by Jilly Cooper
Bas, being half-Latin and the most demonstrative, came straight up, put his long muscular arms round Ricky and kissed him on both cheeks.
‘Welcome back, dear boy,’ he murmured in his husky, caressing, almost exaggeratedly English accent.
Drew, very brown from the troopship, but more reserved, relieved Ricky of his suitcase. Rupert, his blue eyes bloodshot and slightly off centre, lipstick all over his evening shirt, put an arm round Ricky’s shoulder, leading him to the car: ‘You made it, you poor sod. Christ, I’m glad you’re out.’ Then, drawing forward the tousled blonde, ‘This is Beattie Johnson.’
Ricky stiffened, his eyes wary and hostile. Beattie Johnson had written some vicious lies about him and Chessie during the trial.
‘It’s OK,’ said Rupert quickly. ‘She’s off duty.’
Although Rupert had kissed off all her make-up and reddened her face with his stubble, she was even sexier close up. Curling her arms round Ricky’s neck, she kissed him on the edge of his mouth.
‘You poor old thing, the nightmare’s over. I have to tell you, you’re much more glamorous in the flesh.’
Beattie’s flesh, in its clinging softness, reminded Ricky agonizingly of Chessie. Beneath the sharp tang of her scent, he caught the unmistakable fishlike reek of sex and nearly blacked out.
‘Leave him alone, Beattie,’ snapped Bas. ‘You sit in the front, Ricky. Isn’t this a truly terrific motor car?’
‘We decided it wasn’t worth going to bed,’ said Rupert, as he headed towards the motorway. ‘We thought we’d all have breakfast at Sheepfield Chase. Bas got them to lay on a private room, so you won’t get gorped at.’
‘And the uncondemned man is going to eat a hearty breakfast,’ said Beattie, putting her hands on Ricky’s shoulders. Ricky tried not to freeze away. Having taken a large swig out of a bottle of Krug, Bas handed it forward to him. Ricky shook his head.
‘Go on,’ chided Beattie. ‘You’re about three bottles behind the rest of us.’
‘No thanks,’ said Ricky. Looking down he saw Beattie’s rather dirty toe-nailed foot edging down the gear lever to rub against Rupert’s black thigh. Putting down a hand, Rupert caressed her instep.
‘Bugger off now,’ he said to her, ‘or I’ll be done for drunk driving. And for Christ’s sake, get that black tie off, Bas.’
Ricky wished he could go straight home. He needed to touch base, but it had been so kind of them to turn up, he must make an effort. He turned to Drew. ‘Glad you got back safely.’
‘Bloody nuisance missing a whole season,’ said Drew.
‘It must have been wonderful all those cheering crowds welcoming you back,’ gushed Beattie.
‘We’d no idea of the strength of feeling back home,’ said Drew. ‘It was a complete surprise. We were overwhelmed.’
‘How did you feel when the truce was finally signed in Port Stanley?’ went on Beattie. ‘Did you have a fantastic piss-up?’
‘No,’ said Drew. ‘We were simply glad to be alive.’
He’s changed, thought Ricky. The golden boy’s grown up and been jolted out of his habitual sang-froid.
‘Drew’s being recommended for an MC,’ said Bas.
‘Sukey must be thrilled,’ said Ricky.
They’ve all done so well, he thought wistfully – World Champions, Gold Cups, MCs.
The conversation inevitably got on to polo and what a bore it was not being able to buy ponies from Argentina any more.
‘I’m getting some from Australia,’ said Bas, ‘and the Prince of Wales.’ Then, realizing Beattie was listening, he started gabbling away in Spanish to Drew.
‘Speak English,’ said Beattie furiously, hearing the words, ‘Charles and Diana’. ‘It’s bloody rude.’
When she could get no change out of either Drew or Bas, she turned back to Ricky.
‘Did they give you a hard time inside because you were a gent?’
‘No.’
‘How was Dancer Maitland?’
‘Great.’
‘Did he make a pass at you?’
‘Oh, shut up, Beattie,’ said Bas.
‘Well, he is a screaming pouf. I’d have made a pass at Ricky if I’d been in prison.’
‘Dancer’s f-f-fine,’ said Ricky, wanting to strangle Beattie. ‘He’s a lovely man. Everyone adored him.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Beattie writing ‘lovely man’ on her wrist with eye pencil. The inky black cloud had spread over the whole sky. They only just managed to reach the hotel and get the roof up when the heavens opened.
