Polo (76 page)

    scuppered by nerves, he misjudged and hit the post. `Oh,' groaned the crowd.

    Bart hit in. A minute and a half to go. Seb blocked the shot and passed to Dommie, who tapped it in, screaming with frustration as again it hit the post.

    `The afternoon of the woodwork,' said Terry Hanlon sympathetically.

    But an instant later Ricky had thundered in and slapped in a tennis shot in the air. Chessie's scream of joy was not the only one. Six all, a minute to go.

    Suddenly the rain stopped, every tree and flat cap dripped, water cascaded down spectators' necks as other spectators lowered their umbrellas. The Gold Cup on its green baize table was carried out and glittered like the Holy Grail in a lone shaft of sunlight. As the ball flashed frantically from goal-mouth to goal-mouth and Bart crashed round like a maddened Rottweiler, bumping into everyone, the crowd were on their feet yelling their heads off. Now they were down the Flyers' end and Seb, Dommie, Ricky and Dancer were all taking desperate swipes at the ball until it was buried, trodden deep into the ground, with everyone frantically looking for it until the whistle went.

    After a lot of shouting, the ball was dug out and thrown in where it had been buried, twenty yards in front of goal.

    `This is very dangerous for the Flyers,' warned Terry Hanlon. `The fat is in the fire, the chips are in the pan.'

    `Get it out,' screamed Red, as the frantically thrashing sticks hit ponies' and players' legs indiscriminately in a churning whirlpool of mud. Then, god-given, the ball rolled out on Perdita's side. At last she had a chance to redeem herself and get the ball back upfield. Throwing herself forward, her fingers in her slippery glove lost control of her stick, which totally mis-hit the ball.

    `Oh no, please God, no,' she screamed in horror, as the ball slowly trickled between her own goal posts. For a second the goal judge seemed as stunned as she was, then slowly up went the flag once again. Bart's anguished howl of rage was drowned by the sound of the bell.

    And it was all over and Ricky was shaking hands with everyone and thanking Shark and Drew, who, abandoning any attempt at impartiality, put his arm round Ricky's

    shoulders, yelling: `Fucking, fucking marvellous.' Dancer was crying openly.

    `You did it, you bleedin' did it,' he shouted at the twins.

    `You bleeding did it,' shouted back Seb. `You hooked Red when he would have scored the winning goal, didn't he, Dommie?' But Dommie was streaking up the field as fast as tired, little Corporal could carry him and was next seen locked in an ecstatic Louisa's arms. Little Chef darting through equine and human legs, as the crowd spilled overjoyed on to the pitch, took a flying leap on to Ricky's saddle, frantically licking away the tears of joy that striped his master's blackened face.

    `We won, Cheffie,' Ricky babbled to him incoherently. `We fucking did it, Cheffie.'

    Mishearing him, a maddened Bart stopped in his tracks. `You may have won the cup, you asshole, but you won't get her. She's fucking mine!'

    Bewildered for an instant, Ricky realized that, in the joy of winning, he'd forgotten all about Chessie.

    As he rode off the field, shaking hands with everyone, Louisa, extricating herself from Dommie's embrace, ran up to him.

    `Oh, it's so lovely, Wayne's won Best Playing Pony.'

    Seb, shaking up a magnum of champagne, made everyone even wetter than they were already. Terry Hanlon had to exert all his vocal skills to get things on course for the presentation.

    `Put your cigarettes out before you come up,' he chided the teams. `We'll have the bad boys first.'

    As Seb sauntered up, he turned grinning to the jostling reporters and cameramen and made a very pointed V-sign.

    `Too many late nights indeed.'

    Good-naturedly, they cheered and whooped.

    Ricky's face was impassive as he accepted the huge glittering cup from Lord Cowdray, but later, when it was filled with champagne, he grimly raised it to Chessie who was making no attempt to contain her delight.

    Bart couldn't make a scene because of the Germans, but the moment he'd seen them into one of his helicopters he unleashed his fury on Perdita. It was entirely her fault for fouling and scoring an own goal at the end.

    `Comes of playing with a fucking broad. Of all the fucking stupid things to do,' he yelled, to the edification of the entire pony lines. Red was even more lethally nasty, until Angel put an arm round the hysterically sobbing Perdita.

    `Eet could 'appen to anybody,' he protested. 'Eef you hadn't got hooked because you were messing around in front of goal, they'd never 'ave caught up.'

