Polo (59 page)

    But she didn't get any further. Dommie had pulled Seb off the bench beside Sharon and José and hit him across the room.

    `You bastard,' he yelled. `You didn't go near any blood-stock sale this afternoon.'

    `I bloody did, too,' yelled back Seb. `I bought a grey three year old.'

    `You bloody didn't. You went to bed with Rosie and pretended to be me.'

    `Ouch,' yelled Seb, stubbing his toe on David Water-lane's armoured foot, as he scrambled to his feet. `I'm not dancing with him later.'

    `Don't send me up,' roared Dommie. `She's the only girl I've ever loved.'

    `I can understand why,' said Seb.

    Dommie was about to hit him again, when suddenly Seb said, `Kerist, look at that.'

    `Don't change the subject, bloody John Thomas ŕ Becket.' Dommie grabbed Seb's cassock.

    `No really, it's worth a break,' protested Seb. For a second Dommie swung round.

    `Jesus.' He let go of Seb.

    A clatter of hooves was greeted with whoops of excitement, laughter and shrieks of joy and horror as, ducking her head to avoid the top of the door, Perdita rode side-saddle into the room on Spotty. Dressed - or rather undressed - as Lady Godiva, her flowing blond hair concealed very little.

    `Christ, what a body,' said Bas in wonder. `No wonder Ricky kept it under wraps.'

    `Disgraceful,' spluttered Sukey.

    `I always suspected she was a natural blonde,' said Seb, sidling away from Dommie.

    Miss Marple, eyes on stalks, stalked across the room, spyglass poised.

    `I think Lady Godiva was a relation of mine,' said David Waterlane.

    `The dollar has absolutely no defence against the controlled

    yen,' said Victor, still encased inside his dragon's head.

    I have an uncontrolled yen for that girl, thought Red. `Thank you,' said Perdita, accepting a glass of cham

    pagne from a drooling waiter.

    Spotty, incurably greedy, buried his red-and-white nose in a large plate of sausage rolls, raising his upper lip like a camel when he encountered the sausage. The photographers were going berserk.

    `Whatever you do, keep them rolling,' screamed Cameron Cook to the Venturer cameramen.

    Fighting his way through the screaming overexcited crowd, Drew pulled off his white tunic to display a splendidly muscular torso.

    `Get off that pony, Perdita,' he said softly.

    Put her in the stocks,' shouted Seb.

    But Luke was too quick for any of them. Stripped to the waist, unable to give her his shirt, he snatched up a primrose-yellow shawl which had been left hanging over a chair and threw it round Perdita's shoulders.

    `Take Spotty back to the stables,' he ordered Red and, dragging Perdita off, carried her screaming, kicking and struggling back to the Normandie, followed by a pack of reporters baying as joyfully as bloodhounds.

    Up in her room he threw her on to the bed, chucked a towel at her and leant against the door, not trusting himself to speak. Perdita had never seen him so angry. It was as though the door to a blast furnace had suddenly been wrenched open. Paint was streaked across his chest, arms and face, where it had settled grimly in grooves on either side of his mouth, darkened his eyelashes and smudged even blacker rings under his eyes. His spiky, gold hair was beginning to escape the silver spray. He looked like the only miner to escape alive after some prolonged and terrible pit disaster.

    `You drink all this?' he roared, picking up the empty bottle of Moët on the dressing-table.

    Perdita nodded.

    `What the hell for? Are you crazy?'

    `I was making a fucking statement. I came as Lady Godiva because I can't afford a costume. The only way I can compete with all those rich bitches is when I'm naked. Half of them wouldn't dare show off their bodies. They need all those three thousand pound dresses to hide the bulges.'

    `What about that grand I gave you last week?'

    `Wouldn't buy a bra top round here. I'm fed up with being the best woman player in the world, and so fucking poor. It's no fun gambling in the playground of the rich when you haven't got a bean. I've never had any help from my bloody family.'

    `Bullshit,' yelled Luke. `Daisy never stops making sacrifices for you.'

    `She's a whore,' said Perdita tonelessly. `You don't know what it's like being illegitimate, with no father to relate to.'

    The next moment Luke had yanked her to her feet and swung her round to look into the mirror. Grabbing her face, he pulled down her eyes so the blood-red sockets showed, then with the other huge hand pulled her mouth upwards at the corner and squashed her cheeks together, like some hideously deformed cretin.

