Well Groomed (77 page)

The television crew consisted of a bored-looking cameraman with scurf-scattered shoulders, and a balding sound recordist wearing headphones over his pate and waggling a furry microphone around. Lurking behind them was a despotic BBC sports producer called Paul who was wearing a baseball cap and a Pringle sweater and yakked into his mobile phone almost incessantly. He kept grumbling that horses were absolutely not his thing, and he gave anything with four legs – including the dogs – a wide berth, his sunburned nose wrinkling.

‘Is this going to take long? Only I’m due at the vets’ inspection soon,’ Hugo snapped. He was looking extremely dashing, if crabby, in a cream waistcoat and navy cords, Tash noticed. She wished she’d made more effort for the earlier inspection instead of borrowing Penny’s rather worn navy blazer and dragging her hair into a messy ponytail. She looked like a student with a vast overdraft at her first job interview. No wonder he was practically ignoring her at the moment. She determined to make a real effort to smarten up for the rest of the week.

At first, Paul wanted Tash and Hugo to be standing on either side of Snob during the interview, but the chestnut took an instant dislike both to Paul’s hat and to the sound recordist’s furry microphone, looking in imminent danger of demolishing both with his paddling hooves as he reared up, with Tash struggling to keep a grip on him. He was quickly reinstalled in his box and it was decided to interview them with Tash sitting on a bale of straw whilst Hugo stood behind her with his foot resting on the bale in romantic hero pose. The stance was extremely artificial and Julia raised her eyes to heaven in sympathy.

‘Raymond Brooks Ward would never have stood for this,’ she groaned, adjusting the alice band in her short blonde hair and wiping the moisture from her forehead. ‘Still, I need the cash. Right, let’s get cracking.’ She waited for a nod from the camera-man, did a short spiel to camera, and then turned to them with a big smile. ‘Hugo, I was so sorry, as I’m sure all our viewers were, to hear of the tragic death of your great horse Bodybuilder last weekend. How are you feeling about that now?’

Behind her, Tash could feel Hugo’s foot digging into the straw as he tensed.

‘Not great,’ he admitted. ‘He was a terrific horse – perhaps the best I’ve ever had. He was so clever, he could tackle a fence from any direction off any leg at practically any speed. I adored him, and I’m cut to ribbons that he’s gone – I’d be a liar to pretend otherwise.’

That’ll get them right where it hurts, Tash realised. The gruff, drawling voice just tinged with sadness would have teenage girls and old age pensioners weeping countrywide when this was aired.

‘And with the loss of Bod, you weren’t expecting to come here at all, I gather?’

‘Nope, I was planning my first weekend at home this season.’ His foot was starting to dig into the small of Tash’s back now. ‘Which is rather bad timing as my house is being invaded by film crews at the moment.’

Choosing not to pick up on this, Julia pressed on. Behind her Brian Sedgewick’s groom, Ursula, had wandered into shot without realising and was now trying to edge her way out again, looking wildly self-conscious. Watching her shuffling sideways like a prime prat, Tash started to giggle.

‘But you had other ideas, didn’t you, Tash?’

Suddenly realising that the furry microphone was being waggled at her, Tash found her tongue was intent on counting her teeth one by one.

‘Yes,’ she managed to splutter.

Julia smiled kindly, waiting for more. Behind her, Ursula, blushing furiously, fell over a bucket with a loud clatter. Tash felt her face straining and twitching under the pressure not to laugh. Hugo gave her back a sharp prod with his foot but her chest was starting to heave now and hiccups of laughter were bubbling up in her throat so she kept her mouth glued closed as though sucking a fizzy sweet.

‘Can you tell us what happened?’ Julia prompted hopefully.

‘I – er – I—’ Tash had to shut her mouth again as her voice warbled towards the giggles.

‘Tash very generously offered me the ride on one of her top horses, Foxy Snob,’ Hugo cut in smoothly. ‘He’s a brilliant but very difficult horse who tends to drag a rider around a course, as many followers of the sport will know. Tash felt a change of rider at this stage might get Snob on his toes again and, as I was suddenly without a horse, she offered him to me. I’m just hoping I can give her and Niall the best wedding present ever and win Badminton for them this year.’ His foot ground its way towards one of Tash’s kidneys and she winced.

