Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Alejandro.

  ‘She ’as come ’alfway across the world,’ protested Claudia.

  ‘To see my horses,’ said Alejandro.

  They went across a lawn down an avenue of mulberry trees, past a thickly planted orange grove.

  ‘To ’ide the chickens,’ explained Alejandro.

  To the right, a lot of youths building a swimming-pool eyed Perdita with interest. Alejandro snapped at them to get on with their work. The stables were far more primitive than Perdita expected. A few words in Spanish had been painted on the tack-room roof.

  ‘It says, “Please don’t tether any horses to this roof, or they’ll pull it off’,’ translated Luke.

  Dancer’s latest hit single, ‘Girl Guide’, was belting out of the tack room. A pack of emaciated lurchers with burrs in their rough dusty coats charged forward, whimpering and weaving against Perdita’s legs. But as she bent to cuddle them a small boy, brushing down a pony, picked up a lump of mud and hurled it at the dogs to drive them off. Perdita was about to yell at him when her attention was distracted by a man with a cruel leathery face wearing gaucho pants and a white shirt who was galloping a pony very fast round a tiny corral. The horse’s nostrils were vastly inflated and it was panting rhythmically as its hooves struck the hard ground. The man’s control was undeniable. She could hear the horse groan as he squeezed it with his calves.

  ‘That’s Raimundo the peticero, master of the horse,’ said Luke, with a slight edge to his voice.

  ‘Looks a nasty piece of work.’

  ‘Work isn’t the operative word. He’s acting busy because Alejandro’s here.’

  In the yard an old man in a beret was clipping a pony’s mane. The pony was rolling its eyes but stood motionless because a young boy relentlessly twisted its ear. Other horses wandered loose among the gum trees, while still others were muzzled and tied up. They looked very thin, but well-muscled.

  ‘They’re playing this afternoon,’ explained Luke. ‘Argentines don’t feed or water their horses eight hours before a match. I guess they are thin, but again Argentines don’t like their horses to carry a lot of weight.’

  Perdita grew increasingly boot-faced when every pony she tried to cuddle cringed away with terror.

  ‘They’re all headshy,’ she complained furiously.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Luke. ‘You’re here to learn not beef.’

  Fortunately Alejandro was concentrating on Ricky, boasting that every pony in the yard had been entirely responsible for clinching last year’s Argentine Open. They were distracted by a boy in his twenties cantering into the yard on a beautiful red chestnut. He had a bony, tortured face, angry, slanting peacock-blue eyes, bronze curls and a sallow complexion.

  Wow! thought Perdita.

  ‘Angel,’ yelled Alejandro, ‘breeng that mare ’ere. I want Reeky to see ’er.’ Then with a touch of malice, ‘These are my friends, Reeky and Perdeeta. Isn’t she beautiful? Won’t she need the charity belt?’

  Angel pulled up in horror and a cloud of dust, growled something incomprehensible, but undeniably insulting, threw down the reins, kicked his right foot out of the stirrup and, swinging it over the horse’s withers, jumped to the ground and ran into the house.

  ‘Zat is Angel,’ said Alejandro with a shrug, ‘still fighting zee Falklands War.’

  Amazing cooking smells were drifting from the kitchen. Seeing Perdita beginning to wilt, Luke took her back to the house.

  Ricky and Alejandro had to be dragged away from the horses to a lunch laid out on a blue-and-white checked tablecloth under the gum trees. They needed two tables to accommodate the ten children.

  Ranging from twenty-one downwards, there were three boys, Patricio Maria, Luis Maria and Lorenzo Maria, followed by three ravishing plump girls, followed by four more boys, the youngest being little Pablo, who was three. All had the dark eyes and dark curls of their father.

  Claudia exclaimed in delight over the presents Ricky had brought, which included a dark red cashmere jersey, a length of Harris Tweed, a striped silk Turnbull and Asser dressing gown and a Herbert Johnson tweed cap for Alejandro. Then she introduced her children to Perdita.

  ‘Don’t warry,’ said Alejandro with his great laugh. ‘I don’t recognize them myself sometime.’

  ‘Only the ones that play polo,’ said Claudia without rancour.

  ‘Have a wheesky, Ricky,’ said Alejandro, brandishing Ricky’s duty-free Bourbon. Then, when Ricky shook his head, ‘But you used to dreenk half a bottle before chukkas. It was your petrol.’

