Polo (3 page)

    `Can't say I blame his Daddy,' said Bart heavily.
`El
Orgulloso,
indeed.'

    `Actually Ricky's very shy and introverted,' protested Chessie. `He's Aquarius you know - aloof glamour, but has difficulty expressing himself.'

    `What sign d'you think I was born under?' asked Bart. Chessie laughed. `A pound sign, I should think. I want another drink.'

    Shrieks were coming from the swimming-pool as people, fully dressed, jumped into the icy water, which David Waterlane had been too mean to turn up until that morning.

    Inside, Bart poured a glass of wine for Chessie and more whisky for himself.

    `I'm not sponsoring Ricky next season,' he said brutally. `I'm crazy about my polo, but not with him. It's costing me a million dollars a year, none of it disposable. Victor scores a goal today and all I get is abuse.'

    `He droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,' said Chessie. Seeing her face was quite expressionless, Bart said, `He neglects you too.'

    `He prefers polo to sex,' said Chessie flatly, `but what player doesn't?'

    `I don't,' said Bart roughly, stroking her slender brown arm with the back of his hand. `I wouldn't neglect anything as precious as you.'

    `Put me in a packing chest with the rest of your Renoirs, would you?' taunted Chessie.

    The Waterlanes' ancient gramophone was now playing `Anything Goes'. Bart took Chessie off to dance.`Where's Grace?' murmured Chessie, deciding that Bart

    was rather excitingly built.

    `Gone home, she was pooped.'

    `Leaving you on the loose? That's unwise.'

    `Unwise of Ricky and Grace,' said Bart, drawing her

    close.

    For the first time he looked her straight in the eye

    and kept on looking. Her skin was translucent, her hair tousled, her wanton sleepy eyes as violet as the shadows

    beneath them.

    `You could strip a man's aftershave off with a look like

    that,' said Bart.

    `Wish I could strip off Victor's chest-hair. At least he has

    the manners to dance with his hostess,' said Chessie drily

    as Sharon and Victor quickstepped past.

    Gathered round a billiard table in the next room, Jesus,

    who'd just spent half an hour on David Waterlane's telephone ringing Chile, Seb, Dommie and Perdita, who still hadn't returned to her boarding school, were demonstrat

    ing polo plays with sugar lumps.

    `At the hit-in you should have tapped the ball to Seb and he'd have hit it to me,' said Dommie, moving a sugar lump.

    `I was here.'

    `No, you was 'ere,' said Jesus, moving it to the right. `And you should have been here,' said Perdita, moving

    it back to the left.

    `You seem to know more about it than us,' said Dommie,

    squeezing her waist.

    `I ought to go,' said Perdita ruefully. `They lock the fire escape at midnight. We've got biology first thing

    tomorrow, and I haven't revised at all.'

    `If you're weak on the subject of human reproduction,'

    said Seb, starting to plait her long, blond mane, `Dommie and I could give you a quick crash course. There are plenty of beds upstairs. How old are you?'

    `Fourteen,' said Perdita.

    `Gaol bait as far as we're concerned,' sighed Dommie.

^`
Come back in two years' time. What are you going to do when you grow up?'

    `Play polo.'

    `You'd do better as a stockbroker or a soccer player,' said

    Seb. `There's no money in polo.'

    `I know,' said Perdita, `but at least I'd rub up against all the richest, most powerful men in the world.'

    `Like Mrs France-Lynch,' said Dommie, watching Chessie rotating her flat, denimed belly against Bart's crotch. `That looks like trouble to me.'

    `Bloody 'ell,' said Jesus ruefully. If he hadn't spent so long on the telephone, he might have scored there. He toyed with the idea of cutting in, then decided he might want to play for Bart one day.

    Aware that they were being watched, Bart and Chessie retreated to David Waterlane's study. Tearing himself away from the photographs of ponies and matches on the wall, Bart discovered Chessie looking down her vest examining her breasts.

    Whaddyer doing?'

    `They say everything you touch turns to gold. I wondered if I had.'

    `Let me try again.' Bart slid his hands inside her vest. `Christ, you're sexy.'

    They were interrupted by Mrs Hughie, who, like the Brigadier, rather ineffectually tried to act as a custodian of morals at polo parties, and was now trying to foist strong black coffee on unwilling guests.

