Polo

58

Perdita was absolutely appalled that Taggie had lost the baby, but, secretly, what upset her most was that Rupert, whom she had always hero-worshipped, had rejected her sexually and, because of this, she had lost points with Red. But she tucked it under the mattress of her mind alongside her treatment of Luke and her running out on Ricky and tried to forget it. She had much to occupy her. Obsessive, power-driven, the Alderton Flyers swept through the Palm Beach season unbeaten. Many people thought Red and Angel played better together than the O’Briens. They were less powerful physically, but younger and took more risks. Red, riding the legendary Glitz, won Most Valuable Player and Best Playing Pony in every match. Angel, getting $10,000 a win from Bart, which helped pay his gambling debts, had turned himself into a lean, mean, killing machine. The games were fantastically violent. All the other teams, furious that Bart had spent so much on ponies, were determined to beat them. In retaliation, Red and Angel had taught Perdita every dirty trick in the book. She got so terrified before matches that she grew more and more histrionic, while the media gleefully followed every tantrum.

Red egged her on. Nocturnal, sybaritic, self-indulgent, he could sleep anywhere, and, if he’d gone to bed late, could sleep in before a big match until lunchtime, have a huge steak or a toot of cocaine for breakfast and go on and play with no nerves. Perdita, on the other hand, went crazy with stage-fright.

In the past, too, Luke had always listened if she had a problem with a pony or was worried about her game. Red wasn’t interested. He wanted to do all the talking. Then, when she wanted to have her say, he was off out of the room.

Nor were matters helped by Grace rolling up at every game and going into ecstasies every time Red touched the ball, but wincing at Perdita’s expletives and her botched shots, which made her miss the ball more than ever. Chessie, furious at Grace’s presence, stayed at home sulking, spending money and playing tinker, tailor with the caviar. Angel, sulking because Bibi wasn’t there, or because she was there and criticizing him, stepped up his flirtation with Innocenta, all of which went down in Grace’s little book.

Miraculously, because Luke was playing for Hal Peters at the Royal Polo Club at Boco Raton Perdita didn’t bump into him.

Few people realized quite how much Luke suffered. He went on buying runts off the race track and making them under the arc lights until he was so tired he fell off them. He played polo with the same attack and won matches for Hal Peters. He joked with the other players and grooms and listened to their problems. He never talked about himself and appeared outwardly unchanged, except for a twenty-five-pound weight-loss, which hardly showed on his massive frame. Because he was unhappy, he didn’t see why the rest of the world should suffer.

Alas, music and reading, his great loves, no longer comforted him. Mozart and Mahler were impossibly painful. Biography and history were bearable, except that he read the same page over again, but poetry tore his guts out. Unable to sleep, tormented by visions of Perdita in Red’s arms, he slumped in front of the television, but if any love story or programme about animals or children came on, he found himself racked with tears and had to switch off. Repeatedly he chided himself with Emily Brontë’s lines that ‘existence could be cherished, strengthened and fed without the aid of joy’. There was certainly satisfaction in his life when he won a match or mastered a tricky pony, but no joy. For not only had he lost Perdita, but also Red, whom he had loved very deeply. He tried not to hate his brother, and late one night after a quadruple bourbon on no lunch, had called up determined to make it up: ‘Red Alderton and Perdita Macleod are having a bang at the moment,’ mocked Red’s voice on the recording machine, and Luke had hung up and got so drunk he fell off the wooden horse.

And it was difficult to forget Perdita when every newspaper carried pictures of her and Red entwined and laughing: ‘The golden couple so in lerve’. Once the Ferranti campaign started in March, her fleshless diamond-hard face with its streaked boy’s hair, Greek nose and passionate, arrogant, curling mouth was everywhere. If the press couldn’t get hold of her or Red for a quote, they invariably rang Luke.

The two things that saved Luke were Fantasma and Leroy, who had become inseparable. The ugly black mongrel slept in the beautiful grey pony’s box, leaping in and out of her half-door, never being savaged or kicked by her, never in return nipping her nose or her fetlocks, proudly leading her out to the paddock with her rope between his snapping, long, white teeth.

