Riders

She was so so shy, hanging her head, as he admired the slender arms, the tapering waist, the jutting hip bones. Very gently he stroked the little snow white breasts.

“They’re beautiful,” he murmured.

“Too small,” she muttered. “I wish I had a wonderful forty-inch bust, the kind like pillows you could fall asleep on.”

“Nanny always claimed it was much better for one’s back to sleep without pillows,” said Rupert. Then, realizing it was not the time for jokes, he kissed each chestnut nipple, waiting for them to stiffen under his tongue.

With a colossal feeling of triumph he pushed her back onto the bed and began to move downwards, kissing her ribs, then her belly.

“No,” she gasped, grabbing his head.

Firmly he removed her hands. “Shut up. You’re mine now, to do exactly what I like with.”

Feeling her quivering frantically with desire, he progressed down to the ginger bush. Then, suddenly, he encountered a sticky, lacquered mass, like a hedgehog.

“What the bloody hell?” he yelled. “Are you trying to poison me?”

“It’s only vaginal deodorant,” stammered Helen.

“It is bloody not, sweetheart, you’ve used hair lacquer by mistake.”

Picking her up screaming, he carried her into the shower and held her under until he washed it off, then threw her dripping onto the bed.

“Now, let’s get one thing straight. I like the taste of you. And I don’t want it diluted by any damned deodorants. I’m going to wipe out that New England puritanism if it kills me.”

In court he got off with a hefty fine. His lawyer, used to Rupert’s scrapes, had traveled down overnight. Mr. Campbell-Black, he said, had had a row with his girlfriend the day before, which had upset him so much he’d proceeded to get drunk. Now the row was made up and he and his girlfriend were planning to get married. His client was very sorry. It wouldn’t happen again. The press were so captivated by the news that they concentrated on the engagement rather than on the fight.

Later, between classes, Rupert bumped into Laura, who introduced her husband, Charlie. Conversation was very amicable. As Charlie moved on to talk to some friends, Laura said in a low voice: “I’m so glad you’re getting married to her.”

Rupert grinned. “Will you sleep with me again as a wedding present?”

Laura looked reproving. “Your new wife wouldn’t like that very much.”

“Ah,” said Rupert lightly, “she’ll have to take me as she finds me, if she can find me.”

14

Nearly two years later Helen stood in the middle of her bedroom at Penscombe, tearing her hair and trying to decide what she should pack for Rome and then Madrid. She and Rupert would be away for nearly three weeks, so she would need at least three cases to carry all the different clothes for sightseeing, swimming, sunbathing, watching Rupert in the ring, and for the string of parties and dinners which always coincided with international shows abroad. She had started a hundred lists, then scrumpled them up.

But even clothes littering every available surface couldn’t detract from the beauty of the room with its high ceilings, huge Jacobean four-poster, old rose walls, pale yellow and pink silk striped curtains, and fluffy amber carpet. On the dressing table and beside the bed were great bunches of yellow irises. The general effect of a sunrise provided the perfect foil for Helen’s coloring. Or so the woman from House and Garden had said last week when she came down to photograph the house and the dramatic changes Helen had made to it.

On the primrose yellow silk chaise longue lay a copy of this month’s Vogue, with a photographic feature on the new beauties. Most beautiful of them all was undoubtedly Mrs. Rupert Campbell-Black, showing Helen, huge-eyed, swan-necked, her Titian hair spread by a wind machine, Rupert’s diamonds gleaming at her ears and throat. Also on the chaise longue were guidebooks for Rome and Madrid and Italian and Spanish phrase books. Helen took her trips abroad very seriously, sightseeing and trying to learn as much of the language as possible. Beside the books lay Helen’s journal. It was the same dark green notebook she’d had in Regina House. She was ashamed that since she’d married Rupert she’d filled in less than a half of it, only sketchily recording events in what had certainly been the most exciting years of her life. But she’d been so busy living, she didn’t seem to have had much time to write about it.

She remembered the day Rupert had asked her to marry him. In the afternoon she’d been sitting in the stands with Doreen, Humpty Hamilton’s even fatter, bouncier wife, mother of two children, watching Rupert and Humpty jump in a class. Helen, delirious with happiness, couldn’t resist telling Doreen she was engaged. Doreen Hamilton was delighted at the news and promptly bore Helen off to the bar for a celebration drink, then offered her a word of advice.

“If you marry a show jumper,” she said, “involve yourself in his career as much as possible and travel with him as much as you can, even if it means sleeping in lorries, or caravans, or frightful pokey foreign hotels. And if he suddenly rings up when you’re at home and says come out to Rome, or drive down to Windsor, or to Crittleden, always go — at once, even if you’ve just washed your hair and put it in curlers, or you’ve just got the baby to sleep. Because if you don’t, there’ll always be others queuing up to take your place.”

Helen, cocooned in the miracle of her new and reciprocated love for Rupert, was unable to imagine him loving anyone else, or any girl queuing up for fat little Humpty, but she had heeded the advice and gone with Rupert to as many shows as possible. Not that this involved much hardship; his caravan was extremely luxurious and when they went abroad Rupert insisted on staying in decent hotels or with rich jet-set friends who seemed to surface, crying welcome, in every country they visited. But it meant she always had to look her best.

Going to the window, with its rampaging frame of scented palest pink clematis, she gazed out across the valley, emerald green from weeks of heavy rain, remembering the first time she’d seen the house. Rupert and Billy, having both won big classes on the final day of the Royal Plymouth, decided to stay on for the closing party that night. After intensive revelry, Rupert suddenly turned to Helen and said, “I think it’s time you had a look at my bachelor pad,” and they loaded up the horse box and set out for Gloucestershire, Rupert driving, Helen sitting warm between the two men. “An exquisite sliver of smoked salmon between two very old stale pieces of bread,” said Billy.

Helen went to sleep and woke up as they drove up the valley towards Penscombe. The sun had just risen, firing a denim blue sky with ripples of crimson and reddening the ramparts of cow parsley on either side of the road. Suddenly the horses started pawing the floorboards in the back and Mavis and Badger, who were sprawled across Billy’s and Helen’s knees in the front, woke up and started sniffing excitedly.

“Ouch,” said Billy as Badger stepped heavily across him. “Get off my crotch. Why the hell don’t you get his claws cut, Rupe?”

Helen looked across the valley at the honey gold house leaning back against its pale green pillow of beech trees.

“What a beautiful mansion,” she gasped. “I wonder who lives there?”

“You do,” said Rupert. “That’s your new home,” and he and Billy laughed to see how speechless she was.

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “It’s so old and so beautiful. It’s a stately home.”

“You may not find it quite so splendid when you get close to,” said Rupert, slowing down as they entered the village.

He took the lorry straight round to the stables, where Marion and Tracey, who’d driven home the night before with the caravan, were waiting to unload the horses. Leaving Billy to check everything was all right, Rupert whipped into the house, collected a bottle of champagne and two glasses, and took Helen out on the terrace.

Below them lay the valley, drenched white with dew, softened by the palest gray mist rising from the stream