  ‘I’ve changed.’

  ‘Luke?’ asked Alejandro.

  ‘Not if I’ve gotta play this afternoon,’ said Luke, sitting down next to Perdita.

  ‘You are, because I’m not,’ said Alejandro, splashing whisky into his glass. ‘The opposition’s very weak today,’ he explained to Ricky, ‘but Luke is a good back. I must look after my laurel.’

  Two silent maids served them. Perdita felt too tired to eat, but when she tried her steak it was pure poetry, tender as velvet, juicy as an orange, and so exploding with flavour that she was soon piling her plate with potato purée, tomato salad and geranium-red barbecue sauce.

  ‘I can’t believe this food,’ she said to Claudia five minutes later. ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘We in Argentina are very like the Breetish except in their cooking, which is ’orrible,’ said Alejandro, who was now wearing both his new dressing gown and the tweed cap over his black gollywog curls. ‘I like to dress like an Englishman.’

  The talk was all of polo. Claudia didn’t contribute and concentrated on the younger children.

  ‘I love to play again in England,’ Alejandro said to Ricky. ‘When you theenk the ban will be lifted?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ sighed Ricky, who was eating hardly anything. ‘Prince Charles is Colonel of the Welsh Guards, which makes it very difficult for him. And there’s the security problem.’

  ‘That is a point,’ said Alejandro, looking round. ‘Where’s Angel?’

  ‘Not ’ungry,’ said Claudia, trying to force potato purée into little Paolo.

  ‘Not ’ungry, angry. Angel,’ he explained to Ricky, ‘was an ex-Mirage pilot. He ’ate the English, but when he gets to know Perdita,’ Alejandro smiled at her from under the peak of his cap, ‘he will forgeeve.’

  Perdita, having taken far too much, was now feeding the rest of the steak to the shaggy lurchers who ringed the table, but kept their distance.

  ‘They’re so thin,’ she protested to Alejandro.

  ‘Raimundo don’t feed them. They live on hares and badgers they catch out in the pampas.’

  Perdita didn’t think she could eat another thing, but the figs in syrup that followed were so delicious she was soon piling on great dollops of cream.

  ‘Angel is stupid,’ went on Alejandro. ‘The rest of us in Argentina ’ave forgiven you for the Falklands War.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Perdita, brightening up. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because of Benny Hill,’ said Alejandro. ‘We love heem, and all those lovely girls with no clothes on. I love Eenglish programmes, Upper Stairs, Down Stairs. The only thing I watch else is polo on cable, and we’ve got a veedeo of last year’s Open. I’ll show it to you, Reeky.’

  ‘And you can point out all the ponies you’ve just showed me who allegedly played in it,’ said Ricky drily.

  Alejandro giggled. ‘Some was previous year.’

  ‘Our doctor has tiny plane that was conscripted during the Malvinas War,’ said Claudia. ‘The military say they want to fly rockets on it, but when they see ’ow small it was, it didn’t get called up.’

  ‘All the food parcels people sent us from abroad was stolen by the post office,’ said Alejandro.

  What heavenly people, thought Perdita. They’re so merry and funny.

  The spear-shaped leaves of the gum tree were dappling their faces as the sun moved towards the Andes. A dragonfly was bombing the table. Luke pointed out a sto
rk, black and white between the silver trunks. Beyond, the pampas seemed to swim in the midday heat.

  ‘Ow long are you weeth us, Reeky?’ asked Claudia, who’d had a secret crush on him in the old days and was appalled to see how grey and tense he looked.

  ‘Probably the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘But you said you’d stay a week,’ said Perdita in horror.

  ‘Where are you going next?’ asked Luke.

  ‘Palm Springs.’

  ‘That’s great,’ said Luke. ‘My half-sister Bibi’s out there. Working in LA. You must call her. She doesn’t get out enough. She’s on a zero handicap, but she’d play super if she played more.’

  ‘Who’s your patron now, Reeky?’ asked Alejandro.

  ‘Dancer Maitland,’ chipped in Perdita proudly.

  Alejandro nearly fell off his seat. All the Mendoza children were roused out of their pallid apathy.

  ‘You get his autograph?’

  ‘You send us records?’

  ‘He numero uno this week.’

  ‘Is he nice? Please breeng ’im ’ere.’