Giving Tash a very sly wink, Julia turned back to the camera again.

‘Of course as most of you out there who read the gossip columns will know, Tash is marrying the actor Niall O’Shaughnessy a week on Saturday. Despite this, she’s bravely riding around the toughest course in the country on her second horse Hunky Drunk on Saturday. Tell me, Tash, are you more nervous about that, or about marrying every woman’s dream man?’

Tash’s giggles instantly evaporated as the scurfy cameraman panned into her face in sharp close-up.

‘Mmmm . . .’ She started to cough. ‘Both really.’

‘And can we expect the gorgeous Niall to come and support you this weekend?’ Julia looked girlish.

‘He’s – er – busy filming.’

‘What a shame! I bet he’s at the end of a phone all the time, hoping that you don’t do yourself an injury this weekend and ruin the big day?’

Tash coughed. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time in this sport that a bride went up the aisle with the aid of crotches – I mean, crutches,’ she fumbled nervously. ‘In fact, I might need a stretcher to get me up there, as the saying goes.’ She wasn’t sure that the saying did go like that, but anyway.

Julia’s pale blue eyes were widening with surprise and she gave a nervous laugh. ‘Quite. So you’ll be in the unique position this weekend of competing against one of your own horses?’

‘Yes.’ Tash decided to settle for her old favourite answer again. Her more inventive one clearly hadn’t gone down too well.

‘Won’t that be odd?’

‘No.’

‘So you’ve done it before?’

‘Yes.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, no. I mean, in the yard where I’m based we swap around horses quite a lot, so you find that the one you were working with the week earlier is with another member of the team the next week. Quite often it means I compete against a horse I’ve schooled myself. We often change our mind about which horse suits which rider best at a late stage. Like men, really!’ she gulped.

‘I see.’ Julia turned to the producer. ‘We’ll do that bit again, shall we?’

He shrugged. ‘Scrap the lot for all I care – it was dismal. I wanted to be at Silverstone this weekend. Let’s get a shot of the nag now. Which one is it?’ They wandered towards Snob who was being pacified by India with a carrot while Jenny plaited him for the inspection panel. The producer’s eyes lit up.

‘Let’s have a few shots of the horse and his young groom, shall we?’ he suggested excitedly, taking in the length of India’s legs.

‘India’s not actually looking after him this weekend,’ Tash explained, following them. ‘Jenny’s his groom.’

‘It’s all right, darling, we won’t need you for this bit.’ Paul waved a dismissive hand over his shoulder.

Tash melted away.

For the ensuing half-hour Paul presided with meticulous care over the shooting of India from every conceivable angle – leading Snob across the yard, feeding Snob a Polo mint, putting his bridle on, taking his saddle off, lifting his leg and dropping his girth. It was a dangerous escapade – Snob was notoriously evil in the stable – and she was rather embarrassed throughout, but Paul was enchanted.

Finally, Hugo insisted on dragging the horse away for the vets’ inspection. After that, Paul even had the gall to suggest that India carry on the shoot with another similar-looking horse, but thankfully Julia put a stop to it.

‘You might not be able to tell them apart, chum,’ she smiled her delightfully disarming smile, ‘but most of the viewers will – it’s like sports presenters: Des Lynam and Jimmy Hill look one and the same to a BBC2 arts viewer, and horses look the same to a suburban golf-fanatic, but not to the eventing fans. Now we
must
interview Lucy Field – you’ll love her. She’s pretty.’

Tash sloped off to watch Snob fly through the vets’ inspection, so obviously fit to run that he almost dragged Hugo into the crowd. He came away grinning broadly.

‘I am going to have to pin you down soon and grill you for fitness training techniques,’ he told Tash as he waited for the inevitable ‘passed’ to bark out over the senior steward’s megaphone. ‘This horse is like Linford Christie on the blocks.’

Despite herself, Tash felt her shoulders straighten with pride.

But after that he vanished like the shop-keeper in Mr Ben, leaving Jenny clinging on to Snob’s bobbing pink nose. It was becoming something of a habit of Hugo’s. Apart from their dreadful interview together, Tash had hardly seen him.

‘Sloping off to make telephone calls to a bloody girlfriend, I’ll bet,’ Kirsty sniped, blowing her red hair out of her eyes. ‘Stefan says he’s madly into someone at the moment. He’s been yakking away into that mobile all day. You think you can go the straight route on the Three Scythes?’

