Polo

29

Having drunk a great deal of champagne, they drove home in a manic mood, yelling, ‘Juan O’Brien’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his cock goes pumping on,’ and howling with laughter. It was a beautiful evening, a great stretch of brown-flecked cloud lay like a turned-down sheet over an endless blue blanket. They had each been given a little silver cup. Perdita’s lay between her thighs, clinking against Luke’s. Angel clutched his and in its reflection he occasionally examined an eye that was turning purple where Miguel’s elbow had caught him. Luke drove, his heart simultaneously bursting with pride and heavy with foreboding. Hanging from the windscreen was the red, white and blue rosette Fantasma had won as Best Playing Pony. Even though she’d nearly savaged the VIP presenting the awards when he tried to pin it on her headcollar, everyone wanted to buy her now. Alejandro might even overcome his greed and hang on to her himself. Worse still, Angel’s arm lay along the back of the seat, grazing Perdita’s hair. Was he going to lose her and Fantasma, wondered Luke. Then he told himself not to be absurd. Neither was his to lose. As he listened to Angel and Perdita re-living every stroke of the game, it never occurred to him to mind that it had not occurred to either of them that he had set up every goal they scored.

‘Juan asked me for my card,’ said Angel.

‘He asked me for other things,’ said Perdita. ‘Stupid prat. I don’t like used men. I wouldn’t touch him with a pitchfork.’

‘Don’t talk to me of peetchforks,’ shuddered Angel. Then, waving airily at the pampas, ‘My great-grandfather used to own all this land. We was in charge of the frontier. To the North to Buenos Aires it was civilized, to the South it was Indian. My great-grandfather and the Army destroyed the Indians. They were ’orrible – very non-U.’

Perdita giggled. ‘You make Margaret Thatcher sound like Karl Marx. How long did it take to tattoo that heart on your arm?’

‘About a bottle of wheesky,’ said Angel.

Perdita screamed with laughter.

Oh Christ, thought Luke, I meant to bring them together, but not that much.

‘Give us a poem, Luke,’ said Perdita. ‘Something to cool us down.’

Luke thought for a minute.

‘Whose woods these are I think I know,’ he began. His voice was hoarse from the dust and shouting.

‘His house is in the village though:

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.’

Listening, Perdita thought about snow in Rutshire and battling through the drifts to take hay to Ricky’s ponies.

‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ went on Luke with a slight break in his voice,

‘But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.’

I’ve got miles to go before I sleep, thought Angel, until I get to England and avenge Pedro’s death.

‘Eagle,’ said Luke, pointing to a quivering dot in the sky.

‘There are three good things about the Argentines,’ said Angel, ‘their nature: birds, flowers and theengs; their women, and their individuality. But they are very ghastly in a crisis.’

‘You were pretty good today,’ said Perdita. ‘I think the Argentines are the loveliest, funniest people in the world.’

Later they went to a local night-club to celebrate. Sharon Kaputnik, regal in midnight blue with her red hair piled up on top, was practically held together by sapphires.

‘If you threw her into the river,’ murmured Luke, ‘she’d sink like Virginia Woolf.’

‘Alejandro’s the wolf,’ said Perdita. ‘He’s had his hand up her skirt all dinner. I don’t know if it’s a compliment to Alejandro’s right-arm muscles or the beef that he can cut it up with a fork.’

Victor, as usual adoring the sound of his own voice, was slagging off the O’Briens.

‘All Argentines are crooks.’

‘Alejandro’s not laike that,’ said Sharon, whose eyes were getting rather glazed.

‘Nevair,’ said Alejandro, whose hand was still burrowing.

‘Miguel boasted they’d win easy today,’ went on Victor.

‘Easily, Victor, easily,’ corrected Sharon. ‘You ought to learn to talk proper, laike what I do.’

‘She very beautiful,’ whispered Angel.

‘She’s hell,’ hissed Perdita. ‘All you Argentines are too stupid to see how naff she is – and someone should get Alejandro a finger bowl.’

‘All ay’m interested in is buyin’ that lovely waite pony, Fandango,’ said Sharon.

Luke, aching all over from bangs and bumps, was overwhelmed with tiredness. The strain of captaining the team was now telling on him. A bang on the ankle, which was now so swollen he couldn’t get a shoe on, ruled out any dancing, so he was forced to watch Perdita and Angel joyfully celebrating their armistice on the dance floor. Perdita’s arctic blond hair flew loose and newly washed (as usual Luke had boiled up the water for the shower). Her body was starkly but seductively clad in an elongated black T-shirt. Angel’s khaki face was dead-pan. His eyes never moved from Perdita’s, as his body writhed like a snake.

