by Jilly Cooper
Isa doled her out pocket money for housekeeping, but grudgingly. It would be much more sensible, he said, for her to wheedle some serious dosh out of Rannaldini, which was why she had accepted the invitation to Riverdance on Isa’s birthday in January. At the last moment, Isa had cried off in a rage. Tab had a maddening habit of always borrowing his jackets. Grabbing his Puffa from the back of the bedroom door, he had found all the Christmas cards to his owners unstamped and unposted in the pocket.
Which was why Tab had a lone evening with an amused but utterly unyielding Rannaldini.
‘Isa is a successful jockey. You have a charming, free cottage, and if you bothered to check, you ungrateful child, you’d discover the Sèvres vase I gave you for Christmas was worth a few bob. Young people should make their own way.’
He wouldn’t even lend her a grand or two to appease Isa and the bank manager.
The coupling of an alcoholic and a workaholic is not a happy one. As Isa worked endlessly to keep the show on the road and compensate for lack of support from Tab, he had less and less time to spend with her, which lowered her confidence and made her drink more out of loneliness.
Isa was so cool he fell asleep in the middle of a row, and she could never tell, behind that expressionless face, what he was thinking. In fact, throughout that long, hard, cruel winter, Peppy Koala, the chestnut colt, so charming, so idle, so uncompetitive, had never been far from his thoughts.
He was just making plans in late February to fly out to Australia when Mr Brown, Peppy Koala’s owner, suddenly called him. He was in England, taking over some Bristol electronics firm. Was Isa free tomorrow evening?
Mr Brown also wanted to see Jake’s yard, and having read about Isa’s wedding in Hello!, said he’d sure like to shake hands with the new Mrs Lovell, who looked a beaut, so perhaps they could have dinner at Isa’s place.
Switching off his mobile, Isa looked round at Magpie Cottage. God, it was a tip! The ravishing little chest of drawers Taggie had given them for a wedding present was already covered in drink rings, like a pond in a rainstorm.
Knowing there was no way he could bring Mr Brown back here in its present state, Isa swallowed his pride and a large whisky and rang Helen. Could he borrow Mrs Brimscombe, Betty and Sally tomorrow morning to blitz the place? Then all Tab had to do was collect some precooked food from Waitrose and make herself look beautiful.
As luck would have it, in lieu of payment, one of Isa’s owners had given him a brand-new Jaguar XK8, which was being delivered to the cottage that afternoon. If money ran out he could flog it. For the meantime it would impress Mr Brown.
The three-month ban on sex was now up, but the cold war seemed to have set in too hard for Isa to placate Tab by making a move on her that night. Tab had stopped being sick, but instead when she opened her mouth a stream of resentment came out.
On the morning of Mr Brown’s visit, however, she was full of good intentions: no booze, and wifely behaviour. By midday a tight-lipped Mrs Brimscombe and a giggling Betty and Sally had made the cottage look wonderful and set the table.
‘Why don’t you buy some daffies for that lovely blue vase?’ suggested Betty.
Tab had been just off to Waitrose when she went to Isa’s chest of drawers to borrow a pair of socks. Rooting round under the lining paper she found a lovely laughing picture of Martie, his Australian girlfriend. He’s still in love with her, she thought in terror, he’s going to leave me.
When the telephone woke her, it was dark. Isa wanted to know if everything was on course. Mr Brown had been impressed with Jake’s yard. They’d be back around six thirty.
‘What have you bought for supper?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ bleated Tab.
‘Shall I get red or white?’
‘Both, I should think. See you later.’
Whimpering with panic, Tab looked around her. How could she have made such a mess? An empty vodka bottle and fragments of the royal blue and gold vase Rannaldini had given her for Christmas littered the floor. She’d better go and buy the food for dinner; then she could tidy the place and herself while it was heating up.
Her car was out of petrol, so she borrowed Isa’s new Jaguar. God, it was bliss to drive. In no time she had reached Waitrose, and loaded up with a smoked-salmon mousse, three packets of Coronation Chicken, new potatoes, ready-made dressing and a pretty red and green bag of salad. Adding banana and yoghurt ice cream, a brown loaf and runny Brie, she was off to the checkout counter, piling on Pedigree Chum and Whiskas on the way. Catering was so easy if you knew how. She even ignored a great glacier of vodka bottles. Hurrah for Tabitha the coper.
