Collapsing heavily between him and Lysander on the sofa, Marigold opened a red photograph album.

‘You look terrific,’ said Lysander gazing in amazement at a sixties snapshot of Marigold in Hyde Park. ‘Great legs, and that chain belt’s very sexy.’

‘I gave up lunch for a whole fortnight to pay for that dress,’ sighed Marigold. ‘I had a handspan waist then.’

‘Well, you better give up a few more lunches,’ reproved Ferdie. ‘You’ve hardly got a legspan waist now, and your skin’s awful.’

Lysander winced, and wished he could go next door and watch the 3.15. Outside a gaudy pheasant with a red face and staring eyes, trailing awkwardly round the frozen lawn looking for refuge, reminded him of Marigold.

‘It’s nothing personal,’ said Ferdie kindly. ‘It’s exactly like getting a horse fit for a big race. You need a month on the road and two on the gallops. Lysander’ll take you jogging and when it gets lighter in the evenings and you’re frantic for that forbidden first drink of the day, you can both play tennis.’

‘It’ll never work,’ moaned Marigold. ‘If it weren’t for Patch, I’d kill myself.’

Patch stared balefully at them through the strings of the harp.

When Ferdie started to discuss money, Lysander was so embarrassed Ferdie had to take him off to Larry’s den, where he was very excited to find a bar in the corner with every drink known to man hanging upside down with rightway-up labels.

‘Oh, can I play with it?’

‘Of course, and watch the end of Lingfield on the big screen. If you get bored with that, Larry’s got all Donald Duck’s cartoons up on the right,’ said Ferdie, shutting the door firmly.

‘It’s going to cost you,’ he told Marigold, going back into the sitting room.

‘Ay haven’t got any money. Larry’s keepin’ me so short.’

‘Well, you’ll have to pawn a few rings.’

‘He’s charmin’ Lysander.’

‘Charming,’ agreed Ferdie. ‘But very expensive. We’ll have to find a cottage for him to rent down here. Not too near Paradise to preserve his air of mystery. He needs a couple of paddocks and stabling for his horses and a really sharp, fuck-off car, a Porsche or better still a red Ferrari.’

Then, ignoring Marigold’s gasp of horror, ‘And access to a helicopter — we can’t have Larry thinking he’s some tinpot gigolo — and some decent clothes: a few suits and Gucci shoes. He needs decent shoes because he has a tendency to ingrowing toenails. And you must arrange an account at The Apple Tree, and the nearest off-licence and install satellite television, so he doesn’t get bored down here. Then there’s the little matter of his debts.’

‘How much are they?’ said Marigold faintly.

‘Ten grand should cover it,’ said Ferdie airily. ‘He’ll need pocket money of course to send you flowers and take you out on the tiles. If Larry comes back to you that’s a further ten grand, and a retainer for the next year to keep Larry on his toes.’

‘But Ay haven’t got that kind of money,’ whimpered Marigold. ‘Ay shall be destitute.’

‘No, you won’t.’ Ferdie topped up her glass. ‘Insist Larry buys you that house in Tregunter, and I’ll pretend it cost one hundred and fifty thousand pounds more than it does, which gives us lots of leeway.’

Marigold was so distraught, and by this time so awash with vodka, that she accepted all Ferdie’s conditions.

‘Life is about taking chances,’ said Ferdie, cosily pocketing a vast advance cheque. ‘It’s going to be a lark, I promise you.’

‘You ’ave terrific control over Lysander,’ said Marigold shaking her head.

‘I’m his mind and his minder,’ Ferdie reassured her. ‘I’ll be overseeing things all the way.’

Watching the 3.15 on Larry’s ten-foot screen made the race ten times more exciting, but Lysander felt ten times more depressed when the horse he’d backed fell at the last fence.

He thought of Arthur in his last race, donkey ears flapping, big feet splaying out in all directions, but with so much heart in his great grey girth that he ran on and on, just tipping the last fence in his tiredness. He’d got to get Arthur sound again. He had no job, no money, no prospects, no mother. The snowdrops outside, like the ones on her grave, reminded him he’d never see her again. The fish-ponds under the trees were turning ruby red in the setting sun.

He was roused from his black gloom by Ferdie, quite unable to keep the smirk off his broad pink face.

‘Well, you got the job.’

‘What job?’

‘Being Marigold’s toy boy.’

‘Don’t be an asshole. I can’t bonk for money.’

‘You only get paid if you don’t bonk her. We don’t want you involved in a messy divorce case.’

‘What about Arthur and Tiny?’

‘They can move in, too.’

All Lysander’s scruples were overcome when he saw his first pay cheque. On the way back to London he and Ferdie stopped to order a red Ferrari. Arriving at Fountain Street, they found the telephone ringing. It was the police.

