didn’t love him, but she felt it was just too soon.
All the lights were on in Regina House as they drew up. A blackbird was singing in a nearby plane tree. Helen sat for a second, overwhelmed with anticlimax and despair, tears about to spill over again. The women’s movement was always urging one to be assertive and make the running, but in practice it wasn’t easy.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a choked voice. “I didn’t mean to give you a hard time.”
Rupert yawned.
“On the contrary, sweetheart, it was me intending to give you a
He got out of the car, but before he could open the door for her she had scrambled out, standing up so they faced each other a foot apart.
“Good night,” he said brusquely, intending to get back into the car and drive straight off.
But suddenly the bells of a nearby church, carried by the west wind, drifted through the muzzy gray twilight. Rupert shivered, suddenly reminded of the desolation of Sunday nights at school, summoned by bells to Evensong, followed by cold ham and bread and marge for supper, and everyone else coming back feeling homesick from days out with their parents. Rupert had never really had a proper home to feel sick about.
“I w-will see you again, won’t I?” she stammered.
Her face, with its vast, brimming, mascara-smudged eyes, had lost all its color in the dusk. He took it in his hands.
“Of course you will, my little red fox. I’ve let you escape this time, but I’ll get you in the end. Try and go to ground, you’ll find the earth blocked; disappear down another earth, I’ll get the terrier men to dig you out.”
His white teeth gleamed. As he bent and kissed her, Helen trembled with fear and longing.
“Don’t listen to Nige,” he said, getting back into the car. “He’s not my greatest fan. I’ll ring you later in the week about Crittleden,” and he was gone.
Helen stood in the twilight, listening to the bells, thinking about weddings and the attraction of opposites.
Rupert drove down the M4 thinking about Satan. He toyed with the idea of stopping off at the Newbury turn to see a married girlfriend whose husband was away, but he was too tired. At Exit 15 sleep overcame him and the moment he was off the motorway he pulled into a layby, climbed into the back, and, hugging Badger for warmth, fell asleep.
The Frogsmore Valley is considered by many to be the most beautiful in the Cotswolds. On either side, fields, checkered by pale stone walls and dotted by lush woodland and the occasional farm, fall steeply down to jade green water meadows, divided by the briskly bustling Frogsmore stream.
At the top of the valley, curling round like a horseshoe, lies the ancient village of Penscombe. Here, for the past hundred and twenty years, the Campbell-Blacks had made their home, alternately scandalizing and captivating the local community by their outrageous behavior. On Rupert’s twenty-first birthday, a month before he came out of the Army, his father, Edward Campbell-Black, had made over to him the house, Penscombe Court, and its surrounding two hundred acres. The motive for this altruistic gesture was that Edward had just further scandalized the community by leaving his wife and running off with the beautiful Italian wife of one of his Gloucestershire shooting cronies. On reflection too, Eddie decided he was bored with running the estate at a thumping loss, and his beautiful Italian prospective bride decided that neither of them could stand the bitter west winds which sweep straight off the Bristol Channel up the Frogsmore Valley to howl round Penscombe Court throughout the winter. So they decamped permanently to the South of France.
Young Rupert further scandalized the community by moving back into the house with his friend Billy Lloyd- Foxe and a floating population of dogs and shapely girl grooms. Even worse, hellbent on making the place profitable, Rupert promptly dug up the famous rose garden and the orchard, built stables for thirty horses, turned the cricket pitch, where the village used to play regularly, into a show-jumping ring, and put up an indoor school beyond the stables to buttress them from the bitter winds.
Gradually over the next four years, the chuntering subsided as Rupert and Billy started winning and were frequently seen on television clearing vast fences and being awarded silver cups by members of the Royal family. Journalists and television crews came down and raved about the charms of the village and the valley. Suddenly Penscombe had two local heroes and found itself on the map.
Penscombe Court was, fortunately, situated on the north side of the valley, half a mile from the end of the village, so any late-night revelry was deadened by surrounding woodland and didn’t keep the village or the neighboring farmers awake too often. Rupert was generally considered capricious and arrogant, but Billy, who loved gossip and spent a lot of time in the village shop and the pub chattering to the locals, was universally adored. Any inseparable friend of Billy, it was felt, couldn’t be all bad; besides, the locals had known Rupert since he was a child and had seen stepparents come and go with alarming regularity and, being a tolerant and generous community, felt allowances should be made. They also realized that Rupert, like the rest of his family, was indifferent to public opinion, so that their disapproval would not make a hap’orth of difference.
Just before midnight Rupert woke up from his nap in the layby and set off for home. He never saw the signposts to Penscombe’s without a leap of joy and recognition. As he drove along the top of the south side of the valley, Badger woke up and started snuffling excitedly at the crack of an open window. Ahead in the moonlight gleamed Penscombe’s church spire. Although it was after midnight, Rupert looked across to the north side and cursed in irritation to see half the lights in the house blazing. Billy must have gone to bed plastered without switching them off.
As he stormed up the drive through the chestnut avenue planted by his great-grandfather, he could see the pale green leaves opening like parachutes. Behind white railings, three dozing horses in New Zealand rugs blinked as he passed. The car crunched on the gravel in front of the house. There was a great baying and yapping. As Rupert opened the front door, two Jack Russells, a Springer spaniel, a yellow labrador, and a blond mongrel with a tightly curled tail threw themselves on him in delight, growling and fighting each other. Finally they all started rubbishing Badger, jealous because he’d been the one to go on a jaunt. Rupert kicked them gently out of the way. His suitcase was still lying in the hall where he’d left it that morning. In the drawing room the fire was going out, Sunday papers half-read and a pile of entrance forms lay scattered over the sofa. One of the dogs had shredded his hunting tie on the rug in front of the fire.
“Jesus,” said Rupert, slamming the door shut.
In the kitchen he found Billy trying to read
“Hi,” he said, looking up. “How did it go? Have you joined the Antis?”
Billy was not a handsome young man, for his nose was broken and his sleepy dark brown eyes were seldom visible because they were always creased up with laughter, but he had a smile that could melt the Arctic Circle. Rupert, however, was not in a mood to be melted.
“This place is a tip,” he snapped, pointing to the sink which was piled high with plates, glasses, and dog bowls. “Can’t you even put things in the dishwasher?”
“It’s full,” said Billy calmly.
“Or in the dustbin,” went on Rupert, pointing to the empty tins of dog food and milk cartons littering the shelf.
“That’s full too,” said Billy.
“And one of your dogs has crapped in the hall.”
“It was one of your dogs,” said Billy without rancor. “Anyway, I’ve been bloody busy.”
“Drinking my whisky and reading the Sunday papers.”
“The hell I have. By the way, there’s a nice piece about you in
“What did it say?”
“Oh, some sycophantic rubbish about you being the best rider in England.”
“Don’t try to placate me, and why’s the telephone off the hook?”
“To stop Bianca, and Gabriella, and goodness knows who else ringing up.”
Rupert replaced the receiver. Five seconds later the telephone rang.
“See what I mean?”
Rupert picked it up. Both of them could hear squawking. Putting the receiver in a nearby cupboard, Rupert shut the door.
Billy grinned: “Anyway, I repeat, I’ve been bloody busy.”