Her undoing was a white tablecloth covered in glasses, and a beaming salesman with a special offer of Chilean Chardonnay.
‘Might as well have a slurp,’ muttered Tab, as her trolley developed a mind of its own and veered booze-wards.
A man in a flat cap and a green Husky had had the same idea, and was soon swilling away, waggling his nose back and forth in the glass like a windscreen wiper.
‘Remarkably good,’ he said to Tab.
‘It is,’ she agreed, smiling back at the salesman, ‘and a terrific bargain. Could I have another glass just to make sure?’
‘What a lovely little hidey-hole,’ said Mr Brown, as Isa drew up outside Magpie Cottage. ‘Look at those primroses. I’m dying for a leak.’
Isa’s first thought was that his Jaguar had been stolen, the second that his mobile was ringing. Ignoring it, he ran into the house. Chaos met his eyes. Charging into the downstairs loo, he found no bog paper and no towel. Fuck Tab!
The best he could do was a box of tissues from the kitchen, which was also a tip, with no sign of dinner and no flowers. A fire was laid in the grate but unlit. Littering the floor were fragments of the Sèvres vase and Martie’s torn-up photograph. He had better answer his mobile.
‘Are you the owner of car P704 HHA?’
Isa had to think twice.
‘Yes. It’s been stolen?’
‘We’re not sure, sir. It’s been abandoned across the gangway in Waitrose’s car park, obstructing the flow of traffic, and the alarm is causing a disturbance. No-one can get inside the vehicle.’
Coming out of the lavatory, flapping his hands, Mr Brown was rather amused by the news.
‘My spouse is always locking herself out of her car, and my teenage daughters never lift a finger in the house.’
He was very happy to give Isa a lift to Waitrose. He’d seen photographs of Tab in OK magazine on the flight over and was looking forward to meeting her even more.
They found Tab and the man in the flat cap sitting in a little café half-way down a second bottle of Chilean Chardonnay. Not having driven Isa’s car before, she had no idea that it was his number being paged with increasing urgency.
‘This is Hugh Murray-Scott,’ she announced happily. ‘He’s a friend of Daddy’s.’
‘Where are my car keys?’ snarled Isa.
‘Car keys?’ As Tab rootled through the pockets of her jeans, Mr Brown and Mr Murray-Scott admired her slender hips. ‘Here they are. Now, where did I put my trolley?’
The final straw was when Isa found his lovely new Jaguar had been rammed by another car with a furious owner.
‘It’s only metal,’ said Mr Brown soothingly. ‘Don’t blame the little lady.’
He thought Tabitha was wildly exciting.
‘I’m sorry you won’t be able to enjoy any home cooking,’ mumbled Tab. ‘I’m not only off my trolley, I seem to have lost it as well.’
She ended up trying to write a cheque for the Chardonnay with her toothbrush, and Mr Brown swept them all off to the Old Bell for dinner. Despite Isa hissing at Tab to keep her fucking trap shut, she and Mr Brown got on famously. She was soon telling him about her Olympic hopes for The Engineer, and he was telling her all about Peppy Koala. ‘Prettiest little horse you ever saw.’
‘If you brought him over to Paradise, he and The Engineer could meet,’ said Tab, whose eyes
were sparkling at the sight of the bottle of Moët arriving in an ice bucket.
‘Aren’t you rather isolated in that little cottage?’ asked Mr Brown.
‘I’m Isa-lated,’ giggled Tab, ‘because my husband is always late home.’
Mr Brown thought it a very funny joke.
Isa wanted to throttle his wife, but if he could stop her doing anything frightful, Mr Brown’s obvious infatuation might just work to his advantage. By the time they had all ordered lobster with moules marinières to start with, Mr Brown was talking about when he brought Peppy Koala to England rather than if.
‘If you run him in the Derby this year,’ Isa was saying, ‘he’ll get a seven-pound allowance because, as a southern hemisphere horse, he’ll be so much younger than the others.’
