by Jilly Cooper
As Daisy sat down at the dressing-room table, Sukey turned back to Mrs Hughie. Having mouthed, ‘Bit of a Bohemian,’ pointing in Daisy’s direction, she continued, ‘We’re off to St Moritz to play snow polo after Christmas. It’s going to be just like a second honeymoon.’
With trembling hands, Daisy got a tube of base foundation out of her bag.
‘I won’t be able to ski, of course. My gynie said it wasn’t wise, as I lost the last one at three months.’ Sukey’s voice was as insistent as Philippa’s burglar alarm. ‘It’s funny we had no difficulty getting Jamie, but we’ve been trying and trying for this one. I had my tubes blown and Drew was about to have a sperm test when I found I was pregnant.’
Is that really Drew’s mistress looking back at me? thought Daisy numbly as she gazed at her ashen face. Drew had never mentioned the miscarriage and swore he never slept with Sukey.
‘Drew’s over the moon, because he’s always wanted a huge family,’ Sukey was off again. ‘He’s being so caring at the moment. He gave me the most gorgeous recording of Cosi Fan Tutte – our favourite opera – as a celebration present. We’ve been playing it all week. He says at least if I’m listening, I’m not scurrying about.’
That’s what I gave Drew for Christmas. It’s our favourite opera, thought Daisy.
Looking down, she saw she’d spilled base all over her new velvet knickerbockers. Frantically rubbing it away with a Kleenex, she fled downstairs, slap into Drew.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere,’ he said, putting his hands round her pink cummerbund.
‘Sukey’s leaving,’ said Daisy with a sob. ‘She’s just told me the good news that you’re having another baby, and you’ve both been trying for ages, and you’re going to find me a “super chap” and you gave her Cosi for Christmas.’
‘It was the tape you gave me,’ explained Drew, taking her hands. ‘It was the only way I could get it into the house and play it non-stop. Look, I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Meet me on the north side of Eldercombe woods at ten thirty.’
Daisy glanced into the study which now contained the bride and bridegroom locked in each other’s arms.
‘No, it’s no good. I can’t cope with half measures any more,’ she sobbed.
Fighting her way through a hall full of people eating plates of chicken, she passed Janey Lloyd-Foxe telephoning through her copy: ‘Rupert said: Open quotes: bugger off; close quotes.’
Daisy opened a side door and went out on to the terrace. It was bitterly cold and snowing steadily. The magnolia on the lawn buckled under its weight of whiteness. The valley stretched out through the blizzard, shadowed electric blue and darkly furred with woods. Daisy gave a gasp as a ghostly figure rose up from a bench. His face was deathly pale, his hair, his eyebrows and the shoulders of his morning coat were covered in snowflakes. Only his hollowed eyes were as black as whirlpools. He was like some doomed figure in a black-and-white Russian film.
‘I hate weddings,’ wept Daisy.
‘So do I,’ said Ricky.
‘You must be frozen.’ Daisy dabbed her eyes with the base-smeared Kleenex. ‘What are you doing out here?’
‘Trying not to be a spectre at the feast. Thought I’d try out a wedding to see if I was cured. Now I know I’m not. I should be over her. It’s three and a half years.’
‘Not at times like this,’ comforted Daisy. ‘Weddings are killers. Christmas is a killer, not being able to drink doesn’t help, and seeing people as blissful as Rupert and Taggie is worst of all. You’ve got all four.’
‘Chessie looked like an angel as a bride,’ said Ricky. ‘Her hair was filled with spring flowers. I thought I’d arrived in heaven. I loved her so much, but I couldn’t show it. She found me utterly uncommunicative.’
‘I showed it too much,’ said Daisy sadly. ‘Hamish found me utterly claustrophobic. You can’t win really.’
‘You don’t want me, but you want me to go on wanting you,’ sang the bandleader.
‘I wish I wasn’t so attractive to birds,’ sighed Dancer, seeking refuge in the pantry.
‘You wouldn’t be so rich if you weren’t,’ said Bas, who was already very drunk.
Dancer had seen Ricky go on to the terrace. It broke his heart to see him so miserable. ‘We’ve got to do somefink positive about Ricky.’
‘You’ve done a helluva lot,’ protested Bas. ‘You’ve financed the bugger and put up with his moods. But I tell you he’ll never win his beloved Gold Cup or get to ten with the present team.’
