suits along punishingly steep footpaths, watching the first celandine and coltsfoot pushing their way through the leaf mould and the winter barley slowly turning the brown fields pale green, Lysander wished it was Arthur he was getting fit for the Rutminster Gold Cup rather than Marigold, but they made terrific progress.
Marigold was still desperately low and Lysander got bored as she endlessly bent his ear about Larry, but he began to realize the extent of her hurt and desolation, and how hard she had supported Larry in his rocket-like rise to the top.
‘Ay really trayed to be a social asset,’ she told Lysander one morning as they pounded up Paradise Hill. ‘For years Ay struggled with those dreadful elocution lessons.’ Pink from her exertions, Marigold went even pinker. ‘Ay was taught by a disgustin’ old Lezzie who kept touchin’ may bosom to make me project from the chest.’
‘How dreadful,’ Lysander shuddered.
‘Let’s stop and look at the vista,’ gasped Marigold, who was panting more from non-stop chatter than the one-in-five gradient.
Across the valley, softened by a pale sun, morning mist and the thickening buds of its army of trees, Paradise Grange rose like a fairy-tale castle.
‘Ay can’t bear to leave it,’ she sighed. ‘You should see it in summer when the Paradise Pearl is out. That’s a pinky-whaite wisteria Mr Brimscombe planted thirty years ago. We floodlaight it in the evenings. And that’s Lady Chisleden’s home to the left. Ay trayed so hard to dress laike Lady Chisleden.’
‘I don’t think that’s wise,’ said Lysander in alarm. ‘The old trout was blocking Paradise High Street this morning with her Bentley, bawling out Adam’s Pleasure for delivering manure that was more straw than shit. Perhaps she could give Arthur a job.’
Marigold smiled, but as they started off down the hill, she returned to the subject of Larry.
‘Talkin’ of horses, Ay always thought we had a good love laife,’ her voice trembled. ‘But one of the things Nikki screamed at me was that Larry told her Ay made love laike a dead horse, because Ay never moved.’
Although Marigold had told him this a dozen times, Lysander put his arm round her.
‘Alive horses don’t move very much,’ he said consolingly. ‘I’ve seen lots of them being covered. My Uncle Alastair ran a stud at one time, and someone always held the mare still. Anyway, men say anything to a girl when they want to get their leg over.’
To begin with Lysander used to escape to London as soon as he had supervised Marigold’s frugal supper, to party all night, returning yawning at breakfast and falling asleep in the afternoon on Larry’s sunbed. But gradually he spent more and more time at Paradise Grange. There was so much to do, working out in the gym, swimming in the heated pool, riding the hunters Larry abandoned after he’d been bucked off at the opening meet, watching all Larry’s Walt Disney tapes, playing with Larry’s bar.
‘What a pity you’re off the booze, Marigold. I could mix you some terrific cocktails.’
One of their first mutual projects was the restoration of Arthur, who’d been confined to box rest for three months by the vet. As soon as the old horse arrived, Lysander had driven Marigold over to his cottage to meet him.
It was a beautiful day after a night of heavy rain, the robins were singing their heads off, and the racing streams glittered in the sunshine. Marigold tried not to squeal with terror as Lysander stormed the red Ferrari along the winding country lanes, whose high hedges were filling up so quickly with buds and even leaves one had no idea who might be hurtling in the opposite direction. By contrast, barking his head off, and rattling back and forwards like a shaken dice, Jack seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.
‘How did you acquire Arthur?’ asked Marigold faintly.
‘Well, it’s an extraordinary story. Basically my cousin Titus was in the Army in the Oman and during some skirmish he found Arthur wandering on the edge of the desert, thin as a rake and desperately dehydrated. Well, Titus had nowhere to stable him that night and no headcollar, so he and his men made a corral by parking four army lorries, nose to tail. Even in his desperately weakened condition, Arthur jumped straight over one of the bonnets after a passing mare.
‘Titus thought they’d lost him, but he was back nosing around for toast and marmalade the next morning. Anyway, he was such a distinctive-looking horse that his owner, some Arab sheik whom Titus was liberating, recognized him and was so grateful he let Titus keep him. Arthur’s got quite a good pedigree.