Sharon gazed at Angel greedily.

‘Who does that young man play for in Palm Beach?’ she asked Luke.

‘No one at the moment.’

‘Ay’ll have a word with Victor.’

An hour later, Perdita having bopped also with Alejandro and Victor, came back and threw herself on Luke’s knee like a child.

‘Oh, Luke, darling, I’m having so much fun, it’s all due to you. Without you Alejandro would never have let me play and he’s just been really complimentary, and you’ll never guess . . .’ She put her mouth to Luke’s ear. As her hair tickled his cheek and he smelt her scent and felt the excited heat of her body, his senses reeled.

‘Sharon,’ whispered Perdita, ‘is going to put a Mogadon in Victor’s brandy so she can spend the whole night with Angel. That’ll be three men in one day. She is a whore. D’you think Angel will shout Port Stanley at the moment of orgasm and stick a blue-and-white flag on her bum?’

So Perdita wasn’t falling for Angel. Luke felt almost giddy with relief. Then reality reasserted itself.

‘And Alejandro says I can ring Ricky when I get home,’ went on Perdita joyfully. ‘Aren’t the Argentines the most adorable people in the world?’

Perdita’s euphoria was tempered the next morning. While Sharon enjoyed her beauty sleep and possibly Alejandro as well, Victor played in a practice game with Alejandro’s young sons, and Angel, Perdita and Patricio, who all had fearful hangovers. Determined to try out Fantasma, Victor had only been deterred because Alejandro lied that she’d come up slightly lame from her bang on the knee yesterday.

‘You see how good she was. No need to try ’er.’

Victor’s game had not improved since 1981. He slumped around on other horses like a sack of pony nuts, crossing everyone. As the sun grew hotter, and her headache worse, his uselessness began to irritate Perdita. The others were letting him get away with murder. They couldn’t be that hungover. As he teetered towards her, she rode him off so viciously he nearly fell off.

‘Come ’ere,’ yelled Alejandro who’d just arrived. Then, dropping his voice as she drew near, ‘Lay off, you stupid beetch.’

His conniving little eyes were vicious with fury at the prospect of losing a good deal. ‘Your job ees to make Veector look breeliant, and for ’im to score as many goals as possible.’

So, for the next half-hour, they all cantered round, tipping the ball on to the end of Victor’s stick, greeting every goal with roars of applause.

‘Your horses are much better schooled than the O’Briens’,’ said Victor as he rode off the field, flushed with triumph.

He proceeded to buy twenty horses and said that after lunch he would haggle with Alejandro over a price for Fantasma.

Luke, whose ankle was murder, had spent a frustrating morning in the village telephone-exchange tracking down his patron Hal Peters, the automobile billionaire. He finally located him in the Four Seasons in New York, closing a mega-deal with some Italians.

‘Fantasma’s a dream,’ shouted Luke. ‘Lines me up for every shot, changes legs at a gallop, got acceleration that brings tears to your eyes. She outran all the O’Briens’ ponies yesterday and she’s only four.’

‘You talking about a woman?’ said Hal Peters, who wanted to show off to the Italians and their bimbos. ‘Is she pretty?’

‘Prettiest horse you ever saw, silver as a unicorn and all the grace. If we have her on the team, everyone’ll talk about her. Best publicity you could have, but we’ve gotta move fast. People are after her.’

‘Pay what you like,’ said Hal.

Luke belted back to the house to tell Alejandro he could top any bid of Victor’s and the haggling started in earnest.

‘I buy her for $7,000 as a two year old,’ said Alejandro.

‘Bullshit!’ said Luke. ‘She only came into the yard two months ago and you told me Patricio only paid $700 for her.’

Alejandro gave a great roar of laughter. ‘That was when he bought her. Now I am selling her.’

They settled for $12,000.

In the afternoon Luke had a telephone call at Alejandro’s from his father, also in New York. Off the drink and living on shrimp and diet Coke in order to shed ten pounds before the Palm Beach season, Bart was not in a good mood. He did, however, congratulate Luke on going up to seven in the latest handicap listings and asked him to join him, Bibi and Red in the Fathers and Sons Tournament which began in the middle of December.

‘I’ve got to fly a lot of horses back for myself and Hal,’ said Luke, ‘but if you can put in a substitute for the first two games, I should make the semi-final. How’s Red?’

‘Lousy,’ said Bart. ‘Got himself involved with some actress called Auriel Kingham.’

‘Christ!’ Luke tried not to laugh. ‘Wasn’t she at college with Grace?’