Both of them wandered round the yard after Luke, both ganging up if any invader threatened him. Fantasma, given the chance, would have clambered up the narrow stairs into his bed. Sensing Luke was miserable, Leroy would rush in rattling a box of Bonios to make him laugh, or scrape his arm with his paw, gazing up with the crescents of white beneath his big brown eyes, as if to say, ‘You still have me.’ Often Luke woke from bad dreams to find Leroy licking away his tears.

He knew it was childish, but since Perdita had left him he couldn’t bear to be parted from Leroy. So he only went to places that allowed dogs, turning down all invitations to work abroad, which would have helped him to forget, going everywhere by lorry, instead of flying, so Leroy could sit barking beside him.

It was the last tournament of the Palm Beach season with six crack teams playing each other over ten days for a huge silver cup topped with rearing silver horses. On the hottest Sunday of the year the Alderton Flyers were only leading the O’Briens by two goals at half-time. After weeks of no rain, the ground was as hard and dusty as a volcanic crater. The only liquid came from the sweat which poured off pony and player, and from the diet Coke with which the teams slaked their parched throats. Huge white clouds gathering on the horizon suggested a storm to come.

Perdita had had a lousy first half, not helped by a ball on her arm in the second chukka which was now agony. No-one had noticed, but she wasn’t going to complain in case the others dismissed her as a whinging female. As she cantered back to the little tent where the other Flyers were taking a break, she saw them standing in a huddle outside looking deadly serious, except Red, who was sitting down wiping his face with a yellow towel, while the ever-adoring Grace massaged his shoulders. Bibi, in a check suit, had obviously just come from the office. Perdita hugged and gave Spotty a Polo before handing him over to a groom. Aware she was tomato-red in the face and dripping like a defrosting fridge, and not wanting Red to see her like that or be subjected to a pep-talk from Grace, she seized some anti-bruise cream from the first-aid box to rub into her arm and lay down on the unyielding ground, using her hat as a pillow.

Then she heard Bart say, ‘Well, for Chrissake, don’t tell Perdita.’

‘Tell Perdita what?’ The dust made her hoarse.

‘Nothing,’ snapped Red, not glancing round.

‘What?’ Perdita jumped to her feet and saw that Bibi was crying.

‘Nothing.’ Grace had all the charm of a steam-roller with brake failure. ‘We were saying you’re not on your man, and please centre the ball when you back it, and you’re tapping it too much. It’s meant to be hit.’

They were looking at her as if she was a lunatic that needed humouring.

‘Oh, piss off,’ snarled Perdita. Then, seeing Grace’s face: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Alderton, but what mustn’t I be told?’

‘It’s Luke,’ sobbed Bibi, whose mascara was streaked by sweat and tears.

‘There’s been a slight accident,’ said Grace coolly.

Suddenly the rock-hard ground had no substance beneath Perdita’s feet.

‘He’s OK,’ said Bart, who was thinking only of his polo match.

‘He hasn’t tried to k-kill himself?’ whispered Perdita.

‘Don’t give yourself the bloody air,’ snarled Angel.

Red, who’d gone very pale, was lighting a Black Sobranie with a trembling hand.

‘Bobby Ferraro hit him with a ball yesterday,’ he said. ‘Broke his hand in three places. Bobby’s new patron, Pip Gilson, had Luke flown to New York. They’ve just operated and taken fifty chips of bone out of his hand.’

Perdita flinched, then thinking she was going to black out, sat down, nearly missing the edge of one of the duck-egg-blue canvas chairs.

‘Will he be able to play again?’

‘Too early to say,’ said Bart.

‘I must go to him,’ said Perdita desperately, peeling off her gloves. ‘Why weren’t we told yesterday?’

‘Luke didn’t want anyone to know,’ said Red tonelessly. ‘It was Bobby who felt he ought to tell us and called Bibi just now.’

The white clouds had turned a dark sullen grey. Alderton Flyer horses that had played in the first half were being walked home. Rising to the canter to rest their horses, the O’Briens were riding back on to the field.

