Mount! (11 page)

‘Who’s this?’ demanded Rupert.

‘My great-grandson, Trixie’s baby Herry.’ Etta lifted him on to Quickly’s back. ‘They adore each other. Trixie’s gone to some rave-up with your grandson, Eddie – such a lovely boy,’ she added in an attempt to ease the situation.

She then kicked herself as an increasingly wintry-looking Rupert announced: ‘That “lovely boy” should be sober and tucked up in bed. He’s got two big races at Chepstow tomorrow.’

‘Oh dear. Well, he’s probably not drinking,’ stammered Etta.

‘Unlike Master Quickly,’ said Rupert, as Quickly eyed up his glass of red. ‘It’s high time that colt was weaned and moved to Penscombe i.e. prep school.’

‘Not yet,’ pleaded Etta, removing Hereward and leading Quickly towards the door. ‘Oh look,’ she added, peering out of the kitchen window into the golden gloom. ‘Wilkie and Chisolm have come to fetch him. We so love having him here, and he won’t need to be broken in until the end of next year.’

‘By which time,’ said Rupert acidly, ‘he’ll be sleeping in your bed.’

Seeing his friends going back to the orchard, Hereward burst into escalating, inconsolable sobs, so to Rupert’s relief, Etta took him off to bed. It would at least give her the chance to tone down her flushed face, she thought. Why must Rupert always catch her looking at her worst?

‘I should be going,’ said Rupert as Valent filled up his glass. ‘Is Trixie going to live here for ever?’

Valent shrugged. ‘You might have a word with your grandson – tell him not to hurt her, or get her up the duff. God help us.’

‘Only if you don’t indulge that colt too much.’

‘I’ll try, and I’ll give you all my contacts in China. You’ll find the Chinese polite but pretty arrogant and self-confident. “The future is ours” is implicit in everything. But they want us to accept their culture. Guard your phone with your life, or they’ll hack into it.’

‘What are the hotels like?’

‘Very good, they’ve really improved. Twenty years ago I found a cockroach trap in my bedroom.’

‘We could use one of those to catch Cosmo,’ said Rupert, draining his glass. ‘Christ, I hope we beat him. How are your Chinese lessons going?’

‘Well, I discovered “Ma”. Whichever way you pronounce it, it can mean “horse”, “mother”, “house” or “fuck off”.’

‘We’ll have to be careful when we start selling horses there, although I wouldn’t mind selling them my lazy cow of a mother-in-law.’

Coming downstairs, Etta found a laughing Rupert on the way out.

‘Very, very best luck with Leading Trainer and Leading Sire,’ she called after him.

But sadly it was not to be. Isa and Cosmo had a dazzling end to the season, winning every race on Champions Day at Ascot. This boosted Roberto’s Revenge’s progeny earnings so colossally, that neither Love Rat nor Peppy Koala were likely to catch him. As a result, Isa landed the Leading Trainer title in November and Roberto’s Revenge was odds on to land second place to the great Irish colossus, Verdi’s Requiem, in the Leading Sire contest at the end of the year.

Normally, Isa getting Leading Trainer and Roberto’s Revenge’s leap upwards would only appear in the racing press. But since Rupert and Cosmo were so inextricably linked – with Cosmo’s father marrying Rupert’s first wife, who had already eloped with Isa’s father Jake during the Los Angeles Olympics, and Isa briefly marrying Rupert’s daughter Tabitha, who was now married to Cosmo’s elder brother, Wolfe – the whole thing went viral.

Cosmo, taking to Facebook, had a field day, dismissing Rupert as a has-been who’d totally lost his touch and saying that Love Rat’s offspring were doing so badly, he should be taking Viagra, but he supposed Love Rats always left sinking shits like Rupert in the lurch.

Isa Lovell was more restrained but more hurtful when he tweeted that Rupert was failing because he no longer had Billy Lloyd-Foxe’s wisdom and encyclopaedic knowledge to rely on.

Almost worse, Roberto’s Revenge in his glossy dark-brown glory was featured on the cover of Weatherbys’ latest, incredibly prestigious stallion book.

Rupert didn’t react publicly, but privately went ballistic, particularly as he looked up at Rupert Black on Third Leopard. No one, however, could accuse him of a lack of courage. Such a humiliating defeat made him even more determined to crack Leading Sire next year.

So many things at home were annoying him. His father Eddie was driving him crackers. Last week, seeking out his beloved Love Rat, Eddie had left open the doors of three other stallions. And Eddie’s carer, Marjorie, was even more irritating, calling him by his Christian name every second sentence as she took him on a disgusting verbal tour of his father’s nether regions.

