The general, in true Spanish tradition, was late. So the parade started without him. The Germans came first. The famous four, Hans, Manfred, Wolfgang, and Ludwig. Olympic gold medalists who had not lost a Nations’ Cup competition for two years, they had reason to be proud. They rode with a swagger on their equally famous horses: four beautiful Hanoverian geldings, with satin coats, elegant booted legs, arched necks, and chins apparently soldered to their breastbones. As they passed, their grooms gripped the fence and cheered. They were followed by the French, beautifully turned out with the lighter and less obedient horses, and then the Italians in their impeccably cut coats with the blue collars, riding with slapdash elegance, two of them smoking. Then there was a great earsplitting cheer, sending a great communal waft of garlic up from the crowd, as the Spanish team came in. Beautiful riders on beautiful, powerful horses, their manes flowing free, but somehow not coordinated like the Germans. The crowd, however, thought they were the greatest, and screams and shouts of “Magnifico” and “Ole” followed them all round the ring.
The British team came last. Rupert rode on the magnificent Belgravia, chestnut coat gleaming in the sunshine. Not having been ridden in at all (Marion hadn’t even had the time to walk him around), he was boisterous and uncontrollable, and the crowd, particularly the women, marveled how this handsome Englishman hardly moved in the saddle, as the horse bucked and violently shied beneath him. On his left was Humpty on Porky Boy, then Lavinia on the gray Snowstorm, whose coat was already turning blue with sweat, and then Sailor, shuffling along, looking on his last legs, as though he could hardly stagger as far as the grandstand. The crowd laughed, jeered, and pointed.
Jake gritted his teeth. He’d show them.
The wait that followed was interminable. The teams lined up in front of the grandstand and all, except Lavinia, removed their hats as each country’s National Anthem was played. The band knew their own National Anthem and, confident the Germans would win, had been practicing “Deutschland, Deutschland” all week, but when they got to Great Britain, they launched into the “Star-Spangled Banner,” which everyone thought very funny except the mustachioed bandmaster, who turned an even deeper shade of purple.
The horses meanwhile were going mad in the heat, except Sailor who stood half asleep, one back leg bent, hanging his head, twitching his flea-bitten coat against the flies, and occasionally flattening his ears at Belgravia, who was still barging around like a bee-stung bronco. Jake tried not to look at the jumps. All the women in the audience fanned themselves with their programs. Medallions, nestling in a thousand black hairy chests, glittered in the sunlight.
In the riders’ stand, next to the collecting ring, Helen comforted a disconsolate Billy. “You’d be mad to jump,” she said.
“Must say I’ve got the most awful headache. Jake’s horse looks like I feel,” said Billy.
As the teams came out of the ring, Sailor bringing up the rear, shuffling along, head hanging, Helen looked at Jake’s set face. She hadn’t seen him smile once since he’d arrived. The knight of the sorrowful countenance, she thought.
“He’s like Don Quixote,” she said to Billy, “and that poor beaten-down old horse looks like Rosinante.”
Billy wasn’t interested in literary allusions.
“What a bloody stupid thing to do,” he said. “Malise is livid.”
“Doesn’t look it,” said Helen, watching Malise, in dark glasses, with a gardenia in the buttonhole of his pale gray suit, completely calm as he went from one member of the team to another, steadying their nerves, encouraging them.
“Lavinia’s not wearing anything underneath that black coat,” sighed Billy.
As the British team filed into the riders’ stand, Malise gave Helen the jumping order on a clipboard so she could keep the score. The general still hadn’t arrived, but it was decided to start. The arena went very quiet as the white doors opened and the first French rider came in and took off his hat to the judges. As he went past the start, the clock started ticking. It was soon obvious, as he demolished jump after jump, sending poles and bricks flying, that this was a far from easy course. The Italian who came on second was also all over the place and notched up twenty-eight faults.
“Viva Espana!” screamed the crowd as the first Spanish rider came in. Although they had applauded the earlier riders politely, they cheered their own hero unrestrainedly.
