Polo (2 page)

    Green beneath his suntan, shaking violently and pouring with sweat, Ricky spoke briefly to his wife Chessie when she came over and hugged him. Chessie had often been jealous of Matilda in the past; now she could only pity Ricky's anguish.

    `I'm desperately sorry, darling. When'll you be back?' `Probably not at all. I'll ring you.'

    `But what about Lady Waterlane's reception?' asked an outraged Bart, who had just joined them. `You can't miss that.'

    Ricky looked at Bart uncomprehendingly.

    '13-13-bugger Lady Waterlane,' he said coldly.

    Ricky had just climbed in beside the mare when a ripple of excitement ran through the crowd as a dark man in a cherry-red polo shirt pulled up his pony beside the lorry. His hazel eyes were on a level with Ricky's as he called out: `Desperately sorry, Ricky. Ghastly thing to happen. Always liked Matilda - great character. Hope you manage to save her.'

    Touched by the expression of genuine sympathy on the Prince's face, Ricky forgot to bow.

    `Thank you, sir.'

    Bart and Grace, who'd also joined him on the field, shot forward expectantly, avid to be presented, but it was too late.

    Shouting back to Ricky to let him know the result of the X-ray, the Prince had moved off, hitting a ball ahead of him, cantering across the pitch and out of Bart's life.

    `Why the hell didn't you introduce us?'

    `It seemed irrelevant.'

    As they raised the ramp of the horse box and shot the bolts, Bas and Drew shook their heads. They knew how devastated Ricky was, but he was pushing his luck.

    Aubergine with rage, Bart turned to Chessie.

    `What the fuck does your husband think he's playing at?' `Polo,' said Chessie bitterly. `Absolutely nothing else.'

3

    Bart's resentment against Ricky was in no way abated when the Prince regretfully decided he wouldn't have time to look in at Lady Waterlane's party because his match had been delayed. Lady Waterlane, who didn't find Latins at all lousy lovers, was so preoccupied with Juan O'Brien, her husband's Argentine professional, that she hardly noticed the Prince's absence.

    A rather too relaxed hostess, besides feeding and watering her guests and giving them free access to the bedrooms where the four-posters hadn't been made for weeks, Lady Waterlane expected people to get on with it.

    Totally confident in the business world, Bart felt an outsider among the raffish and sometimes aristocratic members of the polo community who knew each other so well. He had expected Ricky to introduce him to everyone. Chessie, furious at having forked out for a baby-sitter and determined to stay for the party, could easily have fulfilled this function, but Bart had been so rude to her about Ricky's arrogance, and the fact that she was dressed like a tramp, that she had stalked off to comfort Jesus the Chilean who was mortified his pony had caused Matilda's fall.

    Bart, however, was not left alone for long. June and July (when the mid-season's handicaps were announced) were the months when dissatisfied patrons started looking round and wondering which players they would hire to make up their teams for next year.

    Apart from the occasional amateur, like Bas and Drew, there are two kinds of players in polo - the patrons who have the money and the professionals who earn money playing for them. Professional players are only as good as their last three games; contracts rarely extend beyond a season. There is therefore collossal pressure to perform well. But, with one's future at stake, diplomacy is almost more important than performance. Patrons not only like to win, but also to be taken to parties and treated as one of the boys.

    During the season everyone had noticed the
froideur
between Ricky and Bart. Miguel O'Brien, known asthe Godfather because he controlled the other Argentine players like the Mafia, was also grimly aware that with his handsome brother Juan constantly wrapped round Clemency Waterlane, David Waterlane might not be overkeen to employ them to play for Rutminster Hall next year. David was tricky and also very mean. Looking round the beautiful drawing room, Miguel's conniving, dark little eyes noticed the damp patches on the faded yellow wallpaper and the tattered silk chaircovers, and saw that David's ancestors on the walls could hardly see out through the layers of grime. He knew, too, that David owed thousands to Ladbroke's and the taxman. Thinking how agreeable it would be next year to be sponsored by Bart's millions, Miguel started chatting him up.

    `You ride very well for the leetle time you 'a
<sup>y</sup>
e learn,' purred Miguel. `Wiz zee right coaching you could be miles bettair, but success in polo
is
eighty per cent zee good 'orses.'

    He hoped Bart and his beautiful wife would come and stay at his
estancia
in Argentina and try out some of the family's superb ponies. Bart was flattered. Imagine the kudos of having the great O'Brien brothers playing on his team both in England and Palm Beach.