Tab sloped off to the ladies. On the way, wondering whether to pack in a quick vodka at the bar, she caught sight of a tank of lobsters. She hadn’t realized they weren’t born red. Black, already in mourning, they waited helplessly, their claws tied together with elastic bands to stop them killing each other so that they could be boiled alive and intact.
Tab was so distraught, she up-ended a nearby ice bucket on the floor, scooped up as many lobsters as it would hold and fled into the street. Outside, in her thin jersey and jeans, the cold hit her like a left hook. If she could reach the sea she could set them free.
Isa and Mr Brown caught up with her on Rutminster bridge crying hysterically, trying to hitch a lift. When Isa tried to snatch back the bucket, she emptied the lobsters into the river.
Although the young lady was a handful, Mr Brown admired her spirit and was horrified by the way Isa tore into her.
‘Don’t you understand, you stupid bitch? They can’t survive in fresh water.’
‘Like me,’ sobbed Tab. ‘I can’t survive in the wrong marriage any more.’
After a week of cold war, Isa flew to Australia on the pretext of winding up the yard he had started with Martie. As March came in, bringing days of torrential rain and flooding, Tab died of every kind of jealousy. Looking out listlessly one morning she noticed the sun had broken through. The stream that flowed past the cottage had also broken away from its course into lots of smaller streams, glittering like a crystal lustre as they danced down the valley to join the river Fleet. We’re free to make our own way in the sunshine, they seemed to sing to Tab.
‘Your future godmother, Lucy, won’t like it, Little Rupert,’ Tab told the baby inside her, ‘but you and I are going hunting.’
Tab had always hunted, until Lucy had persuaded her it was cruel. But so many foxes escaped, and a ropy old pack like the Rutminster Ramblers never caught anything anyway, and the poor Engineer was so bored of dressage it would pep him up to have a day out.
Gold catkins lit up the valley like Tiffany lamps. As The Engineer floated over the fences, Tab had never been more conscious of owning an Olympic horse. She was so enjoying herself she didn’t notice a strand of wire. Next moment The Engineer turned over on top of her.
It didn’t hurt at first. She was conscious only of her white breeches turning red with blood, and screaming, ‘The baby! Please save the baby!’ before she passed out.
By the time Isa had flown home at vast expense, mother and horse were doing well, but little Rupert had died.
Tab was utterly devastated, sobbing and sinking into despair. Isa, who loved children, was determined not to show he was equally devastated. He never reproached Tab, because he knew in his heart that it had been his fault. He had longed to take her in his arms, but such was his loathing of the Campbell-Blacks, he couldn’t convince himself he hadn’t unleashed some gypsy curse. Instead he had gone to Cheltenham, won a big race on a horse of Baby’s and not come home that night.
Rannaldini, delighted at the turn of events, had been playing Iago. Clive, who had let himself into Magpie Cottage with Rannaldini’s master key, had been responsible for putting Martie’s photo in Isa’s sock drawer. He also tipped off Rannaldini when Isa was away, enabling him to ring Tab and drip poison into her ear.
‘Isa is finding it so difficult to break with Martie. She was so capable, and they were together seven years and he is seven years older than you.’ Which was vilely hypocritical of Rannaldini, who was intending to move in, despite being nearly thirty years older than Tab himself.
He would play the same game with Isa, telling him how wild Tab was, how young and unstable, how late coming home, how not always alone, how fond of the bottle. Subtly, slowly, treacherously, the same shoulder Rannaldini was providing for them both to cry on was the wedge he was driving between them. He encouraged Tab to use his indoor school and have a cross-country course built on the estate. Her suspension would be up in August in time for Gatcombe. But he still hadn’t given her any allowance. Let her beg for it.
The National Hunt season was nearly over. Isa’s winnings were shoring up Jake’s yard so money would grow even tighter. Playing his usual cool waiting game, Isa had not pestered Mr Brown about Peppy Koala.
Finally, Mr Brown rang him. ‘I’m dead choked your little Tabitha lost the baby. How is she?’
‘Pretty depressed.’
‘Not surprising, the way you treat her. If you can’t be nice to a pretty lady like that, how can I trust you with my little horsy?’
