Mount! (55 page)

You’re a lousy actress, thought Eddie. As she ran a finger along his lip, he captured her hand and drew her towards him, but when he tried to kiss her she ducked her head and wiggled away.

‘Why did you post Rupert’s picture on Facebook?’ he asked.

‘Because he’s so up himself and not at all nice to you. How’s he taken it?’

‘I doubt if he’ll ever speak to me again.’

‘You’re better off here – Isa’ll give you some decent rides.’

‘Sauvignon, for God’s sake, my life’s in smithereens.’

‘Not for long. Ah, here’s Isa to sort it.’ She kissed Eddie’s cheek. ‘See you in the morning, babe,’ and she was gone.

Eddie drained his glass and was just refilling it when Isa grabbed the bottle. Not in carnival mood either, unamused by Champions Day without wins, Isa weighed in immediately.

‘The average jockey has the body weight of a thirteen-year-old girl. You’re much too fat. From now on, you’re going to run twice a day and not go to the gym – that puts on heavy muscle. You’re to stop drinking and get in the sauna. No diuretics, no laxatives, no flipping, you need to be fit. Go to bed now. I want you out on the gallops at 6.30 tomorrow. The Breeders’ Cup’s in only a fortnight.’

Too weak to argue, Eddie followed Logan along endless twisting, dark passages, past suits of armour, nude sculptures and tapestries to a room with just a chest of drawers, a wardrobe into which his clothes had been unpacked, a large chair, a bookcase full of Felix Francis novels and a big four-poster with frayed gold curtains.

Fighting utter desolation, Eddie opened the window, which had creepers as curtains, jumped as a raped vixen let out a shriek, then again as his mobile rang.

‘This is Harmony Bates,’ said a breathy voice. ‘Gala called me, asked me to look after you. I thought I’d bring you a bowl of soup.’

Eddie was never so grateful to see anyone, as he inhaled wafts of tomato and basil, picked up a spoon kept upright by lentils, and took a bite of hot white bread and butter.

‘You are kind, thank you so much – this is better than Claridge’s.’ Then when Harmony retreated, ‘Please sit down and talk to me.’

‘You must ask me if you need anything.’

In her dark-green pyjamas, Eddie thought, she looked much thinner, and less plain than he remembered her. As she couldn’t comfort him about Sauvignon, whom she loathed anyway, she asked him how he’d got on with Isa.

Eddie laughed for the first time that day.

‘Like S and M without the sex.’

Out on the gallops beneath a silver sky next morning, the grass was drenched with dew, owls hooted, foxes barked, a tiny sickle moon lit the east. Only he and Isa went out through the deer-haunted parkland. Isa was riding Eumenides. Eddie realized he’d been put up on I Will Repay, who was being kept fresh for the Breeders’ Cup.

‘OK, let him go, fast as you can.’

And Eddie’s terror turned to ecstasy as he felt the power of the horse beneath him, the long, raking stride – then, as the deer fled at their approach – the lightning acceleration. The further they went, the better Repay travelled.

Eumenides was a class animal, but I Will Repay beat him by nine lengths. Eddie was laughing with joy as he pulled up.

‘What a beautiful, beautiful horse – I’ve never ridden anything like him. He makes Quickly with his little stride seem like a Shetland pony.’

Isa glanced at his stopwatch. ‘Five furlongs in one minute ten, that’s not bad, although you ought to lie lower over him.’

Isa was not stupid; he knew that success in jockeys was a lot about confidence.

‘I can’t teach you anything,’ he went on. ‘You’re a bloody good rider, and you’re an American so you understand how they ride over there – exploding out of the gates, ballbreaking rough and tumble, and because they don’t push forward as much as British jockeys do, they hit their horses far harder.’

For a moment, Eddie was speechless, close to tears; it had been a hellish twenty-four hours.

‘D’you really mean that?’

‘Yup, and you’re coming to the Breeders’. You can ride in the Junior Turf and show your effing grandfather how good you are.’

Without their realizing it, the sun was rising, turning the silver valley to rose and the trees a singing flame-red. When they got back to the yard, Ash had rolled up, furious to see Eddie riding his horse.

‘I don’t want Repay picking up any bad habits.’

The yard was off to the Breeders’ Cup at the end of the week, taking Herb Roberto for Eddie to ride in the Juvenile Turf. The rest were for Ash, who kept up his bitching as Eddie stuck to his fitness regime, and rode as many horses as he could.

He was comforted when Dora rang him.

‘We’re all worried stiff about you. Life’s not the same here. How’s it going?’

