Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  Across the room Bart was singularly unamused to see his grossly underhandicapped ringer getting on far too well with his daughter. He should never have let them sit by themselves. Detesting small talk, he’d intended spending dinner talking polo with Angel.

  ‘What’s a toyboy?’ boomed the Queen of England’s second cousin who was sitting on Bart’s right. ‘You Americans, Mr Aldgate, are so good at remembering names.’

  Bibi felt as though for twenty-two years she’d been a ship wrecked at the bottom of the ocean which is suddenly aware far above of a sun warming the surface.

  ‘What kind of woman are you looking for?’ she asked Angel.

  ‘Like my mother, but with none of her defects.’ He took Bibi’s wrist, examining each diamond. ‘I want a woman who is sexually liberated with a mind of her own,’ then, looking straight into Bibi’s eyes, ‘that I can dominate utterly.’

  Bibi felt her entrails go liquid. ‘That is obnoxious,’ she said furiously. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her father bearing down on them, looking boot-faced. He was going to order her to work the room again. The band were playing.

  ‘Shall we dance?’ she asked Angel.

  ‘No,’ said Angel. Then, seeing her face fall, ‘Let’s start wiz the first lesson. I do zee asking. Will you dance wiz me?’

  ‘Oh, yes, please,’ breathed Bibi, leaping to her feet.

  And her fate was sealed, because Angel was the best dancer she’d ever met. As he instantly became one with every horse he rode, he now became part of the music.

  ‘Wow,’ said Chessie enviously, watching Angel’s gyrating pelvis and flying feet, and his utterly still face, ‘talk about Travoltage.’

  Gradually the room cleared. To keep up, Bibi kicked off her red shoes. Her scarlet toenails flashed like swarming ladybirds, her dark red hair flowed like seaweed and her lovely body writhed like a flame. Then the band switched to ‘Rock Around the Clock’, and each time Angel took her hand and put his other hand on her waist to swing her around, it was as though he was giving her an electric shock. Finally, such was the violence of her turning that he had to catch her as she fell.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he hissed as she tried to wriggle free.

  ‘That’s zee second lesson, don’t move until I say.’

  Meekly Bibi rested in his arms, luxuriating in the heat of his body and the strength of his arms.

  ‘We go now,’ said Angel.

  ‘We can’t,’ said Bibi aghast. ‘They haven’t even drawn the raffle yet.’

  Returning to their table, Angel took a sheaf of pink tickets from her bag and, tearing them into tiny pieces, dropped them on the floor.

  ‘You win me. I am first prize.’

  Bibi’s jaw dropped. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hardly whisper. ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘Mine,’ said Angel. ‘I want you to see my ’ovel, and I don’t want your father barging in in zee middle.’

  Ignoring a furiously waving Bart, they slid out of the french windows. Picking a gardenia whiter than the moon, Angel put it behind Bibi’s ear.

  40

  Angel lived in a rundown housing estate near the airport. Bibi was appalled by his room which was tiny, airless and impossibly hot, with only a minute chest of drawers, a narrow bed little wider than an ironing board, no carpets and no curtains.

  ‘This is awful. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Would you have listened?’

  ‘Why’ve you put tin foil on the windows?’

  ‘Zee sun gets up earlier than I like to do.’

  Down the landing was a grimy bathroom, with a john, a cracked basin and a creaking inadequate shower.

  ‘Miguel found this room,’ said Angel. ‘He theenk eet five star for spy of Alejandro.’

  ‘We’ll move you tomorrow, right. I’m so sorry. I feel terrible.’

  Bibi moved to the chest of drawers, admiring first the photograph of Pedro. ‘He’s like you, and so handsome.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ snapped Angel.

  ‘That’s a purple heart,’ said Bibi in surprise. ‘Dad got one in Korea.’

  ‘Eet was sent me by American pilot.’ Removing his dinner jacket and black tie, Angel threw them in the corner. ‘He won eet in Vietnam. He say it was the most important of his medal, and he wish to present it as a token of respect to the professionalism and unbreakable courage of Argentine pilots.’

  ‘But that’s wonderful,’ sighed Bibi.

  ‘The Eenglish say we were kamikaze, but a fighter pilot ’as to be in complete control. We were fighting for something that was ours. We knew it was dangerous, but we ’ad to go on.’