    The Napier brothers, Ben and Charles, known as the Unheavenly Twins because of their cadaverous appearance, who'd been beaten by the O'Briens, David Waterlane and the Prince in the second match, were also at the party. Cruel to their horses and even crueller to their patron, a petfood billionaire who they'd ripped off so unmercifully that he was threatening to quit polo, the Napiers also tried to make their number with Bart during the evening. But they were pre-empted by Seb and Dommie Carlisle, who, having got drunk and appropriated Perdita after the match, came rushing up to Bart: `Oh, Mr Alderton, could you please take us into a corner and chat us up like mad, so Victor will get appallingly jealous and offer us three times as much next year?'

    Bart was amused. The twins, he decided, would be far more fun to play with than Ricky or the Napiers.

    Drew Benedict couldn't stay long at the party, as he had to dine with Sukey's parents, his future in-laws, but, ever

    diplomatic, he found time to talk to Bart, his patron, telling him how well he had played and how the team would never have reached the semi-finals without him.

    `It's disappointing we didn't make the finals, but a good thing from my point of view,' added Drew philosophically. `I'm supposed to be guarding some nuclear weapons this weekend, and I'd have had difficulty getting leave on Sunday.'

    Having mugged up on the
Wall Street Journal
and the
Financial Times
every day, Drew was also able to comment on the progress of Bart's latest take-over. Admiring Drew's well-worn but beautifully cut suit, his striped shirt and blue silk tie, and his dependable handsome face with the turned-down blue eyes and juttingly determined jaw, Bart thought that he was quite the best kind of Englishman - a sort of butch Leslie Howard. Briefly he touched Drew's pin-striped arm with the back of his hand, the nearest he ever got to intimacy with men.

    `The Army's loss'll be Sukey's gain,' he said roughly. `She's a very lucky young woman.'

    Drew grinned. ` London 's fortune-hunters are out to lynch me.'

    Having taught himself Spanish because he realized what an advantage it would be understanding what the Argentines were gabbling to each other on and off the field, Drew had also overheard Miguel talking to Juan. Before he left, he took Chessie on to the terrace. The setting sun was turning the house a warm peach and gilded the lake around which cows were lying down. Catmint brushed against Chessie's legs as Drew adjusted the shoulder-strap of her coloured vest which had flopped down her arm.

    `As your husband's best friend… '

    … You want me to stop flirting with Jesus!'

    `That too,' said Drew. `Look I've just overheard that oily sod Miguel telling Juan that Bart's fed up with Ricky and things look rosy for next year. Ricky should be here guarding his patch.'

    `Well, he's not,' snapped Chessie. `When did a party ever come before a pony? He's just rung up to say they've X-rayed Matilda's leg and it's a cannon bone, so they're going to slap it in plaster and then sling her up.'`Thank Christ, so he'll be here soon.'

    `Some hope,' said Chessie bitterly. `He prefers to stay with Mattie. He's already collected Will from the baby-sitter. He's so bloody arrogant, he'll never dance to Bart's tune.'

    `He who pays for the Piper Heidsieck calls the tune,' said Drew, deheading a rose.

    Drew-hoo, Drew-hoo,' Sukey was calling from the french windows.

    `Shades of the prison-house begin to close,' mocked Chessie.

    `Don't be subversive,' said Drew, kissing her on the cheek. `You'd better chat up Bart instead of Jesus, or your husband's on a collision course.'

    The party roared on. Coronation chicken was served, although Seb Carlisle was heard to remark that it was debatable whose coronation it was celebrating. A few bread rolls were thrown. Dommie Carlisle added to the rising damp by filling a condom with water and spraying it round the drawing room. All the players' dogs, which followed them everywhere, lay around panting, finishing up the food and being tripped over.

    In a dark corner Juan O'Brien, a beautiful animal with big, brown eyes, long, black curls and a vast, slightly bruised, lower lip, was gazing limpidly at Clemency Waterlane: `You haf the most wonderful eyes in the world. My best mare in Argentina ees due to foal soon. Eef it's a filly, I shall call her Clarissa after you.'

    `Actually my name's Clemency,' said Lady Waterlane, `but it's awfully sweet of you, Juan.'

    Victor Kaputnik, the pharmaceutical billionaire, bald pate gleaming in the candlelight, black chest-hair spilling out of his unbuttoned shirt, was boasting in his thick Hungarian accent about his prowess as a businessman.

    `I have discovered a cure for the common cold,' he was telling Fatty Harris, the club secretary.

    `I wish he'd find a cure for the common little man,' muttered Seb Carlisle. `He's an absolute pill.'

