“Don’t forget to put ‘Ms.’ on the envelope,” said Billy.

“Marion even got me a book of quotations,” said Rupert, extracting a couple of sheets of hotel writing paper from the leather folder in the chest of drawers. “Now, ought I to address her as Dear or Dearest?”

“You ‘darling’ her all the time when you’re with her.”

“Don’t want to compromise myself on paper.” Rupert picked up the quote book. “I’ll bloody outquote her. Let’s look up Helen.” He ran his fingers down the Index. “Helen, here we are, ‘I wish I knew where Helen lies,’ not with me, unfortunately. ‘Sweet Helen make me immortal with a kiss.’ That’s not going nearly far enough.”

“Are you going to buy Con O’Hara’s chestnut?” asked Billy, who was trying to cut the nails on his right hand.

“Not for the price he’s asking. It’s got a terrible stop. ‘Helen thy beauty is to me.’ That sounds more promising.” He flipped over the pages to find the reference. “ ‘Helen thy beauty is to me…Hyacinth hair.’ Hyacinths are pink and blue, not hair-colored. Christ, these poets get away with murder.”

“Why don’t you just say you’re missing her?” asked Billy reasonably.

“That’s what she wants to hear. If I could only bed her, I could forget about her.”

“Sensible girl,” said Billy, “Knows if she gives in she’ll lose you. Hardly blame her. You haven’t exactly got a reputation for fidelity.”

“I have,” said Rupert, outraged. “I was faithful to Bianca for at least two months.”

“While having Marion on the side.”

“Grooms don’t count. They simply exist for the recreation of the rider. Helen’s not even my type if you analyze her feature by feature. Her clothes are terrible. Like all American women, she always wears trousers, or pants, as she so delightfully calls them, two sizes too big.”

“Methinks the laddy does protest too much. Why don’t you pack her in?”

“I’m buggered if I’ll give up so easily. I’ve never not got anyone I really wanted.”

“What about that nun in Rome?” said Billy, who was lighting a cigarette.

“Nuns don’t count.”

“Like grooms, I suppose.”

“ ‘Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss,’ ” read Rupert. “ ‘Her lips suck forth my soul. Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.’ ”

“That’s a bit strong,” said Billy. “Who wrote that?”

“Chap called Marlowe. Anyway it’s not my soul I want her to suck.”

Billy started to laugh and choked on his cigarette.

Rupert looked at him beadily. “Honestly, William, I don’t know why you don’t empty the entire packet of cigarettes onto a plate and eat them with a knife and fork. You ought to cut down.” He returned to the quote book. “This bit’s better: ‘Thou art fairer than the evening air, clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.’ That’s very pretty. Reminds me of Penscombe on a clear night.” He wrote it down in his flamboyant royal blue scrawl, practically taking up half the page.

“That’ll wow her. Anyway, I should be able to pull her in Lucerne. She’s coming out for a whole week.”

“D’you know what I think?” said Billy.

“Not until you tell me.”

“Unlike most of the girls you’ve run around with, Helen’s serious. She’s absolutely crazy about you, genuinely in love, and she won’t sleep with you not because she wants to trap you, but because she believes it’s wrong. She’s a middle-class American girl and they’re very, very respectable.”

“You reckon she’s crazy about me?”

“I reckon. Christ, Rupe, you’re actually blushing.”

Rupert soon recovered.

“What are we going to do this evening?” he asked.

“Go to bed early and no booze, according to Malise. We’ve got a Nations’ Cup tomorrow.”

“Sod that,” said Rupert, putting his letter into an envelope. “There’s a stunning girl who’s come out from The Tatler to cover the — er — social side of show jumping. I would not mind covering her. I thought we could show her Paris.”

“Sure,” sighed Billy, “and she’s brought a dog of a female photographer with her, and guess who’ll end up with her? I wish to Christ Malise would pick Lavinia for Lucerne.”

“Not while he’s imposing all this Kraut discipline and trying to keep his squad pure, he won’t,” said Rupert. He looked at his watch. “We’ve got three hours.”

“I’m going to give The Bull a workout.”

“Tracey can do that. Let’s go and spend an hour at the Louvre.”

After a couple of good classes in which they were both placed, Rupert and Billy felt like celebrating. Pretending to go to bed dutifully at eleven o’clock, they waited half an hour, then crept out down the back stairs, aided by a chambermaid. It was unfortunate that Malise, getting up very early to explore Paris, caught Rupert coming out of the Tatler girl’s bedroom.

