Coming out of his office on his way to a Venturer board meeting back at the house, he found Lysander leaning against the wall, fighting back the tears again.
‘Thank you, Rupert. I won’t let you down.’
‘I’ve declared him, but I won’t run him unless it rains. And go and have a haircut. You can’t ride in the Rutminster with a pony-tail.’
Everyone grew increasingly tense. Danny, Penscombe Pride’s Irish lad, had been throwing up all morning, even Taggie was shouting at the Press. Rupert, in his board meeting, was trying to concentrate on plummeting advertising revenue, when there was a thundering on the door and Lysander barged in, white-faced.
‘Oh, Rupert, Arthur’s lame. He’s going short on the off-fore.’
‘Probably knocked himself this morning, just poultice him. Now get out,’ said Rupert curtly.
‘Just come and see him. Per-lease.’
So the entire board trooped down to the yard to have a look, only to find Arthur dramatically recovered.
‘He’s winding you up,’ Dizzy chided Lysander. ‘He does it to get sympathy and Polos now.’
Although the yard was running down at the end of the season, and most of the young horses had been turned out, Rupert hadn’t wanted to waste a valuable stable-lad on Arthur. To keep Tabitha out of mischief, he let her do the horse. She had proved both responsible and efficient.
Wearing a navy-blue jersey, which brought out the famous Campbell-Black eyes, but was already coated with white hairs, she stood on a bucket that afternoon to wash Arthur’s mane.
‘We’ve got to stop you rolling and getting yourself mucky before tomorrow,’ she told him, as Arthur nudged her jeans’ pocket hopefully looking for Polos.
Lysander, sitting on the edge of a stone tub of white narcissi, holding Arthur’s lead rope with Jack on his knee, had been laboriously reading Ivor Herbert’s life of Red Rum to inspire Arthur, but had given up with the effort. Trapped in her stable, Tiny watched them beadily.
‘Arthur has a look of Rummy,’ said Lysander. ‘I wonder how many more stable-boys The Prince of Darkness has eaten. I tried to help one of the grooms at Valhalla clip him once. Jesus, he went ape-shit. I jumped on to the manger. The groom shot out of the door. I want to know who’s going to ride him. I bet Rannaldini’s got some nasty surprise. God, I hope he lets Kitty come to Rutminster tomorrow.’
He was really upset that, unlike most of Paradise, Kitty hadn’t sent him a good-luck card. He had even driven over to Magpie Cottage in the lunch hour to check.
‘Have you got a picture of her?’
‘It’s a bit cracked.’ Lysander took a photograph out of his trouser pocket.
After a long pause, Tabitha said kindly, ‘I expect she looks better in the flesh.’
Lysander scratched his head. ‘No, she doesn’t really. Jack’s very plain, particularly on his white-eyed side, but he’s got such a dear little face, and Arthur isn’t classically beautiful either, although I hate the Press saying it, but I love him to bits too.’
‘But you don’t want to go to bed with Jack and Arthur,’ said Tabitha. ‘Shut your eyes, darling,’ she added, as she hosed the soap out of Arthur’s forelock. ‘Not bed-bed, I mean. I suppose you’re beautiful enough for two.’
‘I feel safe with Kitty,’ confessed Lysander. ‘Since I lost weight I’m always cold. The only thing that could make me warm would be her arms around me.’
Suddenly noticing the expression of desolation on Tab’s face, Lysander realized how tactless he was being. Taking her grubby little hands, he pulled her off her bucket.
‘If I wasn’t so hopelessly hooked on Kitty, I’d fall madly for you, Tab. There isn’t a single man in the world that won’t slit his throat for you in a year or two. Like your father, you’re irresistible.’
‘Not to you,’ said Tabitha dolefully.
‘I got you a present.’
It was a silver horse-shoe brooch and he pinned it on her jersey.
‘Oh, thank you, it’s lovely.’
‘It’s going to bring you special luck. Mystic Meg said your destiny was linked with the initial I. God, I’m nervous about seeing Kitty.’
Returning at dusk from the second day of the Rutminster meeting with two wins and a couple of places, Rupert was in a much better mood. The raiding party was turning into a rout. But the smile was wiped off his face when he went into the tack-room and found Dizzy, Danny and the stable cat poring over the
‘You’re not going to like this,’ said Dizzy warily. ‘Bloody Beattie’s dumped again.’
RANNALDINI’S REVENGE, said the front-page headline.
‘
‘
‘“I was impressed by Isaac when I saw him winning a race recently in Ireland,” enthused the Machiavellian Maestro from Valhalla, his Rutshire mansion. “He and The Prince of Darkness will annihilate Penscombe Pride.” ’
Without a word Rupert turned to page three.
‘In a Mafiaesque move worthy of his Latin ancestors, Rannaldini could be paying back Rupert for taking Lysander Hawkley under his wing. Fun-loving Lysander (son of Hatchet Hawkley, headmaster of posh Fleetley — fees ?16,000 a year), nicknamed the Man Who Made Husbands Jealous because of a string of relationships with married women, was caught cuddling and kissing Rannaldini’s much younger wife, Kitty, in Monthaut in December.’
Rupert was deceptively calm and, as the stable cat, who loved newspapers, padded across the page, he gently removed her so he could read on. But as Tab wandered in, putting her arm round his shoulder to see what he was reading, she caught a glimpse of Isaac Lovell’s thick, dark, sombre, gypsy’s face and gave a moan of wonder: ‘Wow-wee, he is gorgeous.’
Turning on her like a cobra, Rupert grabbed her shoulders, shaking her until her bones rattled like castanets.
‘If you ever have anything to do with that little shit,’ he hissed, ‘you’re disinherited, out of here, never coming back, see?’
‘I don’t see at all,’ said Tabitha, flaring up. ‘You never approve of the men I like.’ Then, as Rupert stormed out, ‘Is he worse than Ashley?’
‘Much worse,’ sighed Dizzy. ‘I’ll tell you about it.’
‘Bastard, bastard, bastard.’ Eyes narrowed to slits, Rupert paced up and down the bedroom, neat whisky in one hand, cigar in the other.
Helpless in the face of such volcanic fury, Taggie lay on the faded patchwork counterpane of the huge Jacobean four-poster in which Rupert had made love for so many years to his beautiful first wife.
‘Pridie’ll win it with two legs tied together,’ she stammered. ‘A new jockey won’t make any difference. You’re the best trainer in the world. No-one’s heard of Isaac Lovell over here.’
Rupert got hopelessly uptight on the eve of big races. It affected the whole yard. He had hardly ever been nervous when he was show-jumping because he was so confident of his own riding, but now he could only mount the best jockeys on the best horses and pray. It was the one time when he had to be kept really calm.
‘It all happened such a long time ago,’ muttered Taggie. ‘You’re the most utterly g-gorgeous, glamorous, faint-making m-m-man in the world. Jake Lovell’s a little squit, so’s Rannaldini. I’ll probably trip over both of them in the paddock.’
Taggie never bitched about anyone. Rupert looked down at her in amazement, as she stood up, and putting her hands on both sides of his rigidly clenched face, pulled his mouth down to meet hers.
‘Kiss me. I love you so, so much.’
‘Oh, Tag,’ groaned Rupert, burying his face in her thick dark hair. ‘Thank God for you. You’re absolutely right. It’s all in the past. Jake did me such a good turn. I’m such a boring old reactionary, and I’m so against divorce, I’d