“Doesn’t look very magnifico to me,” said Rupert, as the horse went head over heels at the rustic poles, crashed through the wall and the final double, losing his rider again, and having to be led out impossibly lame.
“I’ve seen enough,” said Humpty, running down the steps and out to the collecting ring to scramble onto Porky Boy as the first German rider rode leisurely into the ring. Hans Schmidt was the second best rider in the German team, but his dark brown horse didn’t like the course any more than the others and came out, most unusually, with twelve faults.
As he walked out, ruefully shaking his blond head and muttering dummkopf, he was practically knocked sideways by Humpty bouncing into the ring. The merry Porky Boy, ears pricked and fighting for his head, his black tail swishing back and forth across his plump cobby quarters, bucketed towards the first fence. The crowd was amused by him and his rider, who rose so high out of the saddle over the bigger jumps that it seemed he would never come down again. But he got around with a very creditable twelve faults.
Now it was time for the second Frenchman to jump.
No one went clear, as round followed round and disaster followed disaster. Several horses overturned and were eliminated. A Spanish horse burst a blood vessel and had to be destroyed later in the day. Despite Rupert’s gloomy prognostications, Lavinia jumped well for only twelve faults, which meant the Germans and the English were level pegging on twenty-four faults at the end of the second round, with the other nations trailing well behind. The next German, Manfred, got eight faults, the best round so far. He was followed by Rupert, who did not jump well. Macaulay, like Belgravia, overoated and insufficiently ridden in, had been frightened in the collecting ring by three loudspeakers crackling fortissimo above his head. An enormously powerful horse, it took all Rupert’s strength to stop him running away in the ring. By some miracle they went clear until they got to the upright, where Macaulay, put wrong, hit it sharply.
For a second the pole bounced agonizingly in the cup, then fell. Unbalanced, and taking off too early, Macaulay also had a foot in the water. Rupert came out of the ring looking bootfaced.
He’s dying to beat the hell out of that horse, said Jake to himself. He watched Helen, beautiful in her yellow hat, biting her lip with disappointment as she entered eight faults by Rupert’s name. Jake didn’t want to be around when Rupert came back. He’d seen enough rounds anyway.
Riding around the collecting ring, he felt sicker and sicker, trying to remember the turns and the distances between the jumps. But his mind had suddenly gone completely blank, as if someone had pulled a lavatory chain, draining all the information out of his head, leaving an empty cistern.
He wished he could slip into the matadors’ church to pray. He listened to the deafening cheer as the last Spanish rider went in and groan follow groan as he demolished the course.
Now it was time for the mighty Ludwig von Schellenberg, the greatest rider in the world, to go into the ring and show everyone how to do it, which he did, jumping clear. But so carried away was he by the poetry and stylishness of his round that he notched up one and a half time faults.
He came out grinning and cursing. Now, as luck would have it, as Jake was due to jump, the last rider in Round One, the general chose to arrive and everything ground to a halt while two lines of soldiers with machine guns formed a guard of honor and the band played the Spanish National Anthem several times, and dignitaries were introduced with a lot of bowing and shaking of hands, and the general was settled in his seat.
“This is a bugger,” said Malise, after Jake had been kept waiting twenty minutes. “I’m very sorry. They’ll call you any minute. Just aim for a steady clear, take it easy, and ride at the center of the fence.”
Up in the riders’ stand Helen was doing sums.
“If the Germans count Ludwig’s, Manfred’s, and Hans’s rounds, and drop Wolfgang’s, that puts them on twenty-one and a half,” she said. “We’ve got Rupert on eight, Humpty on twelve, and Lavinia on twelve; that makes thirty-two.”
“We won’t get lower than that this half,” said Rupert. “Jake’s bound to be eliminated.”
Ludwig von Schellenberg came into the riders’ stand. “You look beautiful, Mees Helen, in that hat,” he said, clicking his heels as he kissed her hand.
“She’s a Mrs. not a Miss, you smarmy Kraut, and keep your hands off her,” said Rupert, but quite amiably. Ludwig was one of the few riders he liked and admired.
