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6

Rannaldini could hardly fly his helicopter home for excitement. Would days of riding out in all weather have coarsened Tabitha’s amazing beauty? Would being fired so ignominiously have tempered her extraordinary arrogance, her capacity for rage?

Evidently not. Rannaldini entered the west courtyard through ancient gates, optimistically crowned with rusty iron letters spelling the words omnia vincit amor. Sprinting up a mossy, paved path, flanked by lavender bushes, and pushing open the heavy oak door he found Helen spitting with fury. Tabitha was showing no contrition at all. Halting her mother in mid-lecture, she had snapped that she hadn’t flown five thousand miles for an earful and sloped off to the yard to settle The Engineer for the night.

‘Now she’s attacking the vodka,’ spluttered Helen. ‘We’ve clearly got a lush on our hands — Rupert always drank too much. And after over a year away she didn’t even peck me on the cheek.’

‘Where is she?’ demanded Rannaldini.

‘In the Blue Living Room.’

The Blue Living Room, an upstairs drawing room, which everyone else at Valhalla still called the Red Morning Room, had just been redecorated by Helen at vast expense in soft blues and rusts to complement her own hazel-eyed, red-headed beauty. The orange flames dancing merrily in the grate and the last tawny leaves on the beech outside enhanced the effect. Rannaldini’s Étienne de Montignys and Russell Flints had been banished in favour of an autumnal watermill by Samuel Palmer, and a Canaletto of sea-blue Venice. An embracing Cupid and Psyche by Canova provided the only erotic note.

Tabitha sat slumped in a carved brown chair, which was Rannaldini’s only contribution to the room, watching Wallace and Gromit on television. She was wearing frayed jeans and a Stop Puppy Farming T-shirt. A green toggle clung to her wrist like mistletoe. She was very thin — probably from taking those mad mood-inducing slimming pills to keep her weight down.

Her face was deathly pale, the long turquoise eyes bloodshot and heavily shadowed, the long nose reddened, the mouth clamped round clenched teeth in an attempt not to cry. White-blonde hair, used to being washed every day, hung lank and greasy to her collarbone. She was clutching a yellow Labrador puppy as though it were a hot-water bottle.

‘Where d’you get that animal?’ asked Rannaldini sternly.

‘Sharon? She was a stray, wandering round the docks.’

Rannaldini clicked his tongue. ‘Have you alerted the quarantine authorities?’

Tab’s eyes darkened in terror.

‘Please don’t betray me. I couldn’t leave her in Kentucky.’

Rannaldini, who was never too hot, put a log on the fire.

‘How d’you fiddle it?’

‘I came through France. There’s a boat smuggling in thirty dogs a day. The Engineer and I had to wait as it only sails when there’s no moon.’

‘How long have you been travelling?’

‘Four or five days.’

Rannaldini filled up her glass.

‘Naughty little girl,’ he said softly, taking Sharon and examining her. ‘Certainly she doesn’t look rabid.’

He dropped the puppy gently on the floor.

‘How can we punish you?’ he purred.

‘The American Horse Show Association’s done that already, for Christ’s sake.’

‘So they should have done. Risking the life of that beautiful horse I gave you.’

‘Engie’s fine, I promise you.’

Tab’s light, clipped drawl was so like her father’s. Every time he heard it, Rannaldini was excited by how much he could hurt Rupert by controlling and manipulating her. Moving round the room, only pausing to run an admiring hand over Psyche’s marble bottom, he pressed a button on the back of Tab’s chair. She gasped then screamed, as its wings suddenly clamped round her waist, trapping her.

‘What the fuck — lemme go!’ Fighting tears, she clawed fruitlessly at the imprisoning wooden arms, until she nearly pulled the chair over.

‘It’s a debtor’s chair,’ mocked Rannaldini, as he closed in on her. ‘Eighteenth century. Used to trap debtors like you. I’ve been looking for one for ages. You owe me two grand for your journey home, remember.’

