Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  By the end of an hour Dancer had fallen off twice more, was bruised as black as midnight and utterly hooked.

  ‘What d’you fink?’ he asked Perdita, as he rode into the yard. ‘Am I going to make it?’

  ‘Gaol Bird’ was blaring out of the tack room wireless.

  ‘You couldn’t be a worse polo player than you are a singer,’ snapped Perdita.

  Back in his black leather trousers, wearing two of Ricky’s jerseys, Dancer prowled round the drawing room, clutching a huge Bacardi and Coke and looking at the cups and the photographs.

  ‘What an ’eritage! Christ, I ache all over, you fucker. When can we go and buy some ponies?’

  ‘We can’t yet.’ Ricky put another log on the fire. ‘We’ve got enough ponies here. If you’re serious we can spend the summer teaching you to ride, and if it works out, see about buying ponies in the autumn.’

  ‘You’re stalling,’ said Dancer, shivering and edging towards the fire. ‘Arm still playing up?’

  Ricky shrugged. ‘I’ve still got no feeling and no strength in my last three fingers.’

  ‘I’ve got just the bloke for you.’

  ‘I’ve seen three specialists,’ said Ricky wearily. ‘They all say rest it.’

  ‘You could fucking rest it for ever,’ said Dancer. ‘We’ve got to get you to ten an’ get the Westchester back, an’ you’re not getting any younger. My friend Seth Newcombe practises in New York, best bone man in the world.’

  ‘I can’t leave the country.’

  ‘Mountain better come to Mahomet,’ said Dancer. ‘Seth’ll fly over if I ask him nicely. He’s been after me for years.’

  ‘I’m not being carved up by some old queen,’ said Ricky outraged.

  ‘Think he might deflower you under the anaesthetic?’ said Dancer. ‘Don’t be so pig-’eaded.’

  Seth arrived in England by private jet the following Saturday. Dancer’s helicopter transported him and his X-ray equipment to Robinsgrove. A charming WASP with the gentlest hands and the whitest cuffs Ricky had ever seen, he examined Ricky’s arm for ten minutes, then said he’d like to operate immediately.

  ‘I think there’s a trapped nerve. You must be in a lot of pain.’

  ‘Can you guarantee a one hundred per cent success rate?’ asked Ricky belligerently.

  ‘No, but you won’t get the strength or feeling back into your hand if you just leave it. And you’ll certainly never get to ten, or nine, or eight, or even seven. I know a bit about polo. I used to play at the Myopia Club in Boston for years.’

  ‘Christ, I hope he wears spectacles when he carves me up,’ said Ricky.

  A week later Ricky went into a clinic in Harley Street. The operation took several hours. Dancer and Perdita waited in a private room so Dancer wouldn’t get mobbed and, as the day wore on, Perdita’s animosity evaporated and she and Dancer clung to each other for reassurance. Perdita, despite Ricky’s admonition, smoked one cigarette after another. Dancer, stuck into Bacardi and Coke, was in an even worse state.

  ‘What happens if he’s really fucked up?’

  ‘Seth said he won’t,’ said Perdita.

  ‘He’s such a sod, I don’t know why we love him so much.’

  ‘I ache for him in bed every night,’ sighed Perdita.

  ‘I ache every night from falling off his bloody ’orses.’

  ‘Pity Seth can’t give him a heart transplant at the same time to get him over Chessie,’ said Perdita. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t like you to begin with. I guess I was jealous.’

  ‘I like you,’ said Dancer. ‘You’re going to play on my team when Ricky gets better. Black’s a great colour wiv your eyes.’

  Both jumped as Seth came into the room still in his green gown. He looked elated but desperately tired, his eyes were bloodshot beneath the green cap.

  ‘Well, we untrapped the nerve – that prison hospital made the most godawful cock-up – and re-set the elbow. Touching wood,’ he leant down to touch the table and, realizing it was veneer, shuddered and touched a picture frame, ‘he should get back all the strength of his fingers and make a one hundred per cent recovery.’

  Dancer burst into tears.

  ‘Can we see him?’ asked Perdita, as she and Seth mopped him up.

  ‘No point. He’ll be out like a light for the next few hours.’

  ‘When can he play again?’

  ‘Well, he’ll have to be patient. A little low goal next year, high goal perhaps in 1985.’

