‘It’s a good thing they didn’t operate in the old days,’ said Dora, ‘when Rupert was pulling every girl groom in sight.’
There were multi-screens in his office to watch his horses wherever they were running as well as a gym, spas and a salt-water pool, plus equipment and flat and uphill gallops to replicate every fence, hurdle, surface or course in the world.
None of this, however, impressed Mrs Wilkinson, who was above all a home bird who never slept in strange stables. She was desperately homesick and frightened at Rupert’s. No one played Beethoven to her. No one laughed when she stuck out her tongue, no one gave her a Polo if she tried to shake hooves. Refusing to eat, walking her box, driving everyone crackers yelling for Chisolm, she desperately missed Tommy, Etta, Rafiq and all her horse friends at Throstledown.
Nor, to their rage, was Rupert going to give that ‘ghastly syndicate’ access or allow any journalists or fans into his yard, so Mrs Wilkinson missed their adulation as well.
The acquisition of Mrs Wilkinson was a two-edged sword. Red postal vans were soon buckling under her fan mail, as tons of
Polos, carrots, barley sugars and get-well cards arrived at Rupert’s gate. Chisolm sent her a bleatings card. These had been redirected by Painswick, who remembered Rupert as one of the most subversive and difficult parents at Bagley Hall.
‘It’s your problem now,’ she sourly told Rupert’s very diplomatic PA.
Dora, however, was a great friend of the Campbell-Blacks.
‘It’s absolutely dreadful for Marius, Tommy and Rafiq,’ she told Etta apologetically, ‘but I can’t diss Rupert because I’m writing his column for him.’
Always on the hunt for a story, Dora rolled up at Penscombe to see her friend Bianca, Rupert and Taggie’s daughter.
Mrs Wilkinson, temporarily roused out of her black depression, was touchingly pleased to see Dora, practically clambering out over the half-door of her box.
‘How is she?’ Dora asked Lysander, Rupert’s assistant, who was a genius at bringing on horses. Infinitely patient, refusing to push them, believing that it didn’t matter if they came fifth or sixth as long as they looked forward to their next race, Lysander praised and encouraged them to the skies. So far he wasn’t having much success with Mrs Wilkinson.
‘She’s absolutely miserable,’ he sighed. ‘Rupert’s put her in a ring bit and a cross noseband to teach her to jump straight. He’s taking her drag hunting tomorrow so she gets used to jumping big fences at speed.’
‘She’s refusing Polos, she must be dying,’ said a worried Dora.
‘She’s also come into season.’
‘Ah, will Rupert still run her?’
‘Only one in ten mares runs better in season or when they’re cycling,’ said Lysander, ‘so the odds aren’t great.’
‘We better enter her for the Tour de France then,’ giggled Bianca.
Mrs Wilkinson sank back into gloom, whinnying piteously then retreating to the back of the box, head drooping, tail down, so Dora asked if she and Bianca could take her for a walk. Lysander,
who was quite used to dealing with temperamental stallions but who had turned deathly pale at the prospect of sorting out an impossibly fractious Furious, said that was OK.
The yard for once was very quiet. All the lads were on their breaks. Rupert was at the World Cup in Dubai. Lysander had clattered off to the indoor school. Bianca, who was madly in love with Feral Jackson, Ryan Edwards’s brilliant new striker, wanted to know if Dora thought seventeen was too young to get married.
‘You’re a WAG anyway,’ said Dora, who wasn’t listening.
They were passing Billionaire’s Row, a yard of boxes housing Rupert’s top stallions, who weren’t let out into the fields but lunged or walked in hand for a couple of hours a day.
‘They’ve got to be kept fit if they’re covering four mares a day,’ explained Bianca.
Beside each stallion’s door was a brass plaque listing the races they’d won.
‘That’s Peppy Koala.’ Bianca pointed to a wild-eyed chestnut, who was chewing at his half-door. ‘He’s worth forty million. He never gets ridden, poor thing, he’d take off. Eddie jumped on Love Rat the other day, nearly ended up in Scotland. That’s the practice mare,’ went on Bianca, pointing to a dozing dapple grey. ‘She stands still and the stallions practise on her.’
‘Cheap date,’ said Dora, ‘no champagne or flowers.’