    `No, he makes pills,' giggled Dommie, shooting a jet of water into the round red face of Fatty Harris who was too drunk to realize where it had come from.

    Bart's mood was not improving. Once a heavy drinker, he had cut out booze almost entirely, to improve his polo, but now really longed for a huge Scotch. Desperately dehydrated after the game, he had already drunk two bottles of Perrier. He was livid they'd lost the match, livid that Victor had scored that goal, which he was boasting to everyone about, livid that Victor had got into the final with the Prince, and might well appear photographed with the Prince and Lady Diana on the front of Monday's
Times,
and livid that Victor was now dancing with his red-headed night-club hostess, his six o'clock shadow grating the sunburnt cleavage of her splendid breasts.

    And there was Clemency Waterlane wrapped round Juan, and that ravishing schoolgirl bopping away with Dommie and Seb. Bart knew that Grace was a wonderful wife, but he had never forgiven her for being from a better class than him, and was fed up with her criticizing his polo, pointing out that if he hadn't bumped Victor so hard today Jesus would never have been awarded that penalty. Now she was being charming to that old bore Brigadier Hughie, and his wife.

    `I've broken m'right leg twice, m'left leg once, my right shoulder three times, cracked three ribs and dislocated m'thumb and m'elbow,' droned on Hughie.

    `Polo players are very brave people,' said Mrs Hughie, who looked like an eager warthog.

    `Brave enough to face the Inland Revenue every year,' drawled Chessie on her way to the bar.

    Ignoring Chessie, Grace listened politely, thinking how dirty Clemency Waterlane's house was and how much better she, Grace, could have arranged the flowers. Then, noticing Bart pouring himself a huge Scotch, she left Mrs Hughie in midflow, as she strode across the room.

    `Baby, we weren't going to drink. Look, I'm exhausted. Shall we go?'

    Bart said he wasn't tired, and still had some business to discuss with Miguel. Why didn't the pilot fly Grace home and come back for him in an hour.

    Chessie France-Lynch, rather drunk, sat in the depths of a sofa, letting conversations drift over her. From a bench on the terrace, she heard an outraged squawk as

    Victor's pudgy hand found the soft flesh between Sharon's stockings and her suspender belt.

    `Hey, d'you
fink I'm
common or somefink, Victor? Tits first, please!'

    In front of the fireplace still full of ash from a fire last March, four young bloods were discussing next week's tournament in Cheshire.

    `Seb and Dommie are definitely coming and they're mounted.'

    `Who's going to mount Drew?'

    `Simon can't, because he's mounting Henry. Bas is mounting himself.'

    `Well, Bas will have to mount Drew too then.'

    Nor did the young men deflect in the slightest from their conversation when David Waterlane, having found Juan mounting his beautiful wife in an upstairs four-poster, was forced to expel the frantically protesting Argentine from the house.

    Clemency was sniffing
in
an armchair and receiving a pep talk from Brigadier Hughie, who felt that, as chairman of the club, he should provide moral guidance. `D'you really feel, Clemency, m'dear, that it's worth leaving a tolerant husband, three lovely children and nine hundred acres for the sake of six inches of angry gristle?'

    Clemency sniffed and said yes she did, that David could be very intolerant, and Juan's gristle wasn't angry and was considerably more than six inches.

    Chessie found herself giggling so much that she had to leave the room and went slap into Bart Alderton, who was clutching another large Scotch. Chessie updated him on the Juan-Clemency saga.

    `She's crazy,' went on Chessie. `David puts up with murder, even if he is stingy, and he
is
loaded.'

    `Unlike your spouse,' said Bart pointedly.

<sup>`</sup>
Ghastly word,' said Chessie. `And I hear you're not espousing his cause next year.'

    Bart took her arm and frogmarched her outside on to the long grass beyond the lawn, away from a scuffling Victor and Sharon.

    `Who told you that?' he said sharply.

^`
Miguel was overheard boasting to Juan. I wish you the luck of them. Miguel will fleece you and Juan will no

    doubt offer Grace a good deal more than six inches. At least Ricky's honest and hasn't jumped on Grace.'

    `Why's he so broke?' snarled Bart. `He's paid enough.'

    Chessie put a hand on a stone lion. Though the sun was long set, it was still warm. The scent from a clump of philadelphus was almost overwhelming.

    `Stymied by a massive overdraft,' she said. `He's spent so much on the yard and ponies and a stick-and-ball field. And he's no good at selling ponies on at a wicked profit like some people. He gets too fond of them, and always justifies not selling them by claiming they'll go for three times as much next year, when he's put more work into them. His father used to help him, but they fell out.'