‘Almost,’ said Bart. ‘She’s junked her husband who’s citing Red, so we’ve got reporters staking out the house night and day.’

Bart, however, was much more furious because the underhandicapped player, known in the game as a ringer, whom he’d signed up to play with him, Juan and Miguel in Palm Beach, had been put up two places in the November handicaps, which put the aggregate of the team’s handicap over the required twenty-six.

‘I called the American Polo Association,’ snarled Bart, ‘I said, “We’ve paid him money and he signed the contract eight months ago and we’ll pull out altogether because it wrecks our team”, but the assholes wouldn’t budge.’

Luke privately thought that the APA, having been pushed around once too often by Bart, had probably decided to take a stand.

‘I’ve gotta find another ringer at once,’ said Bart. ‘You got any ideas? I’m pissed off with Juan’s and Miguel’s cousins.’

‘Sure,’ said Luke. ‘Guy called Angel. Plays like one too. He’s rated one here, but he’s at least four. Got class too. I’ll bring him back with me.’

It touched Luke that, despite their differences, his father trusted him more than the O’Briens when it came to finding players. Having told Angel, he limped outside. Christ, his ankle hurt. He saw that Perdita was cantering Tero round the corral. The change in the little mare was amazing. She had filled out, her iron-grey coat gleamed like stainless steel, her long silver-blond mane, still unclipped to indicate she was a novice, fell coquettishly over her eyelashes. Her brown nose looked as if it had been dipped in paprika.

She no longer trembled or flinched away when Perdita touched her, and this morning, a huge victory, she had accepted a Polo from Perdita’s hand. Schooling and stick and balling her mostly behind Alejandro’s back, Perdita had fallen totally in love with the pony and was desperate to buy her for Apocalypse next summer. But Ricky hadn’t answered any of her letters and he’d been out when she’d rung him last night.

Now Tero was executing a perfect figure of eight, not flinching at all at the stick Perdita was swinging around to get her used to it.

Oh, happy horse to bear the weight of Perdita, thought Luke.

Instead he said, ‘Angel’s gonna play on my father’s team in Palm Beach next season.’

‘That’s great,’ said Perdita, battling with jealousy. ‘What did Angel say?’

‘He’s so fired up that he galloped three times round the stick-and-ball field yelling: “Sheet, sheet, I’m going to play for the Flyers.” I warned him he’d have to play with the O’Briens, and that my father isn’t easy, but at least it’s a polo boot in the door.’

‘Lucky thing,’ said Perdita fretfully. ‘I’d love to play in Palm Beach.’

As Luke stroked Tero’s satin neck, it was difficult to tell if his hand was shaking the mare, or the mare shaking him. Not looking up, he drawled, ‘Why don’t you come and spend Christmas with us? It’s kinda wild. And we can certainly arrange some polo.’

‘Dear Mum,’ wrote Perdita that evening, ‘I’m having such a fantastic time. I hate, hate, hate the way the Argentines treat their horses, but I adore them as people. They’re so larky and funny. Yesterday we beat the O’Briens, an incredible turnaround. I got a cup, so at least I’m bringing home some silver from Argentina. And since the match, the Argies have been so nice and are taking me seriously as a player at last. There’s an American here called Luke Alderton. He’s seriously nice too. He’s going back to Palm Beach next week after the Open and has asked me to go with him and spend Christmas there. It’s a fantastic offer, as their high goal season starts in January. And as Ricky’s not coming back to England until March, there’s nothing for me to come home to. Hope you don’t mind. Violet and Eddie’ll be home, and I’d only disrupt things.

Love, Perdita.

PS Hugs and kisses to Ethel and Gainsborough.’

‘That’s the first letter I’ve ever seen you write to your mother,’ said Luke when she gave it to him to post.

Perdita’s face shut down. ‘I keep telling you, we don’t get on.’

Luke still had eight more horses to buy for Hal Peters, so the haggling went on amicable but deadly, for the next four days. Going out into the yard the day before they were due to leave, Perdita was staggered when Raimundo asked her into his little wooden house for some maté, a herbal tea which gauchos drink out of a silver cup from a communal straw. Although Perdita thought it tasted like grass mowings peed on by a dog, she’d learnt enough tact in the last months to say it was delicious and to thank Raimundo for the honour.

As she left his house, she stroked his lurchers who jostled against her, desperate to be petted, and looked at the ponies wandering loose under the gum trees in the twilight. She couldn’t see Tero anywhere.

‘Has she been turned out in one of the paddocks?’ she asked.

‘Alejandro sell her.’

