Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  Totally unsympathetic, Ricky ordered her to go on circling the ring, doing small turns. For Perdita, frantically wiping away blood as it splattered her and Kinta, the session deteriorated sharply. Ten minutes more on Kinta were followed by twenty minutes on Wayne, Ricky’s favourite pony, still circling, turning, then swinging round and putting her left hand on Wayne’s custard-yellow right quarter at the trot, until her face and neck were streaming with sweat and blood, and her mascara and eyeliner were smeared and making her eyes sting.

  Wayne flattened his big donkey ears and rolled his bruised dark eyes in martyrdom. Like an instinctive footballer who doesn’t need to train, he was appalled to be subjected to such boring manoeuvres. The sun grew hotter.

  ‘I will not give in, I will not give in,’ said Perdita through clenched teeth. Her tits were agony, bouncing around. But just as she was about to crack, Ricky signalled to Frances to bring in a bucket of polo balls. Wayne perked up as Ricky smoothed out the pitted sand in the centre with his boot and put down a ball.

  ‘We’ll start off with the nearside forehand, so you want him on the nearside leg.’

  Desperate to show what she could do, Perdita completely mis-hit three balls in a row.

  ‘You’re not watching the ball.’

  Wayne, getting crafty, skedaddled so near the ball that she couldn’t hit it without bashing his legs. She missed again.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ she screamed.

  ‘Now she’ll go to pieces,’ said Frances happily.

  ‘Come here,’ said Ricky.

  Dripping with sweat and blood, make-up streaking her face like a clown caught in a deluge, Perdita rode sulkily up to him.

  ‘Calm down,’ he said gently. ‘You’re going too fast and getting uptight, and he knows it. And keep at him with your left leg or he’ll move in.’

  Back she went, chattering with rage and panic. ‘Please God, or he’ll never take me on.’

  Slowly Ricky took her through it. ‘Don’t cut the corner; up out of the saddle; bend over; look at the ball; begin your swing; keep watching the ball; head over the ball.’

  Crack! Stick and ball connected in an exquisitely timed shot.

  ‘Bingo!’ Perdita threw her stick into the air, ten feet high, and caught it. ‘That was perfect.’

  ‘You hit it too late, and don’t throw your stick in the air. It’s dangerous.’

  ‘Better a stick in the air than a stick-in-the-mud!’

  The galloping fox weather-vane was motionless in the swooning heat. Beneath it the stable clock said two fifteen. She had been riding for two hours, nearly twice the length of a normal match.

  ‘We’ll try one more thing,’ said Ricky.

  Louisa led out two ponies – Willis, a huge bay, invaluable because he had the best brakes in Rutshire, and Hermia, a little chestnut mare Ricky had bought in Argentina in 1981, who was very green and terrified of everything.

  Ricky mounted Willis. Perdita clambered wearily on to Hermia. Her ribs and shoulders were agony, her back ached, her thighs were raw where the sweating jodhpurs had rubbed them. Her hands could hardly hold Hermia’s reins as she followed Ricky a hundred yards down a wooded lane, past an empty, leaf-strewn swimming-pool. Here, in two and a half acres of lush, green grass, framed by midge-filled trees, lay Ricky’s stick-and-ball field.

  Next year’s tiny catkins were already forming on the hazels. Ricky noticed the reddening haws and remembered how little Millicent used to shut her eyes to avoid the prickles as she delicately picked the berries off the thorn trees. Overwhelmed with bitterness at the hand fate had dealt him, he saw no reason why he should show others any mercy.

  ‘Now, do everything I tell you,’ he yelled to Perdita as he kicked Willis into a gallop. The big bay’s stride was longer than Hermia’s and Perdita had to really motor to keep up. Halfway up the field, Ricky shouted, ‘Turn!’

  ‘He’s crazy,’ raged Frances in anguish. ‘If he has a fall, his arm’s buggered for good.’

  Four times Ricky raced up and down the field, executing sharper and sharper turns. Now he was hurtling towards two orange-and-white traffic bollards which served as goal posts up the other end.

  ‘Ride me off,’ he bellowed.

  Perdita spurred Hermia on, but she was just too far behind. Ricky’s knee and the shoulder of his horse hit Hermia so hard that she seemed to fly four feet through the air. Perdita was still reeling when Ricky turned and was riding back. ‘Ride me off again.’