    `Shut up,' screamed Red. `And for Christ's sake, stop blubbing, Perdita.'

    `It wasn't her fault,' shouted Angel.

    `Piss off,' said Bart. `I don't pay you to have opinions.' He found Chessie talking to Lord Cowdray, stuck into her third glass of champagne and looking radiant.

    `We're leaving,' he snapped.

    `How very unsporting,' said Chessie. `I wanted to watch the second match.'

    `Well, you can't.'

    Two more teams were doing a lap of honour before playing off for third place, as Perdita raced towards Bart's helicopter. Blinded by tears, she ran slap into a man stalking in the other direction.

    `Can't you look where you're fucking going?' she screamed, then gasped and shrank away, for it was Rupert. For a second they gazed at each other, assessing the damage.

    `I'm sorry,' sobbed Perdita. `I didn't mean to screw up your life. I'm sorry Taggie can't have babies, and I'm sorry I played so badly. I can't do anything right any more. When I dumped about Mum, I didn't know I was your child. I'd never have hurt you deliberately. I've just lost the m-match for them. Red'll never talk to me again. Please let me come and explain. Please help me.' Hysterically she clung to him.

    `I'm not fucking social security,' said Rupert, his eyes suddenly as cold as an Eskimo's graveyard. `And there's no way you're my child. No Campbell-Black could ever ride as badly as you just did.'

    As the rain came down again, mingling with her tears and running nose, Perdita gave a wail and stumbled away from him. As she clambered into the helicopter, Chessie was saying happily, `Oh, look, Bart, I've just found your lucky belt under the seat.'

66

    Back at Robinsgrove next morning Ricky, still high on euphoria, was the only member of Apocalypse not laid waste by a hangover. Clutching their heads, groaning, some of them still drunk, the grooms leant against the tired ponies as they walked them out for Ricky to inspect. Wayne had an inflamed tendon and had been ordered a few days' box rest. The others - except for a few cuts and bruises - were miraculously free from injury, so Ricky ordered them to be turned out for forty-eight hours. Leaning on the gate, he fondly watched them, revelling in the sunshine, walking poker-legged at first, then, realizing they were free, breaking into a canter, crinkly tails flying and charging down the valley to roll and cool their bruised legs in the stream which raced and hurled itself against the rocks after yesterday's deluge.

    Although his ash trees were still a feathery blue-green without a trace of yellow, Ricky could see the slow beginnings of autumn, the toasting of the beeches, the gilding of the poplars, the occasional tree garlanded by acid-green traveller's joy, the barley beyond the stables slowly losing its green flecks. But for once the prospect of winter didn't depress him.

    The telephone had rung all morning, patrons suddenly wondering if there was any chance he could play for them next year, friends to congratulate, newspapers wanting quotes - one would have thought the powers of darkness had fallen. The morning papers were equally ecstatic.
`Flyers France-Lynched,'
said
The Times,
which was a slight exaggeration when they had only been beaten by an own goal.
`Flyers Bomb,'
said the
Telegraph.
The tabloids concentrated on Dancer's delight and Perdita's anguish, with variations on Rupert's rejected daughter, Auriel's toyboy, Bart's fury, all reporting the grisly details of the shouting match afterwards.

    Looking at the bowed-down heads of the barley still dripping with raindrops, Ricky was reminded of Perdita yesterday, sobbing, bitterly ashamed and desolate. He had talked to Daisy earlier that morning and persuaded her notto weaken. `Looks as though Red's on the way out, thank God. Let her come back in her own time.'

    Returning to the yard, Ricky went into Wayne's box to find him lying down asleep. But as he sat down in the straw, Wayne opened a baleful black-ringed eye, whickered and, accepting several barley sugars, listened attentively as his master took him through every stroke of the chukka in which he had seen off the great Glitz.

    `We won, my brave Wayne, we won,' Ricky told him exultantly.

    The telephone was ringing again. Remembering the grooms had the day off, Ricky sprinted into the kitchen.

    `Hello, Rick,' said
The Scorpion.
`Congrats on beating your ex-wife's hubby. Your ex seemed over the moon. Any chance of a reconciliation?'

    `F-f-fuck off,' said Ricky.

    The telephone rang again immediately. Ricky snatched it up. `F-f-fuck off.'

    `Hello, hello.' It was Brigadier Hughie. `Thought you might like to know that it's rumoured that you're going up to ten.'