  While Ricky was in hospital, Dancer had not been idle. Rolling up at his bedside a few days later, he looked very smug.

  ‘Well, I’ve got my yard,’ he said, putting a large jar of caviar and a bunch of yellow roses down on the bed.

  ‘Where is it?’ snapped Ricky.

  ‘Eldercombe Manor.’

  ‘Jesus! How did you fiddle that?’

  ‘I went to see Lady Bentley. Nice lady. Said she was fed up wiv providing tea for all the villagers and their visiting teams every Sunday. I told her, “That’s the trouble wiv noblesse oblige, it flamin’ nobbles you.” Anyway your mate Basil Baddingham has been very co-operative. He’s ’andled the deal and says I’ll get planning permission for everyfing.’

  Ricky groaned. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘No, we’re not. All we need is a stack of brown envelopes filled wiv dosh. Bas says the Council’s completely bent, that’s why they’re called Councillors because they counts the money they get in bribes every day.’ Dancer roared with laughter.

  ‘How much did they sting you?’ asked Ricky, disapprovingly.

  ‘Nearly a million, but Bas reckons it’ll be worf four million by the end of the eighties. There’s rooms we can knock froo for a recording studio, and uvver rooms we can knock froo for parties. An’ a nice piece of flat land where we can build a polo field.’

  ‘The village have been playing cricket on that for generations.’

  ‘Well, they’ll have to watch polo now.’

  ‘And Miss Lodsworth, the village bossyboots, will be next door marshalling the Parish Council like a tiger. She’s not going to like her girl guides being corrupted by all your musicians.’

  Dancer grinned. ‘Sounds kind of fun. Bas didn’t mention any incentives in the hand-out about under-age schoolgirls. And talking of schoolgirls, I just love that Perdita. I watched her stick and balling this morning. Never missed the goal posts once.’

  ‘She is not supposed to be playing.’

  ‘You can’t hold her back,’ protested Dancer. ‘Why are you so foul to her?’

  ‘Got to bash the stems of roses to get the water in,’ said Ricky flatly.

  ‘She told me about losing ’er pony,’ said Dancer. ‘Fort I might buy her another one.’

  ‘You will not,’ snapped Ricky, suddenly looking pale and tired. ‘I can only just control her as it is. I got complaints about her from Miss Lodsworth only last week – taking seven ponies up Eldercombe High Street to save making two journeys so she could get back and stick and ball. And she gives them too much road work, so they won’t get dirty and she won’t have to waste time scraping off the mud. Every time my back’s turned, she picks up a stick.’

  ‘Probably want to sleep wiv her,’ said Dancer slyly. ‘That’s why you’re so ’orrible.’

  ‘The only thing I’m interested in is getting Chessie back,’ snapped Ricky.

  He was bitterly ashamed that, having been assured by Seth that his arm would recover, he was still overwhelmed with black gloom.

  The day before Ricky was due home the ancient washing machine finally croaked because Perdita had overloaded it with saddle blankets and Frances had made such a scene that Dancer whipped Perdita off to Rutminster to buy Ricky a new one as a welcome-home present.

  ‘We don’t want him any crosser wiv you than he already is,’ said Dancer, as they stormed back to Eldercombe along the motorway.

  Perdita adored Dancer’s car, a gold Ferrari, fitted with all the latest gadgets including a synthesizer, a CD player, whose spe
akers were blaring out ‘Gaol Bird’, and two telephones.

  ‘Let’s try ringing each other up,’ she suggested; then she gave a scream. ‘Look! There’s a little dog running along the verge. It must have been dumped. Stop, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Can’t stop ’ere,’ protested Dancer.

  ‘You bloody can. Get in the left-hand lane.’

  Then, for a second the traffic slowed down to allow cars to turn off at Exit fifteen and Perdita was out of the Ferrari, narrowly avoiding being run down by a Lotus, and on to the grass track in the centre of the motorway. Tears streaming down her face, she belted back the way they had come, looking desperately for the little dog. Cars were hurtling past her in both directions. How could the little thing possibly survive? Her heart was crashing in her ribs as she stumbled over the uneven divots.

