Polo

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 £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 Señor 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 like puppets. 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 ‘Americanos’ 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.

Two minutes before the parade Bibi crept into her seat beside Bart. She was almost deafened by the O’Brien supporters with their emerald-green parasols and the Mendoza fans with their primrose-yellow flags and banners, encouraging their teams on with a cacophony of trumpet and drum. Bart, who’d bought a new panama for the occasion, was outraged because he was too far from Luke to bombard him with last-minute instructions. All around him were beautiful, laughing girls unfazed by the heatwave, their shining hair cascading on to slim walnut-brown shoulders. Perhaps there was life after Chessie after all. Bibi was more aware, to the right, of a rampart of Angel’s relations, who clearly recognized but studiously ignored her. Only marginally more hostile was Mrs Juan, Sitting Bully in person, whose huge bulk occupied three chairs instead of one.

‘Here they come,’ said Bibi in a choked voice. ‘Oh, come on, Angel! Come on, Luke! Come on, the Mendozas!’

The heat, which had been stifling as the vast crowd began to file through the turnstiles, was now like a cauldron of boiling oil. With people all fanning themselves with programmes, the two stands were like vast swarms of white butterflies. Despite his air of smiling imperturbability, Luke’s primrose shirt was drenched with sweat and his hands were propped on his saddle to conceal their trembling as he rode quietly out on Alejandro’s most beautiful liver-chestnut mare. Beside him rode Lorenzo, Patricio and Angel, curls flowing out underneath their helmets, long limbs supple as liquorice sticks, faces white as flagposts. At mid-field waited the O’Briens, four, immensely strong, proud men in the prime of life, hell bent on a sixth victory, who would take no prisoners. Everyone had been looking forward to the band who had guarded the President for nearly 200 years, but they had been banned from the ground because of the coup, so a lone trumpeter played the Argentine National Anthem instead. The tantivy of horn and trumpet and the tumbril-beat of drums intensified.

‘We are going to be keeled,’ said Angel through clattering teeth, ‘and Bibi ’aven’t even come and say goodbye to me.’

‘Oh, God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;

Possess them not with fear,’ muttered Luke to himself, but out loud, with a confidence he didn’t feel, he said, ‘Bullshit, we’ll bury them.’

‘Now he play bettair,’ said Patricio, nudging Lorenzo and looking upwards. Following his gaze, Angel was stunned to see a little plane chugging across the sky trailing a message: ‘Good luck, Angel, I love you, Bibi.’

The crowd burst into a collective roar of laughter. Angel went crimson but he was grinning like a pools winner. Now he would play like a king. He could hardly wait for the long-thighed umpire in his bright-blue shirt to chuck the ball in.

Luke found the Palermo Open quite different to any other tournament, not only because eight chukkas were played instead of the usual six, but also because the pace was twice as fast, the bumps three times as violent and the ponies four times as superior. There was no razzmatazz, no cheer leaders, no balloons, no commentary, because everyone in the madly excited crowd knew what was going on and made whistling sounds every time a foul occurred, often anticipating the umpire. All you could hear between the great roars of encouragement and the din of trumpet and drum was the clatter of incessantly galloping hooves, the snorting of the ponies, the desperate shouts of the players and the blind-man’s tap, tap, tap of their sticks.

By any standard the first chukka was played on fast forward. To boost morale and rattle the O’Briens Alejandro had mounted his sons and Angel on his best ponies. Exploding on to the field shiny as conkers shot from their husks, they outraced the O’Brien ponies with ease. By the bell the Mendozas were ahead by a staggering 5-1, three of the goals scored by Angel.

The O’Briens’ game-plan emerged as they settled down in the second chukka. Seamus O’Brien spent his time either sneakily inserting himself between Luke and the Mendozas’ posts or luring Luke away from the goal-mouth so that Miguel and Juan could unleash their thunderbolts from the mid-field which would find the flags immediately or be tipped through by a returning Seamus. Playing with pulverizing attack, changing direction all the time, by the end of the third chukka the O’Briens were leading 10-5 and had plunged the volatile Mendozas into despair.