‘Luke didn’t want to worry us into blowing the semi-final, and we’re not going to. Move it, you guys,’ said Bart, slotting in his gum shield and putting on his hat. Then, having mounted a leaping sorrel mare whose coat gleamed like cornelian, he asked the groom what sort of mood she was in.

‘You can’t play knowing this,’ said Perdita, aghast.

Bart adjusted his reins. ‘If he’s just had a three-hour op, he’ll be out for hours.’

One of Bart’s grooms led up Tero. It was only her third match since she’d recovered.

‘She’s a bit edgy. Knows it’s a key match.’

Tero was already lathered up like a white poodle, her eyes popping, diarrhoea running down her back legs in a thin trickle.

‘I’m not playing,’ said Perdita.

‘Sure you bloody are,’ ordered Red. ‘Get on that pony.’

For a second they glared at each other. Perdita dropped her eyes first.

‘Luke would ’ave expected eet,’ said Angel. ‘Don’t be a dreep, Perdita.’

‘Move your ass,’ bellowed Shark Nelligan who was umpiring.

Perdita vaulted on to Tero.

‘Don’t forget to hit not tap,’ called Grace.

Perdita had to clench her first and second fingers not to give Grace a V sign.

‘I’m bloody well flying up to see him immediately after the match.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Red icily, ‘if you want him to get better.’

It was a good thing Perdita was only marking the O’Brien’s new patron, who had a one handicap and only that because he’d bunged the APA so heavily, because in the next three chukkas he went virtually unmarked. Perdita hardly connected with the ball and missed several easy shots at goal. It was purely Red’s and Angel’s flamboyant courage and Bart’s Exocet penalties that kept the Flyers just ahead.

‘Are you still in love with Luke?’ hissed Red, as they lined up for the presentation.

‘Course I’m bloody not. You’re the only person I’m crazy about. But Luke’s been a really good friend to me, and I don’t know how you could play so well after what’s happened,’ Perdita hissed back.

‘It’s the mark of the great player to rise above adversity,’ said Red. ‘The second-rate go to pieces in a crisis.’

‘He’s your brother, and Bart’s son,’ whispered Perdita furiously. ‘Thank you very much,’ she smiled briefly as the President of Cadillac gave her a silver ashtray in the shape of a car.

‘Thank you very much, sir.’ Red accepted his silver ashtray. Then, out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Never noticed blood was thicker than water in your family.’

‘We must go and see him,’ said Perdita hysterically.

‘Perdita,’ said Red softly, ‘he needs to be kept quiet.’

‘If Luke’s sidelined for the summer we might be able to get our hands on Fantasma and take her to England,’ chipped in Bart.

‘I don’t understand any of you,’ screamed Perdita. ‘Luke may have been put out of polo for ever, and all you can think about is your own fucking game.’

Four days later Perdita disobeyed everyone’s advice and, cutting a Ferranti’s promotional lunch for all their buyers, flew up to see Luke. She didn’t tell Red she was going. He’d been determined to punish her since they’d heard the news, even insisting on her watching a video of him and Auriel making love, which revolted her, particularly when she saw how skilled and beautiful Auriel was and how she and Red seemed to be enjoying themselves. She needed Luke’s advice on how to handle Red and about her fast-deteriorating game.

After Palm Beach in the nineties, New York was freezing. Perdita, hopelessly under-dressed in white jeans and a black sleeveless T-shirt, shivered as much from nerves as the cold. The hospital, which had Impressionist reproductions on the walls and banks of flowers and floodlit fountains on every floor, was more plush than most hotels and must have been costing Hal Peters a fortune.

‘Luke Alderton?’ said the nurse on the fourth floor reception desk excitedly. ‘Third on the right. I hope you’ll be able to get in for the flowers. Dancer Maitland dropped by this morning and Auriel Kingham last night.’

‘How is he?’ snapped Perdita, who didn’t want to hear about Auriel.

‘Well, he’s still in some discomfort,’ (bloody silly word, thought Perdita) ‘but he’s a very brave guy.’

‘I know that. Will he be able to play again?’

‘Early days,’ said the nurse. ‘Don’t stay long. Aren’t you the Ferranti girl?’

But Perdita had gone, amazed how much her heart was hammering as she threw open the door.

