Well Groomed (12 page)

Whereas Sophia had been James’s favourite, Tash was something of an embarrassment to him. She in turn had always been perfectly warm and polite to Henrietta, but there was a rather unflattering lack of interest emanating from West Berkshire towards Tash’s childhood home east of Bracknell. Unlike Sophia, Tash never telephoned for a chat or invited her father’s new family over for a day in Fosbourne Ducis. Nor did she ever let them know where she would be eventing so that they could troop out to support her (not that James would really entertain the idea), or let slip any pieces of film gossip she had picked up through Niall. Henrietta, who was somewhat star-struck by Niall (at thirty-six he was closer to her forty years, after all, than Tash’s twenty-seven), found this last negligence particularly galling.

When Henrietta’s younger daughter, Beccy, had announced her intention to enter eventing professionally, Henrietta had braced herself nervously and telephoned Tash to ask her for lunch, adding that she’d really appreciate it if Tash could give some advice to Beccy. Tash had apologised profusely, but explained that it was the middle of the season and she simply hadn’t the time.

Henrietta had felt absurdly snubbed.

The resentment had, to Henrietta’s shame, been allowed to brood and bubble over the past six months, to the point where she now positively disliked Tash.

To add further to Henrietta’s discomfort, the first two weeks of the new year brought a little flurry of postcards from Alexandra. It seemed to be one of James’s first wife’s favoured means of communication; a three-line scribble jotted on the back of a picture of the Loire Valley would arrive just a day after a single line jotted on a Mondrian print; the next day a reproduced watercolour of a wine bottle would be hiding in the Frenches’ post box along with the usual credit card bills and circulars.

After a very bad financial slump in the mid nineties, James’s finance company was at last out of the red and starting to fight its way back into competition with its larger rivals. But they were still extremely cautious with money. Many of the luxuries that Henrietta had delighted in when first married had now gone – the flashy cars, first-class flights, three-week holidays, designer clothes and weekends away. Henrietta’s girls still went to fee-paying schools, but this was more to do with an investment fund which Henrietta’s late father had set up than any contribution from James. He begrudgingly helped finance Beccy’s eventing hopes, but had it been Emily who wanted to pursue the sport, Henrietta suspected it would have been different. However hard she tried to balance things out, it was clear to all that the relationship between James and his younger step-daughter was far healthier than that with Henrietta’s troublesome elder.

Even today, Henrietta had spent most of the morning trying to locate Emily and her boyfriend, Six Pack, who had still not re-emerged from a raucous New Year party in Devon. That morning, three of their mutual friends had poled up the drive clutching ruck-sacks, claiming that they had been invited to stay for the weekend, a plan of which Henrietta had not even been warned let alone asked for permission. Lumping around the house in their slightly embarrassed, messy student way, they got under her feet and kept feeding crisps to the dogs. Henrietta found them very polite but extremely difficult to accommodate.

Consequently when the phone rang, she snatched it off the hook and reeled out the number with unaccustomed abruptness.

There was a short, confused pause at the other end before a soft, tentative voice spoke.

‘Henrietta?’

‘Yes,’ she snapped, watching as one of the lolling students ambled over to the fridge and brazenly removed three cans of beer, nodding at her amiably.

‘It’s Niall here – Tash’s Niall.’

Despite the miles of telephone cable separating them, Henrietta blushed as though given an unexpected peck on the cheek by Imran Khan.

‘Niall!’ She inched her way out of sight of the students. ‘How lovely to hear from you. How are you?’

‘Fine – a bit stressed,’ he apologised. ‘I’m just about to set out to the airport.’

‘Are you heading to Scotland already?’ Henrietta knew that he was due to start shooting some epic ‘Celtic history’ movie in the Highlands soon, a fact she had gleaned from Sophia, not Tash.

‘America,’ Niall explained. ‘Just for two days. Listen, Tash asked me to call.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Henrietta would have felt it rather rude that Tash couldn’t bring herself to call personally were it not for the fact that she was talking to a far preferable deputy.

‘She’s had to dash to meet the vet – one of her horses has a bad tendon that’s gone puffy or something. Listen, are you free on the third Saturday in February? I forget the exact date.’

‘Think so.’ Henrietta was blushing more and more deeply. The sound of his voice was infuriatingly unsettling – deep, mellifluous and lilting; it should really only be allowed loose on the phone network after the nine o’clock watershed.