  Slightly frightened by the fanaticism in his eyes, Bibi picked up the jar of earth. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Malvinas earth. I brung it back. One day it will be Argentine earth.’

  Tears triggered off by champagne filled Bibi’s eyes. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I don’t need peety,’ snarled Angel. ‘I need vengeance.’

  A Simenon paperback lay face down by the bed. Bibi blushed as she remembered how she and Red had bitched in French about Angel at Christmas. As he pulled his shirt out of his trousers, she went over and put her arms round his neck. For a second Angel went rigid. ‘I thought I was the one calling the shoots.’

  ‘I’m just checking the monitors,’ whispered Bibi.

  Looking down, he could see between her breasts to her scarlet pants and breathed in the remains of Giorgio and the acid reek of hot, hopelessly excited woman. Her nose might be like Concorde, but her eyes were dark, long, loving and glazed with desire. She was Bart’s daughter, rich as an Arab sheik and the key to worldly goods.

  Angel laid a warm, steady hand on the back of her neck, then stretched his long fingers round to the front to gently stroke her cheek. Bibi gave a moan as he spat on the thumb of his other hand and smoothed away the mascara that had streaked under her eyes. Her mouth, huge, red and smudged, was trembling as Angel ran a lazy tongue along her upper lip then back along the lower one, then, slowly, as his hand slid down her neck to caress her collar bone, he kissed her properly. Simultaneously he turned her sideways, so his left hand could slide into her coral dress to stroke her breasts. The bra was built in. His right hand reached for the zip, and she was naked except for her red pants and her diamonds.

  God, thought Angel, what a glorious undreamt-of body. He could have rewritten the Song of Solomon just for her. Comparisons with pomegranates, twin roes and sheafs of corn were totally inadequate. Her hands were shaking so much a pearl button flew off as she undid his shirt. His jockey shorts were made up of two pieces of blue-and-white Argentine flag.

  ‘You’re so beautiful,’ muttered Bibi burying her face in the silken softness of his chest, ‘I’ve never met anyone as beautiful as you.’

  ‘Flattery will get you a preek as hard as a truncheon,’ said Angel with a slight smirk.

  Dropping to her knees, Bibi very gently put her lips round it, her tongue flickering like a captured moth. Just managing to control himself, Angel drew her to her feet and laid her back on the narrow bed. Running his tongue up the smooth hillock of her breast, he fastened on her nipple and slid two fingers between her legs. Christ, he could restore polo sticks in the slippery linseed oiliness. Rubbing expertly until she was moaning with ecstasy, anxious not to lose the momentum, only when he was sure she was on the brink did he open her mouth with his tongue and drive his cock deep inside her. As his hips had undulated on the dance floor, so they writhed on top of her now, his pelvic bone driving her towards pleasure.

  ‘Omigod, I’m coming,’ gasped Bibi, bucking as joyously as a pony.

  Angel gave a groan that turned into a sob and came too.

  ‘You are old phoney,’ he whispered in her ear a minute later. ‘All that macho talk and you are soft as marshmallow inside.’

  And, despite the repeated roar of landing and departing aircraft which shook the little room as a terrier shakes a rat, he immediately fell asleep.


  Bibi lay on her side reliving every moment of the last half-hour, which would spoil her for the fumblings of Trust Fund Babies for ever. As she waited for stubble to darken his cheek, and admired the long lashes sweeping the scattering of freckles like the inside of a tiger lily on his cheekbones, she also counted his ribs, and, remembering how he wolfed his food at dinner, wondered how many meals he’d been skipping. Perhaps he was sending money home to his peasant mother. Bibi imagined her, black-eyed in her black dress, a black scarf over her greying hair, with a certain dignity in her prune-wrinkled face despite her desperate poverty in the slums of Buenos Aires.

  She would rescue Angel. She would give him a massive pay rise Bart would never know about. Then she would buy him the best ponies in the world and he would lovingly consult her on every move. Light was creeping along the edges of the tinfoil. Every lining has a window of silver, thought Bibi, gazing down at this glorious animal lying beside her so much in need of her protection.

  ‘This is adopt-an-underhandicapped-animal day,’ she said out loud, and had to stuff her face into the pillow to stop herself laughing.

