Polo (54 page)

    `What's happened?' Luke asked one of Bart's grooms whom he knew from Palm Beach. The groom pulled a long face.

    `Alderton Pegasus totalled in the desert with no survivors.' `Shit,' said Luke. `Dad should fly home.'

    `And miss a final? Pigs would fly,' said the groom.

    The Queen had arrived. State trumpeters and drum horses from the Household Cavalry in their gold uniforms, followed by the band, were lining up between the goal posts to lead the two teams, with the two umpires as a bolster between them, ten abreast on to the field. Players tend to ride their oldest, quietest horses in the parade in case the bands and the crowd overexcite them. Apocalypse, however, stuck to their theme. Ricky rode the pale yellow Wayne, Perdita was on Hermia, her red-chestnut friend from Pony Club days who leapt all over the place snatching excitedly at her bit. Dancer had a safer passage on black Geoffrey, the hangover horse. Luke had reluctantly agreed to ride Fantasma, the only white horse in the yard, and had great difficulty controlling her. A natural loner, she longed to be out in front leading the parade. When she wasn't humping her back in temper, she was taking bites out of poor, kind Geoffrey on her right, and, less advisedly, out of umpire Shark Nelligan's horse on her left. Despite this, Apocalypse, in their black shirts with their black hats over their noses, looked both sinister and threatening.

    Ricky had just galloped Wayne back after the parade and was mounting a hopelessly over-excited Sinatra when he heard a frantic clicking of cameras as journalists and photographers broke through the ropes. Then he heard a soft voice saying, `Hello, Luke darling.'

    Catching a great waft of Diorissimo, Ricky swung round as though a rattlesnake had bitten him, colour draining from his face. The heat had made everyone appear asthough they'd been boiled alive. Chessie, by comparison, looked like a lily of the valley just picked from some cool, shady dell. She wore a pale green linen suit, exquisitely cut to show off the fragility of her body, and flat green pumps on her feet. Her face, faintly flushed from champagne in the Dunhill tent, was tanned to a smooth
café au lait,
the eyes were turned to aquamarine by the green suit and her full, pouting lips were as palely pink as the wild roses dying in the hedgerows.

    Hugging Luke, but gazing over his shoulder at Ricky, she murmured, `How exciting you're in the final and how ironic you're playing against your father. What
embarras de
Aldertons. The commentator's going to get so muddled.'

    Then, wriggling out of Luke's grasp, like a sleepwalker she moved over to Ricky. Gazing up, she took in the hollowed cheeks with their suspicion of black stubble and the grim intransigent mouth which was belied by the fierce, yet desperately wounded, dark eyes beneath the black polo hat.

    `Hello, Ricky,' she said mockingly. `How's our bet going? Still a long way to go. No Gold Cup yet, no ten goal, no Westchester. You'll have to do better than that.'

    Oblivious of the photographers going crazy all round them, Ricky stared down at her. He simply couldn't get a word out as she gently caressed Sinatra's silky shoulder. Sinatra had been known to take people's hands off, but now relaxed almost ecstatically under Chessie's touch.

    `Four and a half years is a long time,' she whispered. `Haven't you missed me?'

    Seeing her wanton, taunting little face, flawless except for the velvet smudges under the eyes, and her caressing suntanned hand inching towards his thigh, Ricky wanted to gather her up on Sinatra, gallop all the way back to Robinsgrove, ram every bolt and never let her go again.

    They were interrupted by Luke, now mounted on Ophelia and looking more thunderous than the cloud now hanging above the pitch.

    `Back off, Chessie,' he said roughly. `I don't know if Dad put you up to this, but it is definitely out of order.'

    Perdita was less reticent. `Fuck off, you bitch,' she screamed. `What a bloody awful time to stage a comeback.'

    The reporters scribbled avidly.

    `Any chance of a reconciliation, Mrs Alderton?' asked
The Scorpion,
wrestling with one of Dancer's security men.

    Chessie gave a sob. `You'll have to ask my ex-husband,' she said.

    `For God's sake get on, Ricky,' snapped Major Ferguson, who masterminded every move at the Guards Club. The Flyers were already on the field.

