Polo (88 page)

    `Oh, how awful! I'm so sorry.'

    `I'll forgive you if you never, never, sleep with him again.' Ricky cut short her frantic apologies with another kiss, then he drew her head against his chest, stroking her hair.

    `It's strange,' he said slowly. `I feel so safe when you're in my arms, but all I want to do is to make you feel safe. You've always reminded me of a stray bitch chucked out for getting in pup, who, although she looked after all her puppies in the wild really well, needed a loving master and a home.'

    `Oh, I did,' sighed Daisy.

    `It's also a dreadful confession,' said Ricky, `but it's the first time in my life I've loved something more than polo. My nerve failed me at the beginning of that third match, I didn't want to win because subconsciously I didn't want Chessie back.'

    Snuggling her face happily into his chest, Daisy suddenly saw pink spots before her eyes. Could it be her hangover? Then she blinked again and, putting her hand up, realized they were real pink silk spots on a blue background.

    `You've left off your black tie,' she said in amazement.

    Ricky glanced down. For a second he, too, had difficulty speaking.`I don't have to wear it any more. The mourning's over.'

    Wonderingly, Daisy put her hand up and touched the scar on his face. For a second he flinched, then his hand closed over hers. `Darling, darling Daisy, are you quite sure you don't mind being a double parent again?'

    Suddenly he looked so vulnerable that Daisy put her arms round his neck and kissed him. They were so engrossed they didn't hear the dogs barking or pause for breath until Violet appeared in the doorway.

    `Hi, Mum. I'm back. Christ!'

    `Bugger off,' ordered Ricky. `We're busy.'

    `Okey'doke,' said Violet.

    But two minutes later she put her head round the door with a faint smirk. `Sorry to interrupt you two love birds, but it's Drew on the telephone for you, Mum.'

    Ricky's eyes narrowed. `It is bloody not,' he howled, loping back into the house. Temporarily blinded after the sunlight, he snatched the receiver from Violet.

    `Drew? You can fuck off, and if you ever come within a million miles of Daisy, I'll smash your head in - and break your bloody jaw. Pity Angel didn't do it properly the first time,' and he crashed the receiver back on the hook.

    Violet whistled. 'Wowee! Macho man.'

    `Don't you get lippy with me, miss,' snapped Ricky.
`I'm
going to be your new stepfather.'

    For a second they glared at each other, then Violet giggled.

    `I
had
guessed. Look,
I'm
really, really, pleased. Mum adores you so much. She's been madly in love with you for yonks.'

    Ricky blushed and was about to return to Daisy in the garden when he knocked over the nude of Drew which had been leaning inward against the kitchen table.

    `My God,' he exploded.

    `I quite agree,' said Violet. `That is definitely one for the log basket.'

76

    A very subdued Perdita returned from Palm Springs. She was delighted - despite Daisy's apprehension - that her

    mother and Ricky were getting married, but their almost incandescent happiness only emphasized her utter desolation. The telephone rang constantly with patrons suddenly finding a hole in next year's team for a five-goal player. But she accepted nothing. She just thought about Luke and cursed herself for not having had the courage to tell him how much she loved him. But surely if he'd felt anything he would have come forward. Perhaps he did love that cool, stylish lawyer with the warm eyes. Daisy was spending most of her time up at Robinsgrove which gave Perdita the chance endlessly to watch videos of the Westchester and marvel at Luke's unselfishness and his sheer bloody-minded tenacity.

    Ricky and Daisy had wanted a quiet wedding at Rutminster Register Office, but as usual the carnival took over and every polo player in the land - except Drew who'd been banned by Ricky - seemed to have rolled up with polo sticks to form a guard of honour outside Eldercombe Church. Daisy wore a dark green velvet suit with a pillbox hat which kept sliding off her newly washed piled-up hair. She looked so radiant no one noticed the ladder in her tights nor the inch of red silk petticoat hanging beneath her hem, nor the mud on her heels from taking the puppies out in the garden before she left.

    Rupert, who, on the Chairman of Revlon's advice, had gone liquid before the stock exchange crash which occurred a few days after the final of the Westchester, insisted on throwing a party for them afterwards. Eddie, euphoric to be out of school and at the prospect of endless fishing and shooting ahead, confided to Perdita in a lull in the service that Taggie and Rupert were planning a surprise party for her twenty-first birthday next week and he hoped to wrangle another day off school. But this did little to raise Perdita's spirits. Then, to crown it, they sang `Dear Lord and Father of Mankind' during the signing of the register. When they came to the bit about the
`Still Small Voice of Calm'
speaking through the
`Earthquake, Wind and Fire',
Perdita was so sharply reminded of Luke that she fled out of a side door.

    Rupert found her, oblivious of the icy wind and a lurking circle of press, sobbing pitifully against a yew tree and hustled her into his car.

