“What does he do?” asked Helen.
“Show jumps internationally,” said Paul, “and allegedly beats up his horses. But he’s so loaded, he doesn’t need to do anything very much.”
Helen noticed the curling copies of the
“What do we do when we get there?” she asked.
“The basic idea, Ellen,” said Maureen, “is to copy everything the huntsmen do. We bring our own horns — Paul here actually plays the horn in an orchestra — and use them to split the pack. We’ve perfected our view halloos, and we also spray the meet with a special mixture called Anti-mate, which confuses the hounds.”
Nigel looked at his watch, which he wore ten minutes fast, on the inside of his wrist. “Nearly there,” he said.
Helen got out her mirror, added some blusher to her pale, freckled cheeks, ran a comb through her gleaming dark red page boy, and rearranged the tortoiseshell headband that kept it off her forehead.
“You’re not going to a party,” reproved Maureen.
Defiantly, Helen sprayed on some scent.
“Nice pong,” said Paul, wrinkling his long nose. “D’you know the one about the Irish saboteurs, Ellen? They spent all day trying to sabotage a drag hunt.”
“Don’t tell ethnic jokes, Paul,” said Nigel, smiling as widely as his small mouth would allow.
They were beginning to overtake riders and horses hacking to the meet. A pretty blonde on an overexcited chestnut waved them past.
“You’ve no idea how we’re going to cook your goose later, my beauty,” Nigel gloated.
Soon the road was lined with boxes and trailers, and Paul drove faster through the deep brown puddles in order to splash all those riders in clean white breeches standing on the grass verge. Now he was fuming at being stuck at ten mph behind a huge horse box which kept crashing against the overhanging ash trees.
The meet was held in one of those sleepy Cotswold villages, with a village green flanked by golden-gray cottages, a lichened church knee-deep in daffodils, and a pub called the Goat in Boots. A large crowd had gathered to watch the riders in their black and scarlet coats saddling up, supervising the unboxing of their horses and grumbling about their hangovers.
“What a darling place,” said Helen, as the sun came out. The Antis, however, had no time for esthetic appreciation. Paul parked his car on the edge of the green and, getting out, they all surged forward to exchange firm handshakes and straight glances with other saboteurs. Both sexes were wearing khaki anoraks or combat kit as camouflage, but with their gray faces and long straggly hair and beards, they couldn’t have stood out more beside the fresh-faced, clean-cut locals.
“Here’s your own supply of Anti-mate,” said Nigel, dropping two aerosol cans into the pockets of Helen’s coat. “Spray it on hounds or riders, whenever you get the chance.”
Helen thought irritably that the cans would ruin the line of her coat, and when Nigel insisted on pinning two badges saying “Hounds Off Our Wild Life” and “Only Rotters Hunt Otters” on the lapels of her coat, she wondered if it was necessary for him to take so long and press his skinny hands quite so hard against her breast. Perhaps she’d have to use the Anti-mate on him.
Two sinister-looking men walked by with a quartet of small bright-eyed yapping dogs.
“Those are the terriers they use to dig out the fox,” whispered Maureen.
Helen also noticed several crimson-faced colonels and braying ladies on shooting sticks giving her dirty looks. A group of men in deerstalkers and dung-colored suits stood grimly beside a Land Rover.
“They’re paid by the hunt to sabotage us,” explained Maureen indignantly. “Given a chance, they’ll block the road and ram us with that Land Rover.”
Helen was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy. She edged slightly away from the group of saboteurs, then said to herself firmly, “I am a creative writer. Here is a golden opportunity to study the British in one of their most primitive rituals.”
Listening to the anxious whinnying from the boxes, she breathed in the heady smell of sweating horse, dung, and damp earth. The landlord of the pub was dispensing free drinks on a silver tray. His wife followed with a tray of sandwiches and sausage rolls. Helen, who had had no breakfast, was dying to tuck in, but felt, being part of the enemy, that she shouldn’t.
Nigel and Maureen had no such scruples.
“Good crowd,” said Nigel, greedily helping himself to three sandwiches. “Oh dear, they’re ham,” he added disapprovingly, and, removing the fillings, he dropped them disdainfully on the ground where they were devoured by a passing labrador.
Suddenly, as the gold hand of the church clock edged towards eleven o’clock, there was a murmur of excitement as a dark blue Porsche drew up.
“There he is,” hissed Maureen, as two men got out. Helen caught a glimpse of gleaming blond hair and haughty, suntanned features, as the taller of the two men vanished in a screaming tidal wave of teenagers brandishing autograph books. Others stood on the bonnets of their parents’ cars, or clambered onto each others’ shoulders trying to take photographs or get a better look.
“Worse than that Dick Jagger,” snorted an old lady, who’d been nearly knocked off her shooting stick by the rush.
A girl stumbled out of the melee, her face as bright pink as the page of the autograph book she was kissing. Half a minute later she was followed by her friend.
“He used this pen,” she sighed ecstatically. “I’m never going to use it again.”
Gradually the crowd dispersed and through a gap Helen was able to get a better look. The man had thick blond hair, brushed straight back and in two wings above the ears, emphasizing the clear, smooth forehead and the beautiful shape of his head. His face, with its Greek nose, high cheekbones, and long, denim blue eyes, was saved from effeminacy by a square jaw and a very determined mouth.
Totally oblivious of the mayhem he had caused, he was lounging against the Porsche, talking continuously but hardly moving his lips, to a stocky young man with light brown curly hair, a broken nose, sleepy eyes, and a noticeably green complexion. The blond man was signing autograph books so automatically and handing them onto his companion, that when the queue dried up, he held his hand out for another pen and a book.
“What a beautiful, beautiful guy,” gasped Helen.
“Yes, and knows it,” snapped Maureen. “That’s R.C.B. and his shadow, Billy Lloyd-Foxe.”
The landlord pressed forward with the tray.
“Morning Rupe, morning Billy. Want a hair of the dog?”
“Christ, yes.” Reaching out, the stocky, light-brown-haired boy grabbed two glasses, one of which he handed to Rupert. Then, getting out a tenner and two flasks from his pocket, he handed them to the landlord, adding: “Could you bear to fill them up with brandy, Les? I’ll never fight my way through Rupe’s admirers.”
“Bit under the weather, are you, Billy?” said the landlord.
“Terrible. If I open my eyes, I’ll bleed to death.”
A groom was lowering the ramp of a nearby box and unloading a magnificent bay mare, sweating in a dark blue rug edged with emerald green with the initials R.C.B. in the corner, and looking back into the box, whinnying imperiously for her stable companions. Rupert turned around.
“How is she, Frenchie?”
“Bit over the top, sir,” said the groom. “She could use the exercise.”
He swept the rug off the sweating, shuddering mare and slapped on a saddle. Suddenly she started to hump her back with excitement, dancing on the spot as the hunt arrived in a flood of scarlet coats, burnished horses, and jolly, grinning hounds, tails wagging frenziedly, circling merrily, looking curiously naked without any collars.
Helen felt her heart lift; how beautiful and glamorous they all looked.
“Little people get on big horses and think they’re gods,” said Nigel thickly in her ear. “Those hounds haven’t been fed for three days.”
But Helen was gazing at Rupert Campbell-Black, who was taking off his navy blue jersey and shrugging himself into a red coat. Goodness, he was well constructed. Usually, men with such long legs had short bodies, but Rupert, from the broad flat shoulders to the lean muscular hips and powerful thighs, seemed perfectly in