  Bart was outraged when Bibi drifted into the office at eleven in the morning, still in her coral dress, absolutely bowlegged from screwing, with stars in her eyes far brighter than the diamonds still in her ears. Having languorously closed a deal with a Japanese for twenty-five Skylarks, she went home to bed.

  ‘You ordered Angel to take good care of me,’ was her only explanation, ‘and, oh boy, he obeyed you almost to the french letter.’

  She woke early in the evening adrift with love and, having showered and washed her hair, drove down to Worth Avenue where she bought a wildly expensive, skin-tight, rust-red cotton sweater and tight, off-white jeans. Putting them on, she dropped her $2,000 pin-striped suit in the waste basket and set off for the barn.

  As she drove up the colonnade of Iceberg roses, the ground was littered with white petals. Bart liked them swept up on the hour and Bibi was about to give the grooms a rocket, then thought what the hell – it was roses, roses all the way.

  Rounding the corner, she found ponies running all round the orange grove and stick-and-ball field and the barn deserted except for two lugubrious-looking men in shiny dark suits.

  ‘How in hell did you get in here?’ she snapped, trying to catch the $30,000 Glitz who clattered past her covered in drying suds, tail still wet whisking water everywhere, with his duck-egg-blue lead rope flying.

  ‘We’re from Immigration,’ said the taller and seedier of the men. ‘We’ve got occasion to believe,’ he consulted his notebook, ‘one Rafael Solis de Gonzales is working here without a work permit.’

  Bibi’s heart plummeted. She had a sick feeling her father must have tipped them off.

  ‘Not here,’ she said firmly. ‘I know all the grooms – only by their given names admittedly, but we don’t have a Rafael.’

  ‘Answers to the name of “Angel”.’

  ‘No way,’ gasped Bibi, hoping she wasn’t going scarlet.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a trainer on the end of a slim brown ankle hanging down from one of the rafters of the nearest box. All the grooms must be hiding up there.

  ‘Everyone’s out in the exercise ring with the ponies,’ said Bibi, quickly walking away from the stables. ‘I’ll make enquiries and call you tomorrow.’

  ‘Seems weird having horses of this quality running loose,’ queried the taller Immigration Officer.

  Fortunately the second, less repulsive, Immigration Officer had a date with his wife’s best friend in half an hour.

  ‘Right,’ he said shutting his notebook. ‘But you better getcha act together by tomorrow.’

  ‘You can come down now,’ Bibi shouted up into the rafters as soon as they’d gone. Tentatively, grooms and low-goal foreign players clambered down.

  ‘Where’s Angel?’ asked Bibi sharply.

  ‘Gone,’ said Juan’s cousin, rubbing his back where a rafter had dug into him. ‘He caught the six o’clock flight out of Miami.’

  Bibi clutched on to one of the white pillars.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Herbie from the polo office called at lunchtime, saying Emigration ’ad been tipped off, and were after him, and on their way down.’

  ‘They search his room,’ said Miguel’s cousin, ‘and found one thousand buck cheque from Mr Alderton.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Bibi. ‘Did he leave a forwarding address?’

  ‘’E didn’t have time. But Alejandro know where he live.’

  ‘Who tipped off Immigration?’

  ‘Herbie say it was Mr Alderton’s secretary.’

  Bibi was devastated. Going home, she cried herself into total insomnia and by dawn had decided to fly to Buenos Aires. Angel hadn’t been paid for the first fortnight of April. He’d left clothes behind at the barn, and she wanted to apologize for Bart shopping him – but these were excuses. She knew she couldn’t live without him.

  Miami Airport had been reduced to even worse chaos than usual by polo players who’d been knocked out of the World Cup returning home to Argentina. It was hard to tell if the airport officials were more bemused by the amount of luggage Alejandro and his family had accumulated (which included two vast van loads of prams, toys, furniture, polo sticks, and Worth Avenue clothes which would be flogged for five times their value), or by the bullying of Alejandro’s mistress.

  ‘Mr Mendoza and his sons must each have five seats to sleep in,’ she was yelling. ‘They’re international polo players who need their sleep.’