Shrugging, Tash chewed her lip and wondered to whom exactly Hugo had been yakking. She’d noticed him sloping off to make phone calls too – he was like a businessman constantly checking on his shares as though he knew Black Wednesday was approaching.

‘Hunk won’t make that last bounce,’ Kirsty told her calmly. ‘He’s no’ got enough impetus to go through with it.’

‘Neither have I.’ Tash went off, not thinking about the Scythes at all.

But later, in the Lime Tree lorry with Penny, she knocked back a scotch-laced coffee and tried not to shake.

‘It’s too big and scary,’ she gulped. ‘I can’t do it, I simply can’t.’

‘Everyone says that their first time,’ Penny dismissed her. ‘Like weddings – you’ll be saying that to Niall this time next week.’ She lifted her chin, raised her eyebrows and all but held up a large question mark on a flash card.

Tash made a sort of nervy, noncommittal squashed hamster noise. Right now she was battling to get to grips with the notion of tomorrow. Next week was far too much for her head to take in.

The next morning, Tash guzzled a vast fried breakfast in the Badminton kitchens – a temporary cafeteria set up in the house’s old servants’ hall. Twenty minutes later she was throwing it all up again. An hour later and what was left was frantic to come out of the other end.

‘Is that what they call the Badminton trots?’ she asked Gus weakly as she staggered out of the loo cubicle, bleach-faced.

‘You’ve only got collected trots right now.’ He looked up from the
Mail
and peered at her over his half-moons. ‘Tomorrow night is extended trots. Penny’s got a Valium somewhere if you want one.’

‘No, thanks.’ Tash shuddered. ‘I don’t want to perform my test high on drugs. I’ll end up doing more than a half-pass at the judges.’

Despite demons of terror on her back, she managed a fairly respectable dressage test on Hunk, finishing the day in fifth place. But with many of the top competitors – including Gus, Stefan and Hugo – performing their dressage tests the next day, she knew she wouldn’t stay there for long. The wait would play havoc with her already turbulent gastric system and she deeply regretted her early draw. Yet it did have its benefits . . .

Thursday night was the official cocktail party at Badminton House – a very august couple of hours swigging champagne cocktails with all the senior stewards and event organisers in the grandest of settings before traditionally heading off to a local pub to unwind. For those competitors still to attempt the dressage it was a tense, abstemious affair, but for those – like Tash – who had already circumnavigated the dreaded rectangle, it was a time to unwind briefly, get slightly tight and let rip.

She made a concerted effort to dress up for Hugo, spending hours over her outfit and make-up until she was convinced she looked pretty knock-out, but he barely looked in her direction all night. Every time she worked her way across the room to get closer to him, he seemed to work his way in the opposite direction. She even started to test her theory by trying out the sly tactic of darting behind people and slowly creeping up on him until, at the last moment, she could pop up within a couple of feet and feign surprise at bumping into him again.

The main topic of conversation with everyone she spoke to was inevitably her wedding.

Despite his dodging technique, Hugo was a fateful few yards away when Tash finally put the spot-changing leopard among the pigeons by stopping the dashing Duke himself in his tracks with a fateful one-liner. When he politely asked her whether she was looking forward to her well-publicised wedding, she scrunched up her face thoughtfully and – several champagne cocktails up – gave him a rather loon-on-acid smile.

‘It’s very good of you to ask, Your Grace, but I’m still not certain whether to run at that particular event as the going’s a bit too rough. Excuse me.’

She fled to the stables after that, frightening several of the security staff who demanded to see her wrist band and know what she was doing.

‘I’ve come to see my horse,’ she announced rather hysterically. ‘I always talk to him the night before a major competition. I have to give him some vital last-minute advice.’

Shrugging, they took in the short, bias-cut silk dress and the dishevelled hair and let her through, keeping a close eye on her – or rather her bottom – as she headed straight for Snob’s box to cry into his red, unsympathetic neck for a few minutes; he was more interested in searching for her pockets and, finding that there were none, was eager to boot her out of his sleeping space and settle down for the night.

‘Do me a favour and buck Hugo off tomorrow?’ Tash breathed into his twitching ear before leaving him in peace, giving Hunk a kiss as she passed.