Riders

interviewed on television, was obviously a genius with horses. Princess Anne looked blissfully happy. And when one considered Rupert was just as beautiful as Captain Phillips, and extremely articulate when interviewed about anything, did it matter, pondered Helen as she tossed and turned in her narrow bed in Regina House, reading A. E. Housman and Matthew Arnold, that she and Rupert couldn’t talk about Sartre and Henry James? He was young. He could learn. Malise said he was bright.

Anyway, all this fretting was academic because Rupert hadn’t mentioned marriage or said that he loved her. But he rang her from all over Europe and managed to snatch an evening, however embattled, with her about once a fortnight, and he had invited her to fly out to Lucerne for a big show at the beginning of June, so she had plenty of hope to sustain her.

Meanwhile the IRA were very active in London, exploding bombs; everyone was very jumpy, and her mother wrote her endless letters, saying that she need no longer stay in England a year, that things sounded very hazardous, and why didn’t she come home. Helen, who would have leapt at the chance all through the winter, wrote back saying she was fine and that she had a new beau.

Rupert sat with his feet up on the balcony of his hotel bedroom overlooking the Bois de Boulogne. After a class at the Paris show that ended at midnight the previous night, he was eating a late breakfast. Wearing nothing but a bath towel, his bare shoulders already turning dark brown, he was eating a croissant with apricot jam and trying to read War and Peace.

“I can’t understand this bloody book,” he yelled back into the room. “All the characters have three names.”

“So do you,” said Billy, coming out onto the balcony, dripping from the bath and also wrapped in a towel. He looked at the spine of the book. “It might help if you started with Volume One, not Volume Two.”

“Fucking hell,” said Rupert, throwing the book into the bosky depths of the Bois and endangering the lives of two squirrels, “that’s what comes of asking Marion to get out books from the library.”

“Why are you reading that junk anyway?”

Rupert poured himself another cup of coffee. “Helen says I’m a philistine.”

“She thinks you’re Jewish?” said Billy. “You don’t look it.”

“I thought it meant something to do with Sodom and Gomorrah until I looked it up,” said Rupert, “but it just means you’re pig ignorant, deficient in culture, and don’t read enough.”

“You read Horse and Hound,” said Billy indignantly, “and your horoscope and the racing results, and Dick Francis.”

“Or go to the the-ater, as she calls it.”

“I should think not after that rubbish she dragged us to the other night. Anyway, you went to a strip club in Hamburg last week. I’ve heard people call you a lot of things, but not stupid.”

He bent down to pick up his hairbrush which had dropped on the floor, and winced. “I don’t know what they put in those drinks last night but I feel like hell.”

“I feel like Helen,” said Rupert. “I spent all last night trying to ring her up. I got hold of the London directory, but I couldn’t find Vagina House anywhere.”

“Probably looked it up under ‘cunt,’ ” said Billy.

Rupert laughed. Then a look of determination came over his face. “I’ll show her. I’ll write her a really intellectual letter.” He got Helen’s last letter, all ten pages of it, out of his wallet. “I can hardly understand hers — it’s so full of long words.” He smoothed out the first page. “She hopes we take in the Comedie Francaise and the Louvre, and then says that just looking at me elevates her temperature. Christ, what have I landed myself with?”

“Don’t forget to put ‘Ms.’ on the envelope,” said Billy.

“Marion even got me a book of quotations,” said Rupert, extracting a couple of sheets of hotel writing paper from the leather folder in the chest of drawers. “Now, ought I to address her as Dear or Dearest?”

“You ‘darling’ her all the time when you’re with her.”

“Don’t want to compromise myself on paper.” Rupert picked up the quote book. “I’ll bloody outquote her. Let’s look up Helen.” He ran his fingers down the Index. “Helen, here we are, ‘I wish I knew where Helen lies,’ not with me, unfortunately. ‘Sweet Helen make me immortal with a kiss.’ That’s not going nearly far enough.”

“Are you going to buy Con O’Hara’s chestnut?” asked Billy, who was trying to cut the nails on his right hand.

“Not for the price he’s asking. It’s got a terrible stop. ‘Helen thy beauty is to me.’ That sounds more promising.” He flipped over the pages to find the reference. “ ‘Helen thy beauty is to me…Hyacinth hair.’ Hyacinths are pink and blue, not hair-colored. Christ, these poets get away with murder.”

“Why don’t you just say you’re missing her?” asked Billy reasonably.

“That’s what she wants to hear. If I could only bed her, I could forget about her.”

“Sensible girl,” said Billy, “Knows if she gives in she’ll lose you. Hardly blame her. You haven’t exactly got a reputation for fidelity.”

“I have,” said Rupert, outraged. “I was faithful to Bianca for at least two months.”

“While having Marion on the side.”

“Grooms don’t count. They simply exist for the recreation of the rider. Helen’s not even my type if you analyze her feature by feature. Her clothes are terrible. Like all American women, she always wears trousers, or pants, as she so delightfully calls them, two sizes too big.”

“Methinks the laddy does protest too much. Why don’t you pack her in?”

“I’m buggered if I’ll give up so easily. I’ve never not got anyone I really wanted.”

“What about that nun in Rome?” said Billy, who was lighting a cigarette.

“Nuns don’t count.”

“Like grooms, I suppose.”

“ ‘Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss,’ ” read Rupert. “ ‘Her lips suck forth my soul. Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.’ ”

“That’s a bit strong,” said Billy. “Who wrote that?”

“Chap called Marlowe. Anyway it’s not my soul I want her to suck.”

Billy started to laugh and choked on his cigarette.

Rupert looked at him beadily. “Honestly, William, I don’t know why you don’t empty the entire packet of cigarettes onto a plate and eat them with a knife and fork. You ought to cut down.” He returned to the quote book. “This bit’s better: ‘Thou art fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.’ That’s very pretty. Reminds me of Penscombe on a clear night.” He wrote it down in his flamboyant royal blue scrawl, practically taking up half the page.

“That’ll wow her. Anyway, I should be able to pull her in Lucerne. She’s coming out for a whole week.”

“D’you know what I think?” said Billy.

“Not until you tell me.”

“Unlike most of the girls you’ve run around with, Helen’s serious. She’s absolutely crazy about you, genuinely in love, and she won’t sleep with you not because she wants to trap you, but because she believes it’s wrong. She’s a middle-class American girl and they’re very, very respectable.”

“You reckon she’s crazy about me?”

“I reckon. Christ, Rupe, you’re actually blushing.”

Rupert soon recovered.

“What are we going to do this evening?” he asked.

“Go to bed early and no booze, according to Malise. We’ve got a Nations’ Cup tomorrow.”

“Sod that,” said Rupert, putting his letter into an envelope. “There’s a stunning girl who’s come out from The Tatler to cover the — er — social side of show jumping. I would not mind covering her. I thought we could show her Paris.”

“Sure,” sighed Billy, “and she’s brought a dog of a female photographer with her, and guess who’ll end up with her? I wish to Christ Malise would pick Lavinia for Lucerne.”

“Not while he’s imposing all this Kraut discipline and trying to keep his squad pure, he won’t,” said Rupert. He looked at his watch. “We’ve got three hours.”

“I’m going to give The Bull a workout.”

“Tracey can do that. Let’s go and spend an hour at the Louvre.”