    `Here come the undertakers,' sneered Charles Napier, deliberately barging his big brown mare into Spotty whom Perdita had just changed on to. `Black's the right colour for you lot. You'll certainly be flying that fag,' he nodded at Dancer, `at half-mast by the end of this match.'

    Ricky had gone to pieces. White, sweating, shaking violently, he hardly seemed to know where he was.

    `Take it easy,' said Luke, putting an arm round his shoulders.

    `Thought Dancer was the fag,' taunted Ben Napier. `Didn't know you and Ricky were having it off. I hear you had to buy the Rutshire, Dancer, to get your handicap up to one.'

    `Knock it off,' ordered Shark Nelligan who was umpiring and wanted to throw-in.

    `That was definitely below the belt, Dad,' said Luke as he lined up beside Bart. `If you want Chessie to be a widow before the end of the match you're going about it in the right way.'

    `Whaddya talking about?' Bart spat out his gum. `Sending her out to the pony lines to screw up Ricky.' For a second Bart was roused out of his obsessive pre

    throw-in catatonia.

    `Nothing to do with me,' he said in outrage. `She must have got looped at lunchtime.'

    As the ball thumped into the forest of legs and sticks the first three pairs missed it. Luke and Bart clashed mallets for a couple of seconds, then Luke got the ball out, immediately whacking it up towards the enemy goal posts, then, following his right of way, hit it again. But he wasn't on his fastest pony. At the touch of spurs on her desperately cut-up flesh, Charles Napier's big brown mare bounded forward like a cheetah. Luke could hear the thunder of her hooves on the dry ground behind him. Then suddenly, to his left, Spotty, electrified by a large cheeringcrowd, was streaking down the field with Perdita's arms, legs and whip going like a jockey's.

    Aware that Charles was about to hook him, Luke swung Ophelia to the right and cut the ball to Perdita on the nearside. Fleetingly he felt Charles's knee under his but managed to stay put.

    `Take your time,' he yelled to Perdita.

    Conscious of the cheers of the crowd, Perdita stroked the ball upfield. Then, out of nowhere, Ben Napier was hurtling towards her at ninety degrees like a boulder in an avalanche.

    Oh my God, thought Perdita.

    Oh my God, thought Spotty, who didn't like the look of Ben Napier's big bay gelding any better.

    Rolling his white eye, he put on another amazing burst of acceleration, whisking his brown-and-white rump forward so Ben Napier bumped the burning air instead. Then, bearing Perdita on as proudly as a gun dog with his master's newspaper, Spotty positioned her to meet the ball exactly right and flick it between the posts.

    Grinning from ear to ear and unashamedly raising her stick to the cheers of the crowd, she cantered back to the halfway line, patting Spotty over and over again. Apocalypse, who had received two goals on handicap, were now 3-0 up.

    `You doll,' breathed Luke, hugging her.

    Ricky said nothing. He was plainly still suffering from shock. Bart just scowled.

    `Aren't you sorry you gave me Spotty for Christmas?' Perdita taunted him.

    Euphoria, however, was shortlived. Ricky simply wasn't connecting with the ball. It was as if he was wearing a pair of reading glasses to run down a steep flight of steps and such, eventually, was his frustration and rage and the ferocity of his ride-offs that he finally sent Bart and black Glitz flying five feet through the air so that even the Queen in the Royal Box could hear the bump.

    Next moment the Napiers were twirling their sticks in the air and Shark Nelligan had blown a foul on Ricky. Contemptuously, Charles Napier converted. Soon it became plain to everyone that Ricky was out to bury Bart. By half-time he had given away three penalties and

    Ben Napier, whom Ricky was supposed to be marking, had scored three goals.

    As the crowd surged on to the field to tread in, Luke rode Fantasma back to the pony lines in a towering rage. The mare was panting desperately, her bottom lip flapping, her nostrils dark red, her tail thrashing at her sweating dock, the blood pumping visibly through her enlarged veins like some biology experiment. Luke had never known her so exhausted. Handing her to Lizzie to cool down, he dragged Ricky aside.