  The fourth time Perdita was knocked clean out of the saddle and only stayed mounted by clinging to the mare’s neck.

  ‘Bastard,’ she screamed as she righted herself.

  But by now Ricky had reached the opposite end of the field. ‘Now ride towards me. Towards me! Towards me! Don’t duck out! Keep going!’

  The mighty Willis was thundering at them like a Volvo on the motorway. Perdita could feel Hermia quailing and about to bolt. It was all she could do to keep her on course.

  She could see Willis’s red nostrils as big as traffic lights, his white-edged eyes, the flashing silver of his bit. They must crash, they must.

  ‘Stop,’ yelled Ricky, swinging Willis to the left. Obedient to their masters, Willis and Hermia skidded to a halt, so close that Hermia’s head brushed Willis’s quarters, and Perdita was deposited on the grass, all the breath knocked out of her aching body.

  ‘You bloody fool,’ she croaked.

  ‘I told you not to sit so far forward. Get up, you’re not hurt.’

  ‘I know I’m bloody not, but you might have been. You risked a head-on collision and wrecking your arm for ever, just for the sake of putting me down. You’re crazy.’

  Just for a second Ricky smiled.

  ‘At least you’ve given me back my nerve. Go and have a shower and we’ll have lunch.’

  ‘Doesn’t look so sexy now, does she?’ said Frances spitefully, as a dusty, blood-stained Perdita hobbled into the yard, wincing as she led Hermia.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Joel.

  ‘She’s jolly brave,’ said Louisa. Kind-hearted and admiring, she followed Perdita into Hermia’s box.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Fine.’ Perdita leant against the wall, fighting back the tears.

  ‘I’ll see to Hermia,’ said Louisa, ‘and show you where the shower is.’

  After she’d found Perdita a towel and some soap, she handed her a pair of pants and a long, white T-shirt with bananas and oranges embroidered on the front.

  ‘I thought you might want to change.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Perdita slowly. ‘Sorry I was bloody beforehand. I was absolutely shit-scared.’

  ‘Needn’t have been,’ said Louisa. ‘Joel and I thought you did brilliant. The hot water’s erratic, but there’s plenty of cold.’

  Twenty minutes later Perdita joined Ricky in the kitchen. He was drinking Coke, eating a slice of ham between two pieces of white sliced bread and reading The Times sports page. He rose six inches from his chair as she came in. At least he recognizes I’m female, thought Perdita, encouraged.

  Louisa’s T-shirt, several sizes too big for her, fell to a couple of inches above her knees. Her hair, wet from the shower, was slicked back, the alabaster skin was without a scrap of make-up. Her nose was swollen, her big curved mouth looked as though bees had stung it, and her wary, dark eyes were still bloodshot from the dust.

  ‘That’s better. You look like a human,’ said Ricky. ‘If you ever turn up tarted up like that again, you go straight back to your play-pen. What d’you want to drink?’

  ‘Vodka and tonic,’ said Perdita, chancing her arm.

  ‘Not if you’re going to play polo. Most top players hardly drink or smoke,’ he added, removing her packet of cigarettes and throwing it in the bin.

  ‘There were four in there,’ said Perdita, outraged. ‘Anyway, the twins smoke.’

  ‘They’re not top players – yet.’

  Armed with a glass of Perrier and a ham sandwich, Perdita wandered round the kit
chen, stopping before a photograph of Herbert on a pony.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘My father.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘He was a nine,’ said Ricky. ‘Won the Inter-Regimental Cup seven times in a row and played in the Westchester.’

  ‘Oh,’ sighed Perdita.

  ‘Why d’you want to learn polo?’

  ‘I want to go to ten,’ said Perdita simply.

  Looking down at the remains of his ham sandwich, Ricky found he was suddenly not hungry and threw it in the bin.

  ‘I don’t think it’s possible,’ he said. ‘With timing and skill a girl could hit the ball as far as a man. You could train your ponies even better, but it’s the riding-off and the violence that’s the problem.’

  ‘I’m nearly five foot seven,’ protested Perdita. ‘That’s bigger than lots of the Mexicans or Argentines.’

  The telephone rang. One of the grooms must have picked it up because next moment a boot-faced Frances had put her head through the window.

  ‘It’s Philippa Mannering,’ she snapped at Ricky. ‘Would you like to go to kitchen supper tonight?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Tomorrow? The next day?’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t.’

  Frances shrugged her shoulders and disappeared.

