Riders

dumped his case in the kitchen.

“All dirty washing,” he said to Charlene, who had positioned herself at the kitchen table, it being the best place to hear any excitement, and was reading the Daily Mail and eating a yogurt.

“Look what I bought for Tab,” said Rupert, proudly producing an exquisite German doll in national costume. “According to the instructions on the box she does almost everything except say ‘Oooh’ at the moment of orgasm.”

“Beautiful,” said Charlene. “What did you get Marcus?”

“Sweets,” said Rupert blandly. “I must have left them in the lorry. I suppose I better give them to him in the morning.”

“Bastard,” Charlene said to herself.

“Where’s Helen?”

“In her room.”

“She all right?”

“Not in carnival mood.”

“Know what it’s about?”

“She’s been a bit jumpy all week. Went to see Dr. Benson yesterday and came back in a frightful state.”

“Oh dear,” said Rupert pouring himself a large whisky, “I’d better go and see her.” Then his eye was caught by a recipe on the corkboard in Helen’s writing entitled: How to make Prawns and Kiwi fruit in Pernod-flavored Mayonnaise. Getting out his fountain pen, he wrote “Oh, please don’t.”

Charlene giggled, so Rupert proceeded to tell her how his new horse Rock Star had gone. “He really is world class. If I can’t get a gold with him I might as well retire.”

When he went upstairs an hour and several whiskies later, he found the bedroom door locked.

“Let me in.”

“Go away,” screamed Helen.

“I’ll break the door down, or shoot it out if you’d prefer.”

After a long pause she unlocked it.

“Christ, you look as if a train’s hit you.” He’d never seen her so gray.

“I went to James Benson yesterday.”

“So I hear. Are we expecting quads?”

“Don’t you dare be flip,” she hissed. “I’ve got gonorrhea.”

“Really,” drawled Rupert, his dark blue eyes suddenly taking on that opaque look. “You must be more careful who you leap into bed with in future.”

“Stop it, stop it,” screamed Helen. “You know perfectly well I haven’t slept with anyone but you.”

“I don’t know that at all,” said Rupert coldly. “I see little enough of you, and your extreme reluctance to come on any of my trips abroad would rather suggest the contrary.”

“You bastard,” yelled Helen. “You caught it from one of your disgusting whores.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve got absolutely no proof. I’ve certainly got the clap. I was treated for it in Hamburg — those German clinics are like Sainsbury’s on a Saturday morning — but I caught it from you.”

“Don’t put that number on me. I’ve never looked at another man since I married you.”

“What about Dino Ferranti?” said Rupert softly. “He’s been in England for six weeks. Rumor has it he spends most of his nights on away fixtures.”

“I haven’t been near Dino or anyone else,” said Helen. “You gave it me and you know it. I’m leaving you and I’m taking the children.”

“You can take Marcus,” yelled Rupert, “but if you lay a finger on Tab, I’ll fight you in every court in this country.”

This was the final straw. Maddened, Helen tried to lash out at him, but Rupert dodged back and only the ends of her long colorless nails caught his cheek. The next moment the door opened.

It was Marcus, red hair ruffled, eyes huge with terror, pajama top falling off.

“Thtop thouting, Daddy, please thtop thouting.”

Tabitha toddled in after him, wearing only the top half of her pajamas, nappy discarded.

“Daddy, Daddy,” she squealed in delight, running towards him, “Daddy home,” then seeing blood on his face, “Daddy got a hurt.”

“Poor Daddy’s indeed got a hurt,” said Rupert, pulling a couple of tissues out of the box on Helen’s dressing table to stem the bleeding. Then, gathering Tab up in his arms, he walked out of the room. “I’m beginning to think you and Badger are my only fans.”

Helen, with a superhuman effort, pulled herself together. “Daddy has cut himself shaving,” she told Marcus. Everyone loved everybody, she went on. She was absolutely fine. Anything to ward off an asthma attack. But thin mucus was trickling from his nose, a sure sign that one was on the way. He was having difficulty in breathing. Oh God, it was her fault for locking herself in her room and not coming to say good night. He must have heard her crying.

“Relax, Marcus, please.”

Soon she had laid him facedown across her lap, tapping his frail ribs with cupped hands to force the mucus out of the bronchial tubes as the physiotherapist had taught her. He had swallowed so much phlegm, eventually he threw up all over her and the carpet. By the time she had got him to bed and calmed him down, read him a story and cleaned up the mess, it was long after midnight.

The light was on in Rupert’s dressing room. On the bed she found Rupert fully dressed, stretched out fast asleep with the sleeping Tab in his arms. Photographs of Rock Star were scattered all over the bed and the floor. In their blond beauty and their carefree abandonment, they were so alike. When Helen tried to take Tab back to her own bed the child went rigid in her sleep and clung on, so Helen left them.

Back in her bedroom, she wearily took a couple of sleeping pills and tried to think rationally about her marriage. She was trapped, trapped, trapped. She longed to leave Rupert, but where could she go? Certainly not home to her parents. The tensions of those two months in Florida last summer had put paid to that, and how could she ever afford Marcus’s colossal medical bills in the States? And if she walked out, taking the children, they would have to give up so much: Penscombe, the valley, the swimming pool, the camp up in the woods, the tennis court, the horses, the skiing, the jet-set existence, the fleet of servants, not to mention the library and the pictures, which they would probably appreciate later. All this for life in a one-bedroom flat. Janey at least had a career and could support herself; Helen had nothing. Her novel, to be honest, was merely a series of jottings. She poured everything out in her journal, sometimes leaving it around in the hope that Rupert might read it, and realize how unhappy she was. But he only read Dick Francis and Horse and Hound. Maybe he was as unhappy as she was and only bullying Marcus to work off his frustrations.

Yet she was only twenty-seven. Was this emotional dead end really all there was to life? Admittedly there were times of comparative contentment when Rupert was away, which was, after all, eleven months of the year, interspersed with periods of desperation like the present one, when he humiliated her publicly by chasing other women, and now giving her the clap.

She was only twenty-seven. She longed for love but, having been married to Rupert for six and a half years, she felt she had become what he kept telling her she was: boring, prissy, brittle, and frigid. He had so sapped her self-confidence that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to hold another guy. She knew she attracted people like Malise, Dino, and James Benson, but was sure they would all lose interest once they got her into bed.

Zonked by sleeping pills, Helen didn’t come down until eleven o’clock the next day. She found Marcus guzzling German chocolates, sweet papers everywhere.

“Where did you get those from?” she said furiously.

“Daddy bought them for me.”

Helen went storming into the tackroom. “You’ve given Marcus candy.”

“You’re always reproaching me for not giving him presents. The one time I remember, I get it in the neck.”

“You know the kids aren’t allowed candy except after lunch. How can I raise them when you spend your time undermining my authority?”

“What authority? Producing a whining, sickly little milksop.”

“That’s because he’s terrified of you.”