Next moment he jumped out of his skin as a neighbor tapped on the window, wanting to congratulate Jake on being short-listed.
“What are you doing in a call box, anyway?” he asked.
“Ours is out of order,” said Jake.
“Come and use ours then.”
“I’ve nearly finished,” Jake banged the door shut. “Darling, I’m sorry, someone banged on the window. Look, I’ll ring you as soon as I get to Lucerne.”
“I can take a hint,” said Helen in a tight voice. “You’ve only got time for your bloody horses.”
“Don’t be such a bitch.”
“I thought you were different,” sobbed Helen, “but you’re behaving just like Rupert.”
“Hardly surprising, if you carry on like this.”
But she slammed down the telephone.
The locals drinking outside the pub were highly diverted to see Jake come out of the telephone box, wander up the street away from his own car, nearly get run over crossing the street, then wander back into the telephone box again.
Jake was very restless at dinner, snapping at the children, hardly eating anything.
“You all right?” asked Tory, as she cleared away.
“I’m sorry.” Jake put an apologetic hand on her back. “It’s just nerves, I guess.”
“And tiredness,” said Tory, throwing the remains of his ham and baked potatoes into the muck bucket. “You’re jolly well going to bed early.”
“I will, I promise, but I met Hugh Massey in the street. He says he’s got a video of last year’s show at Lucerne. He promised to show it to me.”
“Don’t be long,” she said.
Pretending to collect his car keys, Jake went upstairs. Darklis caught him in the bathroom.
“Why are you cleaning your teeth, Daddy?”
“Because I got a bit of ham stuck,” lied Jake.
In disgust Darklis gazed at her face in the bathroom mirror.
“I don’t think anyone will marry me when I grow up.”
“I’ll marry you, sweetheart,” said Jake, dropping a kiss on her head.
“You’ve already got a woman,” said Darklis gloomily.
I’ve got two, thought Jake wryly.
Helen was waiting in the car park of the Goat and Boots, three miles away. She got into his car and they drove half a mile into the country and turned off the road. Helen fell into his arms.
“I’m so sorry, I’m desperately sorry. Please don’t ever let me behave like that again. I just couldn’t bear the thought of your going away.”
“Hush, pet, hush.” Gradually he calmed her.
“Now,” he said, “I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen. We’ve got to face the fact that I’m going to be horrendously busy for the next two months. For one thing, we desperately need the cash. Fen’s been off form and she needs sorting out. I’ve still got a long way to go with Hardy. I’ve got to kill myself to get a place in that team. To be selfish, if I’m not selected I don’t want to reproach myself for the rest of my life for having blown it because I didn’t work hard enough. I’m not a natural, like your husband. Ever since I’ve been in show jumping it’s been one hell of a struggle to keep going. Fen, the children, the grooms, and most of all Tory, have had to make colossal sacrifices. After that last fall I’ve crawled back from the gates of hell. But only because they made it possible. I owe it to them all to get to L.A. and I want to go.” His voice softened, and he put up his hand to stroke her cheek, which was wet with tears. “Until I met you, I thought I wanted it more than anything else. Allow me three and a half months until the Games are over. There, that’s the longest speech I’ve ever made.”
“I’ll put up with anything,” said Helen, in a trembling voice. “I just thought you’d gone off me.”
Jake laughed. “You’re like Macaulay, desperate for reassurance.”
“That’s the difference between us,” said Helen slowly. “My marriage is absolute purgatory. Yours is perfectly okay. We’re batting from different strengths.”
There was a pause. Jake was too truthful to disagree with her.
“Shall I fly out to Lucerne?” she asked with a sudden surge of hope.
“No, I don’t want any distractions.”
And with that she had to be content.
Rupert rang the following evening. He was halfway to Lucerne.
Rocky, he said, had won the Grand Prix on the Saturday.
“How’s Fen getting on?” asked Helen.
“Disastrously. I can’t think why Malise doesn’t pack her off back to junior classes. Mind you, he’s really gone off his head now. He’s just sent for Jake Lovell. ‘Jake Lovell,’ I said to him, ‘couldn’t get a jump in a brothel.’ ”
Lucerne was a show of mixed fortunes for Jake. Macaulay, who hadn’t flown since Jake brought him half- starved back from the Middle East four years before, obviously thought he was being taken back to the stone quarries and completely freaked out on the flight. Sweating as though in the highest fever, his huge body quivering with terror in the tiny crate, his anguished eyes imploring Jake not to desert him, he reminded his master of nothing so much as Helen. It took all Jake’s skill and patience to stop him kicking the plane out.
Arriving in Lucerne, Macaulay was pathetically pleased to see such old friends as Fen, Sarah, and Malise. He was further comforted to see Desdemona in situ, and dragged Jake halfway across the yard to check if it were really her. Touching her nose, exchanging breaths, Macaulay was still rigid with disbelief. Only when Desdemona reached up to rest her roan face against his still sweating neck, protective and defensive, did he begin to relax. But he never really recovered his form all week.
Bearing in mind that there would be a punishing flight to the Olympics and Macaulay was not all that sound in the wind, and a clean-winded horse was essential for the Los Angeles smog, Jake, after long discussions with Malise, decided to pull him out of the contest. He was heartbroken. Most of all he had wanted to win a medal on Macaulay, but his horses always came first, and Jake was not prepared to put the big fellow through the traumas of another plane journey. He’d already made plans to box him home.
Which meant everything rested on the sleek but irritably twitching gray shoulders of Hardy, who was magnificent on his day, but perfectly capable of carting Jake or kicking every fence out if he so chose. In Lucerne, after a sulky start, he came second in two classes, and jumped an exemplary clear in the first round of the Nations’ Cup. In the second he put in a dirty stop at the water, leaving Jake sitting in the exquisite model lake with a stream of expletives on his lips and a bridle in his hand, while Hardy cavorted round the ring like Tinkerbell, refusing to be caught. Having learnt to duck out of his bridle, Hardy suddenly decided what fun it was, and did exactly the same thing in a speed class the following day.
All this provided wonderful fuel for Rupert, who proceeded to put the boot in on every occasion. Although Fen got very hot under the collar and snapped back at Rupert, Jake refused to rise. He got a quiet satisfaction from the thought of how much better he’d been riding Rupert’s wife at home, and a further laugh when the post arrived one morning and Rupert actually handed him an envelope containing a passionate love letter from Helen. Thank goodness, she’d had the foresight to type the envelope and post it in London.
Finally, Hardy put a muzzle on all his critics by coming second to Ludwig in the Grand Prix. But all in all, Jake did not feel the week’s adventures had enhanced his Olympic prospects.
After Lucerne, it was back to the Royal in Birmingham, then out to Aachen, then more shows in England and finally Crittleden at the end of July, after which the team would be announced.
All this made Jake very uptight and, although he missed Helen appallingly, he had plenty to occupy his mind. Helen, on the other hand, had nothing. She thought about Jake obsessively. It was as if he was the same television program permanently in front of her eyes. His face haunted her dreams. At night she tossed and turned, longing for his hands on her body.
She had even convinced herself that Jake would make a much better father for the children, particularly Marcus. Rupert had come home from Lucerne and taken both children to the fair. Here he had insisted on riding on all the most frightening things. Tabitha adored every minute of it. Marcus was absolutely terrified and ended up being sick on the top of the big wheel, soaking not only Rupert’s trousers but the couple immediately below them, who took it in very bad part. Rupert returned home in a blazing temper, with Marcus white and shaking and Tabitha