  ‘Ghastly old bag, that Philippa,’ said Perdita. Then, when Ricky didn’t react, ‘Her house overlooks ours. She’s always peering through the trees with her binoculars. She wouldn’t suit you. She’s a nympho, wear you out in a week.’

  ‘Thank you for the advice,’ said Ricky tartly.

  I fancy him so much, thought Perdita, I’ll never be able to eat again.

  As if reading her mind, Ricky said, ‘Get one thing straight, I’m not interested in you sexually. If you work here, it’s as a groom.’

  ‘Are you after my mother?’ hissed Perdita.

  ‘Hardly. She’s not in a fit state to have anyone after her at the moment.’

  ‘You need a dog round here,’ said Perdita fretfully, as she also threw her uneaten ham sandwich in the bin. ‘It’s a crime to waste scraps like that.’

  She gazed at Herbert’s unsmiling face again. ‘You’ve got to beat your father and go to ten too.’

  Ricky thought of his damaged elbow which was now hurting like hell, and didn’t seem to be getting any better.

  ‘Yes,’ he said bleakly.

  Because he wants Chessie back, thought Perdita, but I’ll get him long before that.

  17

  Alone in his large draughty house, mourning Will, desperate for Chessie, panicking about his arm, Ricky’s hatred for Bart, obsessive, primeval, poisoning, living deep within him, grew like a beast. And so he took it out on Perdita. She didn’t mind him making her clean all the tack, or skip out the horses, or scour the fields for lost balls, or even put all the bandages and saddle blankets through the ancient washing machine that kept breaking down. But sometimes he seemed to invent tasks deliberately, scrubbing the inside and outside of buckets, and even cleaning the bowl of the outside lavatory. Worst of all, he wouldn’t let her near a polo stick.

  Perdita raged inside and took it out on Daisy at home. But at the yard she behaved herself, knowing it was her only chance. Once a week, too, the sullen, protective, scrawny Frances drove Ricky to Rutminster to see his probation officer, which gave Perdita the chance to stick and ball on the sly, while Louisa kept cave. Louisa and Perdita had become inseparable.

  In the spring Perdita retook and passed seven O levels. As a reward, Ricky allowed her to help Louisa get the ponies fit for the coming season, riding them up and down the steep Rutshire hills, trotting them along the winding country lanes.

  One April afternoon they were exercising ponies along the chocolate-brown earth track which ran round the huge field of young barley which Perdita had escaped into after jumping the sheep grid the year before. It was a still, muggy day. Wild garlic swept through the woods like an emerald-green tidal wave. The sweet scent of primroses and violets hung on the air.

  ‘No one’s ever loved anyone as much as I love Ricky,’ said Perdita restlessly.

  ‘He’s thirty and you’re sixteen,’ protested Louisa.

  ‘I don’t care. I’m still going to marry him when he grows up. Christ, look at that.’

  Perdita took hold of little Hermia who was still very nervous and even Wayne rolled his black-ringed eyes and raised his donkey ears a centimetre as a vast black helicopter chugged up the valley. Almost grazing the tips of the ash woods, it flew round the paddocks, over the stick and ball field and circled the battlements of Robinsgrove like a malevolent crow.

  Coming out of the forage room holding a bucket of stud nuts, Ricky, in a blinding flash of hope, thought it might be a returning Chessie. Then he saw the four horsemen of the Apocalypse on the side of the helicopter as it dropped into a paddock beyond the corral, scattering ponies.

  As the rotors stilled, the door flew open and out stepped a lean, menacing figure, entirely clad in zips and black leather. Heavily suntanned, his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses and his blond-streaked mane far more teased and dishevelled than Perdita’s.

  ‘Blimey,’ squeaked Louisa. ‘It’s Dancer Maitland. Why didn’t I stick to that diet?’

  Dancer was followed by two heavies in tweed suits, with bulging muscles and pockets, who had great difficulty squeezing out of the door. As he reached Ricky, Dancer removed his dark glasses. His heavily kohled, brilliant grey eyes glittered with excitement.

  ‘From you ’ave I been absent in the spring,’ he drawled, ‘“Gaol Bird” was number one on the US charts this morning, so I fort it was ‘igh time I took up polo.’

  Ricky just gazed at him.

  ‘Knew you’d get a shock when you saw me done up,’ said Dancer, raking a heavily metalled hand through his blond curls. Then he put his arms round Ricky and hugged him.