‘It’s the prodigal,’ she announced. ‘Darling Luke, have you forgiven me?’

Then she dropped her parcels all over the floor, for, sitting on Luke’s bed, holding his hand, was an incredibly attractive girl. Her second, almost more agonizing, impression was how desperately ill Luke looked. His brown, freckled face was tinged lurid green, and darkly shadowed, the bottle-brush hair dank with sweat, the big generous mouth practically disappearing in the attempt not to cry out, the honey-coloured eyes no longer amused and sleepy. His shoulders were still huge, but everywhere else the weight had dropped off. He reminded Perdita of a Great Dane who’d fallen into the hands of the vivisectionists and was bewildered why it should undergo such horrific pain without an anaesthetic.

She wanted to rush over and hug him, but there was the impediment of this girl in the wonderfully understated coral-pink suit, with a pale clever face and shiny dark hair and wonderful long legs. Her grey eyes were looking at Luke with tenderness and her coral-tipped fingers were gently stroking his forehead.

Bristling with hostility, Perdita picked up her parcels. Relinquishing Luke’s hand, the girl rose to her feet.

‘You must be Perdita,’ she said coolly. ‘I recognize you from the posters. Luke’s told me a lot about you.’

‘Funny, he’s told me absolutely nothing about you,’ said Perdita furiously. She turned to Luke: ‘Christ, I’m sorry! You poor thing! What the hell happened? Bloody Bobby.’

‘Wasn’t his fault.’ Even the deep, slow, husky drawl was weakened. ‘It was an airshot. I blocked it.’

‘The blow knocked Luke off his horse,’ said the girl. ‘When he didn’t get up the players formed a circle round him, but I could see he wasn’t moving. I was shaking and shaking. Alejandro, who was watching with me, put his arm round me. I sat beside Luke in the ambulance crying all the way, because I figured he was unconscious, but in fact he was in such agony he couldn’t talk. Then we had to wait three hours in casualty, because they had to look after some people who’d been in a car crash.’

Perdita looked at this cool girl, who’d suddenly gone as white as Luke’s sheets. What right had she got to cry over Luke and be comforted by Alejandro?

‘Who’s she?’ she asked Luke, nodding rudely in the girl’s direction.

‘Margie Bridgwater.’ Luke made no attempt at explanation. His hand swathed in bandages strapped up in the air didn’t seem part of him.

‘D’you want a drink? Vodka, white wine?’ he asked. ‘Margie’ll get it.’

Perdita shook her head. ‘Is it absolute agony?’

Luke shrugged. ‘The first night was the worst, all night on the hour, I was woken by a vast black lady, saying, “Roll over, Mr Alderton”, and then shoving a thermometer up my ass.’

Just for a second, he grinned and was the old Luke again.

‘I’ve bought you a biography of Robert Lowell.’ Perdita put it on the bed. ‘The one you were always quoting about the woods being snowy, dark and deep.’

‘Lovely, dark and deep,’ corrected Margie.

‘And I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. That’s Robert Frost not Robert Lowell.’ Then, catching a warning look from Luke, added more gently, ‘But The New York Times said the Lowell biography was terrific.’

‘I wouldn’t know, I’m not an intellectual,’ spat back Perdita. ‘And some freesias and a tape of Crocodile Dundee.’

‘Thanks,’ said Luke. ‘That’s really neat. How’s Spotty?’

‘Feeling his feet. Bute doesn’t seem to be working.’

‘Give him some stuff called Arkell,’ said Luke. ‘Makes the blood flow. And Tero?’

‘Bloody Miguel gave her such a bump last week, she’s lost her nerve. She won’t bump any more. She still gets the runs twenty-four hours before a big match and won’t eat for days afterwards. I can’t afford to let her lose weight. I ought to turn her away for the summer, but if I don’t take her to England she’ll pine, and so will I, I love her so much.’

She was so shocked by Luke’s appearance that she hardly listened to his answers. It was as though Big Ben or Westminster Abbey had suddenly been bombed. And, to cap it all, here was this bloody girl guarding him like a lioness.

Interrupting him, she said, ‘For the first time I can see how like Red you are.’

