Osborne was Sampson’s longest-term mistress. Beautiful, self-satisfied, she had been spoilt by Basil, her complaisant husband, who’d been rewarded for the blind eye he’d turned with excellent deals from Sampson over the years.
‘Blanche and Basil will be with us around one,’ Etta told Sampson, then, with a surge of spirit: ‘I wasn’t aware.’
‘I told you last week,’ interrupted Sampson, ‘but you never listen. Why don’t you stop being obstinate and get that deaf aid.’
By the time Etta had chucked a leg of lamb in the oven and defrosted a raspberry Pavlova, lit the fire, laid the table in Sampson’s study and organized drinks, Blanche, who liked to catch her on the hop, had arrived half an hour early, giving Etta no time to change, put on make-up or hardly wash.
Blanche was looking stunning, her sleek silvery-grey bob enhanced by a red suit with a large ruby brooch on the lapel in the shape of a geranium – no doubt given to her by Sampson. Instantly she went into an orgy of plumping Sampson’s cushions, re-buttoning his saxe-blue cardigan, which Etta’s trembling fingers had done up all wrong earlier, and smoothing his hair with a dampened hairbrush.
‘We must make you look as handsome as possible.’
Basil, who had a puce face and a fat tummy, reminding Etta of Keats’s poem about the pot of basil, tucked into a large whisky and the Financial Times, while Blanche talked to Sampson. Etta raced back and forth to the kitchen, and throughout lunch, crying: ‘You’ll need mince sauce’, ‘Redcurrant jelly?’, ‘Sorry I forgot the water jug’ and ‘More cream on your raspberries?’
No one noticed when she went missing. With the sound turned down, she lingered in the kitchen to watch the races.
They had moved on to celery and a very ripe Brie, and Sampson was beginning to look grey from the exertion, when Etta noticed the clock edging towards three fifteen.
‘You need another bottle of red and a glass of port,’ she said airily.
Back in the kitchen to open the wine she couldn’t resist turning up the sound, mindlessly finishing off the Pavlova as the coloured carousel of jockeys and horses circled at the start. Instantly she recognized Rupert’s dark blue and emerald green colours, today worn by Rupert’s longtime stable jockey Bluey Charteris, whom Rupert, spurning younger jockeys, had coaxed out of retirement to ride a special horse.
This was Lusty, a magnificent plunging liver chestnut showing a lot of white eye. Home-bred and the son of Rupert’s greatest stallion, Love Rat, Lusty had been disappointing on the flat. Once gelded, however, he had won over hurdles, but was still at five the most inexperienced horse in the race.
‘Oh!’ Etta gave a sigh of longing and took a slug of red out of the newly opened bottle, for there was Rupert himself, gimlet blue eyes narrowed, smooth Dubai tan displaying none of those wine-dark rivulets caused by years of icy winds pulverizing the veins. His thick brushed-back gold hair was hidden by a trilby tipped over his Greek nose. A covert coat emphasized the broad shoulders and long lean body. Goodness, he was heaven.
Having rudely refused to discuss his horse’s prospects with any of the press, he had taken the unusual step of going down to the start to calm Lusty. Now, with his arm round the horse’s neck, he was repeatedly smoothing his satin shoulders.
The cameras then switched to Rupert’s lovely wife Taggie, who, in a big midnight-blue hat with a feather, was biting her nails in the stands.
The horses were coming in, bunching up towards the tape, and they were off, lifted by the most exhilarating noise in the world: the Cheltenham roar. Etta turned up the volume even further to hear the Channel 4 commentary over the rattle of hurdles and the thunder of hooves on dry ground.
Three from home, Lusty was still tucked up in the back watching the leaders battling it out. Bluey unleashed him, hurtling up the field, overtaking everything. Coming up the straight, Bluey glanced back between his legs. The rest were nowhere.
‘Come on, Lusty!’ screamed Etta, as with the relief of a fox who’d shaken off the pack Lusty sauntered past the post and Cheltenham exploded, hats and race cards hurled in the air.
As two beaming red-coated huntsmen led them back past wildly cheering crowds, Bluey rose in his stirrups to punch the air with both fists and nearly got bucked off by a still fresh Lusty.
Now the cameras were on an exultant Rupert who’d loped up