“Did the horses travel all right?” asked Jake.
“Eventually. The crates didn’t fit, and they had to wait for hours to load, and the flight took thirty-three hours.” Then, seeing Jake’s look of utter horror, he went on, “But they’re all fine and out of quarantine. Hardy’s already bitten Malise, so he must be feeling okay.”
“Can we go straight to the stables?”
Rupert looked surprised. “If you feel up to it.”
Fen sometimes wished Jake wasn’t quite so conscientious. She was dying for a bath and a change, in case she bumped into Dino.
As they drove along in the car Rupert had hired, not a breath of wind stirred the palm trees as they flashed past.
“Is this the roosh hour?” asked Ivor nervously.
“This is nothing,” said Rupert briskly, passing a Cadillac on the inside, then nipping outside a Pontiac. “Once you’ve negotiated the rush hour, the individual competition will seem like falling off a log.”
“How far are the stables from the Olympic village?” asked Jake.
“Well, that’s another slight problem,” said Rupert. “About ninety minutes’ drive on the Olympic bus.”
“Shit,” said Jake, exchanging looks of horror with Fen.
“I’m lucky,” said Rupert, not without a certain complacency. “Helen and I are staying with chums in Arcadia, so I’m only five minutes from the showground.”
“Nice house?” asked Fen, aware that Jake was beginning to look really fed up.
“Terribly quiet,” said Rupert, blithely. “Only thing you can hear at night is the occasional splash as an overripe avocado pear falls into the swimming pool.”
No one could fault the stables. They were huge and airy, with push-button doors, air-conditioning in the boxes, and water playing on the roofs all day to keep the temperature at sixty-five degrees. They were also banned to the press. The grooms slept in dormitories overhead.
Sarah, who’d dyed her hair red, white, and blue, was thrilled to see them. “The talent is fantastic,” she said to Fen. “I’ve just been asked out by a Mexican rider named Jesus.”
Desdemona was even more delighted to see Fen. She looked so small in the huge box. As she cuddled her and checked her for bumps and bruises, Fen, trying to keep her voice steady, asked, “Has the American team arrived yet?”
“Mary Jo and Lizzie Dean arrived this morning. But Carol Kennedy and Mr. Ferranti,” Sarah winked at Dizzy, who was looking over the half-door, “aren’t due until tomorrow night.”
“Hi, Fen,” said Dizzy. “Evidently Dino’s swept all before him this year. Manny hasn’t had a fence down in three months. He’s hot favorite for the individual gold.”
“So eat your heart out, Mr. Campbell-Black,” said Sarah.
“Don’t be unpatriotic, dear,” said Dizzy.
Both of them had already acquired golden suntans. Dizzy was wearing Union Jack shorts. They made Fen feel drabber and tireder than ever. At that moment Malise rolled up, svelte as usual in a cream suit and a panama with an old Rugbeian hatband.
“You’ve made it. Don’t hang about here too long. You need some sleep. When you’re ready I’ll take you back to the Olympic village and we’ll sort out your security chains. Better sleep in them. After tomorrow you won’t be allowed anywhere without them.”
After an hour and a half’s drive back to the Olympic village in a nonair-conditioned bus, which just dumped them outside the male and female sectors, Jake could see exactly why Rupert had found a house in Arcadia. Having been issued with his security chain, which contained his name, a photograph, nationality, and the classes for which he was entered, he had to fight his way through the tightest security cordon. It took ages to find his room, as the guards on each floor all had to check where he was going. Finally tracking it down, he discovered he was sharing not with Ivor but with two weight lifters, who were fortunately out on the town. Apart from three beds, the room included three small chests of drawers, a wardrobe, a shower, a hot plate, and a fridge. He supposed they daren’t provide an oven in case someone put his head in it.
He was pouring with sweat, but it wasn’t just the heat. Looking outside, he was suddenly aware of the number of security vans prowling around between the scorched yellow lawns with their sprinkling of palm trees, and the helicopters and airplanes overhead, all part of the largest security operation ever mounted in peacetime.
The tough guys on the gate, with their guns and their German accents, the bare institutional corridors, the guards seated on every floor, the smell of fear, the anonymity, all unnerved him, and reminded him of the children’s home.
Overwhelmed with homesickness and claustrophobia he started to unpack. Underneath the beautifully ironed shirts and his new red coat, he found a pile of telegrams and good-luck cards he hadn’t seen. There was also a letter from Tory.
“Darling, I’m missing you almost before you’ve gone. When you get this, you’ll be in L.A. on the way to the greatest adventure of your life. Please don’t be scared, and
One parcel contained a black china cat with a horseshoe around its neck. The other a toothbrush which had a glass bubble on the end containing a tiny model of Mickey Mouse, and a bell which rang when you cleaned your teeth.
One of the telegrams was from Garfield Boyson, another from Eleanor Blenkinsop. Feeling much happier, Jake undressed, showered, and fell into his first dreamless sleep in weeks.
“It’s too awful,” grumbled Fen the next morning. “I’m sharing with Griselda and an enormous lady discus thrower of very questionable sexuality who snored all night. The corridors are swarming with security guards. I could do with one in the room for protection, except there isn’t room for the three of us as it is. Griselda is already making eyes at a beefy cyclist in the next room, and on the other side there are three event riders who keep saying ‘Must go and ring Mummy.’ ” She giggled. Nothing really mattered today except that she would see Dino.
They were cheered up by more telegrams downstairs, although Jake was slightly daunted to find three long, rather hysterical letters from Helen, saying how much she was missing him, and would he make contact as soon as possible. Then they explored the Olympic village. Jake was appalled by the sheer noise and size. There were sports shops, hairdressers, cinemas and theaters, saunas, swimming pools, even a disco, and endless souvenir shops and televisions everywhere. He’d expected a kind of monastic retreat. It was going to be about as easy to distance oneself here as in a monkey house.
Fen was almost more appalled in the souvenir shop to see posters of Dino on sale. In one he had a terrific suntan, looked too ludicrously glamorous for words, and was wearing a pale gray shirt. In another he was jumping Manny, wearing the U.S. red coat with the sky blue collar. In horror she watched two American girl gymnasts buy copies of both.
“Look,” said Jake to distract her, “there’s Sebastian Coe.”
“And there’s Daley Thompson,” said Fen, in awe.
Then they went to a meeting called by Malise. The plan, he said, was that from tomorrow the team would rise at four in the morning, drive down to the stables, and work the horses from six to eight, then leave them to rest during the punishing midday heat. Then the grooms would walk them around to loosen them up for an hour or so in the cool of the evening. During the day the riders’ time would be more or less their own, except for the odd meeting or press conference. Beach barbecues, endless parties, trips to Disneyland, Hollywood, or Las Vegas were also on offer. Malise wanted them to relax, enjoy themselves, stick together, and save the adrenaline for the competitions. It was now Saturday. The opening ceremony was on Sunday, the individual competition a week on Monday, and the team event the Sunday after that.
That evening, Malise continued, the Eriksons, with whom Rupert and Helen were staying in Arcadia, had invited the British and the American teams to a barbecue at their house. This information threw both Fen and Jake into a panic. Jake was longing to see Helen, but he didn’t want a hassle. Dublin had been a nightmare, worrying all the time whether Rupert suspected anything. He didn’t want Los Angeles to be a repeat.
Fen, having showered about fifty times, couldn’t put on her makeup. She was shaking so much her eyeliner kept leaving her eyelashes and shooting up the lid. She totally gave up on lipstick. She wore new, baggy, pink- striped Andy Pandy overalls and a pale pink T-shirt.
