Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  So Rupert had stopped bitching at Perdita and merely ignored her.

  The media, of course, were everywhere – the freedom of the press extended even to the manger. Each time Perdita put a foot outside the door, or ventured down to the stables, a notebook, a camera or a microphone would be stuck into her face. How was she getting on with Rupert? What did she feel about seeing Red? How much more weight was she going to lose? Was she quite sure she wasn’t anorexic?

  On the eve of the first match she took refuge in Spotty’s box. The ponies were restless and excited, knowing something was up after their long, long wait. Poor Spotty so loved showing off to the crowd, but, as Perdita was only reserve, he probably wouldn’t get a chance to play at all. Rupert had flown to New York for the day and Perdita was surreptitiously sneaking him a packet of Polos when a car drove up in a cloud of dust. Terrified it might be Rupert, who’d smell peppermint and catch Spotty crunching, Perdita shot out of his box only to find Ricky looking boot-faced.

  ‘The Americans have announced their team.’

  ‘What is it?’ croaked Perdita, feeling as if the cloud of dust had blown straight down her throat.

  ‘Ben, Angel, Red,’ said Ricky.

  Oh, thank God, thought Perdita, I’ll see him again.

  ‘But they’ve dropped Shark and put Luke in instead,’ went on Ricky. If Luke had been tuning up all the American ponies, he was thinking bleakly, they’d be unbeatable tomorrow.

  ‘Oh, how wonderful!’ Perdita was overjoyed. ‘How wonderful for Luke!’

  A pungent waft of sweet scent from the nearby orange grove reminded her poignantly of that day at Bart’s barn when Luke had first introduced her to Red. How comforting if he were there tomorrow to hold her hand when she saw Red again.

  Another perfect afternoon followed next day with a gentian-blue sky arched over a field of bouncy, jade-green Bermuda grass. As the crowd poured into Eldorado Polo Club from all over the world, Perdita had never seen more ravishing sunkissed blondes in shorts and sundresses, or more handsome healthy-looking men. Here was polo at its most relaxed and friendly. Yet beyond the mountains, which ringed the oasis like wrinkled, sleeping elephants, lay the desert where coyotes and rattlesnakes lurked, where dust devils swirled round the creosote bushes and Jacob trees held up their strange, spiky branches like hands praying for an American victory.

  In the pony lines Rupert was winding up his final pep-talk. ‘All that matters is marking. You’ve got to unnerve them early on.’ Then, turning to Perdita, who was sweating in breeches, boots and her dark blue England shirt, ‘Don’t think you’ve got the afternoon off, duckie. Your job is to watch your eyes out, assessing every American pony and player, and I don’t just mean Red Alderton.’

  Perdita went scarlet.

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ said Seb. ‘Ouch,’ he yelled as Perdita clutched his arm.

  For a second she thought she was going to black out. For there, getting out of a brand-new, dark blue Lamborghini to a chorus of female shrieking, was Red wearing the pale amethyst American shirt which went so perfectly with his conker-red hair and his smooth, brown face. Immediately, like cats on raw liver, the press fell on him.

  ‘Whaaddya chances, Red?’

  ‘Pretty good,’ drawled Red, then, catching sight of the English team, he started to laugh. ‘I guess the Brits aren’t exactly weighed down by the responsibility of false expectations. Seeing as how they’re fielding a has-been and three new caps, including Mike Waterlane, who’s about as thick as a Clydesdale’s dick.’

  ‘I say, that’s a bit steep,’ said Mike, going brick-red.

  ‘Don’t rise,’ snapped Rupert. ‘That’s what he wants.’

  But Red was still wandering, smiling, towards them, as malicious as he was seductive.

  ‘I cannot imagine there’s ever been an English side quite so unfancied by the bookies,’ he told the battling, frenzied swarm of reporters. ‘Was it necessary to underplay your hand quite so obviously, Ricky? And hi, Rupert.’ Another flash of white teeth beneath the coldly calculating, fox-brown eyes. ‘I’m surprised you’re not wearing your paternity suit. I hope you’ve got a hot line to the BPA because re-inforcements are sure going to be needed.’

  Motionless, the English team watched him. The press were writing avidly, adoring every moment, shoved by television and radio reporters desperate to get their mikes within earshot.