    `Hello, Chessie,' she said, averting her eyes as Chessie re-inserted her left breast. `Jolly bad luck about Matilda. Ricky's been playing so superbly too. I was trying to remember, what's his handicap?'

    `His personality,' said Bart bleakly.

    `Oh, I wouldn't say that.' Mrs Hughie gave a nervous laugh as she handed Chessie a cup.

    `D'you take sugar?'

    Chessie looked straight at Bart.

    `Only in Daddies,' she said softly.

    `I actually came to find you,' said Mrs Hughie hastily, as the whoops increased next door. `I'm awfully fond of Seb and Dommie, but they have had a bit too much to drink, and they're with a dear little soul called Perdita Macleod, who's boarding at Queen Augusta's. Could you possibly drop her off on your way home, Chessie?'

    `Thereby killing two birds who might otherwise get stoned,' said Chessie.

    Bart was absolutely furious, but as she and Perdita left the floodlit house for the moonlit night, Chessie reflected that Bart would be more likely to renew Ricky's contract if she held out.

    Stormin
^g
up Ricky's drive, twenty minutes later, twitching with desire and frustration, she was alarmed to find the house in darkness. Even worse, the front door was open and no-one was at home.

    Panic turned to rage, however, when she discovered Ricky still in his breeches and blue polo shirt, fast asleep in the stable next to Matilda's. Will, also asleep, lay in his arms. They were surrounded by two Labradors, a whippet, the stable cat, assorted plastic guns and dinky toys and a copy of
Thomas the Tank Engine.
The Labradors blinked sleepily and thumped their tails. Matilda, hanging from her sling, looked up watchfully. In Chessie she recognized a rival. But Ricky and Will didn't stir.

4

    Chessie woke at noon feeling hungover and guilty. She shouldn't have got tight or off so publicly with Bart. Gossip spread round the polo community like napalm. If Ricky didn't know by now, his grooms certainly would. Her fears were confirmed when Will wandered in later from playgroup, bearing paintings to be admired, stories to be read, and his hands crammed full of yellow roses pulled off by the head for her.

    Stocky as a Welsh cob, Will had a round pink face and dark brown slanting eyes with long curly lashes tipping the blond fringe of his pudding-basin hair. No child could be more edible, even allowing for a mother's bias. How could she have dallied with Bart and jeopardized this, thought Chessie, hugging him fiercely.

    `Did you bring me a present?' demanded Will.

    `I didn't go anywhere I could get you one,' said Chessie.
<sup>`</sup>
Who brought you home from playgroup?'

<sup>`</sup>
Fuckies,' said Will, who couldn't pronounce Frances, the head groom's name. `Fuckies say Mummy got pissed up last night.'

    `Mummy did not.'

    `Mattie got sore leggie,' went on Will.

    `As if I didn't know,' snapped Chessie.

    `Want some crisps.'

    `Ask Daddy.' Chessie snuggled down in bed.

    `Daddy gone to London.'

    `Don't be ridiculous. Daddy loathes London.'

    Ricky avoided London at all costs. Only his passion for Chessie after they'd first met had dragged him up to her flat in the Cadogans, and then he'd always got lost. As Will pottered off crispwards, Chessie thought about Bart. He reminded her of all those rich, ruthless, cynical, invariably married men whom she'd met and had affairs with when she used to cook directors' lunches in the City. One of them had been about to set her up in her own restaurant in the Fulham Road, called Francesca's, when she had met Ricky.

    It had been at her rich grandparents' golden wedding. With an eye to inheriting loot rather than a sense of duty, Chessie had reluctantly driven down from London expecting to be bored rigid. Instead she found that her plain, horsey cousin Harriet, who at twenty-five had never had a boyfriend, had turned up looking almost pretty and bursting out of her brown velvet dress with pride because she had Ricky in tow. Despite having absolutely no small talk and the trapped ferocity of a tiger whipped into doing tricks at the circus, he was the most attractive man Chessie had ever seen. It took her exactly fifteen minutes to take him off her poor cousin Harriet, gazing sleepily at him across the gold candles throughout dinner, then dancing all night with him. The chuntering of outraged relations was so loud, no-one could hear the cracking of poor Harriet's heart.