‘I’ll pay you back.’ Tabitha flinched away.

When she could retreat no further, she allowed his fingers to caress her cheek for a second, then dropped her head like a snowdrop.

‘My father’s such a bastard.’

Rannaldini shrugged.

‘Maybe he’s pleased Marcus is gay. Probably never wanted a son competing with him.’

Having left pawmarks all over Helen’s pale blue Regency sofa, Sharon was now attacking a cushion Helen had embroidered of a virgin and a unicorn. Neither Tab nor Rannaldini took any notice.

Rupert’s remark about gaining a daughter when Marcus had shacked up with Nemerovsky had been the one that had hurt her most, confessed Tab.

‘He’s got a daughter, for Christ’s sake.’

‘And what a daughter,’ said Rannaldini lovingly.

‘I want to make him madder than he’s ever been before.’

‘Let’s find something really to worry him.’

Rannaldini moved fast. With his Polaroid memory, he had not forgotten four and a half years ago, his leading jockey, Isaac Lovell, and Tabitha exchanging an impassioned eye-meet in the paddock before the Rutminster Cup. Isaac had been riding Rannaldini’s vicious but generally victorious horse The Prince of Darkness, who’d fallen at the last fence. Tabitha had been the groom looking after Arthur, a big grey gelding, trained by her father, Rupert.

Tragically Arthur had died of a massive heart-attack, way ahead of the field but just the wrong side of the winning-post. Slumped sobbing over Arthur’s body, Tabitha had been too distraught to feel the hand of sympathy Isaac Lovell had dropped on her shoulder as he led home the unhurt but shaken Prince of Darkness.

The Campbell-Blacks and the Lovells had been feuding for nearly forty years, since Rupert had bullied Jake at prep school for being the cook’s son and a gypsy with a wasted leg. Gyppo Jake and Rupert had slogged it out on the international show-jumping circuit throughout the seventies, with Jake finally getting his revenge during the Los Angeles Olympics by running off with Rupert’s then wife Helen.

Later Jake had returned to his wife, Tory, Helen had eventually married Rannaldini, Jake and Rupert had both switched to training, but their feud had not abated. One reason, apart from loathing Rannaldini, why Rupert had disinherited Tabitha and Marcus was because photographs had appeared of both of them smiling at Jake Lovell, who as the Maestro’s trainer had been a witness at Rannaldini’s wedding to Helen.

If Helen and Jake had once fallen so passionately in love, reflected Rannaldini, might not history repeat itself? By a delicious coincidence, Isa Lovell was coming to lunch tomorrow, which would give Tab a decent night’s sleep.

Unhampered by scruples, Rannaldini didn’t give a stuff that Isa was already living just outside Melbourne with a tough little tomboy called Martie. They had invested in a yard that had done brilliantly its first season but which still needed capital. For this reason, Isa had come home to make serious money in the National Hunt season and also to help his father, Jake, now increasingly debilitated by the polio he’d had as a child. Rannaldini had several horses in training with Jake, and had invited Isa over to try out two mares he had bought in France and to plan for the future.

As usual Rannaldini had another motive. During the winter in Melbourne, Isa had won three of Australia’s biggest races, including their Grand National, for Baby Spinosissimo, the young tenor, whom Rupert had suggested should play Don Carlos. Isa would know if Baby was sufficiently broke to accept the part for a quarter of Fat Franco’s fee.

There was nothing youthful about Isa Lovell. Money had always been tight when he was a child: at six he was helping in the yard and jumping at shows, at eight coping with very public trouble in his parents’ marriage, and his mother’s attempted suicide. Despite having been champion jockey three times, he was aware at twenty-six that he would soon have to support his parents, and was therefore considering moving into training.

Isa had trendily tousled black hair, lowering black brows, and slanting, suspicious dark eyes dominating a pale, expressionless face. He looked like the second murderer in Macbeth and had a Birmingham accent you could cut with a flick-knife. But at five foot eight, he was tall for a jockey, with an undeniable brooding gypsy glamour. Not above dirty tricks on the course, where he was nicknamed the Black Cobra, he was as arrogant as Tabitha and, as champion jockey, had had his pick of the girls.