  Having acquired Angel’s address already from Alejandro, Bibi sauntered into First Class. Wrapped in her own thoughts, she was oblivious of the everflowing champagne, the caviar, the poached salmon, the free scent, the washing kit, the rests for head and feet, the interested glances of businessmen across the gangway.

  But when she went to the john she peered round the iron social curtain which divided First from Economy and for the first time saw the red-faced mothers trying to quieten fractious children and puking babies, the men leaning snoring into the gangways, all packed together like sardines, and breathed in the hot foetid air with a shudder. She thought of Angel sitting there last night and vowed he would never go Economy again.

  Back in her seat, deeply apprehensive about the morrow, Bibi concentrated on the guidebook, which was so badly translated that she nodded off until six thirty. That was the longest sleep she’d had in months. Waking she felt more cheerful and able to cope.

  Reaching Buenos Aires, she booked into the Plaza Hotel, showered and washed her hair, and put on a new, short and clinging, shocking-pink cotton jersey dress. It was the beginning of autumn and the great dark green trees outside were beginning to turn. As she bowled along in a taxi, the wide roads, heroic statues and bosky parkland reminded her of a lusher Paris. The taxi driver didn’t freak out when she told him her destination; perhaps he was used to driving into the slums.

  ‘This can’t be right,’ she said five minutes later as he drew up outside a row of beautiful mid-nineteenth-century houses with exquisite wrought-iron balconies on the edge of a park.

  ‘Sí,’ he pointed to the name and number. ‘They are apartments.’

  Uncharacteristically overtipping, heart hammering, Bibi went to the door. There beside the bell was the name Solis de Gonzales in copperplate. Perhaps Angel’s mother worked as a maid. Bibi rearranged her mental picture to an ancient retainer, still in black and wrinkled like a prune, but with a white apron and depended upon by all the family.

  She pressed the bell.

  ‘Sí,’ said a voice.

  ‘Is Angel – I mean Rafael there?’

  ‘You are not tax inspector?’ said a female voice in fluent, but husky, broken English.

  Bibi felt sick. Perhaps Angel lived with a rich mistress. But the woman who answered the door of the private lift, although a charming blonde in a cashmere grey twin-set which matched her eyes, was well into her fifties. The pearls at her neck, and the
rings flashing on the hand she extended, were not those of a poor retainer.

  ‘Come in,’ she smiled at Bibi. ‘Angel go out. He’ll be back soon. Would you like some coffee?’ She tugged a black embroidered bell pull.

  ‘Please,’ said Bibi, who was gaping at the apartment. At a glance she noticed a Sisley, a Pissarro and a Utrillo of a mackerelled sky, as well as marvellous eighteenth-century oils of dogs, horses and hunting scenes. Making up three sides of a square with the fireplace were white sofas with grass-green and violet cushions to match a beautiful black, violet and green carpet which covered most of the polished floor. On a big, polished table in front of a huge mauve vase of michaelmas daisies were silver-framed photographs of beautiful people playing polo or leading in racehorses. There was Angel as a solemn little boy. There were Pedro and Angel together, arms round each other’s shoulders. Beyond the park outside, which was criss-crossed with rust-pink paths and dotted with trees smothered in shocking pink blossom, huge flat-roofed buildings rose like liners out of an ocean of dark green.

  ‘It is so beautiful here,’ stammered Bibi. ‘Are you Angel’s mother?’

  ‘No, I am his Aunt Betty. His mother is in Rio, I theenk, or perhaps Paris. She marry an Italian. Where you stay?’

  ‘The Plaza.’

  ‘Angel’s grandmother, my mother, live there. You will perhaps have tea together.’

  Bibi’s mind was reeling. ‘Is Angel OK?’

  ‘He arrive very mad,’ said Aunt Betty, rolling her big grey eyes. ‘He say his boss reported him to Immigration, so he catch next plane. Angel is very impulsive. He regret it, I think. He play polo well?’

  ‘He plays wonderfully,’ said Bibi. ‘On my father’s team. There was some misunderstanding. I’ve come to beg him to come back.’

  This girl is not so plain after all, thought Aunt Betty as the maid came in with coffee, and a plate of croissants and greengage jam. She has good clothes and she love Angel.

  Bibi’s eyes returned to the paintings. That was definitely a little Watteau in the corner. Her father would go berserk.