  ‘He’s a sweet man,’ admitted Ricky. ‘But he’s very busy, and has difficulty even finding time to stick and ball. You stupid bitch,’ he murmured furiously under his breath to Perdita, ‘now Alejandro’ll quadruple his prices.’

  ‘Please stay, Reeky,’ pleaded Claudia. ‘You need a holiday. Let us pamper you.’

  ‘Let them pampas you,’ said Perdita bitterly.

  She loves him, thought Luke. Perdita was very pale now, her skin the parchment colour of her white-blond mane. She’ll be like a little palomino when she turns brown, he thought.

  ‘Have a siesta,’ Claudia urged her as they’d finished coffee.

  ‘No, I want to look at the ponies with Ricky,’ said Perdita, frantic not to miss a minute.

  ‘Just for an hour. We all do,’ said Claudia soothingly.

  Upstairs, feeling utterly suicidal, Perdita looked round her tiny bare room. The only furniture was a wardrobe, a chest of drawers with no lining paper, a straight-backed wooden chair and a narrow single bed with a carved headboard. There was an overhead light with no lampshade and a bedside lamp on the floor which didn’t work. The only colour came from a picture of a gaucho cracking a whip, a tiny red mat and a shocking pink counterpane. She ought to unpack, but she only got as far as getting out Ricky’s photograph in its blue silk frame and putting it beside the bed. The thought of all those blonde movie stars in Palm Springs pursuing him made her feel quite sick. She’d gone off Luke since he suggested Ricky ring his sister.

  She’d just lie on the bed for a minute. Did she imagine it or did a head of bronze curls pop round the door, and were a pair of peacock-blue eyes gazing at her with implacable hatred? Then the door slammed shut and next moment she was asleep.

  24

  Waking the next morning, she was outraged that they’d left her to sleep. Luke and Alejandro’s three eldest sons had won their match. The teachers had suddenly ended their strike, and the four youngest children had gone back to school. Ricky, exhausted but elated after haggling all night with Alejandro, had bought eight horses.

  Perdita, not in the best mood after a cold shower, found him having breakfast.

  ‘You promised to wake me.’

  ‘You needed sleep.’

  He poured her some black coffee. Sulkily she added milk and buttered a croissant.

  ‘Nice family,’ said Ricky.

  ‘Very,’ said Perdita. ‘I’m not sure about that Angel. He looks as though he wants to Exocet me.’

  ‘Luke’ll look after you,’ said Ricky. ‘Look, I’m leaving at teatime – catching the eight o’clock flight.’

  ‘You can’t,’ said Perdita hysterically.

  ‘I’ve got the horses I need. Luke’s going to get them into America. From there we’ll fly them to England.’

  ‘But why so early, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Alejandro’s got business in Buenos Aires. He’s giving me a lift to the airport.’

  Whatever Alejandro’s business was in BA, it necessitated a silk shirt, light grey trousers, a jacket hanging from a coathanger in the back of the car, his Herbert Johnson cap and about fifteen pints of Aramis.

  Perdita cried unashamedly after they left, fleeing to her bare room and hurling herself down on the pink counterpane. Half an hour later there was a knock on the door.

  ‘Bugger off,’ she howled.

  It was Luke. ‘Poor baby. Feeling homesick?’

  ‘No, Ricky sick,’ sobbed Perdita. ‘I can’t live without him.’

  Luke sat down on the bed and put a huge arm round her.

  ‘You’ll see him in less than three months.’

  ‘That’s a whole school term. I don’t want it,’ she snapped as he handed her a large vodka and tonic, then took such a huge gulp that she nearly choked.

  ‘Isn’t Ricky kind of old to play Florizel?’ asked Luke.

  ‘Not having a father, I’m only attracted to older men,’ said Perdita.

  ‘I used to hero-worship the guy when he played for my father,’ said Luke. ‘He was awesome. I watched him yesterday. He’ll be as good as ever when his elbow heals. He must go to ten.’

  ‘All he’s interested in is getting bloody Chessie back.’

  ‘She’s not bloody.’

  ‘How’s she getting on with your ghastly father?’

  ‘Pretty happy, I guess. Doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to quit.’

  Perdita sat up, blew her nose and looked at him with red, swollen eyes.

  ‘Jolly odd having a stepmother the same age as you. D’you fancy her?’

  ‘Couldn’t help it at first, but we’ve become friends. Her marrying Dad didn’t screw me up like the other two. Red and Bibi have given her hell.’

  ‘Serve her right.’