‘Titus brought him back to England, and gave him to his father, my Uncle Alastair, who was a trainer and who won a lot of races with him. I was left some money by an aunt and Alastair was in financial trouble — he was always bad with money — so I spent the lot buying Arthur from him. I’d always loved the horse. Dad was absolutely livid.’
‘Ay’m not surprised,’ said Marigold, shocked. ‘Your uncle shouldn’t have taken all your inheritance.’
‘You haven’t met Arthur,’ said Lysander fondly. ‘Anyway, poor Uncle Alastair died of a heart attack and Arthur fell first time out last September. The vet said rest him for a year, but Mum and I were determined to get him sound by next season. Then Mum died in October.’ For a second Lysander’s hands clenched on the wheel. Then, swinging off the road and destroying any hope that Marigold might have had that he might slow down on the stony track up to the cottage, he added, ‘So, I’m going to get him sound if it kills me.’
‘Yes, Ay can see that,’ said Marigold, only thankful to be alive amid so much death, as Lysander drew up with a jerk outside the stables behind the cottage. ‘Oh, how adorable,’ she squeaked.
For the great grey horse hanging out of his box was tugging hay from a net so untidily that Tiny, his black Shetland stable-mate, who was attacking another net hung below his, had nearly vanished under a thatch of dropped hay.
‘The sweet wee thing.’ Marigold rushed forward to hug the little pony.
‘I wouldn’t,’ warned Lysander.
As Tiny lashed out with a lightning off-hind, he pulled Marigold out of the way just in time.
‘Tiny,’ he added, giving the pony a sharp boot on the rump, ‘is an absolute bitch.’
‘She ought to meet Nikki,’ said Marigold with a sniff. ‘Nikki said—’
‘Basically I only keep Tiny,’ interrupted Lysander hastily, before Marigold could get into her stride, ‘because Arthur’s so bats about her. She henpecks him dreadfully, and she’s tried to kill Jack several times.’
Scooping Jack up, Lysander held him so he could lick Arthur’s nose, then plonked the little dog between the horse’s huge flopping ears. Immediately Jack tightroped down Arthur’s straggly mane and settled down into the small of his back.
‘How adorable,’ sighed Marigold, giving Tiny a very wide berth, as she stroked Arthur. ‘He’s ’uge, isn’t he?’
‘Eighteen hands,’ said Lysander proudly. ‘He was the biggest horse in training. The public still send him fan mail and Twix bars, because they know he loves them.’
Arthur was pure white except for his grey nose and dark eyes which were fringed with long, straight, white eyelashes and edged with white on the inside corners, as though some make-up artist had wanted to widen them.
‘Arthur looks as though he’s been around,’ said Marigold.
‘Basically he has,’ said Lysander. ‘He’s lived in back gardens in Fulham and on Dolly’s parents’ lawn; there was a row about that, and he spent three days in the orchard of a woman whose house I was — er — trying to sell.’
Not anxious to expand on that, Lysander pointed to the traffic cones and rubber tyres he’d hung over Arthur’s door to give him something to biff around and amuse himself with.
‘He’s so good about being inside.’ Lysander pulled Arthur’s ears. ‘He just adores being petted. He never bites Tiny back and if Jack attacks his ankles, he just looks down in amazement. If he were a human, he’d put on a smoking jacket and velvet-crested slippers every night. He’s such a gent.’
‘Like his master,’ said Marigold warmly.
‘I wish Dolly thought so,’ sighed Lysander. ‘She’s just sent me a really sarky card: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR RETIREMENT. Now watch this.’
As he produced a tin of Fanta out of his Barbour pocket, Arthur gave a deep Vesuvius whicker. Pulling back the tab, Lysander put the tin between Arthur’s big yellow teeth and, with gurgles of ecstasy, Arthur tipped back his head and drained the lot.
‘He can’t get up in the morning without his bowl of coffee,’ said Lysander retrieving the tin, ‘but only if it has two spoonfuls of sugar.’