‘The clocks go back this weekend,’ sighed Eddie, ‘but not cocks. Sauvignon won’t let me near her, not even to talk. I don’t know what game she’s playing.’

‘Bitch – we all miss you. Old Eddie’s inconsolable – he’s got no one to watch porn with.’

‘Have the horses gone to Santa Anita?’

‘Going next Tuesday.’

‘When’s Rupert off?’

‘He’s at the Horses in Training sales in Arqana, but he’s off to the Breeders’ on Thursday. Taggie’s not going, although she hasn’t told him yet. They had such a frightful row because he was so foul to you, and Taggie’s going to say that she’s got too many grandchildren coming for half-term. Really, she wants to get the surprise party organized. You’re coming, aren’t you?’

‘Not fucking invited.’

‘Course you are. Gala also had a row with Rupert over firing you, so she’s had a couple of days off, and Quickly had colic and may not go to the Breeders’ Cup and certainly not with Gala, Rupert’s so cross with her. So it’s all up in the air.’

The press were still utterly obsessed with the drama. Rupert had poached Tarqui; Cosmo and Isa had poached Eddie. The
Scorpion
ran a story that Eddie had moved to Valhalla to be with the mother of his forthcoming child, and how hypocritical of Rupert with his promiscuous track-record to chuck Eddie out.

Eddie found comfort in talking to Harmony, who said how fond she was of Gala and wasn’t Taggie lovely.

‘Doesn’t she get lonely with Rupert away all the time?’

‘Well, she’s got Old Eddie, my grandfather, and Jan, Eddie’s carer, a handsome South African who looks after her – too well
for Rupert’s liking – and a sweet Chinese boy called Bao Tong.’

‘Where have I heard that name …?’ Harmony’s forehead wrinkled.

‘Everyone’s called Tong in China. Bao gave me this rabbit for luck, when Rupert chucked me out. It’s made of ivory. Gala would do her nut – poachers killed her husband.’

Eddie was amazed how nice Isa was being to him. ‘What the hell am I going to do about Sauvignon?’ he asked him, as they rode back from the gallops one morning.

‘I don’t know,’ said Isa. ‘I had to get married – Tab was pregnant. I fancied her rotten but I didn’t love her. Then she lost the baby, and we were stymied.’

‘Tab’s awful,’ volunteered Eddie.

‘Not nearly as awful as her mother Helen, who nearly destroyed my parents’ marriage.’

Ash was wildly jealous of Isa and Eddie’s friendship, never missing an opportunity to bitch, and when Eddie was in the sauna, hovering outside so Eddie couldn’t escape and the pages of Felix Francis got very wrinkled.

Valhalla was a terrifying house after dark, with rooms on all levels, enabling people to peer out of mullioned windows through creepers into other rooms.

‘Any ghosts here?’ asked Eddie.

‘I’m more frightened of the living,’ shivered Harmony.

Aching for Sauvignon, Eddie was sleeping appallingly. If only they could have sex to ease his tension, he might have dropped off. He’d never read so much in his life.

Two days before they left for Santa Anita, the house was creaking in a high wind like a rheumaticky old man. It was after midnight when Eddie heard a step, then another step. As he shoved the big armchair against the door, and switched off the light, he heard the screech of another raped vixen, and leapt back into bed. Next moment there was a crash, the door was forced open, then slammed and the light switched on. It was Ash, reeking of aftershave and wearing a purple paisley silk dressing gown, which fell open to reveal the huge tattoo of David Beckham.

‘Get out, you slimy toad,’ yelled Eddie.

‘That’s not very friendly, poster boy. You know you want it. You won’t get it from Sauvignon, and once you’ve tried it with a guy, you’ll never want to go back.’

‘I bloody won’t.’ Eddie jumped out of bed, wearing only a long T-shirt bearing the words:
single but straight
.

Next moment, Ash had grabbed him. Incredibly strong from driving horses across the finishing line, he pulled Eddie close, his medallion scraping Eddie’s chest. His breath tasted sour from making himself sick so often as he rammed his tongue between Eddie’s lips. His left hand reached round to caress Eddie’s buttocks, parting them, fingering and probing. As Eddie struggled frantically to escape, he could feel a ramrod-hard cock jabbing his belly button. Then, as Ash rolled him over on his front on the bed: ‘There you go, poster boy.’

‘Get off,’ screamed Eddie. ‘Just fuck off, you revolting faggot.’ Fury fuelling his strength, swinging round, he hit Ash across the room – and as Ash landed on the wooden arms of the big chair, pushed aside from blocking the door, there was a fearsome crack of bone. A minute later, Cosmo, who’d been watching the whole thing through a two-way mirror, came storming in.