    Replacing the receiver, Ricky took it off the hook and, picking up the cup, already covered in a thousand ecstatic fingerprints, held it up to the light.

    `We won, Cheffie, we won.'

    Little Chef thumped his curly tail and sniffed appreciatively at the chicken his master was cooking for him as a celebratory treat. Neither had eaten much yesterday. Then he gave a strangled croak, all he could manage after barking himself hoarse yesterday, and shot off into the yard. Still hugging the cup, Ricky wandered into the hall, holding it up for the photographs of his grandfather, uncles and father to see. `I did it, you old b-b-buggers.'

    `You look like one of the wise men bearing gold. Melchior, was it?'

    Ricky almost dropped the cup, for there in the kitchen doorway stood Chessie.

    `As I was ripped untimely from yesterday's celebration,' she drawled, `I thought I'd come and congratulate you personally. I see you haven't painted anything except the stables since I left.'

    Wandering back into the kitchen, she noticed that the

    shelves, from which she'd swiped all her recipe books, were piled high with old copies of
Horse and Hound
and
Polo
magazine. The spice shelves were down to salt, pepper and mixed herbs. She could smell that there was no tarragon in the chicken Ricky was cooking. A calendar for 1981, the year she'd walked out, still hung on the wall, probably because it bore a photograph of a whippet who looked like Millicent. The washing machine, black inside with Apocalypse shirts, quivered on `pause'.

    She turned to Ricky, who was still holding the cup and staring at her. `Aren't you pleased to see me?'

    `I don't know.'

    All he knew was that the sun had gone in and the cup had lost its glitter. Chessie was wearing a clinging black jump suit, sawn off at the knees, with a T-shirt top clinched in with yesterday's leather belt. She appeared to be wearing no make-up at all, but in fact had spent twenty minutes smudging blue-black shadow and a subtle blending of green and beige base to make herself look tired, frail and wildly desirable. Ricky felt himself churning.

    `Got a hangover?' she asked.

    `I don't drink.'

    `I thought you might have made an exception. It is the first rung.'

    `I know,' said Ricky flatly.

    The Slav face was impassive. Above the high cheek- bones, his eyes were as dark as the rain-soaked cedars in the churchyard.

    `Everyone's saying you'll go to ten at the end of the season. All you have to do is win the Westchester.' Her voice was mocking. `Can I have a look round?'

    Sauntering to the window, showing off the slightness of her figure, she caught sight of Wayne, who, having decided to get up, was now leaning nosily out of his box to see what his master was up to. `Is that Mattie?' How clever of me to remember names, thought Chessie.

    `Maine was put down, if you remember, the day you first slept with Bart.'

    Chessie didn't hesitate. `Oh yes, how stupid of me.' Putting the cup down, he followed her into the hall. `You've let the moth get at that tapestry, and look at the

    damp,' she said reprovingly. `This place needs a woman's

    touch. Pity I can't touch Bart for a million to do it up.'

    Ricky's cards were still up from his birthday in February, along with an Easter egg Violet had given him for letting her drive in his fields. Absent-mindedly, he started breaking it up and giving pieces to Little Chef.

    `What d'you want?' he said bleakly.

    `To talk.' She looked him straight in the eyes. `To find out if you still want me.'

    `Don't be bloody silly.'

    Her eyes moved to his mouth and back to his eyes again, glancing at him under her lashes, then smiling slowly in a way that had always destroyed him.

    `Shall we go to bed?' she whispered. `Who's up there?' `The twins and Dancer, all with assorted partners.' `Christ, the twins are such gossips they'd fax Bart in

    Dusseldorf with the news in two minutes.'

    Fretfully Chessie crossed the room, noticing a Lalique bowl and a Rockingham Dalmatian from her side of the family. If she were coming back to stay, there was no need to take them. The dust was awful. Didn't Ricky have a char any more? Then a shaft of sunlight suddenly illuminated Will's portrait.

    `Oh my God, that's beautiful!' Taking it off the wall, she examined it more closely. `It's stunning.
So
like him. Oh Christ, he was sweet!'

    For the first time there was genuine emotion in her voice as she longingly caressed the blond hair, and the round, roguish face. `It was his birthday last week.'

    `I know.' Yet again Ricky felt the whole buckling weight of responsibility for Will's death. `I'm sorry.'

    `I was a good mother, wasn't I?'