Luke smiled ruefully. ‘I guess there must be some plusses about getting sidelined. My brother’s an Adonis,’ he added to Margie.

‘I’ve seen pictures.’ Margie put her hand over his. ‘I like my guys more rugged.’

‘Red is the handsomest man in the world,’ exploded Perdita.

‘Not as good-looking as Rupert Campbell-Black,’ said Margie. ‘Wow! He came to see Luke this morning.’

Perdita felt sick. ‘Did he mention me?’

‘Only to say Venturer weren’t making a movie about you any more,’ said Luke. ‘He was over to finalize American sponsors for the Westchester.’

‘And you’re going to play in it,’ said Margie warmly.

Perdita clenched her fists.

‘Shame they lost the baby,’ went on Margie. ‘He and Taggie are going to adopt one, but they’re having problems in England. Rupert’s forty in the fall and the adoption societies don’t see him as ideal father material, so they’re putting feelers out in the States.’

‘He’s rich,’ said Perdita, who didn’t want to talk about Rupert. ‘If you’re rich you can buy anything. Who’s playing for Hal now?’

‘Alejandro.’

‘For ten times more than Luke was getting,’ said Margie bitterly.

‘The receptionist told me Dancer was here,’ said Perdita.

‘He is so charming,’ said Margie. ‘He wants Luke to see Seth Newcombe, the guy who sorted out Ricky’s hand.’

‘I know,’ snapped Perdita. ‘I was at the hospital when Seth operated. Of course Luke should see him.’

Seeing Luke absolutely wiped out, Perdita added to Margie, ‘Look, Luke and I go back a long way. Would you like to piss off and leave us alone for five minutes?’

Margie raised a thick dark eyebrow at Luke, who nodded.

‘Well, only five minutes. I’ll be outside if you need me.’

Bloody cow, thought Perdita, but she did have wonderful legs. She moved round to see the framed photographs on Luke’s bedside table, disappointed to see they were of Leroy and Fantasma and not of herself.

‘It was nice of you to come,’ he said.

‘I would have come sooner. The others were convinced I’d do more harm than good.’

Luke gazed at her steadily for a second. There was exhaustion but no reproach in his eyes, but he didn’t contradict her.

Lowering herself gingerly on to the bed, so as not to jolt him, she started pleating the white counterpane.

‘I’m sorry I buggered off at Deauville. I didn’t know how you felt.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘You all right?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine now.’

‘I just fell madly in love with Red. I couldn’t help myself.’

‘Sure. How is he?’

‘Doesn’t know I’m here. I hope it might make him a bit jealous. He’s wildly jealous of you, because everyone loves you so much, I guess. They fancy Red, but they don’t seem to like him, but then they don’t know him. Tell me, what’s the best way to hold him?’

‘Don’t get heavy,’ said Luke, then, on reflection, ‘He who bends to himself a joy doth the winged life destroy.’

‘I miss your poems,’ said Perdita. ‘Red’s almost illiterate. You should be nicknamed Well-Read and Ill-Red. Why are you staring at me?’

‘Because I’ve just twigged.’

‘W-what?’

They were interrupted by Margie the Martinet coming back with a doctor and a nurse, who asked Perdita to leave as they wanted to look at Luke’s hand. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead at the prospect of more debilitating pain.

‘But I’ve only been here a few minutes,’ stormed Perdita.

‘Visitation’s being restricted to quarter of an hour,’ said the doctor.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

Once more the doctor, the nurse and Margie were confronting her as though she was a dangerous lunatic.

‘All right, I’m going.’ Perdita was fighting back the tears. ‘I hope you get better soon.’

Margie followed her out into the passage. Forcing her hands furiously into her trouser pocket, Perdita pulled out a bottle.

‘Give it to Luke,’ she said. ‘Morphine from Bart’s medicine cupboard in case the pain gets too bad.’

‘He needed that in August,’ said Margie, ‘when you shoved off with Red. Smashing up his hand and probably terminating his career was a day in the country compared with what you put him through last summer.’

As she went back into the room to grip Luke’s other hand as the doctor started to undo his bandages, he said through gritted teeth, ‘I’ve just realized who Perdita’s father is.’