Mrs. Macaulay averted her eyes and noted Rupert was not wearing a wedding ring. Father must find him one before tomorrow.

“I’m not going to hire a morning coat,” snapped Rupert, when at last he and Helen were alone in their bedroom, “nor am I going to be blessed by some Yankee poofter. We were married in England; that’s enough for me.”

“Hush, darling, they’ll hear you, and it’s worth it for all the wedding gifts.”

“Not if you look at them closely. Six magazine racks, two sets of monogrammed highball glasses, twelve egg coddlers, a dozen staghorn steak knives. Jesus! Two sets of glasses with polo players on. Polo, I ask you.”

“Oh, that was darling Great-Aunt Grace. Doesn’t know the difference between show jumping and polo. She was doing her best. There’s a lovely dinner service, and some beautiful cachepots, and glass. The problem is how to get them all home.”

“We’ll have to hire a plane and hope it crashes on takeoff.”

Helen giggled, but she felt defensive about her parents and their friends. If only he would behave for the wedding, she knew everyone would love him. Rupert went moodily to the window.

“God, I miss Badger. Why don’t your parents have a dog? I am not going through with this party. If I do I’ll wear a suit.”

“All right,” said Helen soothingly. “But please, darling, be nice just this once. Mother’s been arranging it for weeks and Milly’s going to sing “What Is Life to Me Without You.” Mother’s been coaching her for weeks, and Dad’s even been out and bought himself an Ascot and some striped pants. All you’ve got to do is show up and be polite.”

Rupert behaved rather well during the service. Later everyone crowded onto the lawn, and after champagne had been drunk for an hour or so, the most distinguished male relation rose to praise Helen, and to welcome Rupert to the family. Afterwards there was a pause.

“Speech, speech,” shouted all the relations and friends and the large sprinkling of Mr. Macaulay’s patients, flashing their beautifully capped teeth. Rupert, wearing a dark suit and not wearing the wedding ring his father-in-law had pressed on him that morning, rose to his feet.

“My heart is in my mouth at this wonderful party,” he said charmingly, “but as my Nanny always told me not to talk with my mouth full, I’m not going to say anything, except to thank Mr. and Mrs. Macaulay. I could tell jokes about gay Irish dentists, but I don’t think my father-in-law would like that. Thank you all for your wonderful presents,” and with that he quietly slid under the table.

“But you weren’t even drunk,” said Helen, still furious, as their plane took off for England.

“I know, but I was bored. I’m sorry, darling, but the only relations I like are sexual relations.”

“And you’ve left Aunt Martha’s paintings behind.”

“I know,” said Rupert. “I was terrified they might frighten the dogs.”

Rupert’s parents both wrote Helen delightfully vague letters. Rupert’s mother sent her a diamond brooch with a broken clasp, Rupert’s father a jar of caviar. Both promised they’d be over sometime — probably when they want to borrow money, said Rupert — and wished them every happiness.

Helen’s meeting with Rupert’s old Nanny was hardly more successful.

“What shall I wear?” she asked Billy beforehand.

“A skirt with horizontal stripes. All Nanny cares about is good childbearing hips.”

Nanny’s cottage in Wiltshire had been bought and furnished by the Campbell-Black family. They had filled it with pieces from their various houses which were far too large. It was an obstacle race to get across the sitting room. Nanny, almost the largest thing in the cottage, stood six feet tall, with big ears, a whiskery seamed face, a boxer’s jaw, and shrewd, tough little brown eyes like Henry VII. She was wearing a shiny high-necked navy blue dress with a white collar, which gave the impression of a uniform. Although it was a very hot day, she was watching fireworks on a black and white television with the central heating at full blast and none of the windows open. Perhaps years of Campbell-Black austerity and indifference to the cold had unhinged her, thought Helen. Every surface in the room was covered in photographs of babies in long white dresses. The only others were of Rupert at every stage of his career, as a solemn blue-eyed baby, at St. Augustine’s, Harrow, in the Blues, and, mostly, of him show jumping. Otherwise there was no evidence that she was remotely pleased to see him.

She hardly thanked him for the half-dozen bottles of her favorite, disgustingly sweet sherry that he brought her. Pouring out three glasses, she gave much the smallest to Helen.

“Isn’t Helen beautiful?” said Rupert.