    `Howdya like to be born like that?'

    `Well, I wasn't,' said Perdita, wriggling so frantically the shawl slid to the floor.

    `Lots of people fucking were,' Luke held her steady. `You, on the other hand, were given everything: spellbinding talent, charm if you'd bother to use it, a beautiful face, a body like an angel.'

    Below the hideously deformed face, the flowing curves of her breasts, belly and thighs showed up even more perfectly, as though some wood nymph had donned a mask of chaos.

    `You're eaten up with self-pity,' went on Luke accusingly. `Millions of people would give their eye teeth to be illegitimate if they had your advantages. You've just got the wrong values. Money doesn't buy happiness unless you know how to use it. You'll be a great polo player. Just give it time.'

    Coated now by grey-and-green paint, Perdita tried to wriggle free.

    `You're supposed to be strong and silent,' she screamed, `so shut up. You're not interested in living. All you care about is ponies and working your ass off. With you, bread and onions, for Chrissake. All onions give you is stinking breath.'

    For a second they glared at each other's reflections. Her face was streaked with grey now, her eyes glittered. Her breasts were high enough to rest her chin on, her waist as narrow as the width of her face. Luke could feel the white cushion of her bottom against his cock, and in the mirror he saw the soft insides of her thighs just purpled by fading bruises from a match more than a week ago.

    Luke was not a heavy drinker, but he had drunk a great deal that evening. Ignorant of what had happened between her and Red on the pitch earlier, he was only aware that he'd never seen anything so beautiful nor so

    achingly desirable. Dammed too long, passion burst the lid off his normal self-control and reticence.

    Swinging her round, he pulled her into his arms.

    `I can't pretend any longer, right. I love you, more than anything else in the world. From the moment you came off that plane at Buenos Aires airport two years ago. I'm sorry I chewed you out. I just wanna protect you.'

    Her smudged urchin face reminded him of one of those children they sent up chimneys in the old days. Overwhelmed with compassion and love, he bent his head and kissed her. Just -for a second Perdita kissed him back, arching her naked body against him, abandoning herself, overwhelmed by rightness, letting her instincts take over. Then the warning bells started. What the hell was she playing at? It was as if her old teddy bear, or Ethel or Spotty had jumped on her, all of whom would be just as useless at giving her the riches she wanted.

    Punching herself free, utterly shocked, she slapped his face as hard as she could.

    `Fucking hypocrite,' she screamed. `You just don't want anyone else to have me.'

    `No, I bloody don't.'

    `Well, get this straight,' Perdita snatched up the shawl. `With all this sentimental crap about the right values and bread and onions, you'd never give me the things in life I want. I want security and stability, and I don't think I'd find it living in a rathole over a stable for the rest of my life. So you better piss off and stop wasting my time. Now!' she screamed, as Luke hesitated.

    His lips were deathly pale, his eyes haunted and staring. For a moment the streaked, gargoyle face looked as though it had been turned to stone. Then he was gone.

    Sobbing, Perdita collapsed on the bed. Her dear, dear friend, her bloody prudish friend, her rock turned to sifting sands beneath her feet. How
could
he pounce on her like that and spoil everything?

    `I can't bear it,' she sobbed dementedly into the counterpane.

    There was a knock on the door. Frantically hopeful, Perdita looked up. It was a bad dream, they were still friends. But it was Red - not Luke - who stood in the doorway, grinning from earring to earring.

    `Hi, Godiva,' he said softly. `Peeping Tom at the gate anc no-one's gonna blind me. I bet you don't know why Godiva rode through the streets of Coventry. To save the peasants being taxed out of existence by her lousy husband. Fron now on, right, every time I don't want to pay a tax bill. you can strip off in front of the tax inspectors. And I have to admit you are worth inspecting.'

    `Where's Spotty?' asked Perdita.

    `Back in his box. Talk about riding bareback. Jesus!' Perdita was so distraught that she forgot she was still furious with Red and told him about the row with Luke. Whereupon Red went through to the bathroom, soaked a flannel and taking her face in his hands started to wipe away the green-and-grey smears.

    `Sweetheart, Luke's always been dumb about money. He thinks everyone can live on snowballs like himself. If he'd just brown-nosed an iota to my father he could have inherited the earth like the rest of us. Not that it's nearly enough. Lick.' Like a child, Perdita dampened the flannel with her tongue so that he could remove a smear running from her left collarbone down to her breast.