    `Of course,' lied Ricky.

    `God, it's a brilliant likeness.' She looked down at the portrait again. `Let me have it.'

    `I can't.'

    Chessie's face hardened. `You owe it to me.'

    `I know.' Ricky had gone yellow, almost parsnip-coloured. `But it was a present.'

    `Who painted it? Perhaps he could do a copy for me?' `It's a her - Daisy Macleod, Perdita's mother.'

    `Ah.' Chessie put the painting down on the piano as though it had suddenly dropped ten thousand pounds in

    value. `I've met her, very blowzy… the
habituée
of orgies, a bicycle made for six in fact.'

    `She's sweet,' said Ricky coldly.

    Chessie's eyebrows vanished beneath her fringe. `How did she get such a good likeness?'

    `She found a photograph tucked in an old polo book.'

    Chessie went to the drinks' tray, wiped the dust out of the inside of a glass with her sleeve and sloshed in a lot of vodka and very little tonic.

    `Did Daisy, Daisy, do all those drawings of the horses in the kitchen?'

    `Yes.'

    `Making herself very much at home,' said Chessie, downing half her drink.

    `Shut up,' said Ricky, losing his temper. `You know it's only you I love.'

    `Well, hold me then.'

    Reeling with desire, his heart pounding like a cannon Ricky breathed in the Diorissimo she'd sprayed in her hair, noticed the sweat beading the faint down of blonde hairs on her upper lip. Like a man returning to a once familiar house who half-remembers where the light switches are, he fumbled for one of her hardened nipples, then stretched his hand over the wonderful springiness surrounding it.

    `Oh, my d-d-darling.'

    Next moment they both jumped out of their quivering skins as the door burst open and in barged Eddie Macleod.

    `Oh, there you are, Ricky. Sorry to bother you, but we couldn't get through on the telephone. Ethel had five puppies at five o'clock this morning, three black and two brindle, all with curly tails, so Mum thinks Little Chef must be the father, not Decorum. Would you like to come and see them, and can I get Mum's sketch book from her studio? Ethel's such a good mother, she's licked them all clean, and she's awfully proud. We buried the afterbirth and… '

    `Who's that?' said Chessie when Ricky finally managed to evict Eddie.

    `Perdita's brother.'

    `And Mum - Daisy, Daisy has a studio here?'

    The attic room,' said Ricky evenly. `No-one was using it.'

    `And she uses your library too? Making herself very much at home.'

    Ricky glared at Chessie: `It's my house. Stop being a bitch.'

    `I thought Ethel was the bitch. Are you going to be godfather to those puppies?'

    Chessie looked through the window at the house-martins catching insects and at the stable cat pretending to sleep on the warm gravel, waiting for birds to swoop down and attack the peas and raspberries no-one had had time to pick.

    `I just wondered,' she said softly, `if you were sucking up to Daisy as a prospective mother-in-law.'

    `Don't be fatuous,' exploded Ricky. He had forgotten Chessie's relentless nit-picking jealousy. `Daisy needed somewhere to paint. Snow Cottage is minute. It must have been like playing polo on a tennis court.'

    `I'm sorry.' Examining her reflection in the Queen's Cup, which, having been won only six weeks ago, was still quite shiny, Chessie licked her finger, wiped away a smudge of mascara and smiled - the adorable child again.

    `Why don't we go out for a discreet lunch? We could go to L'Aperitif. I haven't been there since we split up.' `I can't.'

    `Can't? Monday's your day off.'

    Ricky gritted his teeth. `I've got to take Violet out to lunch.'

    `And who's Violet?' Chessie's fingers were drumming on the top of the piano.

    `Daisy's daughter. She passed her driving test first go last week and I said I'd take her out to lunch.'

    `Cancel it,' ordered Chessie.

    `I promised. Her boyfriend chucked her after all that stuff in
The Scorpion.
She's been terribly low.'

    `Jesus,' screamed Chessie. `Surely us getting it together is more important.'

    `Daisy was very good to me,' said Ricky carefully. `When I was stupid with misery over losing you she listened. She's a friend. We can have dinner this evening. I'll have got rid of Dancer and the twins by then.'

    His face was as dead-pan as ever, but there was no

    denying the longing and conciliation in his voice. Chessie, however, was miffed.

    `I can't. Bart's only gone to Dusseldorf for the day. He's coming back tonight.'

    `And we can't rock the Bart.'