Back at the Mill House, good as his word, Jake turned his horses out for a rest. It pleased him to see them really enjoying their grass. Even Revenge dropped his belly like an old hunter. In February, a program was announced for Olympic possibles. The riders mustn’t overjump their horses and they must take part in the Olympic trials at the Bath and Wells show and Crittleden in June. The probable team would then be chosen for a trial over the huge, demanding fences at the Aachen show in Germany in July, after which the Olympic team — four riders and a reserve — would finally be selected.
Officially, the Olympic committee told Jake, they were interested in both Sailor and Revenge. Unofficially, Malise rang Jake and asked him if, in the event of one of the other riders, say Rupert, being selected without a decent horse, would Jake be prepared to jump Sailor and lend Revenge to Rupert. The answer was an extremely curt negative. If Revenge made sufficient progress to be selected, over Jake’s dead body would he let anyone else ride him, particularly Rupert. Malise appreciated his sentiments and reported back to the Olympic committee, who felt somewhat differently. Colonel Roxborough, the chairman, master of the Westerham, a bronze medalist before the war, who’d never moved an inch to get any of his five wives, was not the only member who felt Jake was behaving in a thoroughly unsportsmanlike fashion. After all, Belgravia and Mayfair, who’d both been overjumped, were not as good as they used to be, and Macaulay, after a dazzling start, had suddenly lost form altogether.
The committee were heartened, however, by Billy Lloyd-Foxe at last hitting top form. Trying to forget Lavinia, avoiding parties where he might bump into her and cutting down on his drinking, he had concentrated on his horses, with dramatic results. The Bull, and often Kitchener, were in the money at every show they went to, and both were regarded as Olympic possibles.
Among the other possibles were Humpty, Driffield, Ivor Braine, and Lavinia de la Tour, who had married Guy in March. Billy managed to be abroad for the wedding, but sent them a king-size duvet as a wedding present, adding a wry little private note for Lavinia: “If I can’t spend the rest of my life lying on top of you, at least my present can.”
As a newlywed, no doubt subjected to endless demands by Guy, Lavinia lost form. It was agony for Billy to see her with Guy on the circuit, but he found his heart didn’t ache quite so much if he was beating the hell out of both of them.
In March, while Rupert was driving from Dortmund to Vienna, Helen went into labor. As his lorry was snowbound on a mountain road, no one managed to contact him for thirty-six hours. Flying straight back to Gloucestershire, he found that Helen had nearly died after a long and very difficult birth, and that the baby was in the intensive care unit. Seeing her paler than her white pillow, her red hair dark with sweat and grease, Rupert was overwhelmed with remorse. How could he have done this to her?
“I guess Nanny was right about good child-bearing hips. I’m sorry, darling,” he said, taking her hand.
Not by a single word did she reproach him, but he saw the hurt in her huge eyes and knew that his absence would be held against him later. As he sat with her in her private room, various doctors came and talked to him, and nurses popped in to have a gaze. Actually the sister in charge was frightfully pretty, but after three hours Rupert was rigid with boredom, and turned on the television. It was Benny Hill, who always made him laugh, but when he looked around and saw Helen was crying, he turned it off.
He was delighted to have a son, particularly after his smooth and expensive GP friend, Dr. Benson, had turned up and assured him that both child and mother should pull through.
“But I really think you should stick around for a bit, Rupe. She’s had an awful time and constantly called out for you.”
“I appreciate your advice,” said Rupert coolly.
“You can do better than that,” said Benson, equally coolly. “You can act on it, unless you want Helen to wind up in a bin.”
Rupert rang Billy and told him he wouldn’t be coming to Vienna and would he bring back Rupert’s horses.
“What’s the baby like?” asked Billy.
“Got red hair, so we know it’s Helen.”
Then Rupert sat down and wrote letters, putting baby Marcus Rupert Edward down for St. Augustine’s and Harrow. Looking at the tiny baby, with his sickly face like a howling lemon and the bracken-red stubble of hair, it seemed impossible that he would ever attain such heights.
In the evening, Rupert went home to Penscombe and slept for fourteen hours, but after that scrupulously visited Helen every day. She seemed pathetically grateful for the attention, but was distressed that she was unable to breast-feed.
“What the hell does it matter?” asked Rupert. “How do you think Cow and Gate became millionaires? I thought you wanted your figure back.”
He was further irritated that Helen had struck up a friendship with another mother called Hilary Stirling. In her early thirties, Hilary denied her unquestionable good looks by wearing no makeup and scraping her dark hair into a bun. A passionate supporter of the women’s movement, a braless, undeodorized vegetarian, with unshaven legs and armpits, she had just had her second baby, Kate, named after Kate Millett, by natural childbirth—“A wonderfully moving experience,” she told Helen.
Hilary’s husband Crispin, who appeared to do everything in the house — cook, clean,
It suddenly seemed to Rupert that every time he rolled up to see Helen, bringing bottles of champagne, gulls’ eggs, smoked salmon, and armfuls of spring flowers from the garden, that Hilary was sitting on Helen’s bed, breast-feeding her disgusting baby and flashing her goaty armpits.
Admittedly she was ultrapolite. “It’s so kind of Helen to let me take refuge in her private room, although we personally wouldn’t dream of using anything else but the NHS.”
Admittedly, she immediately made herself scarce, despite Helen’s protestations. “I’ll leave you, dear. You see little enough of Rupert
Helen thought she was wonderful.
“She’s a very talented painter. Look at this little sketch she did of me this morning.”
“Looks as if you’ve been peeling onions.”
“Oh, Rupert, don’t be silly. She’s real clever too; got several degrees.”
“And every one below zero,” snapped Rupert.
In between visiting Helen, he had not been idle. He worked the novices and kept up his search for an Olympic horse, which included dining with Colonel Carter and even forcing himself to flirt with the appalling Molly.
After a fortnight, Helen was allowed home and baby Marcus was installed in Rupert’s old cradle, newly upholstered in white frills, in his beautiful buttercup yellow nursery, next to Rupert and Helen’s bedroom, with Rupert’s old Nanny, who had already settled in to look after him, sleeping in the room on the other side.
Rupert thought this was insane.
“How can Billy and I wander around with no clothes on if Nanny’s two doors down? Billy might easily come home plastered and wander into her room by mistake. The baby ought to be on the top floor with Nanny, like Adrian and I were.”
“But I’d never see him,” protested Helen. “I want him near me. You can’t expect poor Nanny to stagger along the passage and down two flights of stairs every time he cries.”
Helen grew stronger physically, but sank into postnatal depression. She had ears on elastic. Every time a lamb bleated out in the fields she thought it was Marcus crying and raced upstairs. Rupert had the lambs and ewes moved to another field out of earshot. But Helen was still impossibly jumpy. Rupert was hustling her to sleep with him again and was furious when, egged on by Hilary, she refused. A power struggle, too, was developing between her and Nanny. If Marcus cried in the night, often they hit head-on over the cradle, like shiny red billiard balls. Nanny insisted on putting Marcus in long white dresses and refused to have anything to do with disposable nappies. She also wanted a strict routine — you had to show the baby early on who was master. Helen, again egged on by Hilary
