Jake’s face registered no emotion. A fly was buzzing round their heads. Malise flicked it away with a copy of
“Spanish fly,” said Jake suddenly, with the ghost of a smile. “S’pposed to be good for sex, isn’t it?”
Malise laughed. “Never tried it myself, more Rupert’s province. Expect you’re feeling homesick, too, missing Tory and the baby, and you’re pulled down looking after the horses by yourself. It’s amazing how your first win will buck you up.”
“If I ever do win.”
“My dear boy, I’ve seen you on form. I know you’re good. You’ve just got to calm down.”
Jake suddenly felt an emotion close to adulation. He could imagine following Malise into battle without a qualm. If only he’d had a father like that, or even a father like Mr. Greenslade, who bossed you around all the time because he minded about you. There he was buying himself a drink at the bar, and about to come and join them.
“I’m going to be very unorthodox,” said Malise. He handed Jake a bottle with some red pills in. “Those’ll make you sleep; put you out like a light. Don’t tell the rest of the team I’ve given them to you. They’ll play havoc with your reflexes, but you’re not jumping tomorrow or in the Nations’ Cup, and a couple of good nights’ sleep’ll put you right for the Grand Prix on Saturday. And don’t tell me you don’t approve of sleeping pills. Nor do I, except in an emergency. Tomorrow you’re not going anywhere near the stables. Marion and Tracey will look after Africa and Sailor. You can go on the sightseeing jaunt with the rest of the team.”
After fourteen hours’ sleep, Jake woke feeling much better. He didn’t know whether Malise had had a word with them, but all the team were particularly nice to him as they set off out of Madrid in an old bus, across dusty plains, like the hide of a great slaughtered bull, then through rolling hills dotted with olive trees and orange groves. The road was full of potholes, sending sledgehammer blows up Jake’s spine as the back wheels went over them. Rupert sat next to Helen with his arm along the back of the seat, but not touching her because it was too hot. Billy sat in front, talking constantly to them, refereeing any squabbles, sticking up for Helen. Lavinia Greenslade sat with her father. Humpty sat with Jake and talked nonstop about Porky Boy.
Only Rupert didn’t let up in his needling. Every donkey or mule or depressed-looking horse they passed reminded him of Sailor or “Jake’s Joke,” as he now called him.
They lunched at a very good restaurant, sitting outside under the plane trees, eating cochinella or roast suckling pig. It was the first square meal Jake had been able to keep down since he arrived. While they were having coffee, a particularly revolting old gypsy woman came up and tried to read their fortunes.
“Do tell your ghastly relation to go away, Jake,” said Rupert.
Helen, beautiful, radiant, and clinging, was surprised Rupert was being so poisonous to this taciturn newcomer. She tried to talk to Jake and ask him about his horses, but, aware that he was being patronized, he answered abruptly and left her in midsentence.
Afterwards they went to a bull farm and tried playing with the young bulls and heifers with padded horns and a cape. Rupert and Billy, who’d both had a fair amount to drink at lunchtime, were only too anxious to have a go. Humpty, who’d eaten too much suckling pig (“You might pop if a horn grazed you,” said Rupert), refused to try, and so did Jake.
Side by side, but both feeling very different emotions, Jake and Helen watched Rupert, tall and lean, a natural at any sport, swinging away as the little bull hurtled towards him. Determined to excel, he was already getting competitive. Billy, fooling around, couldn’t stop laughing, and was finally sent flying and only pulled out of danger just in time by Rupert. In the end Rupert only allowed himself to be dragged away because they had to be in Madrid to watch a bullfight at six. Before the fight, they were shown the chapel where the matadors pray before the fight.
“Do with a session in there before tomorrow afternoon,” said Billy. “Dear God, make us beat the Germans.”
