Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Daisy looked lovely before,’ said Sukey, plunging a knife into the yellow, red and green surface of the quiche, ‘but you know how stuffy Brigadier Canford and Major Ashton are.’

  ‘Charlie Canford’s such a DOM he’d have much preferred Daisy as she was,’ said Drew coldly.

  No-one could have told from his face that he was absolutely livid with Sukey, but he didn’t want a row, which would upset Daisy and gee Perdita up before the interview.

  Patting the chair beside him, he told Daisy, ‘If Perdita gets the scholarship, Sukey and I may well be going out to New Zealand at the same time to buy some ponies, so we can keep an eye on her.’

  ‘Not if you’re going to dress me in sailor suits,’ said Perdita, giving a bit of pastry to Drew’s slavering yellow Labrador.

  ‘I don’t think Perdita ought to have wine if she’s going to ride,’ said Sukey. ‘Would you like salad with or after, Daisy?’

  Ignoring her, Drew filled up Perdita’s glass, then, seeing Daisy’s eyes had suddenly filled with tears, asked her if she’d like another vodka and orange.

  ‘Another thing to remember at the interview,’ said Sukey pointedly, ‘is to let Perdita do the talking. Some mothers answer all the time for the children, which makes the Committee think the child lacks initiative.’

  ‘What have you done to my Mum, Suke,’ sang Perdita.

  ‘Shut up, Perdita,’ said Drew and Daisy simultaneously.

  ‘And do try and appear really keen, Perdita,’ advised Sukey. ‘The Committee loves enthusiasm.’

  The interview lasted half an hour. Very kindly, they asked Daisy about her financial circumstances. She stuck out her darned leg, hoping to give an impression of genteel poverty, smiled so much her face ached and, despite Sukey’s warnings, found herself talking too much to compensate for Perdita’s bored indifference.

  Brigadier Canford, who was indeed a lover of pretty girls, looked at Perdita’s impassive, dead-pan face, and had a strange feeling he’d seen her before somewhere.

  ‘And what d’you want to get out of polo?’

  ‘I want to go to ten.’

  ‘Bit ambitious. Nearest a woman’s ever got is five.’

  Out of the window Perdita could see children riding in pairs and dribbling balls in and out of soap boxes.

  ‘I know, but there was a piece in a polo magazine the other day saying many women were ten in beauty, but never could be ten in polo. Fucking patronizing.’

  ‘Perdita,’ murmured Daisy.

  ‘I hope you wouldn’t use language like that in New Zealand, young lady,’ said the Brigadier. ‘You’d be representing your country, you know.’

  ‘Still patronizing.’

  Later they watched her playing a chukka with seven other contenders for the scholarship.

  Brigadier Canford admired the lightning reflexes, the way she adjusted to a not-very-easy pony in seconds and showed up the others as she ruthlessly shoved them out of the way and cat-and-mouse-whipped the ball away just as they were about to hit it.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, turning to Drew. ‘I’m not sure she couldn’t go to ten, and she’d certainly be ten in looks if she smiled more often.’

  Puzzled, he shook his pewter-grey head. ‘I can’t think where I’ve seen her before.’

  20

  Apart from Perdita, the Rutshire team for the Jack Gannon Cup consisted of Justin and Patrick Lombard, farmer’s sons who’d spent their lives in the saddle and who made up for lack of finesse with dogged determination, and David Waterlane’s son, Mike, now nearly twenty-one, who played like an angel when his father wasn’t on the sideline bellowing at him.

  In an exhausting, exhilarating fortnight, they moved round the country triumphing gloriously at Cheshire, being demoralized at Cirencester, where they drew against a vastly inferior team, cockahoop at Kirtlington, and nearly coming unstuck at Windsor, where Perdita was sent off for swearing, so Rutshire had to play the last chukka with only three men, and only just won.

  On the first Friday in August they finally reached Cowdray and won the semi-finals by the skins of their gumshields. The Quorn, opposing them, had rumbled Drew’s Exocet weapon, and spent the match giving Perdita so much hassle that she only hit the ball twice. The Lombard brothers and Mike Waterlane, however, scored a goal apiece to put Rutshire into Sunday’s final against the mighty South Sussex, who hadn’t been beaten for three years.

