The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

rains any more it’s going to be too wet for Pridie.’

Water was pouring in a tidal wave down the High Street.

‘Ouch,’ grumbled Lysander, as he bit his cheek instead of his chewing gum. ‘I’m injured before I get to the course.’

He felt even worse as he read the horoscopes in the Sun.

‘Arthur’s going to have a good day for shopping.’

‘I hope that isn’t a misprint for stopping,’ said Tab.

61

The ancient town of Rutminster, with its splendid cathedral and russet Queen Anne close, lay in a bowl of hills covered in thick, rain-drenched woodland. In a sensible marriage of secular and ecclesiastical, the racecourse was only divided from the cathedral water meadows by the River Fleet, which was rising steadily as Rupert and Lysander walked the course.

Despite the relentless downpour and the lurking fog, it was very mild and the ground was already filling up. Helicopters were constantly landing and the bookies were doing excellent business under their coloured umbrellas. Lysander never dreamt the fences would be so huge. Not for nothing was the Rutminster called the Grand National of the South.

Down by the start Rupert turned up the collar of his Barbour: ‘You must push Arthur on. No-one misses the beat. You’ve got a very short run up to the first fence. If you’re not at the front at this stage, you can get boxed in or squeezed out.

‘From then on your best bet is to hunt Arthur round in the middle, letting the leaders exhaust themselves trying to pass Pridie. This is a sod,’ he went on, as they stopped at five foot of closely stacked birch and gorse with a huge ditch on the other side. ‘If you hit it below six inches, Arthur’ll turn over. If he drops his legs in the water, it’ll slow him up. Meet it right, and you won’t know he’s jumped it.’

‘I wish Arthur were walking the course,’ sighed Lysander. ‘He’s got a better memory than me.’

‘Give him a breather here,’ said Rupert as they climbed a steep hill to a fence Lysander could hardly see over, ‘and you must stand back at this one. It’s known as The Ambush because there’s a terrific drop on the other side. Yummy Yuppy unshipped his jockey here last year. He tried to pop over on a short stride and bellied into it. Piss off,’ he snapped as two men approached with a camera.

‘Could you take a picture of us beside this fence?’ said the first in a strong Irish accent.

‘No, we can’t.’ As Lysander reached out for the camera, Rupert hustled him on. ‘Concentrate, for Christ’s sake.’

They had reached the top of the course now and three-quarters of a mile away could see the stands and the cathedral spire soaring above its scaffolding.

‘If a favourite moves up here, you can hear a great cheer from the crowd. It’s quite eerie.’

‘And I’ve got to go round twice,’ said Lysander in a hollow voice as they squelched down to the bottom of the hill.

‘This is where you fork right for the final run in,’ explained Rupert. ‘And the horse sees the crowd in all its yelling glory for the first time. Paddywack lost the race here last year. His head came up, he saw the crowd and Jimmy Jardine felt him coming back. Pridie passed him and it cost Jimmy the race, so keep a hold of Arthur.’

‘Arthur loves crowds. He’ll accelerate if he gets this far.’

‘This is a tricky fence,’ said Rupert as they rounded the bend into the home straight. ‘If you go flat out, you’ll turn over; take a pull and you lose momentum; jump it wide and you’ll lose a few vital yards that could cost you the race. Bluey’ll be taking the paint off the rails. From now on, if Arthur’s still on his big feet, it’s a chance of surviving home.

‘Bluey’s so experienced, he’ll be on automatic pilot now, but you’re likely to tense up with nerves and miss a vital gap. If Bluey comes to a bottleneck, he just pushes his way through, freeze for a second and you’ve had it, and if you come up on the inside, even Bluey’ll squeeze you out.’

Glancing at Lysander’s vacant stare, the shadows under his eyes, the pale translucent skin not even tinged with pink by the lashing rain, Rupert was worried he’d pushed him too hard.

‘What have I just said?’

‘That even a mate like Bluey will try and squeeze Arthur out.’

‘Good boy. For eleven thousand pounds in his pocket, any jockey will kill his mother. All that matters from here is to get your whip out and your head down and go like hell. You’ll hear a roar like you’ve never heard, you’ll ride into a tunnel of yelling faces, and you’ll think the post will never come, but don’t let up till you’re past the post. When you hear Tab screaming with relief in the stable-lads’ stand, you’ll know you’re OK.’

‘Thank you, Rupert.’ Lysander felt overwhelmed with gratitude that Rupert should take the whole thing so seriously. ‘We won’t let you down.’ Then, as an ambulance screeched by, ‘When I was at the dentist’s the other day, I popped into a solicitor’s and made a will. It’s in my bedroom drawer. If I don’t come back, I’d like Tab to have Arthur, and you to have Jack. He’s had such a ball since he’s been at Penscombe.’

‘As long as you leave Tiny to Rannaldini,’ said Rupert.

Rannaldini had a household staying for the Rutminster, including the chairman of the board of the New World Phil, a squat, jolly businessman called Graydon Gluckstein, whom he was determined to impress. As a result Kitty had hardly had a moment to think. Having bought a Donald Duck good-luck card for Lysander, she had torn it up. It was immoral to send it if she were trying to save her marriage. Having not been allowed to see The Scorpion, she hadn’t realized the connection between Rupert and the pale, watchful jockey, Isaac Lovell, whom Rannaldini had singled out to wrestle with The Prince of Darkness. He had dropped in for a drink last night.

‘All that matters is that you annihilate Bluey Charteris and Penscombe Pride,’ she heard Rannaldini saying as he shut the door on them both.

Kitty longed to look her best on the day of the race, but as she’d been wracked with morning sickness worse than Danny, and the rain that suited Arthur only crinkled the hair she’d blow-dried straight, there wasn’t much hope.

Although Rutminster was only fifteen miles away, Rannaldini insisted on ferrying his party, which also included Hermione and Bob, Meredith and Rachel and Guy and Georgie, by helicopter. Terrified of throwing up over the dove-grey suede upholstery, Kitty pleaded last-minute shopping in Rutminster for the celebration party the utterly confident Rannaldini was planning for that evening, when everyone would drink Krug out of the Rutminster Cup.

Having bought some home-made pate and a side of smoked salmon from a delicatessen in the High Street, Kitty drove past the russet houses of the Close, peering out behind their fans of magnolia grandiflora, and, parking her car, popped in to the cathedral.

The numbers of the hymns were up for Palm Sunday tomorrow. In a side chapel, pinned to a green baize screen, Kitty noticed children’s drawings of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on donkeys even more outlandishly shaped than Arthur.

Would the baby inside her, which could so easily be Lysander’s, one day draw pictures like that? she thought despairingly, as she sunk to her knees on a faded crimson hassock.

‘Please, please, dear God,’ pleaded Kitty, ‘let him get round, I don’t care if he wins. Just let him come back safe, he’s so brave and reckless.’

Surely it wasn’t adultery to pray for someone’s safety?

Through the clear-glass lattice window to her right, fringes of rain were falling out of dark purple clouds on to the palest green leaves, just emerging from the chestnut trees.

‘Rain’s good for Arfur, God, but please don’t let him slip.’

Beside her lay the stone effigy of Robert, Lord Rutminster, who died in the crusades. He had pudding-basin