‘Keep your shirts on, guys, you’re doing great,’ Luke reassured them as he mounted Fantasma, the only grey in the match, for the fourth chukka. As usual her beauty brought gasps of delight from the crowd and once again Luke felt humbled by the combination of courage, competitiveness, steel, intelligence and boundless energy. She always inspired him. Somehow he must try and settle his own side. But almost certainly it was going to be 11-5 as Juan hurtled towards goal on his fastest mare, the legendary Gatto, and like a matador, revelled in plunging another pic into the desperately injured Mendoza bull.

‘We’ll show them,’ muttered Luke, and next moment Fantasma had streaked like a shooting star after Juan. Coming in from the right, Luke waited until her grey shoulder was level with Gatto’s gleaming, dark brown quarters. He could also feel Miguel behind him breathing down his neck like a hair-dryer on high. Coolly he leant forward, hooked Juan’s stick out of the way and then, with a lightning flick, backed the ball. Instantly Fantasma swivelled round, so, bypassing an astounded Miguel, Luke was able to hit the forehand straight to Angel who was waiting on the boards. Gathering up the ball like a lost lover, Angel dribbled it round, tossed and hit it in the air twice in a contemptuous piece of clowning, then took it upfield, passing to Lorenzo who galloped off and scored. The crowd erupted in delight at such dazzling play. Overjoyed, Bibi hugged Bart. Even Angel’s rampart of relations were looking less supercilious.

A lone trumpeter up in the gods struck up the Stars and Stripes; Luke grinned and waved his stick. Two beautiful Argentine girls behind Bibi consulted their programmes and agreed the blond Americano was muy atractivo.

‘My brother,’ Bibi told them proudly.

In the fifth chukka the Mendozas rode their fast ponies again and closed the score to 8-10, but not for nothing did the blood of Irish kings run through the veins of the O’Briens. Refusing to be rattled, they fought back, furiously stampeding the score to 12-8. Having played their trump card to so little effect, the Mendozas started to panic. Even worse, a second later Miguel pulled up dead on the line bringing down Luke on the beautiful liver-chestnut just behind him. Luke, winded, staggered to his feet. The chestnut stayed put and had to be shot. Channelling his fury into a superhuman effort against the opposition, Luke hit the ensuing penalty through the posts and into the road and a lorry full of soldiers, who, thinking it was part of the coup, reached for their guns.

In the sixth chukka the O’Briens were awarded a penalty four which Luke knocked out of the air to Angel who again took it upfield with three almost languorously contemptuous offside forehands and then scored with an exquisite nearside cut shot. The crowd boiled over; 10-12 and Angel’s relations were all shaking Bart and Bibi by the hand. Angel’s bay mare had a lot to do with that goal, thought Luke darkly, but no-one told her so. In fact none of those gallant ponies had been patted once in the whole match except by him.

The heat was awful and even the umpires’ ponies were white with sweat. He must concentrate. He was exhausted after a long flight, unused to playing eight chukkas, unacclimatized to such punishing heat and the hand smashed earlier in the year was giving him hell. Suddenly the cliffs of yelling faces on either side seemed to be closing in on him and for a terrifying moment he thought he was going to black out.

Respite came horribly. One of Miguel’s ponies, racing Angel’s to the boards, tripped and, overturning, broke her back. With a delay of ten minutes before her body was taken away, Luke managed to recover in the shade. Then in the next chukka one of Alejandro’s most gallant mares broke a leg doing a lightning turn and also had to be shot. Patricio, who had made the mare himself, was in floods of tears. The crowd moaned in sympathy. Again, rage at such senseless waste fuelled Luke’s blast-furnace. As Miguel hurtled towards him, blotting out the sun, bringing the ball down for a certain goal, Luke coolly charged him, buffalo for buffalo, and passing him legitimately on the offside, whisked the ball to Angel who passed just in time to Patricio who scored. Twelve all, proclaimed the sea-green scoreboard in vast, white letters. The crowd had nearly yelled themselves hoarse and resorted more and more to their instruments. Two rival supporters, overcome by emotion, started a punch-up. Primrose-yellow flags and banners, emerald-green parasols swooned in the heat.

