Riders

She even found time to go and give Macaulay two apples and tell him about his master’s great triumph. Housework could go by the board today. It was a beautiful September afternoon. Just a touch of wind ruffled the millpond and the hanging green willow curtains.

The children were very fractious when she picked them up from school. Darklis had lost one shoe, but at least it was better than two, she said. Isa had been beaten up in the playground for boasting about his father. Tory sent them off to watch television. Suddenly as she was cutting the fat off the lamb chops for their supper, she felt very tired. She’d have a large vodka and tonic when she’d put the children to bed. Then perhaps Jake would ring. Another wave of happiness overwhelmed her.

Then she heard the noise of argument from the sitting room. Isa, to Darklis’s rage, had switched on Ceefax over The Sullivans so that he could see the Olympic results.

“Mummy,” screamed Darklis. “Isa’s hitting me.”

“Stop it, Isa,” yelled Tory.

“I always get the blame,” shouted Isa. “Mummy, come quickly. There’s something about Daddy.”

Shoving the chops under the grill, Tory ran into the sitting room.

“Silver medalist Jake Lovell,” she read over the soothing tones of The Sullivans, “has disappeared from the Olympic village. Not seen since last night, he is alleged by the Los Angeles Times to have gone off with Helen Campbell-Black, wife of Rupert Campbell-Black, a fellow member of the British team and a bronze and silver medalist in 1976.”

Tory thought she must be dreaming. It couldn’t be true. They’d made some mistake. Jake had only rung her last night and told her he loved her. There was a moth bashing against the television screen.

“What does it mean, Mummy?” asked Isa. “Where’s Daddy gone?”

“Nowhere, darling,” said Tory in a strange voice. “It’s some mistake. Daddy wouldn’t do that.”

She canceled the Ceefax titles with the norm button then, after a few seconds, switched on the Ceefax Olympic report again.

“Mummy,” complained Darklis. “I want to watch The Sullivans.”

“Silver medalist Jake Lovell,” Tory read again, “has disappeared from the Olympic village.”

It was a few seconds before she realized that the telephone was ringing. She rushed to answer it. It must be Jake to say it was a hideous mistake.

“Mrs. Lovell?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the Sun newspaper here.” It was that thickened voice again with which they announced trouble or asked difficult questions. “Just wondered if you’ve got anything to say about your husband running off with Helen Campbell-Black.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Tory, and slammed down the receiver.

The telephone rang again. It was the Mirror with the same question. Then it was the Sun again. Tory took the receiver off the hook. She started to shake violently.

“Mummy, Mummy, the oven’s on fire.” Darklis, having wandered into the kitchen in search of a biscuit, found the neglected chops ablaze under the grill. The frozen peas had boiled down to a green scum.

“Mummy, Mummy,” yelled Isa, starting to cry, “they’re talking about Daddy.”

Martin Bell, gazing sternly out of the television screen, his light brown curls whipped by the Los Angeles breeze, was confirming that Jake had indeed disappeared from the Olympic village; so had Helen Campbell-Black from the house in Arcadia, where she had been staying with her husband. According to the Los Angeles Times, whose reporter had interviewed the maid, Helen had left after a row with Rupert, directly after a dinner at Ma Maison restaurant, held to celebrate Jake’s silver medal. Malise Gordon, the British chef d’equipe, had appealed to Jake to return for the team competition.

Tory was brought back to earth by the doorbell. It was a neighbor, Mrs. Irvine.

“I heard it on the radio,” she said. “I’m so sorry for you. I’ll get the children’s supper and answer the telephone. You’ll not want to be bothered.”

“I’m sure it’s some mistake,” said Tory.

“The poor little soul didn’t seem to have taken it in,” Mrs. Irvine told her husband later, “so I got the doctor.”

At that moment the doorbell went. It was the local stringer for the Daily Mail. After that they came like locusts, with their long-range cameras, trying to get in through the front door, the back door, even the windows, swarming through the village, attempting to bribe grooms, neighbors, trades people, desperate for information.

Tory tried to put a call through to L.A., but all lines were engaged.

It’s a bad dream, she kept telling herself. Jake wouldn’t go off like that, not when he’d asked her to come out to L.A., not with the team event on Sunday, which meant almost more to him than the individual, and which he knew meant infinitely more to Malise.

Alarmed by her calmness and refusal to accept the facts, the doctor gave her a sedative. It was not that Jake wouldn’t leave her, she kept saying, but he’d certainly never leave the horses, or the children, particularly in the middle of the Olympics. It was a belief she had to cling on to.

Malise, however, rang at ten o’clock. “I’m afraid we know nothing more at this end. What I imagine happened was that Jake and Helen may have walked out together; at least that’s what she told Rupert. Tempers flared. Rupert was absolutely livid at not getting the gold. He’d been simply poisonous all evening, threatening to beat Helen up. She appealed to Jake for help and he probably felt he ought to remove her somewhere safe until Rupert cooled down.”

Malise, reflected Tory, as the truth began to sink in, sounded like a gynecologist telling her she’d got a stillborn baby.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” he went on. “I’m convinced he’ll come back for the team event.”

But Jake did not come back. The Games were into their second week. The public was slightly bored with tales of derring-do and mega-achievement; they wanted a good scandal. Rupert, his beautiful American wife, and her romantic gypsy lover were the perfect answer.

“For just a handful of silver she left him,” quipped the New York Times.

Everyone who knew Jake and Rupert rekindled the old feud. Jake had been bullied at school by Rupert and had got his revenge twenty-two years later by trouncing Rupert at the Olympics and then running off with his wife.

It was the same in L.A. as at the Mill House. Once the Los Angeles Times had led on Helen’s row with Rupert and her running off with Jake, the reporters were everywhere. Like some horror army of killer ants, they crept through seemingly locked doors, through windows, haunting the Olympic village, the Eriksons’ house, the stables, and the exercise rings.

Fen, as their prime target, had been absolutely knocked sideways by the news.

“I must go to Tory,” she pleaded with Malise on the Wednesday morning. “She sounds absolutely terrible now it’s really sunk in. The English papers are crucifying Jake. I can’t leave her to face it on her own. Let me fly home.”

“You can’t,” said Malise, surveying his shambles of a team. “Unless Jake comes back you’ll have to jump Hardy.”

Everywhere Fen went, people were bad-mouthing Jake. Everywhere, the press swooped on her. Every time she worked Hardy the exercise ring was crowded with photographers and curious onlookers.

Rupert was far less vulnerable. First, he was holed up in Suzy’s house, which was electric-fenced and burglar-alarmed to the teeth. Secondly, you didn’t try and interview a man-eating tiger. Rupert was in the kind of eruptive mood that kept even the press at a distance.

“Jake was just doing his bit for Britain,” he told Billy on the telephone. “Unfortunately in this case, the bit happened to be Helen. Extraordinary. For seven years she never looked at another man. Then, according to Dizzy, for the last five months no one’s been able to see her ears for skirt.”

“He sounds terrible,” Billy told Janey as he came off the telephone. “Do you think I ought to fly out there? The Beeb have offered to pay my fare and give me a fat fee if I’ll help Dudley do the commentary for the team competition.”