museums, learning new languages. Also it meant a holiday from all the dogs in the bed, and as Rupert was far less famous abroad they weren’t constantly besieged by groupies (or “Rupies” as Billy called them). And Malise Gordon was there. She always enjoyed spending time with him. They often went to galleries and museums together when they were away, making Rupert slightly edgy. He was jealous of something that Malise and Helen shared that he couldn’t give her, so he continually mocked it.
Helen turned back to all the beautiful clothes Rupert had bought her. She realized above all that it was important to him that other men admired and fancied her, but like Meissen china in a glass case, the admiration had to be kept at a distance. Last year in Rotterdam, when a rather inebriated Dutchman asked her to dance in a nightclub, it had only been Billy’s half nelson that had stopped Rupert knocking him across the room. A slightly more persistent admirer at one of the Dublin Horse Show balls had been less lucky and ended up with a fractured jaw.
15
Jake Lovell rode across his fields at a leisurely pace. When he came to a hedge or a wall he popped the gray gelding over it, but he was in no hurry. He’d already worked all the novice horses that morning, and the Grade A horses were having a rest after a three-day show. Besides, it was a beautiful day and the cuckoo was yelling its head off in the hazel wood nearby. Wolf, Jake’s shaggy adoring lurcher, was chasing rabbits but never letting his master out of his sight for very long, and Jake wanted to think.
It was nearly five years since he had married Tory, and Granny Maxwell had given them the Mill House at Withrington. And although there had been years of hard work and struggle, Jake knew they had been the happiest in his life. The Mill had been in a dilapidated state when they moved in, but gradually he and Tory had painted the rooms, and gradually they had scraped together enough money to pull down the old stables and build new ones, so they now kept a dozen horses.
There had been terrible setbacks. Two Mays ago he’d been selected to ride for Great Britain for the first time, but the day he was due to leave, Africa stepped on a rusty nail, which put her out of action for several months. One of the young novices, a really promising gray thoroughbred, had jumped out of its field, escaped onto the motorway, been hit by a lorry, and had to be destroyed. Then, as Tory had inherited the bulk of her capital by then and Africa was out of action, Jake had spent rather too much money on a top-class horse to fill the gap, which had broken its leg and had to be put down at the first show he took it to.
Things had not gone according to plan in other directions either. At the start of their marriage, Tory had worked as a secretary to a local solicitor, her salary being the main contribution that had saved her, Jake, and the horses from starvation. For months they seemed to live on pork pies and baked beans bought with her luncheon vouchers. But within a year and a quarter she was pregnant, and in July of the following year she produced a son. They called him Isa, short for Isaac, after Jake’s lost gypsy father, and Jake, who’d been very apprehensive, not particularly liking children and feeling most unready to be a father, found himself utterly besotted with the child. Perhaps it was because little Isa was his only blood relation, or because the boy was so beautiful, with his huge black eyes and white blond hair; or because he was so sturdy and merry and placid and seemed positively to thrive in a cold damp house, and being permanently carted from show to show in a carrycot.
Jake was also pleasantly surprised to find how easy it was to be married to Tory, who was the ideal show- jumper’s wife. She never made him feel guilty if he were late back from shows or up all night tending a sick horse. When he came in she always provided him with good food, a sympathetic ear, and sex if he wanted, but was never offended if he didn’t. She understood his terrible nerves before big classes, and why often, if he were sorting out his relationship with a particular horse, he could be withdrawn and taciturn. She coped with all the paperwork, paying bills, and sending off entry forms. When they married, she’d been terrified of horses, but Jake had helped her to overcome this, and although she’d never be much good as a rider, she soon picked up the rudiments of feeding and looking after a string, fussing over each animal as if she was its mother. So all the horses were happy and the yard ran like clockwork even when he was away.