    There was just a primrose-yellow silk shawl between Red and gratification. In her present state of shock, he knew he could take her, but he preferred to wait.

    `Let's not lose any sleep over Luke.' He produced wads of francs out of his floppy shirt pocket. `I've had a windfall at the casino. Let's go buy you some clothes.'

    `The shops'll be shut,' protested Perdita.

    `It's only half-past nine.' It seemed like midnight. `We'll just catch them.'

52

    They got to Yves St Laurent just as they were closing. Grace, Auriel and Chessie had all been excellent customers over the years so the manageress was quite prepared to stay open and even produced a bottle of champagne. Red lounged like some sultan on a white sofa smoking a long cigar, drinking very slowly and totally dominating Perdita's choice.

    With that waterfall of hair and strange unicorn looks

    and body undulating like an ox-bow river, he wanted her starkly plain, mostly in blacks, navy blues and bottle greens, with the occasional brilliant cyclamen, purple or kingfisher-blue. Everything had to fit perfectly and if it didn't it was kept back to be taken in or up. Perdita, who always wanted everything at once, grumbled like hell. But she was in a state of frantic excitement and arousal.

    Red, used to accompanying Grace and Auriel to fashion shows, was an expert on line and cut. He enjoyed watching Perdita's voluptuous pleasure as she swayed and preened in front of him. He liked the way she quivered as he slowly ran his hand over her breasts or her belly, testing the smoothness of the fit.

    After an hour and a half, when they'd bought almost the entire shop, he told her to put on a pair of black high heels and an ivy-green taffeta dress, clinging and high-necked at the front, plunging to the base of her spine at the back.

    As she came out, having piled up her hair with a dark green sequinned comb given her by the manageress, she found Red examining the contents of some little boxes a jeweller had rushed in from next door. From one he drew out a necklace and drop-earrings in huge, very dark sapphires. `These'll do. Come here,' he ordered Perdita.

    Very slowly he put them round her neck and hooked them on to her ears. All trace of her tears had gone now. The sapphires and the ivy-green taffeta heightened her white skin and made her strange eyes so dark that they seemed all pupil.

    `You'll do,' he said.

    `You can't give me all this,' said Perdita. `I hate you.'

    Red laughed. `With enemies like me, who needs friends? One must sapphire to be beautiful.' Then, when she tried to protest, murmured: `Don't spoil it.'

    He paid for the lot out of his casino winnings. He'd call tomorrow and tell the manageress where the rest had to be sent.

    Red had kept Auriel's driver waiting. As they drove past the casino they could hear shrieks and yells. A carrot flew out of the window followed by several chicken drumsticks. Next moment, Sharon, her ice-cream cone flopping, erupted into the street squealing, followed by a furiousdragon, followed by Seb Carlisle laughing uproariously trying to hold back the dragon by its tail.

    Red took Perdita to a very dark night-club where they kept on drinking. When he heard she hadn't eaten all day he ordered some utterly delectable salmon and scallop fishcakes and fed her bite by bite.

    `They're soft inside, just like you. What did you think the first time you saw me?'

    `That you were the handsomest man I'd ever seen.' `Better looking than Rupert Campbell-Black?' `Much. I'm not really attracted to blonds.'

    `What about Luke?'

    `Luke's more red-gold.'

    Red ran an idle finger down her spine, making it almost impossible for her to concentrate.

    `He's going to be mad at us.'

    `He won't,' said Perdita, not wanting to think about Luke. `He's such a good loser.'

    `No such thing,' said Red brutally, `There are losers and idiots who pretend they enjoy it.'

    `What did you think when you first saw me?' asked Perdita.

    Red put his head on one side. `When was it?'

    Christ, it's tattooed on my memory, thought Perdita. Then she said, `When Luke brought me to
El Paradiso.
You were stick and balling.'

    `Oh yes, I remember,' said Red. `It was the only time I stick and balled in the last two years. Did you arrive that day? Oh, that's right. I thought you were kinda plain and needed a nose job, and you should lose ten pounds and about two feet of hair.'

    `Bastard!' Perdita choked on her fishcake.

    `But you had promise.' He patted her briskly on the back. `I always thought you'd be a tiger in the sack.' `Better than a Tayger,' said Perdita.