  Just when she felt she couldn’t run another step, she saw the little dog again. He had huge terrified eyes with bags under them like a basset, and one ear that stuck up and the other down, and a long, dirty grey body and stumpy legs. He wore no collar, and was poised, absolutely terrified, on the far side of the right-hand traffic lane. Perdita didn’t call to him, but, seeing her, he suddenly dived into the traffic, narrowly missing a milk lorry and a BMW and only avoiding a Bentley because it swerved to the left, causing great hooting and screaming of brakes. Now the dog was racing down the green track ahead of her. Two hundred yards away loomed a Little Chef restaurant.

  ‘Oh, please God, let him make it,’ sobbed Perdita.

  Stumbling on, ignoring the wolf whistles and yells of approval from passing drivers, she watched in anguish as the dog decided to make a dive and plunged into the traffic again. Trying to avoid a Volvo going at 100 m.p.h. he was hit by the front of an oil lorry which knocked it on to the hard shoulder.

  Perdita gave a scream of horror, which turned into joy as the dog stumbled on to three legs and dragged himself into the safety of the restaurant.

  Oblivious of cars, forgetting Dancer, Perdita somehow crossed the road and sprinted the last hundred yards. The dog was nowhere to be seen but, following a trail of blood, Perdita found him underneath a parked lorry. His eyes were terrified, his lip curling, his little back leg a bloody pulp.

  ‘It’s all right, darling.’ Gradually she edged towards him, but when she put out her hand, he snapped and cringed away. Perdita tried another tack. Crawling out, she explained what had happened to the driver of the lorry and asked if she could have a bit of his lunch. Grinning, he gave her half a pork pie. At first the dog looked dubious, then slowly edged forwards and gobbled it up, plainly starving.

  ‘More,’ yelled Perdita.

  By the time the dog had finished the pork pie and eaten three beef sandwiches, several drivers were gathered round admiring Perdita’s legs.

  ‘You’ve got to help me catch him,’ she said, peering out, her cheeks streaked with oil. ‘He’ll bleed to death if we don’t get him to a vet.’

  The dog was finally coaxed out with a bowl of water, so frantic was his thirst. The first lorry driver gave Perdita an old blanket to wrap him in, the second offered to drive her to the nearest vet and went off to borrow the Yellow Pages from the restaurant. The third was suggesting the RSPCA might be better when Dancer screamed up in his Ferrari.

  ‘Fuckin’ ’ell, Perdita, fort you’d been totalled.’

  All the drivers had to have Dancer’s autograph for their wives and tell him what a bleedin’ shame he’d been put inside before he and Perdita finally set off for the vet’s. Perdita had to hold on to the little dog very tightly as he shuddered in her arms. Despite the blanket, he bled all over Dancer’s pale gold upholstery. Mercifully the vet was at the surgery. Putting the dog out, he operated at once. The leg needed sixty stitches. Once again Dancer and Perdita waited.

  ‘He won’t have to lose the leg,’ said the vet as he washed his hands afterwards, ‘but he’ll have very sore toes for a bit. You can pick him up tomorrow.’

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’ Dancer asked Perdita.

  ‘Give him to Ricky. He’s got to learn to love something new.’

  Getting home to find Little Chef, as he was now known, in situ, Ricky was absolutely furious.

  ‘I do not want another dog, and, if I did, it would be a whippet. That must be the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘He’s sweet,’ protested Perdita. ‘He’s had a bad time’ – like you have, she nearly added.

  ‘A dog is a tie.’

  ‘Not a very old school one in Little Chef’s case,’ admitted Perdita. ‘But mongrels are much brighter than breed dogs and you need something to guard the yard. Frances is getting very long in the tooth.’

  Little Chef hobbled towards Ricky. The whites of his supplicating, pleading eyes were like pieces of boiled egg. His tail, instead of hanging between his legs, was beginning to curl.

  ‘I don’t want a dog,’ said Ricky sulkily. ‘It broke Millicent’s heart every time I went away. I’m not into the business of heart-breaking.’

  ‘Could have fooled me,’ drawled Dancer. ‘I’ve gotta go. I’ve got a concert.’

  ‘So have I. Dancer’s got me a ticket,’ said Perdita, scuttling out after him. ‘See you tomorrow. Just give him a chance.’

  Left alone with Ricky, Little Chef limped to the door and whined for a bit. When it was time to go to bed, Ricky got Millicent’s basket down from the attic and put it in front of the Aga.

  ‘Stay,’ he said firmly.

  Little Chef stayed.