Nanny looked Helen up and down and sniffed. “Very beautiful face,” she said.

“She’s got a beautiful figure too,” protested Rupert, laughing. “I know you’d have only been happy if I’d married some Flanders mare producing sons every eight months.”

Nanny snorted and proceeded to tear Rupert off a strip for hell-raising in Paris and getting arrested at Plymouth and getting married without a proper wedding. Rupert accepted it with amazing mildness.

“I’m sorry we didn’t ask you to the wedding; we didn’t ask anyone. I couldn’t face all my stepparents muscling in on the act. And my mother would have been bored to have been reminded of all her weddings.”

“Who’s your father married to at the moment?” said Nanny.

“Some Italian whore,” said Rupert.

“I suppose you had to get married?” asked Nanny.

“No, we did not.”

“Whatever happened to Bianca? And Melanie Potter? She was a bonny girl.”

“She’s married with two daughters. I told you last time.”

Nanny knew everything about him, and every round he’d jumped in the last two years.

“Your mother remembered my birthday,” she said accusingly. “More than you did, and so did your brother Adrian. I hear he’s got a girlfriend.”

“Are you sure?” said Rupert in amazement. “I don’t think so.”

“Never knew he was bispectacled,” said Nanny.

Helen didn’t dare look at Rupert.

“Helen’s American,” said Rupert.

“So I read,” said Nanny. “Never thought you’d end up with a foreigner. I’ve read about Watergate,” she added, as though Helen were personally responsible.

Helen was so hot she took off her jersey, revealing her slender brown arms and waist.

“Not much of her, is there?” said Nanny. “Anorexic, I suppose.”

Finally, when Helen thought she’d faint from the heat, she said, “I think we ought to go, Rupert.”

Nanny was not at all upset; she didn’t even come to the door. Desperate to get out into the fresh air, Helen made her good-byes and fled, but not before she heard Nanny say, “Got money, I suppose? Only reason for marrying a foreigner really.”

“Isn’t she a gem?” said Rupert on the way home.

“She’s a Machiavellian old monster,” said Helen.

“Doesn’t mean it; she’s nearly eighty. All the same I can’t wait for you to have a baby so we can get her out of mothballs to look after it.”

It was plain, in fact, as the months went by, that Rupert and Helen were very different. Rupert was spoilt, easily irritated, and didn’t flinch from showing it. His ambition in life was to get his own way and beat the hell out of the opposition. He had many moments of frustration and boredom in life, but very few of self-doubt.

Helen, on the other hand, was riddled with self-doubt. She believed that one should not only constantly strive to improve oneself and others, but that work would indeed keep the devil at bay.

To begin with, therefore, she made heroic efforts to interest herself in horses and learn to ride, but she was too tense and nervous and the horses sensed this, and the way she always caught her breath got on Rupert’s nerves. Then Marion (Helen never knew if it were deliberate) put her up on one of the novices, who carted her through a wood with low-hanging branches and finally deposited her on the tarmac of the village street. Helen bruised herself very badly and after that gave up trying to ride.

She still took an interest in show jumping, however, reading every book on the subject, scanning the papers for horsey news. She even started reading dressage books and discussing her theories with Rupert, trying to show him where he was going wrong. Rupert was not amused. He did not want gratuitous advice that Macaulay might go better in a running martingale, or Belgravia might profit from learning to execute half-passes.

“When all’s said and done,” he told her sharply, “I’m riding the fucking horse, not you, so belt up.”

Helen, during the long, long hours that Rupert and Billy were occupied with the horses, turned her attention to the house and soon had the place swarming with builders, plumbers, electricians, and painters.

“You’d think they were building the Pyramids,” grumbled Rupert.

But gradually the damp and the dry rot were eradicated, and a new heating and wiring system installed. Pastel colors replaced the crimson and dark green wallpapers and old brocades. Tattered silks and moth-eaten tapestries were succeeded by new pale silks, glazed chintz, and Laura Ashley flower prints.

Helen also employed a decent cleaner, Mrs. Bodkin, paid her well, and managed to keep her. Mrs. Bodkin admired Helen. She found her formal and distant and not given to gossip, but she was kind, straight, listened to Mrs. Bodkin’s problems, and was prepared to muck in with the cleaning.