‘You think I ought to stand down and be a non-playing patron?’ said Dancer stoically. ‘You gotta level with me.’
‘Christ, no. It’s me who should,’ said Bas. ‘I’ve got far too many business commitments to play high goal, and next year I’m going to be run off my feet with Venturer. We start transmitting at the beginning of the following year, and Rupert and I are planning to revive the Westchester in the States in September.’
Dancer, who’d been arranging his tangled curls in the reflection of the window, swung round.
‘But the Westchester’s Ricky’s Holy Grail,’ he said excitedly. ‘You’re not having me on? You fink you could?’
‘Sure,’ said Bas, topping up both their glasses. ‘There’s been such a polo explosion, particularly in America. Rupert’s mad about the idea, and he never gets involved with anything that doesn’t mean big bucks.’
Dancer shook his head. ‘We’ll miss you on the team. You give us class.’
‘And a lot of headaches. You need a seriously good defensive back.’
‘Who d’you suggest? Money no object.’
‘Alejandro Mendoza’s the best,’ said Bas, ‘but he’d rip you off and he’s not allowed in. Ben Napier’s a bastard, and wouldn’t even charm you while he ripped you off. Shark Nelligan’s an animal.’
‘You know anything about Luke Alderton?’
‘That’s an idea,’ admitted Bas. ‘You’d like him. He’s playing brilliantly at the moment – scored two penalties from beyond the half-way line in the American Open – and he’s got this amazing grey – Fantasma. He’s rock solid and he’d be brilliant at defusing Perdita and Ricky.’
‘I’ll ring him tomorrow.’ Dancer was really happy now. ‘And I’m knocked out about the Westchester. Is there anyfing I can do for Venturer?’
‘I expect so,’ said Bas. ‘Hullo, Janey darling.’ Slowly he undid the buttons of her bright blue suit and did them up again correctly.
‘Where’s Ricky? I can’t find him anywhere,’ said Janey fretfully. ‘It’s absolutely infuriating. I’ve just filed copy only to find Rupert’s father has suddenly proposed again to Rupert’s mother with nine other wives and husbands to be taken into consideration. I wonder if the Daily Mail diary page has gone to bed. I could flog it to Nigel.’
‘Anyone seen Rupert and Taggie?’ Patrick O’Hara put his head round the door. ‘We must get them to cut the cake or my father’ll be too drunk to make his speech. He’s been rehearsing snatches of Yeats all week.’
‘So many loved Rupert’s moments of glad disgrace,’ said Janey drily. ‘I hope Declan’s not going to quote Yeats at those Philistines. They know far more about snatches.’
‘Not the Irish,’ said Patrick.
Rupert and Taggie, who’d escaped upstairs, gazed over the white valley.
‘It’s all yours now,’ he murmured, removing her veil and her tiara and ruffling her long, dark hair. ‘If I really told you how much I loved you, you’d be still here gathering dust and cobwebs in a hundred years. D’you know, I feel faint.’
‘Oh, darling,’ interrupted Taggie, all concern. ‘I bet you haven’t eaten since yesterday.’
‘Faint with longing,’ went on Rupert. ‘I’m fed up with all these people.’
‘Shall we go?’
‘But we haven’t cut the cake,’ said Rupert, shocked. ‘And I’m supposed to thank your parents.’
‘For letting you pay for the entire wedding?’
‘Declan wants
to make his speech.’
‘He’ll make it whether we’re here or not.’
‘We ought to stay,’ said Rupert doubtfully. ‘It’s your big day.’
‘Only because I married you. I’d much rather we were alone.’
‘What is life to me without you?’ said Rupert, dropping a kiss on her forehead. ‘Go and change.’
Declan quite understood their leaving early. Maud, who was pathologically jealous of her daughter, chuntered with disapproval, but was secretly relieved. Only a few guests, realizing they were going, fought their way through the snowstorm like arctic explorers to wave them off.
‘No, you can’t go too,’ Caitlin O’Hara told Gertrude who was whining irritably, ‘or you’d have to spend six months in quarantine on the way home.’
As Rupert, now in a dark suit, did a last-minute check of the helicopter, Taggie came out of a side door. Wearing a scarlet wool coat over shiny black boots, with her long hair lifting in the wind, she made a brilliant splash of colour.