‘I guess MP stands for Moderately Pissed,’ said Rupert, as ravishing waitresses, hand-picked by Bas, brought more bottles of Krug into the private room. Ricky put his hand over his glass.
‘Go on,’ said Bas. ‘You must celebrate today.’
‘Honestly, I’ve given it up.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Rupert. ‘You used to drink for Rutshire.’
‘I don’t want a drink,’ said Ricky through gritted teeth. Then, lowering his voice, ‘I’m sorry, I just feel I owe it to Will.’
‘Ah,’ said Rupert, also dropping his voice, ‘I understand. Sorry. But don’t punish yourself too hard. Christ, look at the tits on that waitress.’
Attack came next from Ricky’s left.
‘You mustn’t be sad,’ said Beattie, pouring him a cup of coffee. ‘Spare men are at such a premium these days, you’ll be snapped up in a trice. I’ve got some stunning girlfriends. You must make up a four with Rupert and me.’
Her hot, brown eyes ran over him, telling him what fun they could have together. She’s not sure of Rupert and is trying to make him jealous, thought Ricky. God knows, he’d be impossible to hold.
‘Is it true,’ asked Beattie, ‘that Chessie said she’d only come back to you if you went to ten and won the Westchester?’
‘For fuck’s sake, shut up,’ snarled Rupert; then, turning back to Bas, ‘No, it was definitely half-brother to Nijinsky.’
Breakfast arrived – eggs, bacon, sausages, kidneys, cold ham and a mountain of kedgeree.
‘I’ll help you,’ said Beattie, piling up Ricky’s plate. ‘You definitely need feeding up.’
Then they all watched in horror as Ricky tried to cut up a piece of ham. His right arm simply wasn’t up to it.
‘I’ll do it for you,’ said Drew, taking Ricky’s knife and fork.
The prettiest waitress was already sitting on Bas’s knee, feeding him fried bread spread with marmalade.
‘They’re all booked for the morning,’ murmured Rupert, who had his hand halfway up Beattie’s skirt. ‘I’d go for that redhead over there.’
‘I’ve found an amazing girl for you to teach polo to,’ Bas called across the table.
‘Smile, please,’ said Beattie, who had suddenly produced a camera.
Ricky got to his feet, fried egg churning in his stomach. He only just reached the lavatory in time, then it was mostly bile he threw up. Drew was waiting as he came out, the blue eyes matter-of-fact, but not insensitive.
‘I’m sorry, we thought you needed cheering up. We went about it the wrong way. I’ll run you home.’
On the motorway the windscreen wipers fought a losing battle with the downpour and Drew talked idly about the Falklands.
‘Once we reached the actual island, I had the somewhat unenviable task – because I speak Spanish – of debriefing the Argie POWs. One of their pilots, shot down in the sea, was actually a polo player. Arrogant sod, although I must say British methods of obtaining information are somewhat reprehensible.’
‘So are Beattie Johnson’s,’ said Ricky. ‘Christ, she’s awful.’
‘Awful,’ agreed Drew. ‘Ever since Rupert packed in show-jumping he’s been drinking and screwing his brains out. I had a look at your ponies, by the way. They look very well. A season off’s probably done them good.’
‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to . . .’ Ricky’s voice trailed off.
‘Course you wil
l. You’ve got to get to ten.’
Frances, the head groom, and Joel, Ricky’s farm manager, were furious to be caught on the hop. Not expecting Ricky for hours, and by then absolutely plastered, they hadn’t swept the yard. There was hay and straw everywhere, floating in huge puddles. Louisa was just furious that she’d failed to keep up the crash diet she’d started every morning for the last month in anticipation of Ricky’s return. But Ricky didn’t seem to notice anything. Having patted the Labradors, he said he wanted to be on his own for a bit and he’d see them later.
Inside the house, the emptiness hit him like a boxing glove. No silken whippet coiled herself round him, jumping for joy. His one craving was to look at Will’s photographs again. The one in his wallet had cracked and almost disintegrated. But on the piano in the drawing room he found only empty silver frames. Shaking, he opened the photograph album and found every picture of Will had been removed, and where there had been photographs of Ricky and Chessie together, Chessie had cut out herself.
