Free Mount! by Jilly Cooper Page B

sat cooing in his chair, wearing little jeans, trainers and a T-shirt saying
Aren’t you glad you backed me.
He smiled in delight to see his mother and waved a football rattle given him by Valent.
    ‘He looks perfect, and that is a fuck-off dress,’ noted Trixie, pulling down Etta’s frock and zipping up the back.
    But an alarmed Etta was looking in the mirror. The dress was a deep hyacinth blue, perfect with her big blue eyes and apple blossom complexion, but she’d only tried it on in a hurry, over tracksuit bottoms when she hadn’t been wearing a bra, and hadn’t realized how short or low-cut or tight it was.
    ‘It’s the age of the cleave,’ said Trixie.
    ‘Mine’s too wrinkly.’
    ‘No, it isn’t. Dress it up with Valent’s sapphires.’ Trixie put the necklace on Etta and did up the clasp. ‘I’d do anything to have a cleavage, I’d flaunt it all the time.’
    Over at Penscombe, Eddie didn’t show up and had switched off his mobile, so a reluctant Gav set off alone driving the twenty miles to Willowwood in his battered, filthy Golf – hardly a pussymagnet. Fractionally cheered up by the beauty of the day, with bluebells flecking the wild garlic and blackthorn foaming in white waves along the hedgerows, he was interested to drive past the yard of Marius Oakridge, who had trained Mrs Wilkinson.
    Dropping down, he passed the heraldic gates of Badger’s Court, a ravishing Georgian house surrounded by parkland, with the orchard in bloom, goal-posts on the lawn for grandchildren, and people scurrying in and out of a huge marquee. Gav started to shake. ‘Shyness is a lack of interest in people,’ Bethany used to chide him. ‘Look into people’s eyes. Ask them where they live, what do they do, have they come far?’ Methinks, it is no journey.
    Willowwood was such a lovely village, with willows, their gold stems hidden by feathery green leaves and yellow catkins, hurtling down to the River Fleet. He passed the Wilkinson Arms sporting Mrs Wilkinson’s sweet face on its inn sign and a statue of a handsome Cavalier, Sir Francis Framlingham, who’d planted the first willows. To the right was the church with its soaring spire and gold weathercock, and – oh God! – a churchyard swarming with people.
    Everyone had agreed it was big-hearted of Ione Travis-Lock, fearsome termagent, who roared round Willowwood bellowing at people for not recycling or turning off lights, to plant a willow for Master Quickly.
    They felt it was even more gracious of Niall Forbes, the ex-vicar of Willowwood and now a canon, who had blessed Mrs Wilkinson with such success before every race, to return and christen Master Quickly, when he and his boyfriend, tree surgeon Woody Adams, had also been dumped as syndicate members.
    Pink-faced, boyish Niall could only feel relief that he no longer had to preach sermons under the beady eye of Ione Travis-Lock. He now felt free to amend the words of the prayer book for this sweet little foal and beamed at Etta as she led Master Quickly forward, to a flickering of cameras.
    Niall then exhorted Quickly to renounce the devil and the sinful lusts of the flesh.
    ‘Can’t see that happening,’ Trixie whispered to Dora.
    ‘Not when he goes to stud,’ whispered back Dora. ‘Did you ever see so much press?’
    ‘Grant that the old Adam in this colt may be buried and that the new horse be raised in him … ouch!’ cried Niall, as Quickly deliberately trod on his toe. ‘Grant that he may have power and strength to have victory.’
    ‘I’ll drink to that,’ muttered Valent, thinking how gorgeous Etta looked.
    ‘And to triumph against the world, the flesh and the devil.’
    Quickly, however, was bored, and having tried to drink the holy water in which Niall was dowsing him, started to eat his gold embroidered scarf.
    ‘That’s enough, Horse,’ ordered Ione Travis-Lock. Seizing the willow sapling by its slender trunk, she planted it in the large hole, dug and well watered for her by her