    She longed and longed for him to kiss her again. But whenever he took her to dance he merely let his hands travel over her back, fingering, stroking, caressing, creeping round almost to her breasts, then almost to her bottom, teasing until she was leaping like a salmon with hopeless, hopeless desire.

    Dawn had broken as they left the night-club, but a thick

    mist lay over the sea and the beach like a curtain. There was a clatter as grooms rode past leading ponies through the narrow streets down for exercise on the sands.

    `The Normandie's only a hundred yards away. Let's walk.' Red turned to Auriel's yawning exhausted driver, who must have been waiting for six hours, and said casually, `You can push off now. I'll call when I need you.'

    As they passed the Metropole, Dommie came running out. He was wearing the top half of his Henry V costume above boxer shorts covered in Father Christmases and swinging Victor's forked dragon's tail.

    `Crisis, crisis, we've just been fired! Rosie got so fed up because we wouldn't stop fighting that she went home, so we had to resort to Lady Shar and Victor caught us.' Dommie giggled. `I told him he was seeing double after all that drink, and it was just Seb honking, but he wouldn't believe me. So it's just you and Victor playing together now, Red. I wish you luck.' And he ran off down the street, swinging his dragon's tail.

    Perdita giggled. `They are awful.'

    Red took her chin and turned her face towards him. `Your eyes are the eyes of a woman in love,' he sang softly, `and, oh, how they give you away.'

    `They do not,' protested Perdita.

    Ahead loomed the Normandie rising out of the mists like Mount Blanc, with the drying bathing suits all damp again on the balconies. As they mounted the steps Perdita's eyes somewhat hazily fell on a pair of brown boots coming down. Slowly, slowly, she looked upwards to jeans with the belt done up on a third extra notch. It was Luke going out to practise. One look at his face told Perdita of his utter crucifixion.

    `I'll leave you both to it,' murmured Red, disappearing through the doors.

    Desolate but totally unable to give comfort, Perdita gazed at him.

    `I'm sorry,' she whispered. `You put me on a pedestal and I haven't got a head for heights.'

    `Be careful,' said Luke wearily. `You've "fallen among those who are careless with other people's lives".'

    An American journalist who'd been at the party lurched up to him, not recognizing Perdita.

    `Mr Alderton, we spoke briefly yesterday. I wonder if I could have a few words now.'

    Luke shrugged. `I suppose.'

    `Have you had any really serious breaks since you began playing polo?'

    Luke looked at him steadily. `Only my heart,' he said.

    With a sob, Perdita fled into the hotel. How
could
she have done that to Luke? But what had she done? Just been vile to him, which she'd often been before, and gone out dancing with Red. Red's door was open. As she went inside all thoughts of Luke were forgotten. Red was packing.

    `What are you doing?'

    `As you've knocked out my team and ostensibly my mistress, I'm not hanging around here any more.'

    Hearing her gasp of horror, he laughed. `You'd better come with me. The press are going to annihilate you, Lady Godiva.'

    `Where to?' whispered Perdita.

    `How about Singapore? I need a vacation. And then we could go to Thailand and perhaps to Kenya, and then perhaps to Boston to play a few games at the Myopia Club.'

    `But what about Tero and Spotty?'

    `My grooms are flying my ponies home. They can take yours at the same time.'

    `But I can't just walk out on Ricky and Dancer,' wailed Perdita. `I'm committed to play for them for the rest of the season, and what about Venturer? Omigod, I'm supposed to meet Cameron Cook in the lobby at seven.'

    As if on cue the telephone rang. Red picked it up and held it away from his ear for ten seconds.

    `Miss Cook for you,' he told Perdita with a grin. `She heard we came in together and she doesn't like being kept waiting. Oh, shut up!' he slammed down the receiver.

    Perdita gazed out of the window. The mist had rolled back and the rising sun was polishing the white horses and the glassy depths of the Channel. The energetic were already pounding back and forth in the hotel swimming-pool, early riders were bouncing round a little riding-school ring.

    Red crossed the room and kissed her properly for the first time.

    `Are you sure you've got your priorities right?' `I'll come with you,' said Perdita helplessly.

    The telephone rang. It was Cameron Cook again.

    `Go screw yourself,' said Red. Then, cutting her off, immediately started to dial out. `I'll call Orly and get us on the afternoon flight. You can get on with my packing.'