‘Mares travel from all over the country for our stallions,’ said Bianca proudly, ‘like women used to run after Daddy before he married Mummy.’
‘Still do,’ said Dora, thinking of Corinna and Phoebe.
‘Love Rat had three hundred and twenty applications this year, but he only accepted a hundred.’
‘Sounds like the waiting list at Bagley.’
‘Here’s the covering yard.’ Bianca showed Mrs Wilkinson and Dora a huge barn with shredded black tyres over the floor and rubber padding round the walls so the horses didn’t hurt themselves.
‘See that little ramp, it’s for smaller stallions to stand on.’
‘Like jockeys,’ said Dora.
‘Some stallions are very slow and take at least ten minutes.’ Bianca rolled her huge brown eyes. ‘Others only take ten seconds.’
‘Just like jockeys, according to Amber,’ said Dora, who, not having had any lunch, was eating Mrs Wilkinson’s Polos.
‘You need five people for each covering,’ continued Bianca.
‘One man to hold the mare with a twitch, one to hold the stallion, one to hold the tail out of the way, one to see if
the stallion has ejaculated and one to guide the penis in.’
‘Poor mares, just like a levee after a royal wedding,’ said Dora indignantly.
‘Whatever. Talking of weddings,’ said Bianca, ‘should I marry Feral?’
‘Bit young, he’s lovely but only twenty.’
It was a beautiful evening, robins and blackbirds singing their heads off, tree shadows striping the frost-bleached fields. A little foal in a paddock below, his beige coat darkened by rain, was attempting to shag his mother.
‘That’s one of Love Rat’s,’ said Bianca, ‘starting early.’
‘God, I love foals,’ sighed Dora. ‘Where is Love Rat?’
‘Here,’ said Bianca, turning right.
Unlike Rupert’s other stallions who were confined to barracks, Penscombe Love Rat, father of Lusty, had a low boredom threshold and was allowed to roam free for part of the day in an electrically fenced field.
With his huge hindquarters, barrel chest and noble head he was a splendid sight, particularly as, like a teenager, he tossed his long blond mane, through which the setting sun was streaming. From the branch of a huge sycamore, already putting out acidgreen buds, hung rubber tyres, even a rubber horse to keep him amused.
Love Rat’s stud fee was £100,000 but the mares frequently presented to him did not flutter his pulses. He was a free spirit who disliked formalized cover.
‘Are you sure your father’s in Dubai?’ asked Dora, as Love Rat wandered up to them.
‘Quite,’ said Bianca, but she turned paler than Lysander when Dora suggested a bit of nooky, known in the trade as ‘stolen service’.
‘Daddy’d kill you.’
‘He won’t know,’ said Dora airily.
‘One of the screens in Daddy’s office looks straight into this field,’ protested Bianca.
‘Go and switch it off,’ said Dora. ‘It’s the ideal time, March or earlier. The gestation period is eleven months so she’d foal in February.’
‘What about the National?’ quavered Bianca.
‘They can run up to five months,’ said Dora, scribbling excitedly in her notebook.
Dora and Bianca put covering boots like great fluffy Uggs on both Mrs Wilkinson and Love Rat so they didn’t hurt each other, then fed Mrs Wilkinson into Love Rat’s field.
Instantly she became very skittish, whinnying, bucking and flashing her fanny at Love Rat. They then had a heavenly time consummating the marriage.
‘At least nine minutes,’ said Dora proudly. ‘Much better than jockeys. And they didn’t need five humans to guide anything.’
Afterwards Love Rat nuzzled Mrs Wilkinson and licked her very fondly.
‘He doesn’t do that normally,’ said Bianca.
‘Just rolls over and goes to sleep,’ grinned Dora, and rewarded Love Rat with the rest of Mrs Wilkinson’s Polos.
As a result Mrs Wilkinson cheered up no end and ate a large tea when she returned to her box.
‘Eating for two already,’ said Dora happily. ‘Love matches are best.’
‘Then I should marry Feral,’ declared Bianca, ‘and Daddy won’t bully me to get a job.’
‘What are you two laughing about?’ asked an ashen Lysander, limping back after being bucked off and attacked by Furious.
Dora couldn’t resist telling him. Lysander nearly fainted:
‘Christ, Dora! Rupert’ll fire me, and send you a bill for a hundred thousand.’