‘I think we’ve found your Golf GTi, Mr Hawkley. Does it have a NCDL sticker in the back saying, “A Dog is for Life… Not Just for Christmas”?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘It wasn’t in Drake Street where you thought you’d left it, but in Kempton Street.’

‘Thanks awfully,’ said Lysander, ‘that’s really, really kind of you, but basically I don’t need it any more, because I’ve just got another one.’

‘Lysander!’ Ferdie grabbed the telephone in exasperation. ‘We’ll be over to pick it up at once,’ he told the policeman.


9



Lysander, Arthur, Tiny, Jack and a red Ferrari with a top speed of 200 m.p.h. moved into a charming cottage seven miles from Paradise, and Lysander lost no time in getting Marigold into training. As they both jogged in track suits along punishingly steep footpaths, watching the first celandine and coltsfoot pushing their way through the leaf mould and the winter barley slowly turning the brown fields pale green, Lysander wished it was Arthur he was getting fit for the Rutminster Gold Cup rather than Marigold, but they made terrific progress.

Marigold was still desperately low and Lysander got bored as she endlessly bent his ear about Larry, but he began to realize the extent of her hurt and desolation, and how hard she had supported Larry in his rocket-like rise to the top.

‘Ay really trayed to be a social asset,’ she told Lysander one morning as they pounded up Paradise Hill. ‘For years Ay struggled with those dreadful elocution lessons.’ Pink from her exertions, Marigold went even pinker. ‘Ay was taught by a disgustin’ old Lezzie who kept touchin’ may bosom to make me project from the chest.’

‘How dreadful,’ Lysander shuddered.

‘Let’s stop and look at the vista,’ gasped Marigold, who was panting more from non-stop chatter than the one-in-five gradient.

Across the valley, softened by a pale sun, morning mist and the thickening buds of its army of trees, Paradise Grange rose like a fairy-tale castle.

‘Ay can’t bear to leave it,’ she sighed. ‘You should see it in summer when the Paradise Pearl is out. That’s a pinky-whaite wisteria Mr Brimscombe planted thirty years ago. We floodlaight it in the evenings. And that’s Lady Chisleden’s home to the left. Ay trayed so hard to dress laike Lady Chisleden.’

‘I don’t think that’s wise,’ said Lysander in alarm. ‘The old trout was blocking Paradise High Street this morning with her Bentley, bawling out Adam’s Pleasure for delivering manure that was more straw than shit. Perhaps she could give Arthur a job.’

Marigold smiled, but as they started off down the hill, she returned to the subject of Larry.

‘Talkin’ of horses, Ay always thought we had a good love laife,’ her voice trembled. ‘But one of the things Nikki screamed at me was that Larry told her Ay made love laike a dead horse, because Ay never moved.’

Although Marigold had told him this a dozen times, Lysander put his arm round her.

‘Alive horses don’t move very much,’ he said consolingly. ‘I’ve seen lots of them being covered. My Uncle Alastair ran a stud at one time, and someone always held the mare still. Anyway, men say anything to a girl when they want to get their leg over.’

To begin with Lysander used to escape to London as soon as he had supervised Marigold’s frugal supper, to party all night, returning yawning at breakfast and falling asleep in the afternoon on Larry’s sunbed. But gradually he spent more and more time at Paradise Grange. There was so much to do, working out in the gym, swimming in the heated pool, riding the hunters Larry abandoned after he’d been bucked off at the opening meet, watching all Larry’s Walt Disney tapes, playing with Larry’s bar.

‘What a pity you’re off the booze, Marigold. I could mix you some terrific cocktails.’

One of their first mutual projects was the restoration of Arthur, who’d been confined to box rest for three months by the vet. As soon as the old horse arrived, Lysander had driven Marigold over to his cottage to meet him.

It was a beautiful day after a night of heavy rain, the robins were singing their heads off, and the racing streams glittered in the sunshine. Marigold tried not to squeal with terror as Lysander stormed the red Ferrari along the winding country lanes, whose high hedges were filling up so quickly with buds and even leaves one had no idea who might be hurtling in the opposite direction. By contrast, barking his head off, and rattling back and forwards like a shaken dice, Jack seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

‘How did you acquire Arthur?’ asked Marigold faintly.

‘Well, it’s an extraordinary story. Basically my cousin Titus was in the Army in the Oman and during some skirmish he found Arthur wandering on the edge of the desert, thin as a rake and desperately dehydrated. Well, Titus had nowhere to stable him that night and no headcollar, so he and his men made a corral by parking four army lorries, nose to tail. Even in his desperately weakened condition, Arthur jumped straight over one of the bonnets after a passing mare.