It was the last chukka. The O’Briens’ legendary temper was roused. It was time for Goliath to despatch David. But, by sheer persistence, the Mendozas, each clamped on his opposing player like Jack Russells, managed to keep the score level until, in the last ten seconds, Seamus crossed Luke. Up went the Mendozas’ sticks, twirling in triumph and there was a sharp exchange between the O’Briens and one of the long-thighed umpires who’d been looking at his watch at the time, until the third man came out of the bar and confirmed it was a foul.

Grimly the O’Briens lined up behind their goal. The Mendoza supporters (now most of the crowd) bellowed without ceasing and, in the bars below the great stadium, started opening bottles of champagne. Lorenzo, Patricio and Angel exchanged surreptitious but delighted grins. The grooms of the Mendozas rubbed their calloused hands in glee. Señor Gracias never missed a penalty. The Open was going to change hands at last.

The stadium went quiet as slowly Luke circled, a lone figure on an incandescently white horse under the burning sun. Turning Fantasma towards goal, he suddenly panicked. His hand might not hold up and he should have given the penalty to Angel. For a second his concentration flickered. To a man the Mendoza supporters groaned as Luke mis-hit and the ball went wide as the last bell went.

Overwhelmed by shame, Luke slumped in the saddle, resting his tired head on Fantasma’s bristling grey neck. He ought to fall on his polo mallet. Then, realizing the match wasn’t over, with titanic effort he pulled himself together and cantered back to the pony lines.

‘Sorry, you guys,’ he called to the rest of the team who were on the verge of tears.

‘Sorry,’ he shouted to the dead-pan masks of the grooms.

‘I thought you never miss a penalty,’ snarled a furious Alejandro. ‘Why are you bloody well smiling?’

‘To stop myself crying,’ said Luke.

Only Fantasma seemed to be on his side now. Flattening her ears and striking out at Alejandro, she nudged Luke sympathetically in the ribs as he dismounted, then tried to make him laugh by knocking his hat off.

Waiting to go into a ninth chukka, Luke took a swig of Seven-Up and soaked an entire towel wiping off the sweat. Alejandro wanted him to ride another flashy, beautiful chestnut called Zou Zou who’d been rested for three chukkas. But knowing Fantasma best, Luke opted to ride her a third time, which is allowed in Argentina. Briefly he put his arms round her neck echoing Sir Jacob Astley’s prayer at the Battle of Edgehill.

‘Oh Fantasma, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, do not thou forget me.’

Fantasma, who was dying to get back into the action, nipped Luke’s polo shirt in acquiescence. Three hundred chukkas with him were better than one with Alejandro.

‘Come on, you guys,’ shouted Luke as they rode back on to the field. ‘I know I goofed, but we’ve got to hold on. We can do it.’

The young Mendozas and Angel, who’d all played their hearts out, were now running on pure adrenalin. The shadows were lengthening, a slight breeze swirled pale blue jacaranda petals across the pitch, but the sun seemed even hotter. It was sudden death now. All that mattered was somehow to get the ball between the O’Briens’ posts.

The Mendozas had youth on their side and with kamikaze courage, the three young boys tried to score again and again, until Kevin O’Brien, at back, got fed up and cleared from his own goal. It was a monumental hit, the ball making a huge arc through the air, hurtling towards Luke who was waiting just beyond the halfway line.

Luke had left his back door open and he knew that Fantasma, despite her gallant, gutsy heart, had completely run out of steam. There was no way she could turn, gallop and keep up with Miguel and Juan, nor shake the pair of them off and take the ball back down to the O’Briens’ goal. The ball was still hurtling towards him. He was dimly aware of the screaming, excited blur of the crowd, of the leaping mallets of Juan and Miguel trying to halt the ball as it flew over their heads.

Now, bearing down on him, bringing death in the afternoon to the Mendozas’ hopes, pounded Juan and Miguel, ready to whip the ball away from him and together take it down the field and blast it into goal.

