6
Rannaldini could hardly fly his helicopter home for excitement. Would days of riding out in all weather have coarsened Tabitha’s amazing beauty? Would being fired so ignominiously have tempered her extraordinary arrogance, her capacity for rage?
Evidently not. Rannaldini entered the west courtyard through ancient gates, optimistically crowned with rusty iron letters spelling the words
‘Now she’s attacking the vodka,’ spluttered Helen. ‘We’ve clearly got a lush on our hands — Rupert always drank too much. And after over a year away she didn’t even peck me on the cheek.’
‘Where is she?’ demanded Rannaldini.
‘In the Blue Living Room.’
The Blue Living Room, an upstairs drawing room, which everyone else at Valhalla still called the Red Morning Room, had just been redecorated by Helen at vast expense in soft blues and rusts to complement her own hazel- eyed, red-headed beauty. The orange flames dancing merrily in the grate and the last tawny leaves on the beech outside enhanced the effect. Rannaldini’s Etienne de Montignys and Russell Flints had been banished in favour of an autumnal watermill by Samuel Palmer, and a Canaletto of sea-blue Venice. An embracing Cupid and Psyche by Canova provided the only erotic note.
Tabitha sat slumped in a carved brown chair, which was Rannaldini’s only contribution to the room, watching Wallace and Gromit on television. She was wearing frayed jeans and a Stop Puppy Farming T-shirt. A green toggle clung to her wrist like mistletoe. She was very thin — probably from taking those mad mood-inducing slimming pills to keep her weight down.
Her face was deathly pale, the long turquoise eyes bloodshot and heavily shadowed, the long nose reddened, the mouth clamped round clenched teeth in an attempt not to cry. White-blonde hair, used to being washed every day, hung lank and greasy to her collarbone. She was clutching a yellow Labrador puppy as though it were a hot- water bottle.
‘Where d’you get that animal?’ asked Rannaldini sternly.
‘Sharon? She was a stray, wandering round the docks.’
Rannaldini clicked his tongue. ‘Have you alerted the quarantine authorities?’
Tab’s eyes darkened in terror.
‘Please don’t betray me. I couldn’t leave her in Kentucky.’
Rannaldini, who was never too hot, put a log on the fire.
‘How d’you fiddle it?’
‘I came through France. There’s a boat smuggling in thirty dogs a day. The Engineer and I had to wait as it only sails when there’s no moon.’
‘How long have you been travelling?’
‘Four or five days.’
Rannaldini filled up her glass.
‘Naughty little girl,’ he said softly, taking Sharon and examining her. ‘Certainly she doesn’t look rabid.’
He dropped the puppy gently on the floor.
‘How can we punish you?’ he purred.
‘The American Horse Show Association’s done that already, for Christ’s sake.’
‘So they should have done. Risking the life of that beautiful horse I gave you.’
‘Engie’s fine, I promise you.’
Tab’s light, clipped drawl was so like her father’s. Every time he heard it, Rannaldini was excited by how much he could hurt Rupert by controlling and manipulating her. Moving round the room, only pausing to run an admiring hand over Psyche’s marble bottom, he pressed a button on the back of Tab’s chair. She gasped then screamed, as its wings suddenly clamped round her waist, trapping her.
‘What the fuck — lemme go!’ Fighting tears, she clawed fruitlessly at the imprisoning wooden arms, until she nearly pulled the chair over.
‘It’s a debtor’s chair,’ mocked Rannaldini, as he closed in on her. ‘Eighteenth century. Used to trap debtors like you. I’ve been looking for one for ages. You owe me two grand for your journey home, remember.’
‘I’ll pay you back.’ Tabitha flinched away.
When she could retreat no further, she allowed his fingers to caress her cheek for a second, then dropped her head like a snowdrop.
‘My father’s such a bastard.’
Rannaldini shrugged.
‘Maybe he’s pleased Marcus is gay. Probably never wanted a son competing with him.’
Having left pawmarks all over Helen’s pale blue Regency sofa, Sharon was now attacking a cushion Helen had embroidered of a virgin and a unicorn. Neither Tab nor Rannaldini took any notice.
Rupert’s remark about gaining a daughter when Marcus had shacked up with Nemerovsky had been the one that had hurt her most, confessed Tab.
‘He’s got a daughter, for Christ’s sake.’
‘And
‘I want to make him madder than he’s ever been before.’
‘Let’s find something really to worry him.’
Rannaldini moved fast. With his Polaroid memory, he had not forgotten four and a half years ago, his leading jockey, Isaac Lovell, and Tabitha exchanging an impassioned eye-meet in the paddock before the Rutminster Cup. Isaac had been riding Rannaldini’s vicious but generally victorious horse The Prince of Darkness, who’d fallen at the last fence. Tabitha had been the groom looking after Arthur, a big grey gelding, trained by her father, Rupert.
Tragically Arthur had died of a massive heart-attack, way ahead of the field but just the wrong side of the winning-post. Slumped sobbing over Arthur’s body, Tabitha had been too distraught to feel the hand of sympathy Isaac Lovell had dropped on her shoulder as he led home the unhurt but shaken Prince of Darkness.
The Campbell-Blacks and the Lovells had been feuding for nearly forty years, since Rupert had bullied Jake at prep school for being the cook’s son and a gypsy with a wasted leg. Gyppo Jake and Rupert had slogged it out on the international show-jumping circuit throughout the seventies, with Jake finally getting his revenge during the Los Angeles Olympics by running off with Rupert’s then wife Helen.
Later Jake had returned to his wife, Tory, Helen had eventually married Rannaldini, Jake and Rupert had both switched to training, but their feud had not abated. One reason, apart from loathing Rannaldini, why Rupert had disinherited Tabitha and Marcus was because photographs had appeared of both of them smiling at Jake Lovell, who as the Maestro’s trainer had been a witness at Rannaldini’s wedding to Helen.
If Helen and Jake had once fallen so passionately in love, reflected Rannaldini, might not history repeat itself? By a delicious coincidence, Isa Lovell was coming to lunch tomorrow, which would give Tab a decent night’s sleep.
Unhampered by scruples, Rannaldini didn’t give a stuff that Isa was already living just outside Melbourne with a tough little tomboy called Martie. They had invested in a yard that had done brilliantly its first season but which still needed capital. For this reason, Isa had come home to make serious money in the National Hunt season and also to help his father, Jake, now increasingly debilitated by the polio he’d had as a child. Rannaldini had several horses in training with Jake, and had invited Isa over to try out two mares he had bought in France and to plan for the future.
As usual Rannaldini had another motive. During the winter in Melbourne, Isa had won three of Australia’s biggest races, including their Grand National, for Baby Spinosissimo, the young tenor, whom Rupert had suggested should play Don Carlos. Isa would know if Baby was sufficiently broke to accept the part for a quarter of Fat Franco’s fee.
There was nothing youthful about Isa Lovell. Money had always been tight when he was a child: at six he was helping in the yard and jumping at shows, at eight coping with very public trouble in his parents’ marriage, and
