In gratitude the big vicious chestnut put in a terrifying buck. The rider grabbed his mane but didn’t shift in the saddle, then he swung the horse towards the floodlit track, and he was off, hurtling towards the first fence. Meutrier’s ears were flat to the head. He was taking off too near. Meutrier was going to stop. Tab gripped her binoculars in horror. The rider would be killed going at that speed. Then amazingly Meutrier put in a terrific cat jump and sailed over.
Kicking his feet out of the stirrups, stretching his legs, the rider was over the next fence, his body folding beautifully, as he disappeared over the brow of the hill.
Down by the finish, Dizzy forgot the cold and the racing snowflakes and gave a cry of relief as Lysander appeared round the corner. Coming up to the last fence, he dropped his reins and folded his arms, laughing as Meutrier hoisted himself upwards and cleared the birch twigs by a foot. As Lysander pulled up, for a second Rupert’s antagonism, overdrafts, unemployment, even the loss of Kitty were forgotten.
‘This is the most wonderful horse I’ve ever ridden. I’m sure he’d stay twice the distance. I’d give anything to ride him at Cheltenham.’
At that moment Taggie came slipping and sliding down the snowy path. She hadn’t even bothered to put on a jacket.
‘Rupert, you didn’t put Lysander on Meutrier? He was going back tomorrow.’
‘Well, he may not now,’ said Rupert.
His rage had subsided, but, not prepared to be conciliatory, he stalked ahead of them back to the house.
Lysander was sitting at the scrubbed kitchen table eating miraculously light cheese-straws hot from the oven when Tabitha slid round the door like a cat, took one incredulous look at him and shot out again. Then, as Taggie handed him a glass of whisky and settled herself on the window-seat opposite, Tabitha’s amazed face reappeared outside the window.
He couldn’t be real, thought Tabitha, he couldn’t. Such thick brown curls, such a wonderful curving mouth pulled upwards by the short upper lip and such big, kind, laughing eyes.
‘Oooooooh,’ she wailed.
‘Has anyone seen Horse and Hound?’ she muttered as she slid back round the kitchen door a minute later.
‘Hi, darling,’ said Taggie. ‘Help yourself to a drink.’
‘Thanks.’ Tab reached for a sherry glass and filled it up with Coke so it spilled over and over as she gazed at Lysander.
‘Come and sit down,’ Taggie patted the seat beside her.
‘Sorry,’ muttered Tabitha, sliding in beside her stepmother, and putting her chin on Taggie’s shoulder. ‘Didn’t mean it.’
‘I know you didn’t.’ Taggie hugged her. ‘You two haven’t been introduced, have you?’
‘Not properly,’ said Lysander. ‘You look just like your father. D’you ride as well as he does?’
‘Urn.’ Tab had gone crimson and opened her mouth and shut it, when Rupert marched in, dangling the cordless telephone between finger and thumb.
‘It’s Ashley,’ he said softly.
There was a long, tense pause.
‘Tell him I’m not here,’ stammered Tabitha. ‘That I’ve gone back to school, make up something. Arthur’s fantastic,’ she turned adoringly back to Lysander, all thoughts of tractor-drivers forgotten. ‘Can I do him when I come back at weekends?’
Looking from Tab to Lysander, Rupert gave Taggie the faintest smile.
‘All right, you’re on,’ he told Lysander, after he had dealt with Ashley. ‘Three months’ trial, but if you step out of line just once, you’re fired. You can ride out for me, and if any of the other jockeys don’t want a ride in a race you can have it. You’ll need ten wins or places to qualify for the Rutminster.’
Tabitha got up and hugged her father. ‘I love you, Daddy.’
‘Oh gosh, thank you so much. That’s seriously, seriously kind,’ Lysander was able to stammer out at last.
‘You’ll have to lose a stone — which you can ill afford. So you’ll have to build yourself up at the same time. And remember, no booze.’
Lysander turned green. ‘Surely the odd glass of wine wouldn’t matter?’
‘It would be odd if you stopped at one,’ said Rupert. ‘Not a drop till after the Rutminster.’
57
Lysander was so unhappy that the weight dropped off him. He had never been up at six in the morning before unless he’d been partying all night. Nor had he ever been worked so hard. Rupert immediately moved him into Penscombe, putting him up in a little room under the eaves with low beams — ‘one can’t concuss him more than he is already’ — a patchwork quilt and paintings of Rupert’s old ponies on the whitewashed wall.
‘I’m not having you mooning around in Magpie Cottage with your bins trained on Valhalla,’ he told Lysander. ‘I want you here where I can keep an eye on you.’
Lysander would never have survived without Rupert’s girl grooms. Once they realized they weren’t going to get him into bed — and he rejected their offers so sweetly — they stopped squabbling over him and covered up for him instead.
Every morning they would shake him awake, practically dressing him, forcing extra jerseys over his diminishing frame, frogmarching him to whatever difficult horse — Lysander could never remember — that Rupert had earmarked for him the night before.
But however difficult the horse, he seemed to steal into its head and heart before arriving somewhat to his amazement on its back. Horses really wanted to go well for him and seemed delighted by their own capabilities.
His problem was concentration. If he started thinking of Kitty when he was three lengths clear in a gallop, he’d be trailing the field in a matter of seconds. He was also a chatterbox, talking constantly on the gallops and even when jumping fences. If a jockey or a horse had a fall he had to pull up instantly to see if they were all right, and walking Arthur round the Gloucestershire lanes took hours because he stopped to chat to everyone — anything to avoid going back to clean mountains of tack or spend hours dunking hay in icy water to get rid of the dust.
Having lost an efficient if truculent tractor-driver in Tabitha’s boyfriend Ashley, Rupert made an early mistake of handing over the job to Lysander. Flying home the following evening Rupert was appalled to see lines that should have flowed straight over the rich brown earth tangled together like a kitten’s ball of string. A very harrowing experience, admitted Rupert, when he’d regained his sense of humour and put Lysander back to cleaning tack.
Taggie was the person who really saved Lysander’s life. If he hadn’t been so hopelessly in love with Kitty he would have certainly been smitten. Worried about his pallor and dramatic weight loss, while the other riders were joyously guzzling fried eggs, sausages and bacon sandwiches after the gallops, Taggie tried to tempt Lysander with grilled soles, or steaks dripping with herbs and butter. She put slimming biscuits in a flowered tin in his bedroom and made him hot chocolate with skimmed milk at night to help him sleep, which he surreptitiously emptied down the sink because he couldn’t stand the stuff.
And Taggie listened when he banged on about Kitty — the grooms restricted him to five minutes an hour. Still numb at the loss of her own baby, when she was not cooking for Rupert’s staff, she was always bottle-rearing calves and lambs, or feeding hens and ducks, or Rupert’s dogs, or topping up the birdtable, or smuggling forbidden toast and marmalade to Arthur when he hung forlornly out of his chewed-down half-door.