She certainly needed to. Rupert and Billy were appallingly untidy. Both dropped their clothes where they took them off, never brought a cup or glass downstairs, and, if they couldn’t find a boot jack at the front or back door, trailed mud all over the hall and the new carpet, followed by a convoy of dogs with dirty paws.

The dogs drove Helen increasingly crackers, shedding hair, barking, fighting, claiming Rupert’s attention. Also, the colder the winter got, and the last one was a killer (you could skate on the water in the john) the more the dogs tried to climb into bed with them. Rupert, who fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow, didn’t notice or mind Badger lying across his feet, or a Springer Spaniel curled up in the warmth of his back. Helen, a nervous insomniac, was kept awake night after night, shoving the dogs out of bed and listening to them licking themselves or scratching interminably in creaking baskets.

As the winter got colder, and the winds blew off the Bristol Channel, and the central heating was not yet installed, poor Florida-reared Helen developed a hacking cough. Rupert, who like most very healthy people, lacked sympathy with illness, suggested she should get a job coughing between movements on Radio Three.

And that was another problem. Culturally they were so different. Every time she wanted to listen to classical music, Rupert turned on Radio One. Every week she determinedly read the Times Literary Supplement, Encounter, and New Society. She started to read the New Statesman, but Rupert canceled it; he was not having subversive Trotskyite rubbish corrupting the dogs, he said.

Then there was the matter of the Augustus John drawing. Helen, having spent a long time deciding what would really please Rupert for a wedding present, spent her entire savings on a drawing of a horse by Augustus John.

Rupert was enchanted.

“I think that was the old roué who had a walkout with my grandmother.”

He was studying the drawing in great detail when the doorbell rang. It was a man about the washing machine. When Helen returned quarter of an hour later, Rupert had propped the drawing on the sofa and was looking at it with satisfaction.

That’s better.”

“What?” said Helen. Then, noticing a pencil and rubber in Rupert’s hand, gave a gasp of horror. “What have you done?”

“Redrawn the near side hock. Chap simply hadn’t got it right.”

“But you can’t tamper with the work of great artists,” said Helen, appalled.

“I can, when they can’t draw,” said Rupert.

Although he insisted on buying her a completely new wardrobe, making her look, he’d told Billy, like the aristocrat she plainly isn’t, on the whole he approved of the changes she made to the house. But he drew the line at mats under glasses to stop the drink rings, and he tore down the net curtains in the first-floor bedrooms and the downstairs loo, and he threw all the artificial flowers she bought to brighten up the dark hall into the boiler.

Their worst row was triggered off, however, when Helen introduced discs into the lavatory cisterns to disinfect the water and dye it blue. Rupert came roaring into the kitchen, one of the blue discs in his hand, dripping dye all over the floor.

“What the fuck is this?” he howled. “Have you gone mad? Are you trying to poison my dogs?”

“They shouldn’t drink out of the john,” screamed Helen. “Then they go and lick everyone. It’s disgusting. They’ve got water bowls in the kitchen, and a water trough, and a lake in the garden. Why do they bother with the john?”

“Because they always have. I’m not having you introducing any more of your dinky little American ideas. It’ll be chiming doorbells and musical lavatory paper next. I want the water clear by the time I get home, and if any of the dogs get ill, I’ll report you to the RSPCA.” And he stormed out, slamming the door. Helen and Mrs. Bodkin removed the blue discs.

Poor Helen tried and failed to impose gracious living on Billy and Rupert. She yearned for candlelit dinners with the silver out, damask napkins, intelligent conversation, and lingering over coffee and liqueurs. But, looking after horses, there was no guarantee what time Rupert and Billy would get in. After three attempts at boeuf en croute that turned out tougher than a tramp’s boots, Helen found out that all they really wanted was sausages and mash, or Irish stew on their knees, slumped in front of the television. Usually they argued across the program about the day’s events, or some horse they were thinking of buying. Rupert bolted his food, hardly noticing what he ate. She was often tempted to offer him Chappie and Winalot. Often they were so tired, they fell asleep in the middle of a meal.

But however much Rupert fell asleep over the television, he always woke up and wanted sex when they went to bed, and again in the morning, and often popping in, if he wasn’t at a show, in the middle of the day. “I’m happy as long as I’m mounted,” he used to say, “and you’re so compulsively ridable, my darling.”