‘What the hell have you done to him? He’s got the Classic on Saturday.’

‘He’s fucked me,’ screamed Ash.

‘Au contraire,’ drawled Cosmo, ‘you were about to fuck him.’

Cotchester Hospital confirmed Ash had broken his arm and three ribs. Dawn was breaking, a tiny flicker of flame beneath glowering dark-grey clouds, as Ash got home. Immediately, he and Eddie were summoned to Cosmo’s office.

‘When will you learn to control yourself, you stupid goat?’ Cosmo’s voice was so venomous, Eddie nearly crossed himself and could hardly take it in, when Cosmo turned to him, saying, ‘You’re going to ride Repay in Santa Anita.’

‘Omigod, I’ll be riding against Quickly.’

‘And you know exactly how to beat him.’

The Breeders’ Cup, America’s richest, glitziest race meeting, was this year being held in Santa Anita in California. A place Rupert was always edgy returning to because it had once witnessed his greatest humiliation: his wife Helen running off with his teammate Jake Lovell, in the middle of the Los Angeles Olympics.

Ascendancy had been regained by Rupert then clinching the Team Gold with an epic clear round, when he’d jumped using only one arm, the other having been rendered useless by an excruciatingly painful trapped nerve.

Helen’s departure in such a conflagration of publicity, however, still rankled, which was why Rupert felt it imperative on any return to Santa Anita to be accompanied by an adoring, much younger and infinitely more beautiful second wife – particularly this year when there’d be so much guff in the paper about his sixtieth birthday and approaching great-grand-fatherhood.

Despite the ongoing froideur over the firing of Young Eddie and Taggie’s irritating but perennial sadness at beloved foals going off to the sales, Rupert automatically assumed she would be accompanying him to Santa Anita, and then on to the Melbourne Cup. From there, to avoid any fuss and festivities, he aimed to return late on the Wednesday of his birthday.

After several days away at the sales, he came home to find
Taggie in the kitchen baking a cake. Having pecked her on the cheek and removed several pumpkins from the sofa, he sat down, opened the
Racing Post
app and to placate her announced that they’d be staying at the Langham, one of her favourite hotels, only three and a half miles from Santa Anita Racecourse.

Whereupon Taggie went as scarlet as the poppy pinned to her luscious grey cashmere bosom and stammered that she wasn’t coming.

‘But it’s all booked.’

‘I told Geraldine a week ago.’

‘Rather than me.’

‘You weren’t here to tell.’

‘Don’t be bloody silly, of course you’re coming.’

At the tone of his voice, the dogs, who’d been swarming around him, slunk back to their boxes.

‘I can’t get away, I’ve got too much to do.’ Taggie was furiously creaming butter and sugar together.

‘Like what? Last time it was the cake stall at the fete.’

‘Both Sapphire and Timon are coming – it’s half-term and Tab’s still mending her marriage.’

‘Why doesn’t she get a bloody sewing-machine? What else?’

It was Sapphire’s birthday, stumbled on Taggie, and Caitlin’s two sons were coming.

‘They’ve got parents, for God’s sake.’

‘And I’ve promised them a Halloween party this Saturday: we’re going off trick or treating round the village.’

‘Am I hearing this right?’ said Rupert softly. ‘Quickly is running in one of the greatest races in the world and you’re hawking yourself round Penscombe, touting for confectionery?’

Taggie wanted to hurl a pumpkin at him and yell, ‘No, I’m trying to organize a surprise party for you, which is ballooning by the second,’ but she only said, ‘I’m truly sorry, I can’t.’

‘Yansy Pansy’s so brilliant with children, why can’t he organize this bash?’

‘Because,’ snapped back Taggie, ‘since you fired Eddie, your father’s got no one to watch porn with and keeps wandering into the stable lasses’ bedrooms looking for him.’

At that moment, anxious to create their own porn, Cuthbert chose to mount Rupert’s leg so vigorously that Gilchrist decided to mount Cuthbert – behaviour which would normally have sent Rupert and Taggie into fits of laughter, had not Jan barged in with a broomstick between his legs and sporting a witch’s hat.

‘Just the thing for you to wear at Royal Ascot, mam,’ and he grinned, showing red plastic Dracula fangs.

Whereupon an outraged Rupert gave a goal kick, sending both Jack Russells flying through the air, and stalked off to bollock Geraldine, who was also in a foul mood. She and the rest of the office were run off their feet, unravelling Breeders’ Cup red tape, with Quickly, Delectable and Touchy Filly flying out tomorrow, several days early, to adjust to a much hotter climate and get over the journey.