As he looked round the room, he noticed pieces of furniture missing, pictures taken from the walls, huge gaps in the bookshelves. Churning inside, feeling bile rising in his mouth again, he raced upstairs. Someone had tactfully removed the child gate from across the top stair, but the rocking-horse with most of its paint chipped away by Will’s polo stick still stood on the landing.
Will’s bedroom had obviously been tidied up. Opening a drawer, he found the policeman’s helmet Will had been wearing when he squirted Grace with Bloody Mary. There were all the Dinky cars Will so adored. Snoopy lay spreadeagled on the bed, with his vast inflated belly.
‘Oh God,’ groaned Ricky, finding Will’s piggy bank empty on the window sill. Chessie’d even broken into that.
Stumbling into his dressing room, he found the photographs of his ponies still up, but the pictures of Chessie and Will once again removed. Next door, in the bedroom, he nearly fell over Millicent’s basket lined with his old dressing gown, but found all Chessie’s clothes and her jewellery gone. And there, mocking him, was the huge four-poster with its blue chintz curtains covered in pink peonies and roses – he remembered how she’d accused him in that terrible last row of being such a failure in bed. Hopelessly overexcited by her, he supposed he had often come too quickly. The glow-stars Chessie had stuck on the ceiling had long since lost their luminosity. Howling like a dog, Ricky threw himself down, burying his face in the pillow for some faint trace of the Diorissimo she always wore, but there was nothing.
15
Later in the day Ricky pulled himself together and had a bath. Outside the rain had stopped and everything dripped and sparkled in the hopelessly overgrown garden. Tortoiseshell butterflies rose indignantly as he picked Michaelmas daisies, honeysuckle and roses to put on Will’s grave in the little churchyard at Eldercombe, where generations of France-Lynches had been buried.
William Richard France-Lynch, 1978-81, said the newest headstone. The vicar, toddling past to choir practice, was about to stop and speak to Ricky, but, seeing his face, moved quickly away.
Towards sunset, missing Dancer’s prattle and overcome by restlessness, Ricky told Frances to saddle up Donaghue, his old hunter. Now was as good a time as any to see if he’d lost his nerve. Once mounted, the ground seemed miles away, the saddle impossibly slippery, so he tried to concentrate on his surroundings. Joel had got very slack; the fences were in a terrible state.
Bypassing the orchard and a field of stubble, he set out to look at his ponies which were turned out in the watermeadows at the bottom of the valley. After the rain, the ground steamed like a Grand National winner. The sinking yellow sun was turning the steam amber gold. Flocks of gulls were returning to the Bristol Channel after a day’s looting in the newly ploughed fields.
With only one arm working, Ricky had difficulty opening the gate leading to the valley. But Donaghue stood like a statue. Checking the sheep grid alongside the gate, Ricky was pleased to see that at least the wooden ramp which enabled field mice or hedgehogs to clamber out was still in position. The view down the valley, as always, took his breath away. On each steep side dense ashwoods plunged to fringes of reddening bracken, then into a green ride which was divided by a stream which hurtled down through caverns of wild rose, hawthorn and the elders the valley was named after, then raced on to meet the Frogsmore Stream where it flowed under Snow Cottage.
At least this is all still mine, thought Ricky, kicking Donaghue into a canter. Thank God there wasn’t anyone around to see him clinging to the horse’s mane. Relief on reaching the more level watermeadows turned to joy and a great lump rose in his throat as he saw Kinta, who’d kept carting him last summer, and Wayne, Mattie’s hideous custard-yellow admirer and the yard escapologist, standing together idly chewing and scratching each other’s necks. Their tails and their punk, growing-out manes were full of burrs. Then Ricky froze, for, on a stretch of grass eaten flat by sheep, some strange female was riding Pilgrim, his finest mare from Argentina. She was cantering bareback with just a headcollar, and with a polo stick, was tapping a ball in and out of a row of stones, presumably pinched from one of his walls. For a second, he was transfixed with pleasure by how well she rode, then as he drew nearer, and the ponies stopped grazing and looked up, he realized she was only a schoolgirl, with her skirt tucked into dark blue wool knickers, and her platinum-blond pony tail tied back with her school tie. For a further few seconds, he watched her execute a perfect figure of eight, changing legs in and out of a couple of stones. Then he flipped. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
The roar was loud enough to send the ponies scuttling away, almost to start an avalanche of ash trees. Turning, the girl gave a gasp of horror, then swinging Pilgrim round, set off at a gallop up the valley. Ricky gave chase, all thought of his damaged arm forgotten. Donaghue was bigger and had a longer stride than Pilgrim, but the girl was lighter, and God, she made the pony shift. Oblivious of stones and rabbit holes, jumping over fallen logs, she reached the top of the hill and thundered towards the sheep grid.