After fourteen hours’ sleep, a long, scented bath and a raid on her mother’s bedroom Tab, unaware Isa was coming to lunch, wandered into the Blue Living Room. She reeked of Helen’s favourite scent, Jolie Madame. She was wearing Helen’s new dark green cashmere polo-neck, which turned her turquoise eyes almost emerald. Her newly washed hair flopped arctic blonde over her white forehead, as she sidled over to the drinks tray to get stuck into the vodka.

‘That is not a suitable breakfast and that’s my roll-neck,’ began Helen furiously.

‘Shut up,’ murmured Rannaldini, but with such venom that any further reproach froze on Helen’s lips. ‘We have a guest. Tabitha, my dear, I don’t think you’ve met Isaac Lovell.’

Tab halted, tossing her head so haughtily Isa could see up the nostrils of her long Greek nose and the curling blonde underside of her lashes. But as he breathed in her scent, he was so unaccountably overwhelmed by foreboding that he found himself trembling.

Tab in turn saw a young man as dark and narrow as the gallows, and as still as the embracing Cupid and Psyche on the plinth beside him. His eyes were filled with hostility and in his hand was a glass of tomato juice as blood red as the feud between the two families.

‘What the hell’s he doing here?’ she demanded in outrage.

‘Discussing my horses,’ said Rannaldini.

Everyone jumped as the door crashed open and a furiously growling Sharon the Labrador backed into the room frantically worrying a sheepskin slipper. Hanging on to the other end, growling equally loudly but looking more sheepish than the slipper because he knew the drawing rooms were out of bounds, was Tabloid, Rannaldini’s senior Rottweiler.

‘Get them out of here,’ screamed Helen, as a rose-garlanded Chelsea bowl circa 1763 smashed into a hundred pieces. ‘You know those uncontrollable brutes aren’t allowed in the house.’

‘How did he get in, then?’ spat Tab, scowling at Isa.

‘Don’t be so goddam rude,’ shouted Helen.

Ignoring such brawling, Isa picked up Rannaldini’s Times and turned to the racing pages.

Lunch was predictably unrelaxed. Isa, who had the conversational skills of a Trappist monk, who had never visited Sydney Opera House or seen the Nolans and the Boyds in any of the art galleries, and who had never forgiven Helen for nearly destroying his parents’ marriage, turned his back on her and talked horses with Rannaldini. Watching his weight, he drank only Perrier, picked the bits of lobster out of the delectable mango and shellfish salad and had no tartare sauce or vegetables with his Dover sole. Tab just drank vodka and, horrified she was so violently attracted to Isa, disagreed with everything he said. Rannaldini watched them in delight, an evil smile flickering over his lips like a snake’s tongue.

After lunch Rannaldini, Isa and Tabitha rode the new French horses and the dappled-grey Engineer round Paradise. Tab, who had put on a blue baseball cap and an indigo bomber jacket, with ‘Can’t Catch Me’ printed on the back, proceeded to show off, executing dressage steps as gracefully as a ballerina, jumping huge fences and five-bar gates, beating Isa easily as they thundered down the long ride past Valhalla lake.

Passing the gates leading to Hermione’s beautiful mill, River House, Tabitha noticed her fiendish son Little Cosmo Harefield touting for a ‘fiver for the guy’, who looked surprisingly like Rannaldini’s fearsome PA, Miss Bussage.

‘What’s that obnoxious brat doing at home?’ she asked, knowing perfectly well that Little Cosmo was Rannaldini’s son. ‘I thought he’d gone to prep school.’

‘Cosmo has been suspended for bullying.’

Tab was shocked by the pride in Rannaldini’s voice.

‘Like son like father,’ she said disapprovingly.

Rannaldini laughed.