‘That’s crazy,’ said Isa sharply. ‘No-one fusses over horses like my father. Where were you thinking of sending him?’
‘Well, Sir Roberto Rannaldini’s offered me so much dosh I nearly sold to him, but in case Peppy’s that good I’m giving him to your other father-in-law, Rupert Campbell-Black.’
If Isa couldn’t blame Tab for losing the baby, he could, and certainly did, for the loss of Peppy Koala.
The following day Rannaldini and a suicidal Tab rode round Paradise. A big red sun was disappearing into the mist like the brake light of Apollo’s chariot, putting a pink rinse on the bare trees and a rose flush along the horizon. Conscious that they were about to be invaded by far more famous singers, robins and blackbirds were carolling their heads off.
‘I’ve had some lovely letters about the baby,’ muttered Tab, ‘from Lucy in Belgium, Meredith, Mr Brown, and even from that glamorous French director you invited to our wedding. He sent me a lovely poem about Little Rupert really existing and being a plant of light.’ For a second, her stony little face softened.
That one would have to be knocked on the head very quickly, thought Rannaldini.
‘Mrs Brimscombe told Isa how sorry she was about the baby,’ he said idly. ‘Isa said, “At least it’s given Tab something new to grumble about.”’
‘The bastard,’ gasped Tab.
‘I suggested you get a part-time job.’
‘And what did Isa say?’
As the sun sank, all the birds that had been singing so madly went silent. As the glow in the west became an orange fire, Rannaldini noticed a little adolescent moon turning her slim back on such ostentation. She reminded him of Tabitha.
‘He said you were unemployable.’
‘God, he’s a shit. You wait till the bloody ban’s lifted – we’ll show him.’
‘That’s how I wanted you to react,’ said Rannaldini silkily.
As he moved his horse close to The Engineer, his hypnotic black eyes were level with Tab’s. Perhaps he had such an impact on women, she thought, because he was small enough to dazzle them, like a low-angled winter sun.
‘Filming starts the week after next,’ he announced. ‘I’d like to offer you a job on Don Carlos. As mistress of the horse,’ he added sententiously.
‘Sounds perverse?’
‘As well as hunting, war scenes and polo during the overture, horses will be needed for Philip’s coronation, and Tristan might want to film Carlos and Posa galloping across country. We need someone to organize it. We’ll pay you a very good fee.’
‘Won’t people think it a bit odd you hiring a totally inexperienced member of your wife’s family?’
‘Not in the least. Tristan has alrea
dy signed up his delectable niece, Simone, to handle continuity.’
‘Can The Engineer have a part?’
‘A starring role.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’
She was flaming well going to show Isa and Rupert that she could do her bit for the marriage.
What Rannaldini did not tell Tab was that also joining the crew, as second assistant director, and as hellbent on proving himself, was his eldest son, Wolfgang. This had come about because Rannaldini, wildly jealous of Rupert’s rapprochement with Marcus and closeness to Xavier, wanted his son back, and had ordered Sexton to employ him.
The twenty-four-year-old Wolfgang, who had just gained an excellent law degree in Germany, had agreed to work on Don Carlos as a filler before taking up a plum job in Berlin. He had not been back to Valhalla for six years, ever since Rannaldini had pinched from him his beloved Flora Seymour, who was then a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl.
Highly, if somewhat rigidly, intelligent, Wolfgang had read Schiller in the original, and parallels between the cold, tyrannical Philip stealing Elisabetta from his son Carlos were not lost on him.
Now a jackbooting Eurocrat with a slimline briefcase and narrowed eyes, Wolfgang was determined not to let Rannaldini bully him. His job would be to run errands, keep the chorus in order and yank singers out of their dressing rooms, which in turn would give plenty of opportunity for bullying.
I am completely over Flora, Wolfgang told himself firmly and repeatedly, as he hurtled down the M4.
The only car that overtook him was a red Ferrari. Glancing right as it shot past, Wolfie nearly rammed the car in front, for in the passenger seat, yacking her head off to a beautiful boy instantly recognizable as the tenor playing Carlos, was Flora in person.
Wolfie had to pull into Membury service station to recover.