  ‘She lost a kid,’ said Luke reasonably.

  ‘Does she still miss Will?’

  ‘Yeah, but she won’t show it.’

  ‘Like Ricky. He’s so good at bottling things up, he ought to work in a ketchup factory.’

  Luke picked up Ricky’s photograph. ‘You gotta treat being down here as a chance to learn polo. Meet them halfway and you’ll improve out of all recognition. And you’ll like it here; it’s kinda fun.’

  ‘How come you’re so nice?’ asked Perdita.

  Luke yawned. ‘My brother Red’s better-looking than me. He gets all the girls – very good for the character. Dinner’s about ten, I’ll boil up some water so you can have a shower.’

  ‘What time do we get up here?’

  ‘Six o’clock. And on the horses by seven.’

  ‘God!’ said Perdita, appalled. ‘What else do we have to do?’

  ‘Shift the cattle, work the horses, stick and ball, come back for lunch, an hour’s siesta, and you go out like a light I can tell you, then we play chukkas in the afternoon. At least you won’t be roped in to build the swimming-pool.’

  He left her not much happier. She tried to sleep, but she was desperately nervous about tomorrow. What if she made a complete fool of herself and let Ricky down? At least he wouldn’t be here to witness it. She felt twitchy about that vile Angel who hovered shadowy in the background, waiting to perform some dreadful mischief. She started violently at a knock on the door. Frantically wiping her eyes, she went to answer it and found Luke with only a small towel round his waist. For a terrifying moment Perdita thought he was going to pounce on her. Instead the bull-dog face creased into a huge smile.

  ‘Honey, I am absolutely shit-scared of spiders, and there’s the biggest son-of-a-bitch in the shower. Could you possibly remove it for me?’

  Giving a scream of laughter, Perdita felt better.

  Luke Alderton had been only three years old when Bart dumped his mother for Grace and his first memories were of tears and endless shouting. Grace had proceeded to have two children, Red and Bibi, whom she and Bart adored and spoilt impossibly. Grace, however, tended to ignore Luke when he came to stay, doin
g her duty without love or warmth. Then his mother had married again, to a PT instructor who beat Luke up so badly that a court ruled he should go and live with Bart full time. Here he had always felt an outsider.

  At eighteen, because they wouldn’t let him read Polo at Yale, he chucked up any thought of an academic career. Determined to be utterly independent of Bart, he slowly worked his way up, starting as a groom and finally getting his own yard, buying ponies cheap off the race track, or from other players who couldn’t get a tune out of them, making them, and selling them on, which he detested because he got so fond of them. Invariably riding green ponies, his handicap at six was lower than it should have been. He didn’t have the natural ability of his brother, Red, but he was bigger and stronger. You didn’t want to be in the way when Luke hit the ball.

  Because he’d missed out on higher education, and because he could seldom afford to go out on the town with the other players, he spent his evenings listening to music and devouring the classics. On long journeys in the lorry he’d keep the rest of the team entertained reciting great screeds of poetry, Longfellow, Macaulay, whole scenes from Shakespeare, now even bits of Martin Fierro, in an ’orrible accent.

  All the Argentines adored him and nicknamed him Señor Gracias because he was so grateful for the smallest favour. It was the same in the States. He was always in work because he was cheerful, absolutely straight and very good company. But although he smiled in the face of the direst provocation, underneath he was as determined as Ricky to go to ten.

  After such a lousy start in life, and not a penny of the Alderton millions, people often expressed amazement that he was so unchippy. The answer was always the same. ‘There’s nothing to be gained from blaming your background or other people. You’ve got to get out and help yourself.’

  A second after Perdita fell asleep, it seemed Luke was banging on the door telling her to get up and to wear a sweater as it was cold first thing. Out in the yard, Alejandro had turned from the charming rogue of yesterday into a roaring tyrant, bellowing instructions to all the boys. In the corral the ponies waited, mostly chestnut, all young and timid, ducking nervously behind each other to avoid being caught. When Alejandro yelled at Perdita to tack up a little chestnut gelding, she was so nervous she could hardly do up the throat lash or adjust the stirrups. Once up, she felt she was straddling an eel. Every male from the neighbouring estancias, except Luke, who was off moving the cattle, seemed to be gathered round the paddock to watch her as she set off in the milky, misty morning light towards a row of poplar trees. Alejandro shouted after her to do turns at the canter.