  ‘Any message for Perdita?’ yelled the Sun.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Perdita darling,’ Red’s voice softened. ‘I couldn’t see you for assholes. You’re looking good. Your new Daddy must certainly have pulled every string to get you on the team.’

  Stung and humiliated, Perdita stumbled away, frantically rubbing away the tears.

  ‘I’ve nothing to say,’ she howled to the swarm of reporters. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Then, suddenly, ahead of her she saw a big, blond man with blacksmith’s shoulders and lean, cowboy hips moving down the American pony lines, checking tack and bandages, joking with the grooms, outwardly utterly relaxed, keeping his fears to himself.

  ‘Luke,’ called out Perdita desperately.

  Swinging round, catching sight of her tearful, anguished face, he was beside her in an instant. His sheer size made the reporters back off.

  ‘I’m really sorry about Tero,’ were his first words. ‘It blew me away when Red told me.’

  She had remembered him slumped with pain, green-faced, pouring with sweat. Now his hair was bleached the colour of faded bracken, and freckles merged in his suntanned face. Pale amethyst wasn’t the best colour for him, but he looked great, and Perdita thought once again what a lovely open, generous face he had.

  ‘I’m sorry about Fantasma,’ she stammered. ‘Have you heard how she is?’

  Just for a second the pain flickered in his eyes.

  ‘She’s fine,’ he said firmly. ‘Winning a lot of matches for Alejandro.’

  ‘Luke,’ yelled Bart impatiently, ‘For Chrissake, stop yakking. Come and take a look at this fetlock.’

  ‘I gotta go,’ said Luke.

  ‘Good luck,’ whispered Perdita.

  The press surged forwards. ‘How was Red? Any chance of a reconciliation?’

  Perdita had behaved well for too long. ‘Why don’t all you bastards fuck off?’ she screamed.

  She was further jolted when she climbed up into the packed stands to the seat Taggie had kept for her and found herself knocked backwards by a huge, juddering, black, rubber bullet. It was Leroy who’d slipped his lead and, bashing his tail back and forth like a hooked salmon, was frantically licking her face.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ she moaned, clutching his wonderfully solid body. Then, on his forehead she breathed in a scent, sharp, sophisticated with musky overtones which unsettled her far more than the waft of orange blossom had yesterday. She got a sudden vision of Luke in hospital doubled up with pain.

  ‘Leroy, you’re incorrigible,’ said a cool voice. ‘If you’re going to assault the opposition, you’ll have to stay in the truck.’ Perdita found herself looking up into the lean, olive-skinned face of Margie Bridgwater, the beautiful girl who’d been sitting on Luke’s bed in hospital. She was wearing white jeans, loafers and a red shirt and the brilliant sunshine bounced joyfully off her blue-black hair.

  ‘Hi, Perdita,’ she said drily. ‘Congratulations on making the team.’

  ‘Thanks,’ muttered Perdita, collapsing beside Taggie.

  ‘Yes, congratulations, Perdita,’ called Chessie and Bibi, who were sitting above Margie, both looking thoroughly over-excited.

  ‘I do hope you win,’ added Chessie in a much-too-audible whisper. ‘I’m knocked out Luke’s been picked,’ she added to Margie. ‘About bloody time.’

  ‘What’s Luke doing now?’ asked Bobby Ferraro’s wife.

  ‘Running a green pony clinic in Florida,’ said Margie proudly. ‘He’s managed to pay off all his debts. That son-of-a-bitch Hal Peters has run away to Chile so he can’t be extradited.’

&
nbsp; ‘I’d have helped Luke out if I’d known,’ said Chessie, ‘but he’s so proud he never told anyone until it was too late. Where are you staying?’

  ‘Luke hates hotels because they won’t take Leroy,’ said Margie, stroking Leroy’s panting shiny head, ‘so we’ve rented a condo.’

  ‘He’s so lovely, Luke,’ said Chessie.

  ‘Why d’you think I’m with him?’ said Margie.

  Looking down, Perdita found her nails had drawn blood in the palm of one hand. How dare they discuss Luke as if he was a new biography they were all enjoying?

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Taggie, as a burst of band music echoed round the mountains. ‘Here come the teams.’

