Polo

70

Heeding Ricky’s advice, Perdita buried herself in work, standing in for his grooms when they took holidays before the Westchester, playing in low-and medium-goal matches. But she was still desperately pale, thin and unnaturally subdued.

Nor did the situation improve when Violet and Eddie returned from staying with schoolfriends not prepared to be as forgiving as Daisy and stepping warily round their perfidious sister. Soon they were at each other’s throats, all three thinking they had exclusive rights to the television, the bathroom and Violet and Perdita the use of Daisy’s rickety Volkswagen. Matters grew worse when Violet got straight As in her four A levels, was rewarded with money to buy a car by a delighted Biddy Macleod, and Violet’s schoolfriends rang the whole time comparing results and having endless discussions as to what they were going to do in their year out.

Eddie, blissfully unaware that Ricky had pulled strings with the muscular energy of a bell ringer to get him into Bagley Hall, a nearby co-ed, was half-terrified, half-excited at the prospect of boarding with girls in September. He had now reached adolescence, loving and co-operative one moment, moody, withdrawn and resentful the next.

There were compensations. Suddenly the small boy, who Daisy’d had to threaten within an inch of his life to pick up a toothbrush, was cleaning his teeth three times a day and bathing and washing his hair more often than Violet and Perdita. When he wasn’t counting his spots and perfecting a sexy pout in the mirror, he poured over Penthouse and The F-Plan Diet. Soon envelopes addressed to body-building firms were lying around in the hall.

To add to Daisy’s problems, the puppies were crapping everywhere and chewing up everything and Sharon Kaputnik had to be painted. Not wanting to trouble Ricky or subject him to constant sexual harassment by painting Sharon in his attic, Daisy used the sitting room at Snow Cottage. This meant that every afternoon Sharon rose like Page Three incarnate from a sofa lined with Jaffacake crumbs, chewed crayon and puppy fur, surrounded by a sea of Coke tins, beer cans, mugs, kicked-off shoes and overflowing ashtrays, while being eyed by Eddie as he pretended to watch programmes on re-upholstering and re-runs of Falcon Crest.

Nor was Daisy any longer buoyed up by the prospect of seeing Drew again when the holidays were over. She found her thoughts turning more and more to Ricky, and how awful it would be when he finally went back to Chessie. He’d taken to dropping in late in the evening, often bringing a take-away, and was so wonderful at separating and shutting up the children.

‘If you’d ever umpired the Napiers, Bart Alderton and the O’Briens in the same match, you wouldn’t have any problems.’

‘Unfortunately, one can’t send one’s children off for arguing,’ sighed Daisy.

By the middle of August everyone was revving up for the Westchester, or West-Chessie-ter, as Daisy called it to herself. The English team had been confirmed: Ricky as captain, Drew and the Napiers; the same as the International, with the twins as reserve. Not an exciting team, but a solid one. Ricky detested the Napiers, but they were both nines and, under pressure from the BPA, he couldn’t see any way not to select them. He found the prospect deeply depressing, particularly as the very few practice matches they were able to organize were incredibly acrimonious. Rupert, who had high-handedly appointed himself unofficial team manager, because Venturer’s stake was so vast and because ‘although I don’t know that much about polo, I know all about winning’, was all too ready to put his show-jumping boot in and tell the players exactly where they were going wrong.

The ponies were due to fly out to California in mid-September to acclimatize them for the match which would begin the first week in October. With an eye to the extra buck, however, the Napiers and Drew had defiantly flown their horses out the third week in August to play in Oakbrook and in the US Open. This, as Ricky furiously pointed out, was the last way to rest them before the Westchester.

A week later Ricky got a telephone call from Charles Napier. His voice had the oily ingratiating timbre of a reporter about to ask a husband what he feels about his wife shoving off.

‘Ben and I want to level with you, Ricky. Frankly, we were fucked by the International. Five of our best horses were screwed up, not to mention Ben’s cracked collar-bone and my broken finger.’

‘So?’ said Ricky curtly.

‘That’s bad enough, but the Westchester’s a different ball game.’

‘In what way? It involves four people on either s-s-side trying to hit the ball through each other’s goal posts. Seems remarkably similar to me.’

Charles wasn’t to be deflected. ‘There’ll be three matches, three times as gruelling and much tougher opposition.’

‘It might help,’ said Ricky acidly, ‘if you rested your horses instead of carting them all over America.’

‘If you want the bloody truth,’ Charles dropped any attempt at amiability, ‘Ben, Drew and I are totally pissed off with putting ourselves and our ponies on the line for the honour of our country. Only women and horses work for nothing. We’re professionals.’

‘You could have fooled me.’

‘Don’t be so bloody sarky. We’re going on strike. None of us will play unless we get thirty grand each and a share of the TV action.’