‘I’ve just toileted your father, Rupert, he’s had an excellent bowel motion, Rupert, enjoy the rest of your day, Rupert.’

Rupert was also fed up with Young Eddie, who was hellraising instead of learning to become a jump jockey. He and Old Eddie got into endless irritating silliness together, howling with laughter at porn on the internet. For Old Eddie’s eighty-sixth birthday, Young Eddie had plundered the local sex shop and returned with a lifesize rubber sheep, equipped with a hole in the bottom, and horns to cling on to. A totally captivated Old Eddie insisted on the sheep, whom he’d called Mildred, sleeping on his bed.

Multi-married Old Eddie had always been a groper. The reason he’d had to give up his very successful television programme,
Buffers
, was because he wouldn’t stop lunging at the female researchers and presenters. Unfortunately, on a golden autumn day towards the end of October, his daughter-in-law Taggie returned from shopping to find, to her horror, that Forester her greyhound, who suffered from separation anxiety, had shredded Old Eddie’s rubber sheep Mildred all over the drawing-room carpet.

Knowing how upset Eddie would be, Taggie was frantically gathering up Mildred’s remains when, wandering into the room, confronted by Taggie’s long, still-coltish legs and delectable bottom, Eddie shoved his hand up her crimson skirt,
pulling down her tights, as his fingers crept underneath her knickers.

Taggie’s shriek of surprised horror, when she realized it wasn’t Rupert, coincided with her husband coming in through the front door and catching his father crimson-handed. His bellow of rage had all the dogs, including Forester with his mouth full of shredded Mildred, rushing in from the kitchen, and Old Eddie scuttling upstairs.

‘That is the final straw, the filthy letch,’ roared Rupert.

‘No, no,’ pleaded Taggie, crimson as her skirt. ‘It’s OK, he’s sweet and always a bit odd when the moon’s full.’

‘He’s out of control. He’s going into a home tomorrow.’

‘He’d never get in – they’ve got a five-year waiting list.’

‘I took the precaution of booking him a place at Ashbourne House a year ago,’ said Rupert triumphantly.

‘We can’t, he’d hate it.’

Next moment there was another squawk, as Marjorie, Eddie’s whiskery carer, bustled in.

‘We’re busy,’ snapped Rupert.

‘Ay’m sorry, Taggie, Eddie has just put one hand up my skirt and fondled my breast with the other.’

‘Extraordinary how my father always goes for the same type,’ drawled Rupert. For a second his eyes met those of Taggie, who was trying not to laugh.

‘Ay’m afraid ay can’t tolerate that kaind of behaviour.’

‘You won’t have to any more,’ said Rupert. ‘My father’s going into a home.’

Marjorie’s face fell. No more Taggie’s cooking and a very pretty room, with Sky and her own microwave.

No more carers, thought Rupert ecstatically, and there was now no reason why Taggie, who had been looking desperately tired, couldn’t abandon Penscombe for a month and join him on a round trip to Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong and China.

Taggie, to his fury, refused. There was far too much to do at home, she said, particularly in the run up to Christmas; filling up the deep freeze for the office party, finding turkeys for the tenants and presents for staff and family.

She and Rupert parted, not friends.

The moment Rupert, Cathal, his Irish travelling Head Lad, who was in charge of the horses once they left the yard, his stable jockey Lion O’Connor, and two stable girls – sweet, smiling Lark who loved Young Eddie and horses, and ‘woluptuous, wolatile’ Marketa from the Czech Republic who loved the opposite sex and Safety Car – flew off to the Far East with six horses, the family, as if by telepathy, knowing the coast was clear, moved in.

Tabitha Rannaldini, Rupert’s daughter, and Caitlin, Taggie’s sister, claiming the need for more quality time with their husbands, dumped their children, dogs and nannies on Taggie. Janey Lloyd-Foxe immediately invited herself for Christmas because she was so sad, exhausted and missing Billy.

Taggie was further demoralized, being dyslexic, by her step-grandchild, Timon Rannaldini, calling her ‘a crap granny’ because she couldn’t read him a bedtime story. Even worse was Timon’s sister Sapphire announcing: ‘I think Daddy and Mummy are getting a devalse and Mummy says she, me and Timon will be coming back to live with you.’

Oh God, thought Taggie in terror, we’ve already got Young Eddie as a permanent fixture. At least with Marjorie gone, the chocolate biscuit consumption had plummeted.

