Jilly Cooper - Appassionata

Red-hot pokers were gouging out Taggie’s brain, she was being bombed by massive cockroaches, the blades of the electric fan crept nearer and nearer like the Pit and the Pendulum. It was getting hotter by the minute, not a breath of wind moved the gum trees outside, the rains were expected any day.

In her more lucid moments, Taggie screamed for Bianca. ‘Don’t take her away, I hate you, I hate you.’ She was pummelling at Rupert’s chest.

Then at three in the morning, Colombian time, as he was changing her soaking nightgown, he thought he was hallucinating too, and that Taggie had turned into his first wife, Helen, whose slender body had been covered with freckles. Then he realized it was a rash, and was on to the hospital in a flash, yelling at them. Twenty minutes later, an old man arrived, yawning, with his suit over his pyjamas.

‘Just shut up and leave me alone with your wife.’

He was out in five minutes. He had given Taggie ajab to sedate her and curb the itching. When the blisters developed she would need calamine.

‘And you got me out of bed for this,’ he glared at Rupert.

‘What is it, for Christ’s sake?’

‘Virulitis.’

A little Spanish is a dangerous thing. Rupert went ashen.

‘Smallpox,’ he whispered. ‘Oh God, don’t let her die.’

‘Chicken pox,’ grunted the doctor.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite; pretty uncomfortable in older patients. Now keep her quiet and stop her scratching. Pity to spoil such a lovely face.’

Dizzy with relief, Rupert belted back to the bedroom, only to find Taggie sobbing her heart out.

‘Angel, you’re going to be OK.’ Rupert took her burning body in his arms. ‘But you mustn’t scratch.’

‘The doctor says I c-c-can’t see Bianca for a fortnight or go near the convent in case I give the babies chicken pox. They’ll think I’m not healthy enough to be a mother, they’ll give her to someone else. Oh Rupert, I can’t bear it.’

‘I’ll sit with her, I’ll go every day, I promise.’

Despite Sister Mercedes’ furious chuntering, Maria Immaculata was most understanding. Of course Rupert could take Taggie’s place. His was the side of the marriage of which she was unsure. It would be good to study him at close range.

As Sister Mercedes grimly predicted, Rupert caused havoc among the nuns. Anyone would have thought a high-ranking archangel, if not the Messiah, had rolled up as they made endless excuses to pop into the orphanage to gaze in wonder at this edgy, sunlit stranger, whose cold eyes were bluer than Mary’s robes, and whose hair brighter gold than any medieval fresco. He also appeared to be poring over endless medieval scrolls.

Soon pale lips were being reddened by geranium petals, habits bleached to new whiteness, eyelashes darkened by olive oil from the kitchen, and beards and moustaches disappearing for the first time in years. Even Maria Immaculata discreetly wafting Joy, insisted on giving Rupert religious instruction, while the parish priest, who was as gay as a Meadow Brown after summer rain, bicycled over to preach a fierce sermon on the vanity of vanities.

The medieval scrolls were, in fact, reports on Rupert’s racehorses, his television company, and his various enterprises faxed out to the Red Parrot from England.

Other faxes read more like an illiterate serial in a woman’s magazine as Lysander, Rupert’s jockey, who was even more dyslexic than Taggie, joyfully chronicled the escape of his great love, Kitty Rannaldini, from her fiendish husband’s clutches.

Kitty had evidently made her getaway on The Prince of Darkness, Rannaldini’s most valuable and vicious racehorse and managed to stay on his back until she reached Lysander’s cottage. The horse had carried on into the village and trampled all over the vicar’s crown imperials. Rannaldini, even more incensed than the vicar, had retreated to New York to take over the New World Symphony Orchestra, vowing vengeance.

‘and the besst news,’ wrote Lysander, ‘is that kittys having my baby in the ortum so Biacna will hav sum ass to kik. Sorry yoov got to babysitt at least yoo can OD on snow or dope, botaga is sposed to hav the best grarse in the werld.’