Ricky sighed. Knowing there was absolutely no way Venturer or the big British and US sponsors could pull out at this stage, the Napiers and Drew, feeling they could easily afford the extra cash, were plainly determined to force his hand.

‘You still with me, Ricky?’

‘I was temporarily speechless. Have you bastards no idea of the honour of playing in the W-w-westchester? Have you no sense of history?’

‘Just to bring back some stupid pot your ancestors couldn’t manage to hang on to. Ten losses on the trot, wasn’t it? Well, we don’t want to make it eleven.’

‘Look,’ Ricky was trying not to lose his temper, ‘I’ll try and get you ten grand each, but not a cent more. Venturer can’t afford it.’

‘Surely Rupert could take out a mortgage on his fifty house?’

‘Let me talk to Drew,’ said Ricky grimly.

There was another long pause. Ricky could almost hear the sweat bubbling on the palm of Charles’s great, red, meaty hand as he clapped it over the receiver. After an age Drew came on.

‘You’ve spent nearly thirty grand on this telephone call already,’ snapped Ricky. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a friend of mine.’

‘I am. I also have a living to make.’

‘Bullshit. You’re just fucking greedy. You wouldn’t expect to be paid for the Olympics.’

‘I would if I were likely to screw up my best horses.’

Then Ben Napier seized the telephone.

‘Thirty grand or no deal,’ he said roughly. ‘And that’ll only replace a couple of ponies.’

‘OK,’ said Ricky. ‘I’m dropping the lot of you.’

‘You can’t,’ said Ben, outraged. ‘We’ve flown our ponies over specially.’

‘To play in the Open. Go screw yourselves.’

‘The BPA will go apeshit.’

‘Good,’ said Ricky and hung up. He didn’t think he’d ever been so angry in his life.

He was unprepared for the storm which broke over his head. Venturer and the BPA went into shock horror to a man and called an emergency meeting in London the next day.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ howled Rupert. ‘They can’t have any television rights, but we could easily have raised another ninety thousand pounds. That’s peanuts. We could even stretch to one hundred and fifty thousand.’

‘It’s immaterial,’ said Ricky wearily. ‘I was always worried about this team. There were too many chiefs and not an Indian in sight. I could never have made it gel.’

‘Remember in Karachi, we had an Indian chappie, brilliant player, but hopeless if you gave him any responsibility,’ mumbled Brigadier Hughie. ‘Perhaps you’d feel happier if Charles was captain, Ricky.’

‘I don’t take orders from gorillas,’ said Ricky. ‘If you don’t let me pick my own team, I’ll drop out.’

David Waterlane, who had a bad back from an excess of Sharon-shagging, hit the roof. ‘Don’t be bloody silly. Who the hell did you have in mind?’

‘Seb and Dommie.’

‘Ludicrously inexperienced,’ snapped David, throwing his cigar butt at the half-open window and missing. ‘And far too erratic.’

‘Mike Waterlane,’ added Ricky with the faintest smile.

‘Mike!’ said David dumbfounded. ‘D’you think he’s up to it?’

‘Easily,’ said Ricky. ‘I’ve played all summer with the three of them and,’ scowling round the room, defying anyone to challenge him, ‘I’m going to take Perdita Macleod as reserve.’

Leaving the meeting in uproar, Ricky drove to Rutshire Polo Club where the last match of the season – always an elegiac occasion – was taking place. It had been raining. As he arrived, the drying boards were shimmering in the sinking sun, which was also warming the feathering willowherb. The huge, domed trees round the pitches were echoed by the grey-blue clouds of a Constable sky as a red tractor chugged back and forth weighed down by bales of straw. Perdita, her hair now shoulder-length and in a net, was watching the second match with Dommie and Mike Waterlane, who had a silver cup under his arm. Little Chef bounced ahead to greet his friend Decorum, the bull terrier, who grinned down at him, triangular eyes genial, tail going like a vivace metronome as he pirouetted on stiff, poker legs.

‘How did you do?’ asked Ricky.

‘Buried them 17-1,’ said Dommie.

‘Thank Christ for that.’

‘Corporal won Best Playing Pony. We’re thinking of promoting him,’ crowed Dommie.

Seb lay stretched out on the bonnet of his Porsche, his head on the windscreen, his newly washed hair flopping. He had changed into white jeans and a pale blue bomber jacket and had a glass of whisky in one hand and his portable telephone in the other. He opened a bloodshot eye and grinned at Ricky.

‘Ciao, sweetheart. I’ll meet you at Annabel’s around ten. I’ll book. Hi, where’ve you been?’ he asked Ricky as he switched off the telephone.

‘Reselecting the team for the Westchester.’

‘Who’s in it?’

Ricky told them.

‘Yippee,’ yelled Dommie, chucking a ball twenty feet in the air.

‘Good Lord, I must ring Daddy,’ said Mike Waterlane, going as scarlet as the Virginia creeper now smothering the clubhouse.

