Riders

ran away. It was the one thing in his life he’d always been ashamed of. He wanted to say something to Jake, to apologize for the teasing at dinner, but it was too late. He’d gone.

Outside Jake took a taxi down to the showground. Fortunately he’d remembered his pass and the guards let him in. He realized he was very drunk.

The Great Bear overhead kept disintegrating and reforming, like a swarm of illuminated gnats. Crossing the exercise ring, he threw up behind a large Spanish chestnut. As he covered it with sand, he hoped one of Rupert’s bloody horses would slip on it tomorrow.

Bastard, bastard, bastard, he hadn’t changed at all. New boy’s tease indeed. Nausea overwhelmed him again. He leant against an oak feeling dizzy. Finally he made the stables. It was a comfort that Africa and Sailor were so pleased to see him. Blinking sleepily, they smelt of hay and contentment. One arm round each of their necks, he clung onto them, desperate for reassurance. They were his horses from his yard.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll go out and lynch him.”

17

Jake never knew if it was a result of meeting Rupert again, or because he drank too much tap water, but in the early hours of the morning he was laid low with a vicious attack of gyppy tummy. For the first few days of the show, it was all he could do to struggle up and crawl down to the stables to look after Africa and Sailor. Later in the day, he was either eliminated or knocked up a cricket score of faults in every class he entered. The jumps were huge and solid, with the poles fitting deeply into the cups, and the competition was fierce. Both Africa and Sailor were out of sorts after the long journey. Jake was so strung-up, he transmitted his nerves to the horses, who jumped worse and worse as the week went on.

To make matters worse, none of the classes started before three o’clock in the afternoon, with an evening performance beginning at 11 P.M. By the time the final National Anthem had been played it was 3 A.M. and usually four o’clock before Jake fell into bed, to wake like a stone at six in the morning, his usual time for getting up, after which he couldn’t get back to sleep again.

A doctor was summoned and gave him pills and advised forty-eight hours’ rest. But for a workaholic like Jake, this was impossible. He couldn’t bear to be parted from his horses, his one link with home. He had no desire to sightsee with Malise or Helen, or lounge round the pool sunbathing with the others and be confronted with the contemptuous bronzed beauty of Rupert Campbell-Black.

So while the others relaxed and enjoyed themselves, Jake didn’t miss a round jumped by another rider, or a workout in the warm-up area. He was learning all the time, but not to his advantage. There were too many of his heroes around to influence him, and he got increasingly muddled as first he tried to ride like the Italians, then like the dashing Spaniards, then like the mighty Germans.

The rest of the team, except Rupert, tried to be friendly and helpful. They were all relieved he was not the white-hot savior predicted by Malise, but as one catastrophic round followed another and he became more monosyllabic and withdrawn, they gave up.

Rupert, on the other hand, was openly hostile. On the morning after they arrived in Madrid, he was riding round the practice ring when Billy said, “You know that new chap?”

“The great gourmet and conversationalist?” said Rupert scornfully.

“Don’t you recognize him. He’s the same Gyppo Lovell who was at St. Augustine’s with us.”

“Can’t be.”

“Bloody is. Don’t you remember his mother was the cook. Mrs. Lovell? She did herself in.”

“Hardly surprising after producing an undersized little runt like that. Didn’t he become a boarder?”

“Yes,” said Billy bleakly. “He was in our dormitory. We gave him such hell he ran away.”

“Perhaps we should repeat the experiment. With any luck he might do it again.”

“You didn’t help much last night,” snapped Billy. “Making him order octopus. Poor sod, he’s never been abroad before.”

“Certainly doesn’t know how to behave in a hotel,” said Rupert. “I caught him making his bed this morning.”

For a few minutes they rode on in silence, then Billy said, “I feel I ought to make it up to him somehow for being such a shit at St. Augustine’s.”

Rupert started to play on an imaginary violin. “Don’t be so bloody wet. Little creeps like that deserve to be hammered. How the hell did he get started anyway?”

“Well that’s the interesting part. D’you remember a hugely fat deb named Tory Maxwell?”

Rupert shuddered. “Only too vividly. Maxwell big as a house — unable to turn round without the use of tugs.” He glanced sideways at Billy, relieved to see he had made him laugh. “And quite rich.”

“That’s the one. Well, Jake Lovell married her and evidently used all her cash to get started.”

“No wonder he’s undersized; squashed flat in the sack. Must be like going to bed with a steamroller. Who told you all this?”

“Malise. Last night. He thinks Lovell’s brilliant.”

“Well, he’s wrong. Lovell’s just about as insipid as the mince his mother used to cook. And, what’s more, he kept Helen and me awake all night throwing up.”

To rub salt into Jake’s wounds, all the other members of the team were jumping well and in the money, particularly Rupert, who won a Vespa on the third day and insisted on roaring round the showground on it, to everyone’s amusement and irritation. Jake’s was the only part of the British tackroom without its share of rosettes.

Rupert never lost an opportunity to put the boot in. On the third day, just before the competition, he persuaded Marion to hide all Jake’s breeches and his red coat and fill up his trunk with frilly underwear.

Marion was only too happy to oblige. Wandering round, heavily curvaceous in pink hot pants and a sleeveless pink T-shirt, she was the toast of the showground, always followed by a swarm of admiring tongue-clicking Spaniards, and the recipient of endless bonhomie from the other male international riders.

Jake, resentful that Rupert not only had an exquisite wife but a spectacular groom, ignored Marion, a reaction to which she was unused.

“He went bananas when he found his clothes missing,” she told Rupert gleefully. “He’s not as cool as he makes out.”

Although Marion soon returned his clothes, what upset Jake more was that the yellow tansy flower he always wore in the heel of his left boot to bring him luck had somehow vanished. Without his talisman, his luck was bound to plummet and as a result he lost even more confidence.

Most of all he was upset by Rupert’s constant cracks about Sailor — that he must be a mule or a camel, and no wonder he’d frightened them at customs; they must have thought they were letting a dinosaur into the country. Jake felt very protective towards Sailor, whom he loved very deeply, and his heart blackened against Rupert.

On the fifth day Malise announced the British team: Rupert, Billy, Humpty Hamilton, and Lavinia, with Jake as reserve. In the evening he took Jake out for a drink and explained there was nothing else he could do on Jake’s current form.

“Don’t worry,” he said, spearing an olive out of his very dry martini. “This often happens to new caps.”

“Not as badly as this,” said Jake, gazing gloomily into a glass of soda water. He still felt too sick even to smoke. His eyes seemed three inches deep in his face. His face was gray and seamed with exhaustion; he must have lost half a stone.

“It’s a vicious circle,” said Malise gently. “Everyone talks about the killer instinct and being hungry enough to go out and win, but you’re so snarled up inside you’re frightening the hell out of your horses. I know the fences seem huge and you’re worried about overfacing them, but you must be more aggressive. The only way to tackle those fences is to attack. Be accurate, but ride on all the time. Those big heavy poles are so firm you can afford to clout them. Africa should be able to sail over them anyway.”