In the Nations’ Cup later in the day Rupert jumped appallingly and had over twenty faults in each round. In the evening Malise called him to his room and gave him the worst dressing-down of his life. Rupert was irresponsible, insubordinate, undisciplined, a disruptive influence on the team, and a disgrace to his country.

“And what’s more,” thundered Malise, “I’m not having you back in the team until you’ve learnt to behave yourself.”

Helen sat in the London Library checking the quotations in a manuscript on Disraeli before sending it to press. Goodness, authors are inaccurate! This one got everything wrong: changing words, leaving out huge chunks, paraphrasing long paragraphs to suit his argument. All the same, she was glad to be out of the office. Nigel, having recently discovered she was going out with Rupert, made her life a misery, saying awful things about him all the time. In the middle of a heatwave, the London Library was one of the coolest places in the West End. Helen was always inspired, too, by the air of cloistered quiet and erudition. Those rows and rows of wonderful books, and the photographs of famous writers on the stairs: T. S. Eliot, Harold Nicolson, Rudyard Kipling. One day, if she persevered with her novel, she might join them.

Being a great writer, however, didn’t seem nearly as important at the moment as seeing Rupert again. She hadn’t heard from him for a fortnight, not a telephone call nor a letter. Next Monday she was supposed to be flying out to Lucerne to spend a week with him, and it was already Wednesday. She’d asked for the week off and she knew how Nigel would sneer if she suddenly announced she wouldn’t be going after all. And if he did ring, and she did go, wasn’t she compromising herself? Would she be able to hold him off in all that heady Swiss air? God, life was difficult. A bluebottle was bashing abortively against the windowpane. At a nearby desk a horrible old man, sweating in a check wool suit, with eyebrows as big as mustaches, was leering at her. Suddenly she hated academics, beastly goaty things with inflated ideas of their own sex appeal, like Nigel and Paul, and even Harold Mountjoy. She wanted to get out and live her life; she was trapped like that bluebottle.

“Have you any books on copulation?” said a voice.

“I’m afraid I don’t work here,” said Helen. Then she started violently, for there, tanned and gloriously unacademic, stood Rupert.

Her next thought was how unfair it was that he should have caught her with two-day-old hair, a shiny face, and no makeup. The next moment she was in his arms.

“Angel,” he said, kissing her, “did you get my letter?”

“No, I left before the post this morning.”

“Sssh,” said the man with mustache eyebrows disapprovingly. “People are trying to work.”

“Are you coming out for a drink?” said Rupert, only slightly lowering his voice.

“I’d just love it. I’ve got one more quote to check. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.”

“I’ll wander round,” said Rupert.

Helen found the quotation, and was surreptitiously combing her hair and powdering her nose behind a pillar when she heard a loud and unmistakable voice saying: “Hello, is that Ladbroke’s’? My account number’s 8KY85982. I want a tenner each way on Brass Monkey in the two o’clock at Kempton, and twenty each way on Bob Martin in the two-thirty. He’s been scratched, has he? Change it to Sam the Spy then, but only a tenner each way.”

Crimson with embarrassment, Helen longed to disappear into one of the card index drawers. How dare Rupert disturb such a hallowed seat of learning?

“Funny places you work in,” he said, as they went out into the sunshine. “I bet Nige feels at home in there. Come on, let’s go to the Ritz.”

They sat in the downstairs bar, Helen drinking Buck’s Fizz, Rupert drinking whisky.

“Don’t go and get tarted up,” he said, as she was about to rush off to the powder room. “I like you without makeup sometimes. Reminds me of what you might look like in the mornings.” He ran the back of his fingers down her cheek. “I’ve missed you.”

“And I’ve missed you. How was Paris?”

“Not brilliant.”

“I read the papers. Belgravia was off form.”

“Something like that. I bought you a present. They’re all the rage in Paris.”

It was an ivory silk shirt that tied under the bust, leaving a bare midriff.

“Oh, it’s just gorgeous,” said Helen. “I’ll just never take it off.”

“Hm, we’ll see about that.”

“Such beautiful workmanship,” said Helen, examining it in ecstasy. “It’ll be marvelous for Lucerne. I’ve bought so many clothes. I do hope the weather’s nice.”

Rupert’s fingers drummed on the bar. He beckoned for the barman to fill up his glass.

“There isn’t going to be any Lucerne.”

“Why ever not?” Helen was quite unable to hide her disappointment.

“I’ve been dropped,” said Rupert bleakly.