  ‘Grite to see you, beauty.’

  ‘It’s w-w-wonderful to see you,’ stammered Ricky.

  ‘’Ave you missed me?’

  Ricky nodded. ‘To tell the truth I bloody have.’

  ‘This is Paulie and this is Twinkle,’ said Dancer, waving airily at the two heavies who were gazing hungrily at Perdita. ‘Them’s my minders. Very amenable, if I feed them fresh Rottweilers every morning. This place is somefink else. The ’ouse, and all the trees and that ravine.’ He gazed down the valley.

  ‘We ’ad a cruise round,’ he went on. ‘Who owns the big house on the edge of the village?’

  ‘Eldercombe Manor?’ asked Ricky. ‘Some awful old fossil called Bentley.’

  ‘How much land?’

  ‘About two hundred acres, including the village cricket pitch.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Dancer. ‘Now I want to see all the ponies. That’s Wayne wiv the floppy ears, an’ Kinta wiv the bad-tempered face and li-el Hermia, she’s the shy one. You see, I remember everyfink you told me.’

  But when Ricky took him into a nearby paddock where a dozen ponies came racing up and, at the sight of Ricky’s bucket of stud nuts, started flattening their ears, barging and kicking out at each other, Dancer edged nervously closer to Ricky.

  ‘Can we get a taxi back to the yard?’

  ‘They won’t hurt you, although they might hurt each other,’ said Ricky. ‘Stop it,’ he snapped, punching Willis on the nose as the big bay lashed out at little Pilgrim.

  Once he was safely on the other side of the post and rails, Dancer said that, now he was here, it was time for his first lesson. Four or five minutes later he emerged from the house with his hair tied back in a pony tail, wearing a black shirt, breeches and boots.

  ‘Look at the length of those legs,’ sighed Louisa, ‘I’m going to convert him.’

  ‘I’m surprised Ricky hasn’t ordered him to take off his make-up,’ snapped Perdita, who felt wildly jealous of Dancer.

  ‘Potential patron,’ explained Louisa. ‘Ricky wouldn’t mind if he wore blusher and a miniskirt.’

  ‘
These boots ’ave never been on an ’orse before, and neither ’ave I,’ boasted Dancer, as Ricky took him through a games room, crammed with golf clubs, ski boots, tennis rackets and polo sticks, to a room with netting walls and floors sloping down to a flat oblong on which stood a wooden replica of a horse. Every time the ball was hit it rolled back so it could be hit again. Before he jiggered his arm, Ricky would spend half an hour a day in here practising his swing. Dancer on the wooden horse was a revelation – long legs gripping the slatted barrel, new boots in the stirrups, shifting effortlessly in the saddle. He had a marvellous eye and sense of timing; he met the ball right every time.

  ‘Cowdray an’ ten goal ’ere I come,’ he screamed, getting more and more excited. ‘I can fucking do it! We can start getting some ponies right away. Now let’s try a real ’orse.’

  ‘You may not find it quite so easy,’ said Ricky gently. ‘Tack up Geoffrey,’ he added to Perdita.

  Geoffrey was known as the ‘hangover horse’ because he was the kindest, easiest ride in the yard and from the days when Ricky used to drink heavily, had always seemed to know when his master was somewhat the worse for wear. You could trust a dead baby on Geoffrey.

  ‘All right, gimme a stick,’ said Dancer, when Perdita had lengthened his stirrup leathers.

  ‘Try without one to begin with,’ advised Ricky.

  ‘Don’t be daft, I’ve cracked it,’ said Dancer, riding into the corral.

  Even on the gentle Geoffrey, however, he fell off seven times, with escalating screams of rage and elation.

  ‘I can’t control this fucking machine,’ he yelled at Ricky. ‘It’s got no steering, no brakes, and I can’t get my foot off the accelerator. Give me another one.’

  ‘Just walk to start with,’ shouted Ricky, and, as Geoffrey jerked his black head to avoid being hit in the eye, he added, ‘Stop brandishing that stick like Ian Botham. You’ve got to take it slowly.’ He grabbed the relieved pony’s bridle and removed Dancer’s stick. ‘There’s no problem teaching you to play polo, but you’ve got to spend the next six months learning to ride. The aim is to keep the patron out of traction. Now get your ass down in the saddle, get your heels down and your knees in.’