Madrid, before the train slowed down enough for him to get back to them. He was so proud. Africa had a cut knee where she had fallen down, and both were obviously saddened by his absence, but delighted to welcome him back. They swayed from side to side keeping their footing. If they could, he thought, they would have got out and pulled the cattle trucks themselves.
When they finally reached Madrid, the trucks were pulled into the passenger station. Jake and Bridie found the platform packed with chic Spanish commuters, soberly dressed for the office, and looking with astonishment on two such travel-worn wrecks and their shabby horses.
16
After such a hellish journey, Jake was prepared for hen coops in which to stable the horses. But the Madrid showground turned out to be the last word in luxury, with a sumptuous clubhouse, swimming pools and squash courts, and a huge jumping arena next to an even bigger practice ring containing more than fifty different jumps.
“Humpty says it’s worth coming to Madrid just to practice over these fences,” said Bridie as she unloaded a stiff, weary, chastened Porky Boy.
Even better, each foreign team had been given its own private yard with splendid loose boxes. Next door, the victorious German team had just arrived from Rome and were unloading their huge horses and making a lot of noise. Jake recognized Ludwig von Schellenberg and Hans Schmidt, two riders he’d worshiped for years. Tomorrow, he thought with a thud of fear, he’d be competing against them.
He was distracted from his fears by another crisis. The loose boxes were all bedded with thick straw, which was no good for greedy Sailor, who always guzzled straw and blew himself out. Jake had run out of wood shavings on the journey down. How could he possibly explain to these charming, smiling, but uncomprehending Spaniards what he wanted? Bridie’s dictionary had “wood” but not “shavings.” He felt a great weariness.
“Can I help?” said a voice.
It was Malise Gordon, who had just flown in from Rome, his high complexion tanned by the Italian sun, wearing a lightweight suit and looking handsome and authoritative. Jake was never so pleased to see anyone.
Immediately Malise broke into fluent Spanish and sorted everything out.
“You look absolutely shattered,” he said to Jake. “Sorry it was a bloody journey, but I warned you. Still, it was as well you were there to look after Porky Boy last night. Are your horses okay?”
While the Spanish grooms put down the wood shavings for Sailor, Jake showed Malise Africa’s knee, which mercifully hadn’t swollen up.
“Where’s your other horse?”
“Here. They’ve got his box ready.”
Sailor, a messy eater, had tipped all his feed into the wood shavings and was busily picking it out. He gave Malise a baleful look out of his walleye. After the four-day journey he looked perfectly dreadful.
Christ, thought Malise, we’ll be a laughingstock entering something like that. But, he supposed, in the remote chance of Jake having to compete in the Nations’ Cup, he could always ride Africa. Anyway, the boy looked all in. No point in saying anything now.
“I’ll take you back to the hotel. You’d better get some sleep.” Malise looked at his watch. “It’s only ten o’clock now. The rest of the team won’t arrive till this afternoon. I suggest we meet in the bar around nine P.M. Then we can have dinner together and you can meet them all.”
To Jake, who had never slept in a hotel, the bedroom seemed the height of luxury. There was a bathroom with a shower, and a bath and a loo, and free soap and bubble bath, and a bathcap, and three white towels. In the bedroom there was a television, a wireless, a telephone, and a huge double bed. He was dying for some coffee but he didn’t dare pick up the telephone in case they couldn’t understand him. French windows led out onto a bosomy balcony which looked over a park. To the left, if he leaned out, he could see a street full of shops and cafes with tables outside. Already smells of olive oil, pimentos, and saffron were drifting up from the kitchen. Drawing the thick purple curtains and only bothering to take off his shoes, Jake fell onto the surprisingly hard bed. The picture on the wall, of a matador in obscenely tight pink trousers shoving what looked like knitting needles into the neck of a bull, swam before his eyes and he was asleep.
Despite his exhaustion, however, he slept only fitfully. His dreams of disastrous rounds kept being interrupted by bursts of flamenco music or the screams of children playing in the park. By six the city had woken up and stretched itself after its siesta and Jake decided to abandon any hope of sleep. Outside, the streets were packed with cars rattling over the cobbles, hardly restrained at all by lights or frantically whistling policemen. Tables along the pavement were beginning to fill up, crowds to parade up and down. Looking across at the park, he saw a small child racing after a red ball, then tripping over a gamboling dog, falling flat on his face and bursting into noisy sobs. Next moment a pretty dark-haired mother had rushed forward, sworn at the dog, and gathered up the child, covering him with kisses. Jake was suddenly flattened with longing for Isa and Tory. He was desperate to ring home, but he didn’t know how to, nor did he dare pick up the telephone and ask for some tea.
Instead, raging with thirst, he drank a couple of mugs of water out of the tap, then unpacked, showered, and, wrapped only in one of the white towels, wandered out onto the balcony. Instantly he stepped back, for there on the next balcony was a beautiful girl painting her toenails coral pink and soaking up the slanting rays of the early evening sun.
She was impossibly slender, with long legs and arms, which, despite being covered in freckles, were already tanning becomingly to the color of weak tea. She wore a saffron yellow bikini and her hair was hidden by a big yellow towel. Beside her lay the catalogue of some art gallery, a Spanish dictionary, what looked like a book of poetry, and a half-finished glass of orange juice. Obviously she could make Reception understand her. The whole impression was of a marvelously pampered and overbred racehorse. As she stretched luxuriously, enjoying the sensation of being warm and alive, Jake felt a stab of lust. Why didn’t one ever see girls like that in Warwickshire? He wished she would pick her nose or scratch her crotch, anything to make her more normal and less desirable.
Suddenly there was a commotion in the corridor. The girl jumped up. A man’s voice could be heard shouting in the passage, “Okay, we’ll see you in the bar about nine.”
The girl in the saffron bikini could be heard calling out in an American accent, “Darling, it’s so good to see you.”
There was a long pause. Then he heard the man’s voice more clearly. It was a flat distinctive drawl which he would recognize anywhere and which made his knees disappear and the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.
“Bloody awful journey,” said the voice. “Lorry kept overheating. We’ve been on the road for nearly thirty-six hours.”
“Sweetheart,” said the girl, “I’m so sorry. You must be exhausted.”
Another pause followed, then the voice said sharply, “I don’t care how fucking exhausted I am, get that bikini off.”
The girl started protesting, but not for long. Next moment there were sounds of lovemaking, with the bed banging against the wall so hard that Jake felt he was back in the cattle truck. Mercifully it lasted only five minutes. Any more evidence of Rupert’s superstud servicing would have finished Jake off altogether. Almost worse was the splashing and laughter as later they had a bath together. It was still desperately hot. Jake made his bed neatly and, soaked with sweat, had another shower and changed his shirt, for something to do. He’d have liked to have washed some underpants and shirts and hung them out on the balcony, but he could imagine Rupert’s derisive comments. Later he heard them having a drink on the balcony.
“Better get a few quick ones under my belt, so Malise doesn’t think I’m alcoholic.”
By nine o’clock Jake was so crucified by nerves and waiting that he couldn’t bring himself to go downstairs, until Malise rang up from Reception saying they were all in the bar, and had he overslept? Malise met him as he came out of the lift. Noticing the set face, the black rings under the eyes, the obvious tension, he said, “Don’t worry, they’re all very unalarming.”