Despite her utter exhaustion, Fantasma never took her eyes off the ball. Trembling with anticipation, shifting from foot to foot, she was determined to position Luke perfectly for the shot. Dropping his reins on her sodden steelgrey neck, grasping his mallet in two huge hands, Luke took a mighty swipe as the ball passed him at eye-level. It was a complete cowboy shot but perfectly met. There was a tremendous crack, like an elephant’s tusk breaking, as he connected.

The crowd gave a great shout of amazement as the ball took off back again. As though carried by the slight breeze and the indrawn breath of everyone in the ground, it flew like a white gull towards the posts. The great shout of amazement had become a greater one of ecstasy and encouragement. Had it gone far enough? Kevin O’Brien bucketed back. But he was so busy looking up in the air and whipping his pony that he didn’t give himself enough time to get in position. Swiping at the ball as it thudded to the pavement-hard ground, he missed and the next second it had somehow bounced to the right and sidled in through the posts.

With agonizing slowness, as though the goal-judge couldn’t believe his eyes, the red flag suddenly went into a frantic jive of joy.

For a few seconds there was utter silence as it dawned on the vast crowd that the Titans had at long last been toppled. The six-year wait was over. Then followed a mighty explosion of cheering that must have been heard by the foals at General Piran and, just as if the huge stands had leant forward to see better, the fans fell, as though toppled, on to the field. Fantasma’s breath was coming in sobbing gasps. Her nostrils flared red as traffic-lights, her pale coat was black with sweat; like cobras, her veins writhed with her heaving body.

‘Gracias, gracias,’ croaked Luke, collapsing on her neck again.

Next moment Juan and Miguel were pumping him by the hand and he had been pulled off Fantasma and was being carried shoulder-high round the stadium.

‘Americano, Americano,’ shrieked the crowd in ecstasy, over and over again.

They knew Luke had stepped into the boots of the mighty Alejandro at the last moment and they wanted to salute his courage because he had turned the game around and never stopped fighting.

‘Americano, Americano,’ roared the crowd as, with his widest grin, Luke went up to collect the great Gold Cup with the soaring eagle on its lid and they roared on and on, refusing to let him go. Glancing up at the stands, Luke saw that Bart was yelling his head off, tears of joy coursing down his cheeks.

Another great cheer went up for Angel, olive skin tinged with colour, peacock-blue eyes bloodshot, bronze curls clinging damply to his forehead. All his cousins were shouting, crying and congratulating each other. He knew now that he’d been taken back into the fold.

As Angel brandished his own gold trophy he smiled across at Bibi who was crying as much as Bart and he thought how lovely she looked with her mascara running and her long nose red.

Luke ruffled his hair. ‘I guess God looked after his Angel today.’

Luke won the Best Player Award. Fantasma won the two Best Playing Pony prizes and was only just restrained from kicking the President of the Argentine Polo Association when he put the white blanket of honour on her even whiter back. She had never looked more beautiful, thought Luke, shimmying round in her new white rug, ears pricked to hear the cheers, dark eyes searching restlessly for Luke, terrified to let him out of her sight for a second. Soon she would be his again.

Determined to clinch the deal at once, leaving the others swigging champagne and signing autographs, Luke set off to find Alejandro. Post-mortems were already going on in the bars in every language under the sun. The Buenos Aires Herald stopped Luke for his views on the match.

‘We should remember the horses,’ he said, suddenly sombre. ‘They played their hearts out in this heat and three of them died. It was the worst I’ve ever known.’

He found Alejandro ecstatic, tearful and already drunk.

‘Well done, amigo. I taught you well.’

‘And now you can sell me my horse back.’

Suddenly Alejandro looked shifty.

‘She play well. I decide I cannot part with ’er. Friendsheep ees friendsheep, but business ees business.’

‘I’ll give you one hundred and fifty thousand bucks,’ said Luke in desperation. ‘It’s all I can raise.’

But Alejandro refused to budge. He had put nothing in writing.

‘If you hadn’t broken your leg, I’d beat you to a pulp, you greasy, double-crossing son of a bitch,’ shouted Luke, storming off.