Perdita, turning to stone, always became most angry when she was frightened. ‘I won’t go. I can’t believe it. I’m not up to it. Whose bloody stupid idea was it to select me?’

‘Mine,’ said Ricky calmly.

‘But I’ll have to play against Red.’

‘Stop over-reacting,’ said Seb. ‘You’re only reserve. We’re much too tough to get injured.’

‘Not unless you get a few early nights,’ said Ricky, removing Seb’s whisky and emptying it on to the grass. ‘Annabel’s is going to miss you, Seb.’

To the shock horror of Venturer and the BPA were added next day the furious protests of the British and American sponsors and the American Polo Association, who all felt Ricky was making a total mockery of the Westchester. The thirty-five-goal English team had struggled in the International. How did Ricky imagine he could field a bunch of babies with a team aggregate of twenty-six against the might of the Americans in their own country? The media were equally outraged.

‘Cannon fodder,’ said a huge headline in the Daily Express. ‘How can David without a sling beat Goliath armed with an exocet? It’ll be annihilation.’

Frantic preparations ensued in the next week. Good horses about to be turned away had to be wheedled out of other owners and flown over to America for Mike and Perdita in case she had to play. Longingly she thought of the six ponies Red had given her. He’d probably be riding them against England. At least she still had Spotty, but he was in a frightful temper, as was Wayne. Announcing that they were both much too fat and that Argentines won matches because their horses carried no spare flesh, Rupert had put both ponies on a rigorous diet. Much to Ricky’s irritation, Rupert was in fact supervising the diets of all the ponies. He also insisted that all the team took the equivalent of a Marine’s assault course to get fit, but even he couldn’t make Ricky go out jogging.

Hell, thought Perdita a day later, as she gritted her teeth to stop herself crying, is being coached by Rupert Campbell-Black. God, he was sarcastic as he rode up and down, blue eyes narrowed, whip tapping his boots, not missing a trick, the nerve-gas hostility in no way abated, the drawling commentary more bitchy than ever.

‘I see Ricky’s given you a second chance,’ had been his first bleak words to her. ‘I certainly wouldn’t.’

For two chukkas, each time anyone missed a ball or a stab at goal it was greeted with sighs of ‘Oh dear, a Perdita pass again’. After shouting at her every time she picked up her stick, he called her over.

‘Stylistically you’re not bad,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve got most of the shots.’

Perdita looked up in amazed relief, a compliment at last.

‘It’s a pity,’ Rupert raised his voice, ‘you’re so fucking useless at selecting which shot and when.’

Perdita went crimson.

Two minutes later he was yelling, ‘For Christ’s sake, hook him, Perdita,’ as Seb scorched towards goal. Then as Seb scored, ‘What’s the point of hooking air? Why the fuck didn’t you catch up with him?’

‘I was twenty yards behind when he started off,’ stammered Perdita.

‘Then you catch up with him. You’re very deceptive. You’re even slower than you look.’

Then, after she’d let Seb through a third time, ‘Come here, Perdita.’ Oh God, how she dreaded that soft, bitchy, upper-class ring. ‘This is a pony,’ Rupert touched Spotty’s neck with his whip. ‘Rather an unattractive one, admittedly. These are his legs, these are your legs. You’re supposed to use them to make him carry you upfield as fast as possible. This is a whip.’ For a second he banged his whip against hers like a fencer starting a duel. ‘I want you to use it. I want your ponies collapsing when they come off the field.’

For a second Perdita watched a gull drifting across the khaki woods. The Argentine word for gull was Tero.

‘Like Tero collapsed,’ she screamed, suddenly exploding like a pressure cooker.

‘If need be, but they won’t collapse if you get them fit enough. That pony is still too fat.’

‘He is not, and he’s not ugly.’

‘Shut up,’ said Rupert coldly. ‘If you were as quick on the field as you are with your temper, we might get somewhere.’

Perdita burst into tears.

‘Oh dear,’ sighed Rupert. ‘I’ve always believed a woman’s place was in the home, or on her back, or regrettably in the shops, but not on the polo field. Ricky’s got sprinklers to water this pitch. He doesn’t need you.’

Dommie, who had a softer heart than Seb, leapt to Perdita’s defence.

‘I’ve known you all my life, Rupert, and I’ve always liked you, but I never realized you could be quite such a shit.’

‘Well, now you know, Sunshine,’ snapped Rupert.

The trouble was that Rupert was right. He had a marvellous eye, miraculous anticipation, and saw exactly where they were making mistakes. Every time he picked up a polo stick it looked right. Every time he got on the most refractory pony, it came together.

No-one was spared. He made Ricky cut down drastically on his bad habits, all those accumulated short cuts which great players resort to. Gradually Ricky straightened his swing, found he was hitting the ball twice as far and learnt to use his team again.