‘Well, it’s my one free weekend in England, so it is. Can you come over here for lunch? We’ve a great local restaurant I can book us into.’

Henrietta thought briefly and guiltily about a charity committee meeting she had arranged for that day, and then, mentally concocting a whopping lie about one of the girl’s having ’flu as an excuse, said that of course she’d be delighted to go.

After she had arranged the time and directions, Henrietta rang off and danced around the flagstone lobby. Then, to the astonishment of the students, she offered them all enormous gin and tonics.

‘Everyone’s so madly in love with Niall,’ Tash grumbled to Zoe the next day. ‘It’s not fair. Either they envy me like mad, or they simply don’t think I’m good enough for him, or they smile that secret smile that says they’re certain it won’t last. Hardly anyone’s congratulated me yet.’

‘I have.’

‘Only after questioning whether I was doing the right thing. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much how everyone has reacted.’

Zoe placed their requisite strong black coffees on the table and settled in front of her before speaking, kind blue eyes drinking her in. ‘It’s only because we love you both and care about you both and know how hopelessly harebrained you both are. We just want to know that you’re not both doing it because you’re being pressurised into it.’

‘Of course we’re being pressurised into it,’ Tash sighed. ‘But the whole point is that neither of us mind – we’re used to being bullied into things, it’s the only way either of us knows how to live.’

She glanced at her watch. It was still before seven and hollow with icy darkness outside. She’d spent most of the night awake as she always did when Niall had just gone away, plus she had been worrying about Hunk who was still not trotting out levelly and looked likely to be out of action for the first few weeks of the year.

‘Kirsty not up yet?’ she yawned.

‘Not back actually.’ Zoe raised a blonde eyebrow. ‘Sneaked off for a session at stud last night and clearly can’t walk straight enough to get back here.’

Tash winced. ‘Hugo’s such a sod.’ She shook her head. ‘I thought Richie was coming out here in a couple of weeks?’

Richie was Kirsty’s boyfriend from Australia. None of the occupants of Lime Tree Farm had met him yet, but photos of his butch, bull-necked person littered every surface and pin-board, more often than not featuring a girder-thick hairy arm draped around Kirsty’s slender shoulders. When she had first arrived back in England, Kirsty’s every sentence had been prefixed with ‘Richie thinks’ or ‘Richie says’. Nowadays it was more often ‘Hugo thinks’.

‘My guess is there’ll be fireworks when he does stagger off the red eye, poor chap.’ Zoe scratched her chin unhappily at the prospect. Outside they could hear Penny telling Ted off for smoking a fag in the hay-barn. He complained loudly that it was the only way to keep warm.

‘Do you think Hugo’ll kick up a stink then?’

She shook her head. ‘More likely Kirsty will. She’s far more in love with Hugo than she wants to admit. Hugo being Hugo, he’ll just get a kick out of the whole secrecy thing. It’s Kirsty who’ll crack under the strain.’

‘Poor Richie.’

‘Sounds like a prize idiot to me.’ Zoe stood up to fetch her toast which had just popped out of the rusty toaster and on to the plate drainer. ‘If he hasn’t guessed what’s going on then he must be pretty thick. Rumour has it Kirsty hardly saw him over Christmas. Too busy sloping off to meet up with Hugo in the bush or something.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Penny heard it from Ted who heard it from Franny.’

‘The bird in the bush telegraph then.’

Outside, Gus was leading out one of the horses to turn it out into the floodlit menage for a roll. They could hear its hooves sliding over the frozen cobbles, and Penny warning him that the sand in the menage was as hard as rock.

‘How did Hugo take the news of your engagement?’ Zoe asked lightly.

‘Fine.’ Tash shrugged. ‘He just said: “I always thought you were a star-fucker, Tash, but I never had you down as the marrying type. How extraordinary.” He’s got a bet on with Stefan that it’ll last less than six months. Stefan bet ten – but that’s allowing for divorce proceedings.’

Stefan Johanssen was Hugo’s unnaturally tall, hell-raising Swedish working pupil who was only marginally more morally principled than his boss.

Zoe started to laugh, but shut up as soon as she saw Tash’s face.

‘Do you think we’ll last?’ Tash asked worriedly.

Zoe stretched across to squeeze her hand, which was still icy cold from working outside. ‘Of course you will, if you work at it and want it enough.’