  The entire Championships were being sponsored by petfood billionaire and fitness freak, Kevin Coley, Chairman of Doggie Dins, Moggie Meal and the newly launched Fido-Fibre. Kevin had formerly sponsored show-jumping, but five years ago had run off with Janey, the wife of Billy Lloyd-Foxe, one of his professionals and Rupert Campbell-Black’s best friend. After Janey went back to Billy, Kevin had patched up his differences with his wife, Enid, but one of the conditions had been that Kevin would sponsor polo instead of show-jumping to avoid bumping into Janey on the circuit, and because their daughter, Tracey, would meet a nicer class of young man in polo. Trace – as she liked to be called – at eighteen was playing in the crack South Sussex team against Rutshire in the final. If she wasn’t quite up to her other team-mates, her presence there vastly increased her father’s generosity. The whole South Sussex team had been driving round the country in a vast aluminium horse box, evidently the latest thing in America, and Kevin had provided each player with four top-class ponies.

  The South Sussex team was also more than compensated by the rock solidarity of a boy called Paul Hedley at back, and the dazzling Sherwood brothers, Randolph and Merlin, who’d pulled out of high goal polo for a fortnight to piss it up with the Pony Club.

  Randy Sherwood, who was known as the Cock of the South, had a handicap of two and was so glamorous with his long, long legs and curly hair that fell perfectly into shape, that girls clamoured to groom for him for nothing. Merlin, who was quieter, but just as lethal, had pulled a different groupie every night of the Championships. Randy, going amazingly steady for him, had spent the fortnight screwing Trace Coley, who was as pretty as she was spoilt, because he’d heard rumours that Kevin was thinking of including him in his team next year.

  Perdita and Trace had detested each other on sight and, together with Randy, Trace spent a lot of time when they weren’t screwing, winding Perdita up. Not only did they drench her in a water fight when she didn’t have a change of clothes and throw her on the muck heap, but on Friday evening offered her a roll filled with Doggie Dins, so she spent the rest of the night throwing up. Perdita reacted with screaming tantrums. Trace, suspecting Randy’s incessant baiting might have some basis in desire, stepped up the spite.

  And now it was Finals’ Day and the number two Ambersham ground at Cowdray was a seething mass of caravans, tents, trailers, canvas loose-boxes for 200 ponies and rows of cars belonging to team managers and exhausted parents. Breakfast of sausage, egg and chips was sizzling over camp-fires. The mobile loos had worked until the day before, but now each bowl was an Everest of Bronco and the stench was getting worse.

  With fifty teams present, there had also been one hell of a party the night before. Now, revellers nursed their hangovers. All the Beaufort and the VWH had been penalized for skinny-dipping. One of the Quorn had been discovered in a very loose-box with a girl from the Cotswold and dropped from his team. Perdita, not in a party mood, had stayed in her tent reading The Maltese Cat.

  Daisy, having taken a fortnight’s holiday to drive Perdita around in yet another hired car, had never felt so shattered in her life. She spent the morning scrubbing out the ponies’ boxes because the Rutshire team manager, miffed that Drew seemed to have utterly taken over, threatened dire reprisals if a blade of straw was left on the floor. In despair at the greasiness of her hair, Daisy had washed it in the river – how the hell had women coped in biblical times? – and it had dried all crinkly. The cornflower-blue dress she had brought to wear at the finals had been slept on by Ethel and was impossibly creased, as was her face after two nights sleeping in the car. Her
legs, not brown enough, were becoming bristly.

  She was miserably aware of getting on Perdita’s nerves, and, as all the fathers had rolled up, of the loneliness of being a woman on one’s own. She was almost abject with gratitude to Drew who’d insisted she use his Land-Rover as her base, and who’d come up specially that morning to invite her to lunch and to watch the match with him and Sukey.

  Among the Pony Club, Daisy noticed, Drew was a Superman. A fortnight ago he had played for England against America in the annual International. Only his two hard-fought goals and grimly consistent defence had prevented the game turning into a rout. Now he couldn’t move twenty yards without signing autographs. In his cool way Drew found this gratifying.

  Marrying Sukey had admittedly enabled him to buy a string of cracking ponies and build a much-envied yard, but he was increasingly irked by the curbs on his freedom. Sukey raised eyebrows when he ordered rather too good a bottle of claret in restaurants. She winced at the size of his tailor’s bill and questioned him going to Harley Street to replace two teeth knocked out in the Gold Cup when there was a perfectly good National Health dentist down the road. And just because Miguel O’Brien had switched to a new, ludicrously expensive, lightweight saddle, why did all Drew’s ponies need one too?