On the village green, parents and children were happily building a huge bonfire. As the horses clattered down Paradise High Street, lights were coming on in the cottages. Seeing people companionably having tea and watching television, Tab was overcome with longing for Penscombe.

‘What date is it?’ she asked.

‘October the thirtieth,’ said Isa.

‘It’s Daddy’s birthday tomorrow,’ she said bleakly.

Mist was rising from the river as they turned right towards Valhalla. The house itself was hidden by its great conspirator’s cloak of woods, but ahead in a dense copse known as Hangman’s Wood, they caught a glimpse of Rannaldini’s watch-tower.

The roar of a tractor taking hay to Rannaldini’s horses was accompanied by deep complaining from the rooks. An early owl hooted. In the dusk, Tab kept losing sight of Sharon the Labrador as the dog plunged into a stream choked by leaves as yellow as herself.

Entering Rannaldini’s estate down a little-used back lane, The Engineer stopped, and trembled violently, sweat blackening his dappled coat, his big brave eyes rolling. Even when Isa and Rannaldini rode on ahead, he refused to follow them between two gnarled oaks into a tree tunnel in which blackthorn, hazel and hawthorn intertwined overhead like a guard of honour.

In sympathy with The Engineer, Sharon raised her hackles and yapped, and when shouted at by Tab, rammed her tail between her legs, and howled.

Even when Tab uncharacteristically laid into The Engineer with her whip because she was so humiliated he was napping in front of Isa, the horse wouldn’t go forward. Finally he backed, terrified, into a rusty barbed-wire fence, entangling his hind legs.

Only Isa’s lightning reactions, leaping from his mare, chucking his reins to Rannaldini, gently talking to The Engineer as he calmly set him free, avoided a hideous accident.

‘Could have severed a fetlock, you stupid bitch,’ he swore at Tab as he bound up the horse’s leg with a red-spotted handkerchief.

Tab, who’d also jumped down, couldn’t stop shaking and had to lean against an equally shaking Engineer for support. After he’d given her a leg back up, Isa handed her Sharon to hold.

‘The little one’s gone far enough. Better carry her home.’

‘Let’s go back through the main gates,’ said Rannaldini, swinging his horse round.

The setting sun had emerged from beneath a curtain of dark grey cloud, firing the puddles, warming the swirling silver spectres of old man’s beard. As they swished home through the wet leaves, Isa lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. Then, as Tab’s hands were full of reins and Sharon, he held it to her lips for a couple of puffs, letting his fingers rest for a second against her cold face.

‘Few horses like that lane,’ observed Rannaldini idly. ‘Sir Charles Beddoes, a previous owner, got so bored with the local blacksmith visiting his young wife Caroline, he rearranged the old man’s beard cables between the two oaks. Then he surprised the lovers in bed. Escaping on his horse down the back lane, the blacksmith rode straight into the cables and — snap — they broke his neck.

‘Over the years many villagers have heard the clattering of his horse’s hoofs or seen him hanging above the road at twilight.’ Rannaldini’s smile was satanic in the half light. ‘Sometimes on winter evenings at Valhalla you can hear poor Caroline sobbing for her lost love, or see her wandering the passages in a bloodstained grey dress.’

‘A fashionable colour for ghosts,’ said Isa sardonically, but he crossed himself quickly and spat on the tarmac, as they turned into the Paradise — Cheltenham road.

‘Maybe,’ said Rannaldini, ‘but the trail of her little footprints comes through locked doors leaving marks on the flagstones.’

‘Why the hell did you take us that way, then?’ yelled Tab. Then, slipping all over the wet leaves, endangering both her horse’s and her puppy’s lives, she galloped back to the stables.

Once the vet had given The Engineer the OK, Tab retreated along endlessly twisting dark passages to her bedroom, refusing any supper, tempted to drown herself as she soaked in a hot bath, sobbing helplessly like Caroline Beddoes as she waited in dread for the sound of Isa’s departing car.