    `I didn't mean to screw up Mum's wedding,' she choked, `but I can't bear it.'

    Rupert got a hip flask out of the dashboard.

    `I brought this to steady Ricky's nerves. Forgot he didn't drink. Have a great slug. Warm you up. Look, I know how ghastly these things are.' He put a hand on her heaving shoulders, appalled by the jagged edges of collarbone and shoulder-blade. `I never really understood unhappiness until I thought I wouldn't end up with Tag.'

    `Luke's like Taggie,' sobbed Perdita. `They're both seriously good people.'

    `And prodigals like you and me are far too insecure to find happiness with any other kind of person. You turned Luke down once - told him never to come near you again. You'll have to make the first move.'

    Putting a hand in his inside pocket he drew out a Coutts cheque book and a fountain pen.

    `It's your birthday next week. We're both Scorpios.'

    `I know. Eddie said you might be giving me a party. It's really kind but I couldn't.'

    `Sure,' said Rupert. `But you can't stop being twenty-one. I've been meaning to settle some money on you. Ricky's always said the thing that you craved most was financial security. This should be a start.'

    In his big blue scrawl he wrote her a cheque for Ł 100,000.

    Over in Florida, Luke was slowly going out of his mind with misery. Seeing Perdita at Palm Springs had made everything a million times worse. He had finally levelled with Margie, telling her it could never work out. Now he wanted to slink into his lair and die. But, with Red disappearing with Chessie and Angel shoved off with Bibi to play in the Argentine Open, there was no-one to cope with the Herculean task of comforting a maddened, desperately humiliated Bart.

    For not only had Bart lost his wife, but his fortune as well. In his obsession with polo he had neglected his business and totally failed to anticipate the stock market collapse. Black Monday had cost him over a billion and chopped the value of Alderton Airlines by ninety-five per cent. Bart had also borrowed heavily to take over oil and property companies, gold mines, theatres and

    big department stores. Now these had to be sold off for virtually nothing, most of them to a gloating Victor, when the Wall Street merchant banker withdrew a $330,000,000 loan which Bart desperately needed to help lower his enormous interest charges at other banks. He had also had to sell his five houses and put
El Paradiso
on the market.

    Bart was very unpopular, so no friends came forward to bail him out, particularly in the polo world. Ponies he had spent $100,000 on were now being sold off for a fifth of the price. He had enough to live on and would no doubt claw his way back one day, but he couldn't support a polo team.

    The only good thing that had come out of the whole sorry business, reflected Luke, was that his father and he had at last become friends.

    One Friday afternoon at the end of November Luke was down at
El Paradiso
trying to forget Perdita for one second by concentrating on breaking one of Bart's young thoroughbreds which they'd managed to salvage from the wreckage.

    A slender, dark brown filly, with one white sock and a white star who turned both ways automatically, she was such a natural she reminded Luke of Fantasma, when he'd ridden her back from the river after her first, maddened bucking-and-bolting spree in Argentina. He wondered, as he wondered every day, how she was and prayed Alejandro's grooms hadn't broken her glorious, cantankerous, tempestuous spirit. A warm breeze shook the `For Sale' sign hanging forlornly outside the barn and sent a waft of orange blossom towards him.

    Oh, Perdita, he thought hopelessly. To him, she truly was the Lost One now.

    He was roused from his black musings by a groom telling him that Angel was ringing from Buenos Aires in a complete panic. Alejandro, the captain of the Mendozas' team for which Angel was playing in the Argentine Open, had broken his leg in the semi-final.

    `It's the final on Sunday,' begged Angel. `Alejandro say you only back in zee world who can stand in for heem.'

    `I have no horses,' said Luke in despair. `Alejandro's got my best one.'

    `Eef you come and play the Open, Alejandro say you can buy back Fantasma. He say she never go as well for him.'

    But, the blissful prospect of getting Fantasma back apart, the moment Luke agreed to play he regretted it. He knew it was every polo player's dream to play in the Open and no American had ever reached the final. But he didn't feel up to it. There was no way the Mendozas' team, which consisted of Angel and Alejandro's two sons, Patricio and Lorenzo, could win without Alejandro, particularly when they were pitted against the might of Juan and Miguel O'Brien and their cousins Kevin and Seamus, all ten-goal players who'd beaten them five years running. The two teams detested each other and there had been endless squabbles over officials and umpires being bribed and both teams threatening to pull out. Fans would turn up on Sunday to see them tear each other apart. No-one ever shook hands at the end of the game.

    Besides Luke didn't want to go to Argentina. It reminded him far too poignantly of Perdita. Making matters worse, Bart insisted on coming too to lend support, which was the last thing Luke needed, as Bart, unused to being poor, would make a fuss about travelling Economy and not staying in five-star hotels.