  The first match, as Red and the entire polo world had predicted, was a massacre. From the moment Bob Hope threw in the ball from the back of a Cadillac, Ricky knew it would be a tough game and that he, as the most dangerous player in the English team, would take the punishment. For six chukkas it seemed the Americans took positive pleasure in harassing the hell out of him. Particularly violent whenever he got the chance was Red, who seemed less interested in scoring, which he should have been doing from the number two position, than in paralysing Ricky. Time and again Ricky found himself forced off the ball, crushed between the explosive, unpredictable Angel and the sleek, viciously smiling Red, who jabbed his elbows into Ricky’s ribs as though he intended to puncture his heart.

  On the rare occasions Ricky did get through, like a gundog finally escaping the shackles of a bramble thicket, there was Luke solid as the Rockies backing ball after ball such an incredibly long way that they invariably fell ten yards in front of goal beside the one American player that was loose. And when the English got rattled and started fouling, he hit four glorious penalties from the sixty-yard line.

  Luke, whose horses had all been sold to pay his debts, was riding Bart’s ponies, which, as Ricky suspected, he had been tuning up for days with all the skill of a Ferrari mechanic. Because of his height and endless legs he still gave the air of a father riding a seaside donkey to amuse his children. But his hands were so light, and so supple was his thirteen-stone bulk that he managed to shift it like a contortionist. For the first time he had the chance to show the world how brilliantly he could ride when given top-class horses. Apart from Fantasma his own ponies had only been good because he’d trained them so well.

  But his air of calm was deceptive. A despairing Dommie, who was supposed to be marking him and who had hardly touched the ball at all, saw Luke setting off upfield yet again. Unable to catch him because he was riding one of Bart’s fastest ponies, an exquisitely pretty little bay thoroughbred mare, Dommie panicked and ran Corporal into Luke’s mare broadside.

  There was a sickening thud as the mare hit the ground and lay still. Leaping to his feet, Luke seized a horrified Dommie by his dark blue shirt and pulled him down off a quailing Corporal.

  ‘You goddamm asshole,’ he roared, lifting his huge fist.

  ‘Luke, for Chrissake, don’t hit him,’ howled Red, galloping up. Then, as the bay mare scrambled to her feet: ‘Pony’s only winded.’

  For a second the fist trembled in the air.

  ‘You goddam asshole,’ said Luke more gently. Then, seeing how terrified Dommie was looking, he started to laugh and let him go, whereupon Juan O’Brien awarded a free goal to the Americans. Rupert put his head in his hands.

  ‘Unlike Luke to flip his lid,’ said Chessie to Bibi. ‘Must be more strung up than he looks.’

  But Bibi was cocooned in happiness. She was expecting a baby by easily the most dashing man on the field, who, between blowing kisses in her direction, was making Seb Carlisle’s life a misery by scoring all the goals. The most miserable man on the field, however, was Mike Waterlane, who’d spent the last twenty-four hours on the loo, whose mallet had developed an allergy to the ball and who, like a policeman on point duty, had waved every American player through. With Ricky pegged like Gulliver, the young English team lost direction and ran out the losers 3-13.

  Poor Ricky plunged into another nightmarish week as the clamour of his detractors intensified. Colossal recriminations followed from the sponsors and the two polo associations. Ricky, by his bloody-minded obstinacy, had sabotaged the Westchester. The press carved him up, baying for the return of Drew and the Napiers to prevent the second match being a complete joke.

  Drew was quoted as saying he would make himself available but that ‘It would be rather like joining the Titanic in mid-voyage’ which didn’t improve Ricky’s temper. Rupert stood by him staunchly in public, but, in private, the rows were awful and shook the white walls of the Villa Victoria. If the Americans won the second match the third would be cancelled which meant Venturer would lose a fortune in television rights and sponsorship money. Worse still, David Waterlane insisted on flying over to sort things out. He arrived around midnight on the eve of the second match and was even more incensed to discover that Mike had been out since lunchtime with the twins.

  Perdita, who’d valiantly tried to keep everyone’s spirits up during the week, had retreated to her room to avoid the brickbats. She’d been unable to concentrate even on Dick Francis since she’d arrived, but, flipping through the paperbacks she’d scooped up at random before she left, she discovered an old poetry anthology of Luke’s. Outside, the delicious spicy smell of Taggie’s paella had been overwhelmed by the sweet, voluptuous scent of orange blossom and stephanotis. A shooting star careered across the indigo sky. Croaking tree-frogs harmonized sexily with Bob Marley, throbbing and pounding out of the outside speakers. Perdita started flipping through the anthology. It fell open at Emerson:

  ‘Give all to love,

  Obey thy heart,’ read Perdita.