    Offhand with people to cover up his feelings, unused to giving or receiving affection, Ricky had not had an easy life. The France-Lynches had farmed land in Rutshire for generations. Horse-mad, their passion for hunting had been exceeded at the turn of the century by a passion for polo. Herbert, Ricky's father, the greatest polo player of his day and a confirmed bachelor, had suddenly at fifty-five fallen madly in love with a twenty-year-old beauty. Sadly she died giving birth to Ricky, leaving her arrogant,crotchety, heartbroken husband to bring up the boy in the huge, draughty Georgian house, which was called Robinsgrove, because the robins in the woods around were supposed to sing more sweetly there than anywhere else on earth. Ricky needed that comfort. Determined that his son should follow in his footsteps, Herbert was appalled to discover that the boy was left-handed. This is not allowed in polo. Consequently Herbert spent the next years forcing Ricky to do everything right-handed to the extent of tying his left arm to his side for hours on end. As a result Ricky developed a bad stammer, for which he was terribly teased at school.

    Although Herbert adored the boy, he couldn't show it. Only by playing better polo could Ricky win his father's approval. Herbert went to every match, yelling at Ricky in the pony lines. The cheers were louder off the field than on when Ricky started yelling back. Herbert's vigilance was rewarded. At just twenty-three, when he met Chessie, Ricky's handicap was six and he had already played for England.

    To Chessie he was unlike anyone she had ever met. In the middle seventies, when men were getting in touch with their feelings and letting everything hang out, Ricky gave nothing away. A tense uncompromising loner, lack of love in his childhood had made him so unaware of his charms that he couldn't imagine anyone minding being deprived of them.

    Chessie had had to make all the running. Smitten by her, Ricky was terrified to feel so out of control and went into retreat. He was always away playing in matches or searching for new horses. He never rang because he was shy about his stammer, and he knew it would wreck his polo career to marry when he needed all his concentration to make the break. Gradually, persistently, Chessie broke down his resistance.

    Herbert had been violently opposed to the marriage, but when the tetchy old eccentric met Chessie he was as bowled over as his son, even to the extent of moving out of
^R
obinsgrove, which had grooms' flats, stabling for twenty horses and four hundred acres of field and woodland, and moving into the Dower House two miles away, to make way for her and Ricky. At first the marriage was happy.

    Herbert went to matches with Chessie and enjoyed her cooking at least once a week, and when Chessie produced an heir two years later the old man was happier than he'd ever been.

    But although Herbert had initially settled Ł200,000 on Ricky, Chessie, used to having her bills picked up and being showered with presents by besotted businessmen, soon went through it. The land, which included a large garden, a tennis court and a swimming-pool, needed maintaining and the house, with its vast rooms, needed a gas pipe direct from the North Sea to keep it warm.

    Also Ricky's dedication, aloofness and incredible courage on the field, which had attracted Chessie madly in the beginning, were not qualities she needed in a husband. Ricky adored Chessie, but he was far too locked into polo, and after the first two years too broke, to provide her with the constant approval, attention and material possessions she craved.

    Resentful that Ricky wouldn't pay for a nanny, Chessie was always palming Will off on his grooms. Most top-class players employ one groom to three ponies; Ricky's grooms had to look after five, even six, but they never minded. They all adored Ricky who, beneath his brusqueness, was fair, kind and worked harder than anyone else, and they were proud to work for such a spellbinding player.

    Chessie, a constant stranger to the truth, had also failed to tell Bart at the Waterlanes' party that she had caused Ricky's rift with his father. Gradually Herbert had recognized Chessie for what she was: selfish, manipulative, lotus-eating, narcissistic, unreliable and hopelessly spoilt. One rule in the France-Lynch family was that animals were fed before humans. Horrified one day when Ricky was away that the dogs had had no dinner by ten at night and the rabbit's hutch hadn't been cleaned out for days, Herbert had bawled Chessie out. Totally unable to take criticism, Chessie complained to Ricky when he came home, wildly exaggerating Herbert's accusations, triggering off such a row between father and son that Herbert not only stopped the half-million he was about to settle on Ricky to avoid death duties, but cut Ricky out of his will.

    Although both men longed to make it up, they were too proud. Ricky, whose family had always been the patrons

    pr

    was forced to turn professional. Incapable of the tac needed to massage the egos of businessmen, desperately missing Herbert's counsel, appallingly strapped for cash - Bart's Ł25,000 for a season went nowhere when you were dealing with horses - Ricky threw himself more into polo and devoted less time to Chessie.