‘Have my bouquet,’ she said shyly, throwing it to Daisy. ‘Rupert’s so thrilled with your painting of Rocky. It’s his best present.’
As Rupert was about to help Taggie into the helicopter, Tabitha hurled herself on her new stepmother.
‘I want to go on the honeymoon,’ she sobbed.
‘She could really,’ said Taggie, looking up at Rupert, ‘You both could,’ she added taking Marcus’s hand.
‘No, they bloody couldn’t,’ said Rupert.
‘Throw some confetti,’ said Billy Lloyd-Foxe, giving Tabitha a huge handful to distract her. But as she flung it, most of the pink-and-blue circles were caught up in the whirling blizzard and swept away.
‘Where are Taggie and Rupert?’ demanded Rupert’s mother, from the warmth of the drawing room.
‘Gorn,’ said Rupert’s father, looking out of the window on what used to be his valley.
‘Strordinary behaviour in the middle of one’s own wedding. Damn rude I call it,’ grumbled Rupert’s mother. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, my darling old cook dropped dead this morning.’
‘Before lunch?’ said Rupert’s father, shocked. ‘How frightfully selfish.’
‘So I’ve no one to cook for me.’
‘Come and live with me in the Ritz.’
‘I don’t think Rudolpho would like it.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘My husband.’
‘Thought you were married to someone called Luigi.’
‘That was the one before.’
Declan waved as the helicopter soared into the white night, lighting up the swirling snowflakes and the igloos that had formed over yew tree and rose bush.
‘And they are gone, ay ages long ago,’ he said huskily, ‘These lovers fled away into the storm. God bless them both.’
As Daisy handed him her last Kleenex, he turned to her, smiling through his tears. ‘And you got the bride’s flowers, darling,’ he touched her cheek. ‘You’re so pretty. You deserve a decent husband.’
‘Thank you,’ said Daisy.
‘Even if he is somebody else’s,’ whispered a voice behind her.
Leaping round, Daisy found Drew with the brown velvet collar of his coat turned up, and his blond eyelashes thick with snow.
‘I thought you’d gone.’
‘I dropped Sukey and came straight back. I’m sorry about what she said, but it is you that I love.’
44
In March Luke flew through similar snowstorms over white-capped peaks to Denver, Colorado. He had arranged to meet Dancer who was in the middle of a punishing, but wildly successful, forty-five-concert tour across America to coincide with the launch of his new album: Four Horsemen. Dancer’s noisy entourage had taken over the Warwick Hotel, which was barricaded up like Fort Knox. Four security men, screaming ‘He’s gonna bed, for Chrissake,’ to the hordes of fans stamping their feet in the snow outside, smuggled Luke in.
After two hours on stage, during which he reckoned to run six miles and lose as many pounds to the accompaniment of rockets, squibs, flame throwers, videos and millions of watts of flashing lights, Dancer was slumped on a sofa, eating doughnuts and unenthusiastically sipping herbal tea sweetened with honey to protect his voice.
He had kicked off his shoes and undone the top buttons of the crumpled, white, Regency shirt he’d worn on stage. His streaked mane, now dark with sweat, was drawn into a pony tail. The famous face was tanned and flushed with colour, and with the light behind him it was hard to tell how much of this was stage make-up. The demoniacally glittering eyes were hollowed and bloodshot. He looks more like Mephistopheles than a fallen angel, thought Luke.
‘Christ, I could murder a bottle of Bourbon.’ Dancer winced slightly as Luke’s powerful handshake pressed a plethora of heavy metal rings into his hand. ‘Wiv sixty-thousand people screamin’ at you, it takes about three hours to come down off the high. Sit down. What can I get you?’
‘Bourbon’d be great,’ said Luke.
Dancer nodded curtly to a minion with strawberry-pink hair who was eyeing Luke with considerable excitement.
‘I just love the album,’ said Luke. ‘The whole of Palm Beach Polo Club is thrumming to the beat of the “Four Horsemen”. Blacksmiths shoe to it, grooms strap to it, every car stereo booms it across the pitches. It’s the best tune since “High Noon”. Thanks,’ Luke grinned lazily up at the minion who went as pink as his hair.