Tash looked reassured, and pulled a face at Enid, who was lurking under the table and eyeing her nervously.

Zoe wished she could feel as sure as her words. As Tash heaved herself back up to resume work, pulling on that awful, ancient Puffa which looked as though a dog had slept on it for years, she could feel herself gradually filling up to the scalp with the icy chill of apprehension. She knew in her heart that she should have told Tash the truth; told her that no, she didn’t think she and Niall had a cat in hell’s chance – even given all of its nine lives.

But as she watched Tash gather up a sleeping Beetroot from Enid’s bed and wander happily outside, she knew that as ever she had pandered to Tash’s fragile self-confidence and told her a comforting lie. She just hoped that she’d be proved wrong about this one.

Most of the yard’s horses were being clipped that day, a long, tedious job that required everyone to take a turn. It was the second major clip of the winter, which meant that the horses took to the unfamiliar buzzing of the electric blades more easily than they had in the autumn, and that the lines left from their previous clip still stood out on their coats as a guide. Tash, who was a notoriously asymmetric stylist, was grateful for them as she started on Gus’s lazy old bay gelding, Fashion Victim, a gangly thoroughbred with a drooping lower lip and eyes that never fully opened, like a dope-smoking hippie. With one hind hoof propped up on its rim, he stood stock still throughout, looking like a bored hooker waiting on a pavement when trade was slow.

Clipping Snob, however, was a different matter. A thin-coated Selle Français with twitching skin and a brutal temper, he required the lightest of clips, but this took all of an hour and a half with both India and Ted clinging on to him for dear life as Tash tried to get anywhere near with the humming blades. His dark eyes rolling, red nostrils fluted and hooves stamping like a flamenco dancer in a sulk, he wasn’t frightened so much as determined to have some fun and make them work hard.

‘Can’t we dope him?’ Ted groaned as he was bitten for the third time.

Poor, injured Hunk was missing out on the fun as – confined to his stable all winter beneath a swathe of rugs – he didn’t need another trim; his coat was still short enough to last through until spring. Pulling bored faces and whinnying for attention, he watched as his stable mate cavorted around causing bedlam.

Tash was puce in the face and utterly exhausted by the time she’d finished. Waiting for the clippers to cool, she heard a loud revving in the lane and, moments later, Kirsty was wandering up the pitted drive, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder and two tired bags slung under her baby blue eyes. Her red hair was looking uncharacteristically tousled and three of her shirt buttons were undone, displaying a lot of bouncy freckled cleavage and no bra. Her face was still flushed from the heating inside Hugo’s car.

‘You clipping?’ she called out as she wandered past. ‘Could you make a start on Betty for me, Tash? I’ll take over when I’ve had a shower. Thanks, hen.’ She tottered inside.

‘Lazy cow,’ Ted commiserated, heading towards Betty Blue’s box. Kirsty’s scatty, steel-grey mare was already looking goggle-eyed with trepidation as she backed away from the half-door over which she had recently been admiring Snob’s antics.

Unable to face another battle, Tash told Ted to take a break and they headed through to the tack room to brew up a pot of tea.

‘That woman has such a cheek.’ Ted whistled as Tash filled the kettle at the chipped enamel sink. ‘She’s hardly ever here before eleven these days. I’m amazed Gus doesn’t fire her.’

‘She’s the only one around here with any sponsorship,’ Tash sighed. ‘He can’t afford to.’

‘Can’t you get Niall to sponsor you?’ Ted gave her a cheeky look, his broken nose wrinkling thoughtfully. ‘He must be worth a packet.’

But Tash shook her head. ‘His divorce settlement was diabolical – his first wife was practically bankrupt when they settled, so she gets half of everything he earns.’

She winced at the memory. Although married formally in a Catholic church in England, Niall and Lisette O’Shaughnessy had in fact been married first at a drive-in chapel in America. Both had seen it as a private joke at the time. When Lisette chose to divorce him in the States instead of England, however, she was not just after the favourable exchange rate – she knew that she could claim for maintenance, which as a childless woman she would undoubtedly have been refused on the other side of the pond. With one of the best divorce lawyers on her side, she took Niall apart. Desperate to get things over with quickly, Niall had allowed Lisette to divorce him on the grounds of his adultery, even though she had left him for another man long before he met Tash. At the time he’d said he was happy for her to take every penny he earned so long as he was rid of her. She’d walked away with a Lottery winner’s smile on her face.