Ricky thought that this assessment didn’t work if applied to Louis’s face. His very slight tan looked almost as if it had been laid on, imposing a spurious air of health over a rather dissipated foundation.
“I bought this lot in Acapulco eight years ago,” said Louis.
“I remember. From a dethroned prince who’d lost his all at the green baize tables,” said Julia.
“My recollection,” Carlotta said, “is of a déclassé gangster, but I may be wrong.”
Selina, who had been going through a short repertoire of exhibitionist antics ignored by her seniors, suddenly flung herself at Louis and hung from his wrist, doubling up her legs and shrieking affectedly.
“You little monster,” he said, “you’ve nearly torn off a button,” and examined his sleeve.
Selina walked away with a blank face.
Bruno said, “Do let’s get posed-up for Ricky and then take off for the stables.”
“Let’s be ultramondains,” Julia decided. She sank into a swinging chaise longue, dangled an elegantly breeched leg, and raised a drooping hand above her head.
Jasper raised it to his lips. “Madame is enchanting — nay irresistible—ce matin,” he said.
Selina stuck out her tongue.
Bruno, looking impatient, merely stood.
“Thank you,” said Ricky.
They piled into Louis’s car and drove to Leathers.
The avenue, a longish one, led to an ugly Victorian house and continued around the back into the stable yard, and beyond this to a barn at some distance from the other buildings. They followed the extension.
“Hush!” Julia said dramatically. “Listen! Louis, stop.”
“Why?” asked Louis, but stopped nevertheless.
Somewhere around the corner of the house a man was shouting.
“My dears!” said Julia. “Mr. Harkness in a rage again. How too awkward.”
“What should we do about it?” Carlotta asked. “Slink away or what?”
“Oh, nonsense,” Jasper said. “He may be ticking off a horse or even Mr. Jones for all we know.”
“Ricky says Mr. Jones is in London.”
“Was,” Ricky amended.
“Anyway, I refuse to be done out of our riding treat,” said Bruno. “Press on, Louis.”
“Be quiet, Bruno. Listen.”
Louis wound down the window. A female voice could be clearly heard.
“And if I want to bloody jump the bloody hedge, by God I’ll bloody jump it, I’ll jump it on Mungo, by God.”
“Anathema! Blasphemy!”
“Don’t you lay a hand on me: I’m pregnant,” bellowed Miss Harkness.
“Harlot!”
“Shut up.”
“Strumpet!”
“Stuff it.”
“Oh, do drive on, Louis,” said Carlotta crossly. “They’ll stop when they see us. It’s so boring, all this.”
Louis said, “It would be nice if people made up their minds.”
“We have. Press on.”
He drove into the stable yard.
The picture that presented itself was of a row of six loose-boxes, each with a horse’s bridled head looking out of the upper half, and flanked at one end by a tack room and at the other by an open coach house containing a small car, coils of old wire, discarded gear, tools, and empty sacks — all forming a background for a large red man with profuse whiskers towering over Miss Harkness, who faced him with a scowl of defiance.
“Lay a hand on me and I’ll call the police,” she threatened.
Mr. Harkness, for undoubtedly it was he, had his back to the car. Arrested, no doubt, by a sudden glaze that overspread his niece’s face, he turned and was transfixed.
His recovery was almost instantaneous. He strode toward them, all smiles.
“Morning, morning. All ready for you. Six of the best,” shouted Mr. Harkness. He opened car doors, offered a large freckled hand with ginger bristles, helped out the ladies, and, laughing merrily, piloted them across the yard.
“Dulcie’s got ’em lined up,” he said.
Julia beamed upon Mr. Harkness and, to his obvious bewilderment, gaily chided Miss Harkness for deserting them. He shouted: “Jones!”
Syd Jones slid out of the tack-room door and, with a sidelong scowl at Ricky, approached the loose-boxes.
Julia advanced upon him with extended hand. She explained to Mr. Harkness that she and Syd were old friends. It would be difficult to say which of the two men was the more embarrassed.
Syd led out the first horse, a sixteen-hand bay, and Mr. Harkness said he would give Jasper a handsome ride. Jasper mounted, collecting the bay and walking it around the yard. The others followed, Julia on a nice-looking gray mare. It was clear to Ricky that the Pharamonds were accomplished horse people. He himself was given an aged chestnut gelding who, Mr. Harkness said, still had plenty of go in him if handled sympathetically. Ricky walked and then jogged him around the yard in what he trusted was a sympathetic manner.
Bruno was mounted on a lively, fidgeting sorrel mare and was told she would carry twelve stone very prettily over the sticks. “You asked for a lively ride,” Mr. Harkness said to Bruno, “and you’ll get it. Think you’ll be up to her?”
Bruno said with dignity that he did think so. Clearly not averse to showing off a little, he rode out into the horse paddock where three hurdles had been set up. He put the sorrel at them and flew over very elegantly. Ricky, with misgivings, felt his mount tittupping under him. “You shut up,” he muttered to it. Julia, who had come alongside, leaned toward him, her face alive with entertainment.
“Ricky!” she said, “are you feeling precarious?”
“Precarious!” he shouted, “I’m terror-stricken. And now you’re going to laugh at me,” he added, hearing the preliminary splutter.
“If you fall off, I’ll try not to. But you’re sitting him like a rock.”
“Not true, alas.”
“Nearly true. Good God! He’s at it again!”
Mr. Harkness had broken out into the familiar roar, but this time his target was Bruno. The horse paddock sloped downhill toward a field from which it was separated by a dense and pretty high blackthorn hedge. Bruno had turned the sorrel to face a gap in the hedge and the creature, Ricky saw, was going through the mettlesome antics that manifest an equine desire to jump over something.
“No, stop! You can’t! Here! Come back!” Mr. Harkness roared. And to Jasper: “Call that kid back. He’ll break his neck. He’ll ruin the mare. Stop him!”
The Pharamonds shouted but Bruno dug in his heels and put the sorrel at the gap. It rose, its quarters flashed up, it was gone and there was no time, or a lifetime, before they heard an earthy thump and a diminishing thud of hooves.
Mr. Harkness was running down the horse paddock. Jasper had ridden past him when, on the slope beyond the hedge, Bruno appeared, checking his dancing mount. Farther away, on the hillside, a solitary horse reared, plunged, and galloped idiotically up and down a distant hedge. Ricky thought he recognized the wall-eyed Mungo.
Bruno waved, vaingloriously.
Julia had ridden alongside Ricky. “Horrid, showing-off little brute,” said Julia. “Wait till I get at him.” And she began shakily to laugh.
Mr. Harkness bawled infuriated directions to Bruno about how to rejoin them by way of gates and a lane. The Pharamonds collected round Julia and Ricky.
“I am ashamed of Bruno,” said Jasper.
“What’s it like,” Carlotta asked, “on the other side?”
“A sheer drop to an extremely deep and impossibly wide ditch. The mare’s all Harkness said she was to clear it.”
“Bruno’s good, though,” said Julia.
“He’s given you a fright and he’s shown like a mountebank.”
Julia said: “Never mind!” and leaned along her horse’s neck to touch her husband’s hand. Ricky suddenly felt quite desolate.
The Pharamonds waited ominously for the return of the errant Bruno while Mr. Harkness enlarged upon the prowess of Sorrel Lass, which was the stable name of the talented mare. He also issued a number of dark hints as to what steps he would have taken if she had broken a leg and had to be destroyed.