  ‘Tis a brave master,

  Let it have scope,

  Follow it utterly.’

  She had difficulty reading the last verse because she was crying and because Luke had written the word ‘Perdita’ in the margin:

  ‘Though thou loved her as thyself

  As a self of purer clay.

  Though her parting dims the day

  Stealing grace from all alive.

  Heartily know

  When half-gods go,

  The gods arrive.’

  Red had been a half-god, she thought bitterly, and he’d gone. And she’d been a half-god and left Luke. That was why he was now with Margie Bridgwater, who was as clever as she was good and beautiful and Perdita absolutely loathed her guts.

  Outside, raised voices were definitely winning over Bob Marley and the tree-frogs. Perdita, creeping to the window, noticed Rupert’s cigar glowing redly as he increasingly drew on it, trying to keep his temper. His other hand, holding a glass of brandy, rested on Taggie’s shoulder. She was shelling peas for tomorrow night’s dinner which would either be a celebration or the wake to end all wakes. No one was taking any notice of Sharon, who, rippling the oily, pale turquoise surface of the pool, dog-paddled up and down in the nude, piled-up hair held firmly above the water, diamond earrings upstaging the huge stars.

  ‘Do come in and have a dip, boys. The water’s laike satin. Ay’m sure it will cool you down.’

  But David was yelling at Ricky. ‘I want to know where the hell Mike is. He’s not even in bed by midnight on the night’ – he looked at his watch – ‘or rather the day of the most important match of his life. If I’d been in charge, this would never have happened.’

  He was interrupted by the sound of a Mini-Moke roaring up the dust track pouring out Dire Straits, followed by raucous laughter and slamming doors.

  ‘There is a green hill far away, Without a city wall,’ sang Seb Carlisle in a light tenor, as he pushed his way through the crimson mane of bougainvillaea.

  ‘Where our dear Lord was crucified.’

  ‘Who died to save us all,’ joined in Dommie in harmony.

  ‘For He’s a jolly good fellow,’ brayed Mike coming in on an even lower register, ‘For He’s a jolly good fellow, for He’s a jolly . . .’

  T
he singing tailed off as the trio encountered a solid phalanx of disapproval lined up round the pool.

  ‘Where have you been?’ thundered David Waterlane.

  ‘Hello, David,’ said Seb, brushing his blond hair out of his eyes. ‘We thought there was no point Mike worrying all evening about you flying over and tomorrow’s match so we took him for a jaunt.’

  ‘A seriously good jaunt,’ said Mike, swaying towards the swimming-pool and only being saved from falling in by Dommie catching hold of his shirt. Mike’s normally slicked-back hair flopped all over his forehead and he was wearing an outsize T-shirt on which was printed the words: ‘Fran’s Friendly Fornicating Facilities’.

  ‘We took him to a brothel in Nevada,’ said Seb who was wearing a T-shirt which said: ‘Have a good lay’.

  ‘Pretty sophisticated. Customers landing all the time on the airstrip,’ he went on.

  Dommie’s T-shirt said: ‘Support your local hooker’.

  ‘We bought ones for you and Perdita,’ he beamed at Ricky. ‘You OK, darling?’ he shouted up to Perdita, who was by now nearly falling out of the window with laughter. Rupert threw his cigar into the swimming-pool, only just missing Sharon’s nose.

  ‘You took Mike to a knocking shop and got him drunk?’ he said softly.

  ‘He’s not drunk. He smoked a joint on the way home,’ said Seb, taking the cigarette from Mike and inhaling deeply. ‘You should try this place, Rupert. They’ve got an orgy room with blue shagpile, leading up to the waterbed and a jacuzzi with red lights under the water and we saw some brilliant blue movies. Much better for Mike’s morale than that frightfully depressing video of him letting everyone through in the first match.’

  ‘We nearly tried the dominance dungeon,’ added Dommie. ‘We thought how much Chessie would have enjoyed it – whoops, sorry,’ he added, giggling, as Ricky’s face tightened with rage.

  ‘Seriously nice girls,’ said Mike, collapsing on to a sunlounger. ‘Really seriously friendly.’