She was also passionately proud of everything he did and nailed up every new rosette with joy, so a whole wall of the tackroom was now covered. Most important of all, she understood that his character was like a stray dog’s rescued from Battersea dogs’ home. Constantly moving from one show to another satisfied some nomadic gypsy wanderlust in his blood, but he only felt safe doing this knowing he had a safe, loving home to come back to. Like many wanderers, only by going away would he test that home would still be there when he returned.
Two years before he had had a special stroke of luck. He had gone to a horse sale in Warwick, not one of his favorite pastimes. He tried not to be anthropomorphic about horses, but sales always reminded him of the children’s home. All those horses, bewildered, frightened, displaced, often coming from cosseted homes or, after years of hard work, to be sold to the knacker’s yard, or to people who didn’t know how to look after them, or who would abuse their willing natures.
The mare he’d been tipped off about went for more than he could afford, but suddenly he heard a horse squealing his head off. Get me out of this horrible place, he seemed to be saying. Wandering down the horse lines, Jake found a half-starved, dirty, flea-bitten gray gelding, standing about 16.3, with a walleye, big feet, a coarse head, huge ears flapping like a mule’s, and ribs sticking out like a plate rack. He had to be the ugliest horse Jake had ever seen. He was obviously starving. But Jake looked at his teeth and was surprised to see the horse was only six or seven. He looked a hundred, but his legs were clean and strong, and when he was petted and scratched behind the ear, he stopped screaming and accepted Jake’s attention with obvious pleasure.
“What’s his history?” Jake asked the dealer who trotted him up and down.
“Some old nutter bought him as a pet for his wife, who had one foot in the grave anyway. They called him Sailor. One day the horse stopped suddenly in the yard and she fell off, catching her head on the mounting block, and croaked two days later. The old nutter was heartbroken, but too mean to have the horse put down, so he left him in a tiny yard, virtually starving him to death.
“Finally the old nutter died. When they discovered his body, they found the horse. The only thing he had to drink out of was a rusty bucket, with two inches of rainwater filled with dead wasps. As you can see, it’s a case for the RSPCA, but you can’t prosecute a dead man.”
For a second, Jake felt choked with rage.
“Poor old sod,” he said stroking the ugly gray head, “had a bad time, have you?”
He had to pay ?150 in order to outbid the horsemeat dealers, which he could ill afford at the time. Once home, he stuffed Sailor full of food and, during the day, turned him out with Africa. After three months he took him hunting and had one of the best days of his life. Sailor still looked like nothing on earth — it was always impossible to get any condition on him — but he could jump anything you put him at and keep going all day. And Jake experienced a surge of excitement he had not felt since he first jumped Africa.
Jake had had many arguments with Granny Maxwell because he refused to overface his horses and did not bring them on fast enough. But there was no need to bring Sailor on slowly. By the end of the next season he had been placed in every class he entered and had lifted himself to Grade A. The Northern show jumping fraternity, who were a hard-boiled bunch, not easily impressed, laughed at Sailor when they first saw such an extraordinarily unprepossessing horse, but stayed to pray once they had seen him jump.
He was also the cleverest horse in the yard and, when he was bored, would unbolt his stable door and wander over to the house, putting his flea-bitten head in through the kitchen window, hoping for an apple or a piece of chocolate — always milk, he wouldn’t touch plain — but just as happy with a petting. He never strayed beyond the yard. It was as though he couldn’t believe his luck in having found a good home. He was also the gentlest horse, devoted to Africa, and Wolf the lurcher, and Tory’s Jack Russell, Horace, who could lead him in from the fields tugging at the head-collar rope with his teeth. He was also a marvelous babysitter. Tory found she could leave baby Isa in Sailor’s box, playing round the manger, clinging onto Sailor’s legs and often pulling himself up by the horse’s rather skimpy tail. If he fell over and cried, Sailor would nudge him gently, breathing on him, until he laughed and got up again.
Today, on this ravishing day, Jake was hacking Sailor round the fields just to check that all the fences were
