coddlers, a dozen staghorn steak knives. Jesus! Two sets of glasses with polo players on. Polo, I ask you.”
“Oh, that was darling Great-Aunt Grace. Doesn’t know the difference between show jumping and polo. She was doing her best. There’s a lovely dinner service, and some beautiful cachepots, and glass. The problem is how to get them all home.”
“We’ll have to hire a plane and hope it crashes on takeoff.”
Helen giggled, but she felt defensive about her parents and their friends. If only he would behave for the wedding, she knew everyone would love him. Rupert went moodily to the window.
“God, I miss Badger. Why don’t your parents have a dog? I am not going through with this party. If I do I’ll wear a suit.”
“All right,” said Helen soothingly. “But please, darling, be nice just this once. Mother’s been arranging it for weeks and Milly’s going to sing “What Is Life to Me Without You.” Mother’s been coaching her for weeks, and Dad’s even been out and bought himself an Ascot and some striped pants. All you’ve got to do is show up and be polite.”
Rupert behaved rather well during the service. Later everyone crowded onto the lawn, and after champagne had been drunk for an hour or so, the most distinguished male relation rose to praise Helen, and to welcome Rupert to the family. Afterwards there was a pause.
“Speech, speech,” shouted all the relations and friends and the large sprinkling of Mr. Macaulay’s patients, flashing their beautifully capped teeth. Rupert, wearing a dark suit and not wearing the wedding ring his father-in- law had pressed on him that morning, rose to his feet.
“My heart is in my mouth at this wonderful party,” he said charmingly, “but as my Nanny always told me not to talk with my mouth full, I’m not going to say anything, except to thank Mr. and Mrs. Macaulay. I could tell jokes about gay Irish dentists, but I don’t think my father-in-law would like that. Thank you all for your wonderful presents,” and with that he quietly slid under the table.
“But you weren’t even drunk,” said Helen, still furious, as their plane took off for England.
“I know, but I was bored. I’m sorry, darling, but the only relations I like are sexual relations.”
“And you’ve left Aunt Martha’s paintings behind.”
“I know,” said Rupert. “I was terrified they might frighten the dogs.”
Rupert’s parents both wrote Helen delightfully vague letters. Rupert’s mother sent her a diamond brooch with a broken clasp, Rupert’s father a jar of caviar. Both promised they’d be over sometime — probably when they want to borrow money, said Rupert — and wished them every happiness.
Helen’s meeting with Rupert’s old Nanny was hardly more successful.
“What shall I wear?” she asked Billy beforehand.
“A skirt with horizontal stripes. All Nanny cares about is good childbearing hips.”
Nanny’s cottage in Wiltshire had been bought and furnished by the Campbell-Black family. They had filled it with pieces from their various houses which were far too large. It was an obstacle race to get across the sitting room. Nanny, almost the largest thing in the cottage, stood six feet tall, with big ears, a whiskery seamed face, a boxer’s jaw, and shrewd, tough little brown eyes like Henry VII. She was wearing a shiny high-necked navy blue dress with a white collar, which gave the impression of a uniform. Although it was a very hot day, she was watching fireworks on a black and white television with the central heating at full blast and none of the windows open. Perhaps years of Campbell-Black austerity and indifference to the cold had unhinged her, thought Helen. Every surface in the room was covered in photographs of babies in long white dresses. The only others were of Rupert at every stage of his career, as a solemn blue-eyed baby, at St. Augustine’s, Harrow, in the Blues, and, mostly, of him show jumping. Otherwise there was no evidence that she was remotely pleased to see him.
She hardly thanked him for the half-dozen bottles of her favorite, disgustingly sweet sherry that he brought her. Pouring out three glasses, she gave much the smallest to Helen.
“Isn’t Helen beautiful?” said Rupert.
Nanny looked Helen up and down and sniffed. “Very beautiful face,” she said.
“She’s got a beautiful figure too,” protested Rupert, laughing. “I know you’d have only been happy if I’d married some Flanders mare producing sons every eight months.”
Nanny snorted and proceeded to tear Rupert off a strip for hell-raising in Paris and getting arrested at Plymouth and getting married without a proper wedding. Rupert accepted it with amazing mildness.
“I’m sorry we didn’t ask you to the wedding; we didn’t ask anyone. I couldn’t face all my stepparents muscling in on the act. And my mother would have been bored to have been reminded of all her weddings.”
“Who’s your father married to at the moment?” said Nanny.
“Some Italian whore,” said Rupert.
“I suppose you had to get married?” asked Nanny.
“No, we did not.”
“Whatever happened to Bianca? And Melanie Potter? She was a bonny girl.”
“She’s married with two daughters. I told you last time.”
Nanny knew everything about him, and every round he’d jumped in the last two years.
“Your mother remembered my birthday,” she said accusingly. “More than you did, and so did your brother Adrian. I hear he’s got a girlfriend.”
“Are you sure?” said Rupert in amazement. “I don’t think so.”
“Never knew he was bispectacled,” said Nanny.
Helen didn’t dare look at Rupert.
“Helen’s American,” said Rupert.
“So I read,” said Nanny. “Never thought you’d end up with a foreigner. I’ve read about Watergate,” she added, as though Helen were personally responsible.
Helen was so hot she took off her jersey, revealing her slender brown arms and waist.
“Not much of her, is there?” said Nanny. “Anorexic, I suppose.”
Finally, when Helen thought she’d faint from the heat, she said, “I think we ought to go, Rupert.”
Nanny was not at all upset; she didn’t even come to the door. Desperate to get out into the fresh air, Helen made her good-byes and fled, but not before she heard Nanny say, “Got money, I suppose? Only reason for marrying a foreigner really.”
“Isn’t she a gem?” said Rupert on the way home.
“She’s a Machiavellian old monster,” said Helen.
“Doesn’t mean it; she’s nearly eighty. All the same I can’t wait for you to have a baby so we can get her out of mothballs to look after it.”
It was plain, in fact, as the months went by, that Rupert and Helen were very different. Rupert was spoilt, easily irritated, and didn’t flinch from showing it. His ambition in life was to get his own way and beat the hell out of the opposition. He had many moments of frustration and boredom in life, but very few of self-doubt.
Helen, on the other hand, was riddled with self-doubt. She believed that one should not only constantly strive to improve oneself and others, but that work would indeed keep the devil at bay.
To begin with, therefore, she made heroic efforts to interest herself in horses and learn to ride, but she was too tense and nervous and the horses sensed this, and the way she always caught her breath got on Rupert’s nerves. Then Marion (Helen never knew if it were deliberate) put her up on one of the novices, who carted her through a wood with low-hanging branches and finally deposited her on the tarmac of the village street. Helen bruised herself very badly and after that gave up trying to ride.
She still took an interest in show jumping, however, reading every book on the subject, scanning the papers for horsey news. She even started reading dressage books and discussing her theories with Rupert, trying to show him where he was going wrong. Rupert was not amused. He did not want gratuitous advice that Macaulay might go better in a running martingale, or Belgravia might profit from learning to execute half-passes.
“When all’s said and done,” he told her sharply, “I’m riding the fucking horse, not you, so belt up.”
Helen, during the long, long hours that Rupert and Billy were occupied with the horses, turned her attention to the house and soon had the place swarming with builders, plumbers, electricians, and painters.
“You’d think they were building the Pyramids,” grumbled Rupert.
But gradually the damp and the dry rot were eradicated, and a new heating and wiring system installed. Pastel colors replaced the crimson and dark green wallpapers and old brocades. Tattered silks and moth-eaten tapestries were succeeded by new pale silks, glazed chintz, and Laura Ashley flower prints.