  Drew had never been extravagant, but he couldn’t see the point of parsimony for parsimony’s sake, so he had decided to look for a patron, some ignoramus who would pay him a long salary to coach him and look after his ponies. Kevin Coley was rumoured to be fed up with the dreadful Napiers and looking for a new senior professional. Trace Coley was impossibly spoilt, but Drew felt he could handle her. It was therefore in his interest to be the coach responsible for toppling South Sussex this afternoon.

  While the South Sussex team, by invitation of Kevin, were all lunching on lobster, gulls’ eggs, out of season strawberries and champagne in the Doggie Dins’ Tent, half a mile away in one of Lord Cowdray’s cottages, the Rutshire were having a team meeting. The curtains were drawn so they could see the video that Drew was playing of their semi-final against the Quorn. Drew leant against the wall, his thumb on the control button.

  ‘Today we have one problem – you have to mark the other guys or we’ll lose. You should never be more than two horse-lengths away from your man at any time. You must concentrate. Justin. You were loose in the first chukka, so were you, Patrick.’ Drew froze the picture for a second. ‘Their Number Three was all on his own. If Randy Sherwood gets loose with the ball we’re lost. Trace Coley’s their weak link. You won’t have any trouble with her, Mike, so give Patrick all the back-up he needs and both mark the hell out of Randy.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Mike, who had a hoarse voice like a braying donkey, the gentle timidness of a Jersey cow, and blushed every time he was spoken to.

  Drew turned to Perdita, who was deciding whether to race to the loo and be sick again.

  ‘Remember you’re playing polo, not solo, Perdita. Their back, Paul Hedley, is quite capable of storming through and scoring, so stay with him. And, above all, no tantrums. South Sussex may be ludicrously over-confident, but we can’t beat them with three players.’

  Then, to Perdita’s squirming embarrassment, he replayed the clip of her rowing with the umpire three times, freezing the frame of her yelling with her mouth wide open, until her team-mates were howling with laughter and rolling round on the floor. A shaft of sunlight coming through the olive-green curtains wiped out the picture.

  ‘Let’s go and have lunch,’ said Drew.

  Daisy hung about until Drew and the team came back to the Land-Rover. Sukey had done everyone proud, and the Lombard boys, who were Labradors when it came to food, were soon wolfing smoked salmon quiche, marinated breast of chicken, mozzarella in brown rolls, ratatouille and potato salad made with real mayonnaise.

  Mike, who’d gone greener than the minted melon balls provided for pudding, and Perdita, who was lighting one cigarette from another, couldn’t eat a thing.

  ‘You must get something inside you,’ insisted Sukey bossily, ‘and you too, Daisy.’

  I’d like your husband’s cock inside me, Daisy was absolutely horrified to find herself thinking. It was only because Drew had remembered she liked vodka and orange and had poured her two really strong ones. In her present vulnerable state she was hopelessly receptive to kindness.

  ‘Oh, where’s Ricky?’ moaned Perdita for the millionth time.

  ‘Don’t be too upset if he doesn’t come,’ said Drew in an undertone. ‘I know he wants to, but all these children riding and such family solidarity may be too much for him.’

  He’s so sweet to her, thought Daisy gratefully, getting out her sketchbook as Drew took the team off to the pony lines to tack up.

  Sukey firmly screwed the top on the vodka. ‘You’re driving. I expect you’d like coffee now instead of another drink.’

  ‘Aren’t you nervous?’ said Trace Coley fondly, as Randy accepted a glass of brandy.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Mike Waterlane’s their only decent player, and he’ll go to pieces as soon as his father turns up.’

  David Waterlane drove his Rolls-Royce with the leaping silver polo pony on the front towards Cowdray. He had made the mistake of going via Salisbury because his bride of six months, who was twenty years younger than him, wanted to look at the cathedral. As they drove through rolling hills topped by Mohican clumps of trees and moved into the leafy green tunnels of Petersfield, his bride, who’d been primed by Drew, put her hand on her husband’s cock and suggested that it would be more fun to stop and have their picnic in a field than join the crowds at Cowdray. It was only two o’clock, they’d seen the parade many times before, and Mike’s match wouldn’t start before 4.15.