    In Chessie's defence, with a less complex man she might have been happy. She loved Ricky, but she burned with resentment, hating having to leave parties early because Ricky was playing the next day. Why, too, when then were ten other bedrooms in Robinsgrove with ravishing views over wooded valleys and the green ride down to the bustling Frogsmore stream, did Ricky insist on sleeping in the one room overlooking the stables? Here the window was always left open, so if Ricky heard any commotion he could be outside in a flash.

    As she staggered downstairs to make some coffee, on ever) wall Chessie was assaulted by paintings of polo matches and photographs of Ricky, Herbert and his brothers, leaning out of their saddles like Cossacks, or lined up, their arrogant patrician faces unsmiling, as their polo sticks rested on their collar bones. Going through the dark, panelled hall, she glanced into the library and was reproached by a whole wall of polo cups grown yellow from lack of polish.

    Oh God, thought Chessie hysterically, polo, polo, polo. Already on the wall was the draw of the British Open, known as the Gold Cup, the biggest tournament of the year. Starting next Thursday and running over three weeks, it would make Ricky more uptight than ever.

    At least marriage had taught him domesticity. In the kitchen his white breeches were soaking in Banish to remove brown bootpolish and the grass stains from yesterday's fall. From the egg yolk on the plates in the sink, he had obviously cooked breakfast for Will and himself, but Chessie only brooded that she was the only wife in polo without a washing-up machine. On the table was a note.

<sup>`</sup>
Darling,' Ricky had written with one of Will's crayons. `Gone to London, back late afternoon, didn't want to wake you, Mattie's bearing up. Love, Ricky.'

    Other wives, thought Chessie, scrumpling up the note furiously, went to Paris for the collections. Ricky was so terrified of letting her loose in the shops, he wouldn't even take her to London. At least it was a hot day. She might as well get a suntan. Going upstairs to fetch her bikini, she heard the telephone and took it in the drawing room. It was Grace, probably just back from a shopping binge at Ralph Lauren, sounding distinctly chilly. Learning Ricky was in London, she asked to `speak with Frances '.

    `Speak
to,
not
with,
you silly cow,' muttered Chessie. `Doesn't trust me to pass on messages.'

    She was about to go in search of Frances when she noticed a lighter square in the rose silk wallpaper above the fireplace. It was a few seconds before she realized that the Munnings had gone. Valued at Ł30,000, it had been given to them as a wedding present and was a painting of Ricky's Aunt Vera on a horse. Ricky must be flogging it in London in order to buy another pony.

    `I don't believe it,' screamed Chessie, storming into the hall, where she found Will applying strong-arm tactics to the frantically struggling stable cat as he tried to spray its armpits with Right Guard.

    `Stop it,' howled Chessie, completely forgetting about Grace at the other end.

    Ricky returned around six. He had managed to get Ł10,000 for the Munnings. He knew it was pathetically little, but at least it had enabled him to buy from Juan a dark brown mare called Kinta who'd previously been a race horse, whom he'd always fancied and with whom Juan had never clicked.

    He felt absolutely shattered. Now yesterday's adrenalin had receded, he could feel all the aches and pains. He was in agony where Jesus had swung his pony's head into his kidneys and where a ball had hit his ribs. His stick hand was swollen where Victor had swiped at him, and there was a bruise black as midnight in the small of his back where Jesus's bay mare had lashed out at him scrabbling to regain her feet after that last fall.

    Chessie waited for him in the drawing room, fury fuelled by his checking Mattie and the other ponies before coming into the house.

    `Hi, darling,' he said, ignoring the gap above the fireplace, `I've got another pony.'

    `How dare you flog Aunt Vera?' thundered Chessie. `Half of that money belongs to me, how much did you get?'

    `Ten grand.'

    `You were robbed.'

    At that moment Will erupted into the room.

    `Daddy bring me a present?'

    `Yes, I did,' said Ricky, handing him a half-size polo stick for children.

    Will gave a shout of delight, and, brandishing it, narrowly missed a Lalique bowl on the piano.

    `Just like Daddy now.'

    Chessie clutched her head. `Oh, please, no,' she screamed.