If they ever had a row, Rupert had to make it up because he wanted to sleep with her. If she found his demands excessive, and she frequently didn’t achieve orgasm herself, she never said so. But after nearly a year she still grabbed a towel when he walked into the bedroom and found her naked. She always locked the lavatory door, and she only really liked sex if she’d just had a bath. She was embarrassed by his unashamed delight in her body. She still couldn’t convince herself that he really enjoyed doing those things he insisted he liked doing long enough to make her come, so she often wriggled away pretending she had, then felt desperately ashamed of faking. But she found him irresistible and she needed his constant assaults as evidence that he still doted on her.

For there was oodles of competition. Wherever they were, girls ran after Rupert, clamoring for his autograph, mobbing him at parties, even pulling hairs out of his horses’ tails as souvenirs, until they were almost bald. And although she got kudos, wherever she went, as Rupert’s beautiful wife, and there was a great feeling of mutual congratulation in being such a handsome couple, it was Rupert people really wanted to see.

Marion troubled her too. She longed for Rupert to sack her (as he was always threatening to do) but was too tactful to say anything. But she remembered Marion’s reddened eyes, particularly after their wedding. She tried to be particularly nice to the girl, giving her a beautiful black cashmere jersey for her birthday, which Marion never wore, and was constantly urging Rupert to ask her to dinner and suggesting handsome young men to meet her. But Marion politely refused and kept her distance, gazing at Helen with the hostile somber eyes of a prisoner of war.

Billy explained to Helen that Marion was so good with the horses that it was worthwhile putting up with her moods. Billy was such a comfort. He’d offered to move out when Helen and Rupert got married, but neither of them could bear to lose him. After all, he and Rupert had been inseparable since they were eight, and they were business partners, and Rupert needed someone to talk horses with. As the weeks passed Helen decided Billy was simply the nicest person she’d ever met. He was so kind, funny, easygoing, and, she flattered herself, just a tiny bit in love with her. If she had a row with Rupert, Billy stuck up for her. If Rupert was irritable because the horses were going badly, she could dump on Billy, knowing she wasn’t being disloyal, because Billy understood Rupert and loved him, at the same time as knowing all his faults. It was a very happy arrangement. Billy obviously wasn’t serious about Lavinia Greenslade and wouldn’t get married for years.

Rupert sometimes complained of being gentrified, but he and Billy soon found it a boon that the house was run like clockwork, that their suits and red coats were always back from the cleaner’s, that there were always enough clean white shirts, ties, and breeches, that their boots were mended, that the house was ordered and tidy, that entry forms were filled in, that fan mail was answered, and endless requests to speak or open fêtes and supermarkets were politely refused by return of post.

This left Rupert and Billy to concentrate on the horses, which they certainly needed to do. The three-day week brought extra costs. Petrol prices in particular shot up. There were forecasts of economic doom for years to come, and, with the Socialists coming to power, there was more chilling talk of a wealth tax, which would cripple Rupert’s income. It became increasingly vital to win and win. And they did. There was no doubt that since Rupert married Helen he and Billy had calmed down, and were now both regular fixtures in the British team.

So now Helen, on the eve of leaving for Rome and Madrid, gazed out on the green valley. She was really looking forward to the trip. For the first time she felt she could leave the house without the workmen doing something frightful. She loved going abroad, picking up antiques and pieces for the house, visiting galleries and museums, learning new languages. Also it meant a holiday from all the dogs in the bed, and as Rupert was far less famous abroad they weren’t constantly besieged by groupies (or “Rupies” as Billy called them). And Malise Gordon was there. She always enjoyed spending time with him. They often went to galleries and museums together when they were away, making Rupert slightly edgy. He was jealous of something that Malise and Helen shared that he couldn’t give her, so he continually mocked it.

Helen turned back to all the beautiful clothes Rupert had bought her. She realized above all that it was important to him that other men admired and fancied her, but like Meissen china in a glass case, the admiration had to be kept at a distance. Last year in Rotterdam, when a rather inebriated Dutchman asked her to dance in a nightclub, it had only been Billy’s half nelson that had stopped Rupert knocking him across the room. A slightly more persistent admirer at one of the Dublin Horse Show balls had been less lucky and ended up with a fractured jaw.