Aware of Sister Mercedes’ massive disapproving shadow blocking out his light, Rupert hastily scrumpled up the fax.

Despite being the object of every other nun’s adulation, Rupert often wondered how he endured those long days at the convent. There were only Sister Angelica and two novices to look after twenty babies in the orphanage, which was part of the old chapel and had high windows out of which you couldn’t see. The din was fearful and when the rains came, to the incessant crying of babies, was added a machine-gun rattle on the corrugated roof.

Rupert was also exhausted. Having come to the end of a punishing racing season, masterminded the entire trip to Bogotá and worried himself into a frazzle over Taggie’s illness, he was woken all through the night by calls from Tokyo, Kentucky and the Middle East. Like Bogotá, the bloodstock market never slept.

But, although Rupert ran one of the most successful National Hunt yards in the country, he was coming to the depressing conclusion that if he were going to beat Lloyd’s and the recession, keep the estate going and support all his children, including Bianca, he would have to switch to the flat full time. Rupert had always been a hands-on boss, but, as he gazed at the sleeping baby, he thought how nice it would have been if he could have started handing over the running of the estate to his son, Marcus. But Marcus was a wimp, only interested in playing the piano.

Bianca was very sweet, Rupert decided, and far prettier than the other babies, but she slept most of the day, and Rupert had finished his faxes by ten o’clock. With plenty of time on his hands, he soon noticed a nearby cot where an older child, with a terrible squint and a dark magenta birthmark down the side of his brown face, sat slumped, gazing at the white-washed wall, the picture of desolation. But when Rupert stretched out a hand to smooth back the child’s hopelessly matted hair, he cringed away in terror, whimpering like a kicked puppy.

‘Poor little sod, what happened to him?’

‘Beaten up and left for dead by his Indian parents,’ said Sister Angelica angrily. ‘They regard birthmark as sign of devil. We call him Xavier,’ she went on, ‘but it’s him who needs saving. He show no desire to walk or talk, the doctor think he’s seriously backwards.’

When Xavier was two, next month, he was destined for the state orphanage, which meant he’d almost certainly never be adopted.

‘Even then he’ll be lucky,’ Sister Angelica added bitterly. ‘All over Bogotá, you must have seen the posters, advertising funerals. Always the government have purges. In Chile, unwanted children are left to die in concrete bunker, here, they shoot any kid hanging round street, because it make the place untidy.’

Outside the convent, knee deep in mud, a little graveyard lurked like a crocodile. Rupert shivered and, noticing Sister Angelica had tears in her eyes, put an arm round her shoulder. Sister Angelica, who’d been plunging rose thorns into her flesh at night to curb her immoral thoughts about Rupert, jumped away, but not before a glowering Sister Mercedes appeared in the doorway.

‘You’re wanted in the kitchen, Sister.’

Rupert was so bored, he started playing with Xavier, bringing him toys and sweets. At first Xavier shrank from him, but gradually interest sparked in the boy’s hopelessly crossed eyes. The next thing was to improve Xav’s appearance. He shouldn’t be wearing girl’s clothes. Rupert returned next day with a blue checked shirt and blue jeans to replace the flowing white nightgown. It was then he realized how pitifully thin Xav was. The trousers, which had to be rolled up at the ankle, were meant for a one year old.

It took two hours, four tantrums and two bars of chocolate to untangle and wash his hair. The screams were so terrible that Rupert had to remove him from the dormitory. The novices were in raptures over Xav’s lustrous black curls. Sister Mercedes looked thunderous. She had spent her life in the prison of being ugly; what right had Rupert to raise Xavier’s hopes of escape?

The days slid by, the rains continued. They’d have to build an ark soon. Taggie made heroic efforts not to scratch her spots which were crusting over and beginning to drop off. Every night she bombarded Rupert with questions about Bianca, poring over the polaroids he brought her, but beyond telling her Bianca had drunk all her bottles, put on a couple of ounces, cooed and slept, there was little of interest to report. Instead, he found himself talking about Xav who was still shoving him away one moment, clinging and tearful the next.