    `What the fuck are you playing at?' he hissed. `I've just ridden the duck soup out of Fantasma covering up for you. This final is between Apocalypse and the Flyers not you and my father. It's goddam selfish to take your personal vendetta on to the field.'

    Luke had sweat in his eyes, dust in his throat, his ribs ached from a foul hook no-one had seen, he'd had to change ponies twice in the first two chukkas because two had gone lame and he could see his dreams going up in smoke. Nor could he bear to see Dancer and Perdita's dejected faces. They deserved better.

    `This match is dirtier than a coal hole,' said Seb Carlisle as he bought Chessie a Pimm's up in the stands during the second half, `and you ought to be wearing a duck-egg-blue shirt with five stamped on the back, you've contributed so much to Ricky's disintegration and Apocalypse's certain defeat.'

    `Oh, shut up,' said Chessie. `I had to talk to him. With two bloody bodyguards tailing me all the time I may not get another chance this season.'

    `Why don't you lure them both into your bedroom?' suggested Seb, `then rush out and lock the door on them. Oh, lovely pass, Perdita. Luke Alderton has certainly worked miracles with her and Dancer. They're hassling the shit out of your husband and Ben Napier and, Christ, look at that.' He waved his programme disapprovingly at Charles Napier's pony who was bleeding both from her mouth and her lacerated sides. `I have nightmares that I'm going to come back in another life as one of Charles's horses.'

    Charles Napier was also famous for using his elbows during ride-offs and at the throw-in, and he was usingthem with increasing ferocity in the fifth chukka when he was riding the lightning Andromeda and the Flyers had failed to increase their lead. Fed up with Perdita giving him the slip as they were fighting for the ball on the boards, he deliberately rammed an elbow so hard into her left breast that she gave a shriek.

    `Why don't you go back to the kitchen where you belong?' he hissed.

    `Why don't you go back to the gorilla house?' screamed Perdita, so doubled up with pain she could hardly lift her stick.

    Next minute Luke had thundered up.

    `You OK, baby?'

    Perdita bit her lip and nodded.

    `Well, belt up and leave this to me.'

    At the beginning of the last chukka Charles galloped towards goal. As Luke, back on Fantasma again, rode him off, out came Charles's elbows.

    `Get out of my way, you goddam prick,' bellowed Charles.

    `Takes a prick to know a prick,' said Luke, putting his arm through Charles's. And such was his massive strength that he lifted him off his horse as easily as if he was pulling the plug out of the bath. Charles crashed to the ground. `Man down,' said Luke, grinning.

    `Foul,' yelled Charles furiously.

    `No foul,' said Shark and Dommie Carlisle, the other umpire, in unison. Both had been the recipients of Charles Napier's elbows far too often.

    The sun behind the stands lit up the thundery indigo clouds, the acid-yellow fir trees, the jade-green statue of Prince Albert on his horse, the yellow-and-white goal posts and the tiring ponies. It was stiflingly hot and stuffy.

    `Luke must be very much in love with Perdita to risk a foul like that,' said Seb to Chessie.

    No one quite knew how it happened, but in the following frantic męlée in front of the Apocalypse goal, Charles Napier took a mighty swipe at the ball and instead hit Luke on the head with his stick. As Luke slumped in his saddle, Fantasma pulled up with a jerk and the pitted field came up to meet him.

    Perdita was off Tero in a trice, begging Luke frantically

    to be all right. Beside her Fantasma gazed down at her master with huge, dark, worried eyes, nudging him impatiently in the ribs to get up, then raking his shoulder gently with her hoof.

    `Out cold,' said the doctor, who'd arrived with the ambulance, bending over Luke. `Ouch,' he howled a second later as Fantasma bit him jealously on the bottom.

    Bart and the Napiers belted off to change ponies.

    `I'll get another player,' said Ricky, at long last coming out of his coma. But as he galloped towards the stands, the heavens opened, lightning ripped the inky clouds apart and rain, coming down in torrents, bounced eighteen inches off the dry ground. In the stands, spectators huddled under coloured umbrellas. Others fled for the hospitality tents or their cars. The deluge almost halted the windscreen wipers of the ambulance as it ploughed off to hospital.