  Upstairs he had difficulty getting out of his clothes. Across the yard, he could see a light on in Frances’s flat. She’d be across in a flash if he asked her. Since the operation he’d had terrible trouble sleeping. To get comfortable he had to lie on his back with his left hand hanging out of the bed.

  His body ached with longing for Chessie. For a second he thought of Perdita, then slammed his mind shut like a dungeon door. That could only lead to disaster. Frances’s scrawny body was always on offer, but on the one night when despair had driven him to avail himself of it he hadn’t even been able to get it up. That was why she was so bitter.

  He turned out the light, breathing in the sweet soapy smell of hawthorn blossom. Through the open window the new moon was rising like a silver horn out of the jaws of the galloping fox weather-vane. Before he had time to wish, he jumped out of his skin as a rough tongue licked his hand. In the dim light he saw Little Chef gazing up at him beseechingly.

  ‘Go away,’ snapped Ricky. Then, as the dog slunk miserably away, ‘Oh all right, just this once.’

  But when he patted the bed, Little Chef couldn’t make it, so Ricky reached down and helped him up. Immediately he snuggled against Ricky’s body, giving a sigh of happiness. For the first time in years, both of them slept in until lunchtime.

  18

  Within a week Little Chef was running the yard, bringing in the ponies from the fields, doing tricks for pony nuts, retrieving lost balls from the undergrowth, then running on to the field and dropping them when there was a pause in play.

  He also learnt not to scrabble Dancer’s leather trousers and who was welcome in the yard, biting the ankles of visiting VAT men, growling at Philippa Mannering when, ever hopeful, she dropped in on Ricky, and lifting his leg on the probation officer’s bicycle.

  He adored Perdita, but Ricky was his great love, and gradually as the ugly little dog limped after him, barking encouragement during practice chukkas, and even hitching a lift on the back of a pony in order not to be separated, Ricky succumbed totally to his charms.

  And when the vet came to take out Little Chef’s stitches, it was Ricky who held the wildly trembling dog in his arms. Any visiting player who was foolish enough to make eyes at Perdita, or disparaging cracks about Little Chef’s appearance, got very short shrift.

  By the beginning of August Ricky’s arm was so much better that he was able gently to stick and ball. By the end of August so excessive had been the overtime paid the builders and excavato
rs that Dancer and his gaudy retinue were able to move into Eldercombe Manor.

  Miss Lodsworth had a busy summer. When she wasn’t inveighing against cruelty to ponies and disgusting language at Rutshire Polo Club, and furiously ringing up Ricky to complain about Perdita thundering ponies five abreast down Eldercombe High Street, she was writing to Dancer, to grumble about cheeky builders, truculent security guards, and Alsatians chasing her cat, Smudge. Nor was she amused by helicopters with flashing lights landing like fireflies at all hours, nor the deafening boom of all-night recording sessions.

  Worst of all, some sadist of a landscape designer had slapped down Dancer’s stick-and-ball field right next to her house, so she not only had fairies at the bottom of her garden, but also a microcosm of Rutshire Polo Club. As Commissioner for Rutshire, how could she hold dignified get-togethers with her guides when expletives and polo balls kept flying over her hawthorn hedge?

  Nor did any of the rest of the Parish Council come to her aid. The Vicar, who was a closet gay, and the local solicitor, who reckoned that such development would triple the price of his house, both thought Dancer was splendid.

  Dancer, however, was warned well in advance that Miss Lodsworth would be holding an All-Rutshire Jamboree in her garden on the first Saturday in September and had promised there would be no stick and balling that afternoon. A perfect day dawned. Rising early, Miss Lodsworth prayed that it would continue fine and her guides would find enjoyment as well as fulfilment in their Jamboree. Believing in economy, Miss Lodsworth had already baked rock and fairy cakes and spread hundreds of sandwiches with crusts still on with Marmite and plum jam which was cheaper than strawberry. Nor was Coca Cola or Seven-Up allowed. Her guides would have lemon squash because it was better for them and less expensive.

  Creaking up from her knees, Miss Lodsworth snorted with indignation. Even on a Saturday Dancer’s bulldozers were still knocking down trees and flattening hillocks to extend one of the loveliest cricket grounds in England into a polo field. Just after lunch, as she was wriggling into her guide uniform, which had grown somewhat tight, Miss Lodsworth looked out of the window and saw a girl not wearing a hard hat clattering five ponies down the High Street.