of Valent, Bonny, Corinna and Seth at the races. He was envious of men like Sir Alan Sugar and Sir Philip Green. Like them, he wanted to be recognized in the street.
He was shrewd enough to realize that even the most cut-throat tycoon took on a new persona at the races. Filmed wiping away a tear and hugging a beautiful, panting horse in the winners enclosure, the most ruthless bully could suddenly be regarded as a big softie, and emerge from the financial pages, which women tend not to read, on to the front pages. Look at Valent, the taciturn Tin Man without a Heart, his arm round Corinna one week, Bonny the next. Bertie Barraclough, despite his happy marriage and his religion, was a thug in the workplace.
Lester also wanted Cindy to be recognized as an actress. Fame was the spur. Lester decided to take up racing and invest in some horses.
His first choice as a trainer would have been Harvey-Holden, with whom he’d dined after Ione Travis-Lock’s party two years ago, and part of whose wood he had bought and was transforming into an arboretum, but they had fallen out. H-H wasn’t good at observing boundaries. Ilkley Hall had nearly run over him and Cindy having a woodland shag the other day and when, at the time, Lester had resisted buying horses, H-H had dropped him. Shade, H-H’s biggest owner, had cut him dead in the City the other day. Marius Oakridge’s yard and the Willowwood syndicate looked more star-studded and exciting, so in March he summoned the Major to Primrose Mansions.
Picking up a video of Furious winning at Wetherby from the pub, the Major arrived to find the last Portakabin had rolled away and not a chip of gravel out of place. He had great difficulty getting in through the electric gates and, in the dim, Ione-induced lights up the drive, tripped over a garden gnome in a bikini.
The Major was in a lather about seeing Cindy again. The two years out-of-date girlie calendar she’d presented to him remained locked in his den desk with the British Legion cashbox. Frequently he took surreptitious glances at August, showing Cindy’s thrusting breasts, or November, which revealed her parted buttocks.
He was almost relieved when fat little Lester, wearing an open-necked very white silk shirt and showing off a ‘Dearest Dad’ pendant nestling in a copse of ginger chest hair, said Cindy was out pampering herself at a salon in Larkminster.
The Major was then given a brief look at the library, lit by a huge chandelier. It contained a vast screen and shelves crammed with porn videos, of which he glimpsed a few titles: Young Muff, Juicy Snatch and The Naughtiest Girl on the Monitor. The Major felt he’d like to revisit Lester’s oeuvre again and again.
‘ ’Elp yourself at any time, Mijor,’ urged Lester. He led his guest downstairs to a bar, which had leopardskin walls, a huge screen and nude photographs of Cindy cuddling a lion cub, and vast leather sofas like beached oxen, covered in leopardskin cushions.
As the progress of his lifts was impeded by the off-white shagpile, Lester clutched on to a lap-dancing pole descending from the ceiling.
‘Cindy will give you a personal demonstration one day,’ he told a sweating Major.
Also built into the ceiling was the large glass-bottomed swimming pool whose delivery had held up the minibus on the way to Newbury.
On the bar was the Daily Mail, with a picture of Bonny and Valent at Wetherby.
‘A lovely lady, but not a patch on Cindy.’
Lester opened a bottle of sparkling wine.
‘I need your ’elp again, Norm.’ He rested their two glasses on the back of a fibreglass nude bending down to touch her scarlet toes and, sitting down, practically disappeared into the folds of a leather sofa.
‘I ’old my ’and up, Norm. I’ve upset the folk of Willowwood, I’ve stopped the flow of village life. Work at Ravenscroft and Badger’s Court ’as been equally extensive, but the properties are outside the village. I want to win over ’earts and minds, engage with the community and send our kiddies to Greycoats. Mijor, I’d like to join the Willowwood syndicate.’
Before the Major had time to express any opinion, Bolton added that he would like to invite all the syndicate to an ’arse-warming party.
‘Blinis and bubbly. They could bring their cossies, or not,’ Bolton winked lasciviously, ‘and have a swim in the pool after dinner, or there’s a jacuzzi, takes eight.’
Bolton also wanted to treat guests during the evening