‘To Victor?’ asked Perdita, aghast. ‘She’ll hate it. We must get her back.’

‘Is all right,’ said Raimundo soothingly. ‘Señor Gracias got her very cheap as Alejandro theenk her hopless. It was the only one ’e did. Alejandro overcharge him for the rest.’

Hurtling off to find Luke, Perdita threw her arms round his neck. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you. I’ll persuade Ricky to buy her. Promise you won’t sell her on. Oh, can I ride her in Palm Beach?’

On their last night there was a massive barbecue called an asado under the stars. Luke pointed out the Southern Cross. Guitars strummed in the background. Everything was already packed as they were driving the horses to the airport first thing in the morning. In thirty-six hours, thought Perdita, I’ll be in Palm Beach. She was so nervous and excited she fed all her dinner to the lurchers.

‘Those dogs will go into mourning when you leave,’ said Alejandro. ‘Try this.’ He put some stringy-looking white meat on her plate.

‘Ugh!’ said Perdita. ‘Tastes like chewing gum without any flavour. What is it?’

‘Intestine,’ said Alejandro. ‘No worse than ’aggis. I had ’aggis once in England. It looked like sheet. When I eat it, I wish it was.’

Perdita laughed. ‘My stepfather was Scottish. He used to recite poems to haggises, stupid dickhead.’

‘We will all mees you,’ said Claudia sadly to Luke.

‘You’ll see us in Palm Beach in less than a month,’ said Luke.

‘It won’t be the same. We will not be together every day. Who will mend my washing machine and the children’s bicycles? Who will tell them stories at night?’

As pudding arrived, a beautiful cake of meringues, peaches and cream, Perdita’s mind started to wander. Was she doing the right thing staying with Luke in Palm Beach and obviously sooner or later bumping into Chessie and Bart? Would Ricky ever forgive her for fraternizing with the enemy? Would Chessie still be as ravishing? Perdita was worried, too, because her image of Ricky was becoming increasingly remote. She kissed his photograph every night, but often panicked because she couldn’t remember what he was like. Her heartache had certainly lessened. Would seeing Chessie trigger off all this hurt again? Absent-mindedly she fed a piece of meringue to a hovering lurcher.

‘The Eenglish are a strange people,’ said Alejandro. ‘They love their dogs more than their ’usbands. We Argentines are more romantic. Love is for always.’

Having seen that Claudia was deep in conversation with Luke, Perdita cracked back, ‘But not necessarily with the same woman.’

‘In Argentina,’ went on Alejandro, the firelight flickering on his swarthy, wrinkled face, ‘we ’ave a saying. “With you, bread and onions”. It mean eef you really love someone, money doesn’t matter. Just being with them, even if you only have bread and onions to eat, is enough.’

‘Sure,’ said Luke, who’d been listening with half an ear, ‘I’d go along with that.’

‘Crap,’ and ‘Bullshit!’ howled Angel and Perdita simultaneously. ‘Money ees essential,’ said Angel emphatically. ‘Particularly eef you’ve once ’ad it. I go to Palm Beach to find very rich, beautiful woman.’

Perdita grinned. ‘I’m going to marry the richest man I can stand.’

Luke’s face was in darkness. He turned back to Claudia.

Later, fuelled by Bourbon, Alejandro became very sentimental.

‘I haf to tell you, Luke, Angel, even Perdita eef she learn to control the temper, you are the three best pupil I ever have. But Luke,’ his voice softened, ‘will always be my amigo and special friend. One day Señor Gracias, you step into my boots as the greatest back in zee world.’

Luke was touched, but not too carried away the following morning not to check the horses they were taking with them. Alejandro tried to distract him by merrily checking and re-checking the bill.

‘Wiz inflation at one hundred per cent, eet’s probably gone up in the last five minutes,’ he kept saying, as he fingered his calculator like a lute player.

But Luke was not to be deflected. At the back of the lorry he discovered that Alejandro had substituted a donkey of an old mare for Fantasma. Only after much Argy-bargy and histrionic protestation that Luke was utterly ‘meestaken’, Fantasma was located, muzzled, hobbled, but still trying to kick out, in an old pigsty at the bottom of the garden, with grey dapples ringing her white coat.

Unfortunately, as Luke led her out the heavens opened, as though the River Plate had been diverted on to the yard, and all the dapples ran.

Alejandro was philosophical. ‘I cannot ’elp it eef my grooms want me to ‘ang on to a good horse,’ he said as he waved them off.

Angel shook his head. ‘The Argentines are a people very simpaticos, but utterly irresponsible.’