    They had great difficulty landing at Buenos Aires because there had been a coup and the airport was on strike. Although the whole town was sky-blue with jacaranda blossom, soldiers with cigarettes hanging out of their handsome mouths were everywhere. Armoured cars patrolled the streets. Bart's wallet was promptly nicked and, when he stormed into the police station an officer with his boots up on the desk told him there was a coup on and no-one had time to bother about stolen goods.

    The taxis were also on strike and no-one was there to meet them. Luke was wearily hiring a car to drive out to Alejandro's
estancia
when Angel rolled up, black under the eyes, already in a frightful stew about Sunday and not at all pleased to see his bossy father-in-law whom he disliked intensely.

    As Angel negotiated the lunatic traffic out of Buenos Aires, using his horn at red lights rather than his brakes, he deliberately excluded Bart by gabbling incessantly in

    Spanish to Luke, who felt burdened by added responsibility as he realized how crucial Sunday's match was for Angel. Having deeply offended his family, his fellow players and his country by taking American citizenship, Angel felt he would only be taken back into the fold again if he played well in the Open.

    At General Piran all was pain. Every eucalyptus leaf, every speck of brown dust, the pampas stretching like his love to infinity, reminded Luke of Perdita. Claudia and all the children hugged him, the grooms, gauchos and their wives rushed forward to pump his hand, even Raimundo, whom he'd hit across the café after he'd tried to back Tero by tying her to Angel's car, seemed delighted to see him. Why had Senor Gracias stayed away so long? they demanded and where was Perdida, the little lost one?

    But Luke was only interested in seeing Fantasma. Rounding the orange grove, he saw her before she saw him. Flattening her ears, pawing at the floor, she was furiously trying to gnaw wood off her half-door through her muzzle. At least they hadn't broken her spirit.

    At the sound of his voice, Fantasma looked up incredulously, stared for a second, whickered like an earthquake, then once again soared over her half-door like a lark in flight. Charging up to Luke, she began rubbing her head against his chest, nuzzling his pockets as though he'd never been away.

    Ripping off her muzzle, stroking and hugging her, Luke ran his hands down her legs, still as familiar to him as the pattern on his own bedroom curtains. Thank Christ, she was OK. His hands trembled so much he could hardly undo the packet of Polos he'd bought her at the airport and in the middle he had to get out a handkerchief to blow his nose and wipe his eyes.

    Having crunched up every Polo, Fantasma wouldn't let him out of her sight, jumping fences and grazing close by when he lunched under the trees with the family, then insanely, shrilly jealous when he tried out other ponies for the match the next day.

    Alejandro, who was in a lot of pain, was very bad-tempered and, yelling instructions from his wheelchair, only succeeded in unnerving the rest of the team. For too many years he had manipulated Patricio and Lorenzo likepuppets. How would they take orders from Luke?

    Luke and Bart stayed the night with Bibi and Angel, who were restoring a romantic ruin near by with a beautiful deserted garden. But, as the match approached, Angel got more and more nervous and ratty, ending up in having such a row with Bibi that she flatly refused to come and watch him.

    Match day dawned. True to form, Fantasma started lashing out with both back legs the moment she saw the polo basket containing all the tack going into the lorry. On the day of last year's final the grooms of the wily O'Briens had reached the Palermo ground three hours early to bag the better stalls on the shadier side of the pitch. This year they were outfoxed by Raimundo and the Mendoza grooms who arrived four hours early to annex the cooler stalls. This so incensed the O'Briens that they started sneering that the Mendozas must be very pushed to include two damned `Americans' in their team. Soon both sides were hissing like Montagues and Capulets and only Luke shoving his large shoulders between rival grooms stopped a fight breaking out.

    Oblivious of all this, Angel sat on an upturned bucket with his head in his hands, not bothering to check his horses or even warm up.

    `She'll show up,' said Luke, resisting the temptation to shake Angel. `Don't be so goddam histrionic.'

    Ten minutes before the parade both captains were giving last minute pep-talks. The Mendozas had speed and the courage of lions, but the O'Briens were technically superior and hit the ball harder and more accurately.

    `The only way to beat them,' urged Luke as he pulled on his lucky gloves which were mostly hole now, `is to stop them opening up and press them all over the field, which means sticking like leeches.'

    The O'Briens, who, like Perdita, had been watching videos of the Westchester, realized they must obstruct Luke as much as possible and divert his fusillade of deadly passes away from his young team.

    `Don't hang on to the ball,' ordered Miguel, swinging his mallet round and round to loosen up his massive shoulders, `and don't let the Mendozas see what you're doing.'

    Despite being surrounded by the skyscrapers of Buenos

    Aires, few grounds are more beautiful or dramatic than the Number One field at Palermo with its forest of white flagpoles, lush tropical trees, green hedges lined with pink roses and huge stands rising like cliff faces to a white-hot sky on either side of a sage-green ground.