“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“You must rest. You mustn’t carry anything heavy. Are you sure you’re up to carrying that glass of Perrier? When did you think you were? Oh, sweetheart, you should have told me.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“I thought you were on the Pill.”
“I stopped taking it.” Tears suddenly filled her eyes. “I was real scared after the termination,” she almost gagged on the word, “I wouldn’t be able to conceive. Then I started feeling vile in Madrid.” She sat down on the loo seat.
“You never told me.” Still dripping, he crouched beside her, kissing her again and again.
She was so pleased he was pleased, but she wished he’d get dressed. This rampant nakedness seemed incongruous somehow with the momentousness of the occasion.
Finally he stood up. “My father’ll be knocked out. What shall we call him — Eddie?”
“He might be a girl.”
Rupert started doing his sums. “When he’s twenty-four, he’ll be able to ride in the 2000 Olympics.”
He went to the bedroom window and opened it. “Billy, Billy.”
“Put something on,” urged Helen, wrapping a towel around him.
“Billee.”
Next minute Billy appeared at the edge of the lawn, still riding the gray.
“Yes?”
“For Christ’s sake, come here.”
“Not across the lawn,” wailed Helen. “Mr. Higgins’ll do his nut.”
“Helen’s going to have a baby!”
Billy threw his hat high up in the air and rode through some delphiniums.
“Fantastic.”
“You can be the fairy godfather,” said Rupert, “and just think what a wonderful opportunity it’ll be to get Nanny back to look after him.”
Over my dead body, thought Helen.
At that moment one of the Jack Russells wandered into the bedroom and sicked up a few frothy blades of grass on the carpet. And the dogs are going to be kept outside once the baby comes, she said to herself. I’m not having them in the nursery.
20
Fen never dreamt she’d have to work so hard. Jake’s indoor school was finished by the autumn, which meant, even as the days drew in, that she was able to get up at five in the morning and work the horses for two hours before school. Then she would come home, grab a quick bite to eat, dash off her homework, then back to the indoor school until late in the evening. Often she fell asleep at her desk. Her form mistress rang up Tory and complained. Fen was not stupid, just exhausted and totally unmotivated. It was the twentieth century; people didn’t send children down the mines anymore. Her complaints fell on deaf ears. Tory remonstrated gently with Jake and tried to get Fen into bed by ten, but it was often midnight before they finished.
Jake was a very hard taskmaster. As Fen was tall for her age, it was pointless to waste time learning to ride ponies. She must go straight on to horses, and as she’d be competing initially against children who’d been riding the circuit since they were seven, there was a lot of ground to catch up.
Fen found it hard to be patient. She only wanted to jump and jump, but Jake insisted she do the groundwork first, hardly letting her ride across the yard without coming to see if she were doing it properly. To straighten her back and deepen her seat, he gave her daily lessons on the lunge, without reins and stirrups, with her arms behind her back, and a stick through them to keep her shoulders straight. Cold weather didn’t deter him. Sometimes they worked outside, with everything frozen, and the snow hardening to a sheet of ice. With the wind up their tails, the horses would give a series of bucks and, stirrupless and reinless, Fen would fly through the air and emerge from the shrubbery like a snowman.
Day after day she came in with raw bleeding knees and elbows, every bone in her body aching. Seldom did she complain, she was so frightened of being sent back.
On the whole she was happy, because she felt she was getting somewhere. Like Jake, she loved the cozy family atmosphere created by Tory. She adored the children, Wolf and the cats and the horses, and hero-worshiped Jake. Revenge, however, was her special pet. She spent any free moments in his box, talking to him, calming him. In a way they were learning the ropes together. Like her, when he arrived, he was miserably displaced, suspicious of everyone. Gradually they got their confidence back.
Revenge was never worked in the same field twice. Horrendously high-strung, he was a picky eater, hated any box but his own, and was liable to kick any strange stable to pieces. He also fell madly in love with Africa, following her everywhere, to Sailor’s irritation, and yelling his head off if she went to shows without him. Jake brought him on with infinite slowness, never overfacing him, retiring him over and over again, going for slow clears to give him confidence, never exciting him by jumping him against the clock.
Revenge still put in the odd huge buck and had a piece out of Fen if he’d got out of bed the wrong side. But she defended him to the death.
“He’s really a kind horse,” she would explain, “he always waits when he’s bucked you off.”
Tory and Fen got on well, but there were undeniable tensions. Although she helped out in the stables, Fen made a lot of extra work at home. She was extremely untidy, dropping her clothes as she stepped out of them, forgetting to bring her washing down, spending hours in the bathroom washing her hair, gazing at her face in the steaming mirror, and leaving the bath filthy and the plughole blocked with hair. She was also terribly dreamy and, when she wasn’t with the horses, her nose was always buried in some technical horse book or riding magazine, and if there was washing-up she always managed to find something to do in the stable. Tory tried not to resent Fen nor to mind her teenage moods, nor to feel jealous that Jake and she spent so much time together.
Fen adored Jake, but, unlike Tory, she saw his faults. Tory spent hours making quiches and chicken pies for Jake when he was away at shows, which he seldom touched because he got so nervous, and which Tanya, the groom, usually finished up so Tory wouldn’t be hurt. Jake never laughed at Tory’s jokes, seldom reacted, often didn’t answer. She noticed how Tory ended so many sentences with “Isn’t it,” to evoke some sort of response, how she never answered Jake back. Jake and Fen on the other hand had blazing rows.
One gray day towards the end of November, Fen was particularly tired. Her form mistress had sent her out of the class and the headmistress had come past and shouted at her. Her period was due any minute, her spots were worse than ever, and she felt fat and edgy. Jake was in a picky mood. Tomorrow he and Tanya were off to Vienna and Amsterdam for two big shows. Everything had to be packed up and ready. It was so mild that Tanya had tied Revenge up in the yard to wash his tail. The dead dry leaves were swirling around his feet.
She had just finished, and Fen, who had fed all the other horses, had Revenge’s feed ready, when she suddenly remembered she hadn’t added any vitamins or chopped carrot to encourage him to eat. Putting the bucket down beside Sailor’s door, she rushed back to the tackroom and here got sidetracked by the latest copy of
Jake hit the roof. “Fen!” he bellowed.
“Yes,” she said nervously, coming out of the tackroom with a carrot in one hand and the magazine in the other.
“Can’t you fucking concentrate for one minute?” said Jake furiously. “Filling your stupid head with dreams of Wembley, and lining up above Rupert Campbell-Black, with the Queen telling you what a star you are. Well, you’ll bloody well never get there unless you pull your head out of the clouds.”
“I’m sorry.”