‘Come back,’ howled Ricky. ‘Don’t be a bloody idiot.’
Perdita ignored him. Digging her heels into Pilgrim’s heaving sides, she put her straight at the sheep grid. For a second, the pony hesitated, then the iron bars flew beneath her and she had landed safely on the other side. By the time Ricky had gone through the side gate, he found Pilgrim running around the barley stubble, and the girl vanished into the beech woods like a gypsy’s lurcher.
Pilgrim was gratifyingly delighted to see her master, digging him in the ribs and searching his pockets for Polos, whickering with joy, until Donaghue was squealing and snapping with jealousy.
By some miracle Pilgrim seemed all right, but, as Ricky ran his hands down her delicate dark brown legs, he shuddered at the thought of them snapped by those murderous iron bars. Grimly he rode back to the stables to tell Joel what had happened.
‘Sounds like Perdita Macleod,’ said Joel.
‘Who the hell’s she?’
‘Daisy Macleod’s daughter. They’ve rented Snow Cottage.’
‘They what? I know nothing about it.’
‘You do,’ said Joel. ‘You signed the lease the day Martin came to see you. I guess you had a lot on your mind.’
‘Well, they’re not living there much longer,’ snapped Ricky.
‘I’d no idea she was riding the ponies,’ said Joel. ‘I haven’t been down that end of the valley for a few days.’
‘Well, you should have been; half the fences and walls are down.’
‘She’s a stuck-up bitch, that Perdita.’ Joel hastily changed the subject, ‘They can’t stand her at the village shop.’ Then, because he wanted an excuse to go and see Daisy, added, ‘I’ll pop down and have a word with her mother.’
‘I’m going to talk to her mother,’ said Ricky grimly.
‘I’ll drive you,’ said Joel.
‘No. I’ll walk down through the woods.’
Daisy Macleod had had a gruell
ing day. She absolutely loathed her new job. Her boss, Mr Bradley, the Christmas pudding manufacturer, was a revolting thick-voiced, potbellied letch, who was constantly chiding her because her typing and filing, particularly in her current state of post-divorce shock, were not up to scratch. Almost worse, he insisted she wore high heels and dresses to the office, adding that as a ‘Caring Chauvinist’, he was only making her dress as femininely as possible for her own good, so that she might one day attract a new husband. He made Daisy’s flesh creep, but she put up with it because she desperately needed the money, and the factory, on the far side of Eldercombe Village, was in walking distance, so she could rush home and take Ethel out during her lunch hour.
Now Eddie and Violet had gone back for the autumn term, Daisy had hoped Perdita would be less disruptive. She had got straight ‘U’s in her O levels, but any remonstrance from Daisy triggered off a storm of abuse. Then on the first Friday of term she was suspended for a week for punching a girl in the playground.
‘At least I wasn’t being laid by the art master,’ she screamed at Daisy when she got home. ‘I don’t take after you that much.’
Daisy knew that when Perdita was frightened she became more abusive – but it didn’t make things easier. Now, a fortnight later, Perdita should have been back at school, but, to the intense irritation of the Caring Chauvinist, the switchboard at the Christmas pudding factory had been besieged by calls all day – from mothers complaining that Perdita had terrorized their children, from the village shop grumbling that Perdita had walked out twice without paying and asking Daisy to settle a horrifying drink-and-cigarette bill, and, worst of all, from Perdita’s form mistress saying Perdita hadn’t been near the school since Tuesday and was supposed to be retaking her O levels, which didn’t bode well.
Walking wearily home along the cart track which ran alongside Ricky’s woods and at right-angles to the Eldercombe valley, Daisy kicked off her shoes. Although sharp pebbles cut her bare feet, anything was better than those punishing high heels. Even the undeniable prettiness of Snow Cottage didn’t cheer her up, because she was so aware of crumbling mossy walls that should be pointed, and hart’s tongue ferns growing out of the roof, and the hayfield of a lawn, and a door bell that didn’t work, and red apples littering the orchard floor, reproachfully waiting to be turned into pies.