‘How many more weeks have you got to do?’ he went on, even making an armchair look tiny as he sat down.
‘Abart a month and ten cities,’ sighed Dancer. ‘God, I wish it was over.’
‘I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep,’ murmured Luke.
‘Nice,’ said Dancer, selecting another doughnut. ‘About 10,000 miles in my case. What d’you want to eat? The T-bones come off dinosaurs here.’
Luke shook his head.
‘Well, perhaps later,’ said Dancer. ‘I wish we could go to a restaurant, but we’d only get ’assled. Leave the Bourbon out and ’op it, you lot,’ he added to the entourage.
‘We oughta stay. You’re going to talk terms,’ insisted the lawyers in their pin-striped suits.
‘We oughta stay,’ said the minders, eyeing the breadth of Luke’s shoulders.
‘You oughta get out of that shirt, Dancer. It’s sopping,’ said his dresser.
‘Piss off,’ snapped Dancer.
‘Trust you to keep all the nice ones to yourself, Dancer. Ouch!’ squealed the pink-haired minion as a doughnut hit him on the forehead. ‘Bye, bye, Luke. So nice not to be allowed to meet you.’
Reluctantly, grumbling, the entourage dispersed.
Luke picked up a photograph on the side table of a jubilant Apocalypse team winning the Royal Windsor Cup. The print had obviously been chosen because, for once, Ricky was looking relaxed and smiling. Perdita, flushed and sweaty, didn’t look her best. But Luke’s heart still jumped in pain.
‘How is she?’ he asked, his face impassive.
‘Tricky,’ said Dancer. ‘Bitching at that lovely mother, rowing with Ricky, screaming at umpires, believing the world owes her £50,000 a year after tax. Little Miss McEnroe, in fact. But rewarding.’
‘Situation normal,’ said Luke.
‘Every bit of affection going on the animals,’ went on Dancer, fishing, ‘but I reckon she’s still a virgin.’
Luke drained half his Bourbon. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘She the only reason you’re taking the job?’ asked Dancer, gouging the jammy centre out of another doughnut and chucking the rest away.
‘Yes and no. I guess your album’s great, and you could play real good polo if you spent more time, and Ricky’s potentially the best player in the world, and I’ve always wanted to visit Stratford.’ Sweating from the central heating, Luke took off his US Open bomber jacket. Underneath he wore the much-patched blue-and-green check shirt Perdita had given him the Christmas before last. It was the nearest he could get to her.
&
nbsp; Ugly, but seriously attractive, decided Dancer, as he admired the generous friendly face and the marvellous body. But Luke looked weary beneath the freckles, like some young Civil War general who’s been fighting without sleep for too many days in the burning sun, but still has to radiate calmness and confidence to the troops.
‘We gotta win the Gold Cup this year,’ said Dancer flatly.
‘You’re the boss,’ said Luke, ‘but you’ve all gotta get your act together. You never fielded the same team twice last year and I know it’s hard when you’re working, but you’ve gotta make time to practise.’
Dancer smiled. ‘I’ll make twelve million on this tour. I guess I could take May, June and July off. I can write the odd song in the mornings.’
‘You’ll be stick and balling every morning.’
Dancer shuddered. ‘Fucking hell. The nick cured me of getting up early. Ricky’s been abroad buying ponies. D’you need any?’
‘I’ll bring ma own,’ said Luke.
Oh, that straightforwardness and that deep, husky, Florida drawl, thought Dancer. It conjured up images of orange juice, sunshine, blond beaches and all the time in the world to train ponies and make love. Perdita needed her swollen head examined.
‘I’m looking forward to meeting your dream machine,’ he said.
‘Fantasma?’ Luke’s face softened. ‘She’s a once-in-a-lifetime mare. I’m two goals better when I ride her, and she’s so clever. If I play her in jeans, she’ll buck me off, but if I put on boots and whites and a polo shirt, she knows she’s going to a match and becomes the soul of responsibility.’ He blushed slightly. ‘I guess I just adore her.’
Having heard from Ricky how pushed Luke always was for cash, Dancer started picking polish off his nails.
‘Now about dosh, I was finking . . .’ After all, he had sent the lawyers and the accountants packing and it was his money ‘. . . about $100,000, plus all expenses, airfare for you and the ’orses, and of course a car, and you’ll stay with Ricky.’