  Ponies tacked up in the pony lines yawned with boredom as their owners gave them a last polish. Mothers cleared up the remnants of picnics. Fathers looked up at the uniform ceiling of grey cloud and decided to put on tweed caps instead of panamas.

  Mrs Sherwood, Randy’s and Merlin’s mother, divorced, with a Brazilian lover, and too glamorous for words in a peach suede suit, was talking to Kevin Coley, who looked like a pig with a thatched, blond tea-cosy on its head. Kevin, in turn, was being watched by his wife, Enid, who had gaoler’s eyes, was more regal than the Queen, and in her spotted dress looked like a Sherman tank with measles. Daisy marvelled that she and Kevin could produce a daughter as pretty as Trace.

  Cavalcades were riding quietly down to the ground, past trees indigo with recent rain, and cows and horses grazing alongside the faded grey ruins of the castle with its crenellated battlements and gaping windows. Of the fifty teams taking part in the parade, only eight were playing in the four finals, but there was still the prize for the best-turned-out team to be won.

  The ground, a huge stretch of perfect emerald turf, was bordered to the north by fir trees and to the south by mothers having fearful squawking matches about the authenticity of various junior teams who weren’t allowed to ride bona fide polo ponies.

  ‘Tabitha Campbell-Black’s pony played high goal at Cirencester!’

  ‘No, it didn’t!’

  ‘Yes, it did!’

  Brigadier Canford, Chairman of the Pony Club, and lover of pretty girls, was less amused to be stampeded by Valkyries.

  ‘The Beaufort are cheating. They’ve back-dated membership of their Number Four. He’s American and only been in the country two weeks.’

  ‘The Bicester are cheating too. I’ve just caught them trying to ditch their weak link and import a brilliant boy from Rhinefield Lower who doesn’t have a team.’

  ‘Ladies, ladies,’ said Enid Coley, joining the group of howling mothers. ‘Polo is only a game.’

  ‘And she’ll have the South Sussex team manager stoned to death at dawn with vegetarian Scotch eggs if they don’t win,’ murmured Bas Baddingham who’d just rolled up and was kissing Daisy.

  At two forty-five the parade began. On they came: chestnut, bay, dark brown, dappled grey, palamino, the occasional
extravagantly spotted Appaloosa, ears pricked, tack gleaming, stirrups and bits glittering.

  Daisy marvelled at the shifting kaleidoscope of coloured shirts, and the great, ever-moving millipede of ponies’ legs in their coloured bandages. Many of the riders wore faceguards like visors in some medieval contest. Daisy wished she could paint it, but you’d need to be Lady Butler to capture that lot. Fatty Harris, Rutshire’s club secretary, seconded for the day to do the commentary, had had rather too good a lunch in the Doggie Dins’ Tent and was waxing lyrical over the ancient names.

  ‘Here comes the Beaufort, the Bicester, the Cotswold, the Vale of the White Horse, the Craven, the Shouth Shushex Shecond Team.’

  ‘Thought he’d have trouble with that one,’ said Bas.

  ‘And a big cheer for the Rutshire,’ went on Fatty Harris, ‘today’s finalists in the Jack Gannon.’

  On came the Rutshire in their Prussian-blue shirts, Prussian-blue bandages on their ponies’ gleaming legs. Little Hermia, a changed pony after a fortnight’s attention from Perdita, danced and snatched at her bit in excitement.

  ‘She should have ridden Felicia in the parade,’ said Sukey disapprovingly. ‘Hermia doesn’t need hotting up.’

  But Hermia’s the nearest she can get to Ricky, thought Daisy, and she’s still hoping he’ll turn up.

  Next to Perdita rode Mike Waterlane on Dopey, a deceptively sleepy-looking pony, who was faster than a Ferrari and nipped all the opposition ponies in the line-out. Beyond him rode the Lombard brothers grinning broadly and enjoying themselves.

  ‘Oh, don’t they look lovely?’ Suddenly the tears spurted out of Daisy’s eyes and she had to turn away and bury her face in Drew’s Land-Rover. Next moment a large piece of kitchen roll had been shoved into her hand. A minute later, when she’d got control of herself, Drew was back with another glass of vodka and orange.

  A great cheer rang out as Cowdray, the home team, came on in their orange shirts.