‘You’ll have to sell a lot of stories for that,’ said Bianca. ‘Better not put it in the
Racing Post
. The marriage has been arranged between Love Rat Campbell-Black, and Mrs Usurper Wilkinson.’
‘Don’t call her Usurper,’ shuddered Dora. ‘That’s what hideous Harvey-Holden called her.’
Mrs Wilkinson sank back into gloom. Young Eddie, who’d been ordered on to Furious by an absent Rupert, didn’t want to get savaged so instead he put the horse on the horse walker for the first time. Instantly Furious went berserk, and nearly wrecked himself and the horse walker, kicking the sides out.
Over at Throstledown, Marius, despite Amber moving in, was absolutely devastated by the departure of his two star horses. He’d picked himself up from the floor once too often. Chisolm was on hunger strike and bleated incessantly for her friend. Mrs Wilkinson’s box was left empty. All the horses, particularly Sir Cuthbert and Count Romeo, peered in hopefully. The lads, in despair, even missed being bitten by Furious.
Rafiq had cried and cried when Furious was taken away. Even though trainers were offering him rides, the media were avid to interview him and agents desperate to handle him, he could hardly force himself up in the morning, he was missing Furious so much.
Tommy soldiered on but bled inside, missing Wilkie, desperately sorry for Marius, spurned by Rafiq. Trixie was devastated. Her difficult but endearing charge had been whipped away. None of Marius’s other horses had the same appeal. Eddie promised he would put in a word when Rupert came back from Dubai.
The papers, however, which had led on Glorious Furious’s spectacular victory on Saturday and spent endless column inches working out why Mrs Wilkinson fell at three out, were by Tuesday slagging off Valent and Rupert for taking the horses away from Marius. Both men were getting hate mail.
Marius, however, was a gentleman. He had already given Rupert details of the fads and feeding habits of Furious and Wilkie, although he forgot to mention the tricks she did for a Polo. When he heard from Dora that both horses were going into a decline, he offered to lend Tommy, Rafiq and Chisolm to Rupert until after the National. The move wasn’t entirely altruistic. He was fed up with Rafiq’s tantrums, and he wanted his horses, particularly Sir Cuthbert who was entered for the National, to get some sleep.
It was a measure of Tommy and Rafiq, and particularly their love for Wilkie and Furious, that they were prepared to go and work for the hated enemy. But despite young Eddie’s pleas, there was no way Rupert was going to allow a schoolgirl like Trixie loose in his yard.
Rupert tolerated Tommy and Chisolm moving in, but he didn’t want the moody, darkly resentful Rafiq, who looked at him with such loathing, muttering what sounded like curses under his breath. Rupert’s sweet wife Taggie had made matters worse by insisting ‘poor Tommy and Rafiq’ stay in the house. ‘It’s only for a few days, and they must be so devastated losing both Mrs Wilkinson and Furious.’
On the first morning, a silent, sullen Rafiq sat in Rupert’s Land-Rover watching Mrs Wilkinson and Furious being taken over National-size fences in a tiny forty-by-twenty-metre school to teach them to jump more carefully. Neither of them performed well with Eddie Alderton. Rafiq expressed disapproval of Mrs Wilkinson being restricted by a cross noseband and a ring bit.
‘A great jockey called Terry Biddlecombe,’ Rupert felt he was being extremely decent to explain, ‘travelled five miles in a four and a half Grand National because his horse wandered. Mrs Wilkinson hangs left; she’s got to learn to run straight.’
Mrs Wilkinson looked listless, then terrified as they moved on to Rupert’s uphill gallop, and Eddie, his feet practically touching the ground on either side, got out his bat to make her go faster.
A horrified Rafiq dropped his guard:
‘You are crazy. If you knock her about she stop trying, and Furious, I know he seem vicious but he is insecure and if he’s threatened he get more angry. Both horses need treating gentle.’
‘Both horses need experienced riders on their backs,’ snapped Rupert.
‘That’s why he win Gold Cup with me,’ spat Rafiq. ‘And you should put Amber back on Mrs Wilkinson. They are twin soul.’
‘Amber is beautifully balanced and controlled going over
fences. But she lacks the power to hold up and to force a finish.’
Why, wondered Rupert, was he bothering to justify himself to this arrogant little shit?