Taggie’s withers had also been wrung by putting Old Eddie in the care home. Sewing nametapes on all his clothes was like sending a little boy off to prep school, particularly when he sobbed and sobbed, clung on to the banisters, wept all the way on the journey and even louder when she left him. Taggie felt so dreadful that she insisted on visiting him every day, which took up even more of her time.

On her tenth visit on a dank, grey November afternoon, she was passed going the other way down the drive by Brute Barraclough. Brute, the foul trainer who was so unkind to his darling wife Rosaria, but had no intention of leaving her because she did all the work and kept owners and horses sweet. Brute, the on-off lover of both Gav’s ex Bethany and Janey Lloyd-Foxe.

On arrival, Taggie was immediately summoned into the
office of Mrs Ramsey, the head of the home, who grumbled that she had just had to deal with Brute Barraclough who, discovering that someone’s rich old mother, Mrs Ford-Winters, was a resident, had dropped in and managed to sell her a horse called Geoffrey.

‘I’m not sure if she can afford it
and
our fees. You racing folk, Mrs Campbell-Black! And I’m afraid your father-in-law has been rather wayward.’

Old Eddie, it seemed, had been sliding his hand under too many tartan rugs.

‘And I don’t quite know how to say this, Mrs Campbell-Black, but in the afternoon your father-in-law’s been wandering round, slipping his penis into our lady residents’ mouths when they’re asleep in front of the television. There have been complaints.’

Taggie fought hysterical laughter and was tempted to suggest the lady residents took their teeth out.

‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Campbell-Black,’ Mrs Ramsey concluded, ‘but I’m afraid you’ll have to take your father-in-law back home.’

‘Oh please, can you keep him a day or two,’ begged Taggie, ‘while I sort something out?’ Oh God! Rupert would go berserk to have the house full of Treasures again. Nor had she told him that Helen, his ex-wife, as well as Janey, were angling to stay for Christmas. She couldn’t bother him when he was abroad concentrating on the horses and networking with rich Chinese.

For a second she thought how heavenly it would be if she could have gone with him or if their own children Bianca and Xav had been able to return from abroad for Christmas.

Quailing, she rang up Mrs Simmons at the carers’ agency, who asked if Taggie wanted Marjorie back. ‘She was very happy with you.’

‘Not really, so embarrassing when my father-in-law made a pass at her. Might be better to have someone a little younger.’

By luck, said Mrs Simmons, they had a white Zimbabwean called Gala Milburn.

‘She’s a widow of thirty-four, had rather a rough time, not
been long in this country but she’s a good cook and an excellent worker. We’ve had very good reports. She could be free in the run up to Christmas.’

In the year 2000, a land invasion had started in Zimbabwe when gangs of armed blacks, claiming to be veterans of Mugabe’s Liberation Army, began seizing white-owned land, shooting farmers in the face, battering them to death, assaulting and torturing to death any black workers who remained loyal, ransacking houses, burning tobacco barns, butchering pets and livestock, and riding Land Rovers for fun into herds of giraffe. Everywhere, mud huts sprang up on raped and ruined land.

Gala and Ben Milburn had had a beautiful farm, but as their land was near a mine containing precious minerals, including emeralds worth £300,000 each, they were not likely to be left alone. During a prolonged court case to keep the farm, Ben and Gala were endlessly harassed by veterans.

The day after they won their case, their farm was burnt to the ground. Ben, who was a passionate conservationist and who doubled up as a game warden, was away from home. He had been trying to curb the excesses of a Chinese mafia warlord, a Zixin Wang who, not content with stripping mines of their emeralds and diamonds, was also targeting rhino horn and elephant tusk worth £60,000 each.

In SAS-style operations, Mr Wang’s poacher gangs would load helicopters on to trucks so they needn’t log a flight-path. Armed with machine guns, they would then mow down rhinos
and elephants, hack off their horns and tusks, load these into the helicopters and fly them away.

Attempting to save a baby rhino whose mother had been gunned down, Ben was gunned down himself with fifty bullets in his body.

Gala, who’d been shopping, returned to discover at the smouldering farm that limbs had been hacked off their cows and horses, so they staggered around moaning on three legs, until she put them out of their misery by shooting them. Even more horrible, her adored Staffordshire Bull Terriers and Ben’s black Labrador, Wilson, had had their throats cut and been hung up on posts. Only then did Gala learn that Ben had been murdered – but she had no means of fighting back. If you take on the Chinese mafia in Zimbabwe, you’re dead in the (lack of) water.