The bullfight nauseated Jake, particularly when the picadors came on, riding their pathetic, broken-down, insufficiently padded horses. If they were gored, according to Humpty, they were patched up and sent down into the ring to face the ordeal again. They were so thin they were in no condition to run away. The way, too, that the picadors were tossing their goads into the bull’s neck to break his muscles reminded Jake of Rupert’s method of bullying.
The cochinella was already churning inside him.
“I say, Jake,” Rupert’s voice carried down the row, “doesn’t that picador’s horse remind you of Sailor. If you popped down to the Plaza de Toros later this evening, I’m sure they’d give you a few pesetas for him.”
Jake gritted his teeth and said nothing.
“That’s wight,” whispered Lavinia, who was sitting next to him. “Don’t wise. It’s the only way to tweat Wupert.”
Jake felt more cheerful, particularly when, the next moment, Lavinia plucked at his sleeve, saying, “Can I wush past you quickly? I’m going to be sick.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Jake.
Neither of them was sick but on the way home enjoyed a good bitch about Rupert. The rest of the team went out to a party at the Embassy. Jake followed Malise’s advice and went to bed early again.
On the morning of the Nations’ Cup, Jake woke feeling better in body but not in mind. The sight of fan mail and invitations so overcrowding Rupert’s pigeonhole that they spilled over into Humpty’s and Lavinia’s on either side gave him a frightful stab of jealousy.
Then in his own pigeonhole he found a letter from Tory, which filled him equally with remorse and homesickness. “Darling Jake,” she wrote in her round, childish hand, “Isa and Wolf and all the horses and Tanya and most of all me (or should it be I) are missing you dreadfully. But I keep telling myself that it’s all in a good cause, and that by the time you get this letter, you’ll have really made all the other riders sit up, particularly Rupert. Is he still as horrible or has marriage mellowed him? I know you’re going to do really well.”
Jake couldn’t bear to read any more. He scrumpled up the letter and put it in his hip pocket. Skipping breakfast, he went straight down to the stables. He wanted to work the horses before it got too punishingly hot.
Walking into the British tackroom, he steeled himself for whatever grisly practical joke was on the menu today, but he found everything in place. Because it was Nations’ Cup Day, everyone was far too preoccupied. The grooms were tense and distracted, the horses edgy. They knew something was up. Jake worked both the horses and was pleased to find Sailor had recovered from the bout of colic he’d had earlier in the week, and Africa’s leg was better.
Back in the yard he cooled down Sailor’s legs with a hose, amused by the besotted expression on the horse’s long speckled face. Nearby, Tracey was washing The Bull’s tail. Beyond her, Rupert’s groom, Marion, was standing on a hay bale to plait the mighty Macaulay’s mane, showing off her long brown legs in the shortest pale blue hot pants and grumbling about the amount of work she had to get through. Macaulay was so over the top that, rather than risk hotting him up, Rupert had decided to ride Belgravia in the parade beforehand and bring out Macaulay only for the actual class. This meant Marion had two horses to get ready.
Jake, who’d been carefully studying Rupert’s horses, thought they were getting too many oats. No one could deny Rupert’s genius as a rider, but his horses were not happy. He had surreptitiously watched Rupert take Mayfair, Belgravia, and Macaulay off to a secluded corner of the huge practice ring and seen how he made Tracey and Marion each hold the end of the top pole of a fence, lifting it as the horses went over to give them a sharp rap on the shins, however high they jumped. This was meant to make them pick up their feet even higher the next time. The practice, known as rapping, was strictly illegal in England.
Jake, however, was most interested in Macaulay. He was a brilliant horse, but still young and inexperienced. Jake felt he was being brought on too fast.
In the yard the wireless was belching out Spanish pop music.
“I do miss Radio One,” said Tracey.
The Italian team came past, their beautifully streaked hair as well cut as their jeans, and stopped to exchange backchat with Marion and Tracey.
As Jake started to dry Sailor’s legs, the horse nudged at his pocket for Polos.
“How long have we got?” Tracey asked Marion.
“About an hour and a half before the parade.”
