promise I’ll win it all back. And I passed a poster of Janey Lloyd-Foxe in the tube, telling me to read her column every week, so I drew a mustache on her and wrote ‘bitch’ underneath.”
“I hope no one saw you,” said Tory in alarm. “Let’s see what you bought.”
“And I went to the hairdresser,” said Fen casually. “I covered it up with a scarf, because I thought Jake might freak out. It’s gone a bit flat.”
She removed the scarf. Tory just gaped at her. Fen had gone out that morning with dark mouse hair trailing almost to her waist. Now it was streaked white blond and no longer than two inches all over her head. Tendrils curled round her face and down to a point at the nape of her neck. She had been on a crash diet for the last ten days since she heard about the trip, and now weighed no more than eight stone. As a result of so many salads, the spots had gone for good, the new hairstyle emphasized the emerging cheekbones, the brilliant, slanting, aquamarine eyes, and the long slender neck.
“I’m sorry,” Fen hung her head, “but I thought it would be easier to keep like this.”
Certainly it won’t be easier to keep men at a distance, thought Tory. Malise was going to have his work cut out as a chaperone. Suddenly, with a flash of equal pain and pleasure, she realized that Fen was no longer a child, a little sister. Almost since this morning she’d grown up into a beauty.
“It’s gorgeous,” she said in awe. “The hair’s heaven.”
Fen grinned with relief. “Griselda won’t be able to keep her hands off me!”
38
Fen had seldom met anyone she disliked more than Griselda Hubbard. Having told Fen to be ready at five- thirty, she rolled up, while it was still dark, at four forty-five, just as Fen was feeding Desdemona and Macaulay. Refusing to come in for a cup of coffee, she sat drumming her fingers on the wheel of her vast eight-gear juggernaut, gazing at the immaculate yard as though it was a pigsty, forcing Fen into a complete panic and sabotaging all her down-to-
the-last-minute organization. Macaulay loathed getting up early, at the best of times. There was no way you could hurry him over his breakfast or Sarah over blow-drying her hair.
“It’ll dry all crinkly if I leave it,” was her only answer, in reply to Fen’s frantic pleas.
“What on earth’s that?” said Griselda, as Fen installed a huge sweetshop jar of lemon sherbets, taking up a large corner of the very limited cupboard space.
“Macaulay’s reward if he jumps well.”
“You’re optimistic,” said Griselda dismissively. She was bull-terrier solid rather than fat, with huge fleshy thighs stretching a maroon track suit, and a hard face with short permed dark hair, small beady eyes, and more than a suggestion of mustache on her upper lip. She might have been any age between thirty and forty-five but in fact was only twenty-eight.
“I am not sitting next to her,” muttered Sarah.
Georgie, Griselda’s girl groom, as thin and wiry as Griselda was solid, had a pointed nose, watery blue eyes, and a long beige plait down her back. There was a lot of fuss about loading. Griselda had four horses, with her star, Mr. Punch, on the outside.
“I’m not having that brute next to Punchie,” she said, as Fen started to lead Macaulay up the ramp.
“He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” protested Fen.
“Punchie is not a fly,” said Griselda, “and that’s not what Rupert Campbell-Black says. Put Desdemona next to Punchie.”
“Desdemona gets scared. It’s easier if she’s between Mac and Hardy, and Mac goes in first.”
“Look, if you hitch a lift with me,” said Griselda, “you abide by my rules.”
Handling the monster lorry like a man, Griselda calmly knocked down two of Tory’s carefully nurtured lilac trees on the grass verge by the gate. Fen shivered for Desdemona and Macaulay’s safety, as Grisel overtook juggernaut after juggernaut on the motorway. She got to the ferry two hours early, which meant lots of hanging around. Fen insisted on feeding her horses at the docks, which, to Griselda’s intense irritation, had Mr. Punch and the rest of her horses clamoring for their lunch too. To upset Fen, there was the inevitable lorry-load of bewildered, thirstily bleating little calves. The driver said they were destined for the pot.
“Why can’t they bloody kill them in England?” said Fen.
“EEC Regulations,” said the driver.
“Don’t be so sentimental,” said Griselda. “You eat meat, don’t you?”
When they were at sea they had lunch in the restaurant. Grisel ordered a huge steak. “I need my fuel. I’m the only one doing any work.”
Fen, who was starving, ordered a grilled sole, which seemed less bloodthirsty. The moment it arrived, Grisel made a point of asking her to go down to the hold and check the horses.
Throughout the three-day journey, she treated Fen with even more contempt than the grooms, insisting she map-read, then hitting the roof when Fen gazed out of the windows at the pink and white apple blossoms and, wondering how she would put Desdemona at all the fences that flashed past, twice navigated Grisel on to the wrong motorway.
Every sixty miles or so, Griselda ordered Sarah or Fen to make her yet another cup of strong black coffee with three spoonfuls of sugar.
Jake always stopped to water and graze his horses on the way. Griselda believed in pushing on. “We’ll never make Fontainebleau by nightfall if we bugger around blowing them out with grass. Who’d like a lemon sherbet?”
“They’re Macaulay’s,” snapped Fen.
“He’ll hardly get through that lot. No wonder he’s so podgy.”
“Certainly likes her pound of flesh,” muttered Sarah to Fen, “although why she should want any more flesh defeats me, the ugly cow.”
“She’s supposed to have a boyfriend,” said Fen.
“Must have picked him up at St. Dunstan’s.”
Finally, two days later, with the Ave Maria ringing out all over the city, they drove into Rome. Fen was knocked sideways by the beauty of the churches, the statues, the lakes reflecting the yellow and turquoise sky, and the great humpbacked dome of St. Peter’s. The streets swarmed with people parading up and down, gossiping and showing off their new clothes. The traffic was terrifying. Griselda, however, drove the lorry on undaunted, on the principle that if she crashed into a Ferrari it would come off worst. Sarah, sitting by the window, was the object of repeated wolf whistles.
“I always felt I’d like to end my days in Rome,” she said smugly.
“You probably will if Griselda doesn’t drive more slowly,” said Fen. “Oh, look at that beautiful park over there.” Through the gap in the houses she could see a rustic amphitheater circled with umbrella palms.
“That’s the showground,” said Sarah. “It’s supposed to be the most beautiful in the world.”
The stables, part of a military barracks, were splendid, with big roomy boxes, enabling the horses to look out into the yard.
“There’s Snakepit and The Bull,” said Sarah. “So Rupert and Billy are already here.”
Fen suddenly felt nervous and wondered what they’d think of her new hair.
“Hello,” said Dizzy, coming out of Snakepit’s box. “We flew out. We were lucky. Have you had a frightful journey?”
“Marvelous,” lied Fen, because Griselda was in earshot.
“Where are the team staying?” Griselda asked Dizzy.
“The Apollo, just round the corner.”
“Well, I’m off,” said Griselda. “I expect you’ll want to settle your horses, Fen. Can you carry my cases to the taxi rank, Georgie? And mind you brush out the horse area, and clean up the living area.”
