Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Calm down,’ said Mrs Paget, thinking how frightfully attractive he was. She wanted the money for the unmarried mothers’ house very badly. The committee would regard it as a tremendous coup and had already earmarked an adorable Irish baby for Rupert and Taggie, but she felt he ought to be made to sweat a little longer.

  ‘I understand,’ she went on soothingly. ‘You must be feeling very threatened. It happens to lots of middle-aged men who marry very young wives and worry not only about satisfying them sexually, but keeping them amused. A baby seems the perfect answer.’

  Rupert’s jaw dropped. There was an imperious knock on the door.

  ‘I’m interviewing, Miss Roach,’ cried Mrs Paget.

  ‘I think you should see this,’ said Miss Roach who looked more like a cod. Barging in, she thrust a copy of The Evening Scorpion in front of Mrs Paget, whose pale pink wild-rose complexion slowly turned the dark crimson of an Ena Harkness as she read.

  ‘I’m afraid there’s not an adoption society in the country who’ll touch you now,’ she said, handing Rupert the paper.

  On the front page were two huge photographs of Perdita and Rupert at eighteen. Both in profile, they were incriminatingly identical. ‘Snap!’ said the huge headline.

  Rupert was as pale as the lilies-of-the-valley on the table as he turned to the centre pages where Jackie Cosgrave’s statement was quoted in full:

  ‘There were seven men at the Sidney Street Orgy. They included rock star Bob Riley and his lead guitarist Harry Nelson, actor Johnny Friedlander, the Hon Basil Baddingham, a polo player, show-jumpers Rupert Campbell-Black and Billy Lloyd-Foxe and myself. At eighteen, Rupert was an officer in an exclusive cavalry regiment, the Blues, and was home on leave from Cyprus. He was very brown and so beautiful no-one could take their eyes off him. Being in the forces, he was also the only one with short hair. Rupert was very much taken with Daisy, and being very fit, made love to her most of the night. We all had bets how long he could keep going. The rest of us were too stoned to do very much, though we all had a go at her, I remember, because she was so tasty.’

  Jackie Cosgrave had always been disgusting, thought Rupert irrationally. Like Daisy two days before, he couldn’t read any more. Inside were fuzzy blown-up snapshots, including one of Daisy and Rupert both naked. In one he was smiling down at her and stroking her left breast. In another he was kissing her passionately and his left hand had disappeared below the cropping of the photograph. There were also pictures of everyone else at the orgy, and, even more horrible, on the next page of Eddie, Violet, Marcus and Tabitha, with a caption: ‘You’re half-brothers and sisters now.’

  ‘Jesus,’ exploded Rupert, crumpling up the paper and throwing it in the corner. Then, turning to Mrs Paget, ‘And you believe this junk?’

  ‘It seems conclusive,’ she stammered. ‘You could be twins.’

  ‘I’m going to get the highest damages in history. Can I use your telephone?’

  Mrs Paget nodded. After the initial rage, she told Miss Roach later, he was terrifying in his calmness.

  It was a good thing the helicopter knew its own way back to Penscombe because Rupert was totally unaware of flying it. As towns, motorways and the winding Thames gave way to acid-green woods, emerald fields and tawny villages, he churned with rage. Perdita was responsible for Taggie losing their own child, and now an adopted baby. And God knows what lasting damage she’d done to his children, just as they were getting over the devastating revelations of his memoirs eighteen months ago.

  He couldn’t see the gravel outside his house for reporters and cameramen, and took a savage pleasure in sending them scurrying for their lives. As he leapt out, they all swarmed back.

  ‘Hello, Rupe, talk about gaining a daughter,’ said the Sun.

  ‘She’s a chip off the old block where horses are concerned,’ said the Mirror. ‘You going to teach her to show-jump?’

  ‘We heard you were trying to adopt a baby. What chances of that now?’ asked The Scorpion.

  ‘Are you going to recognize paternity?’ asked ITN.

  As they ringed him, ravenous for information, there was something of the cornered, maddened bull about Rupert. Then, with his phenomenal strength, he shoved them out of the way and, sending The Scorpion and the Star flying, charged the front door, which opened like a trap door to admit him, then slammed against their frenzied hammering fists.

  Frantically Taggie and Rupert clung to each other. She tried to smile, but she was deathly pale and her eyes were red-rimmed. ‘You poor, poor thing, it’s so horrible for you.’

  ‘I’m so desperately sorry.’ As he held her, Rupert felt comfort flowing back into his body like a transfusion after a massive loss of blood. ‘Please don’t leave me. I can face anything as long as I’ve got you.’

  ‘I’d never leave you,’ said Taggie, appalled. ‘I love you. Anyway, it all happened years ago, long before I met you.’

  ‘It could have been any of the other guys at the party. They can make anyone look like anyone in photographs.’

  ‘Course they can. What did they say at the adoption society?’ She was trying to control her longing.

  Rupert shook his head. Since they married there had only been truth between them. ‘I’m afraid they’re not going to give us a baby, but we’ll get one from somewhere.’

  ‘It’s OK. We’ve still got Tabitha and Marcus and the dogs,’ her voice faltered. ‘And Perdita,’ she was about to say. Rupert’s ability to have children seemed so at odds with her own recently enforced infertility. The reporters stepped up the hammering on the door.

  ‘How could Perdita have done it?’ she said in bewilderment. ‘To poor Daisy as well.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about Daisy. You’re the only thing I care about.’

  Mrs Bodkin, Rupert’s ancient housekeeper, who’d seen endless dramas in her time, came into the hall. Thank God he had Miss Taggie. Seeing them in each other’s arms, she coughed.

  ‘It’s Tabitha on the private line, Mr Campbell-Black.’

  Rupert picked up the telephone. ‘I was just going to ring you, darling. I’m terribly sorry. D’you want to come over?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Tabitha. ‘Your new intermediate daughter won’t take all our money, will she?’ Her shrill voice suddenly broke. ‘You won’t love her more than me, will you?’

  ‘I’m bloody well going to have it out with Daisy,’ snarled Rupert as he came off the telephone.

  Ten minutes later his helicopter landed on Ricky’s front lawn, and this time the press fell back, scalded by the white heat of his rage. He found Daisy in Ricky’s kitchen, mindlessly making a shepherd’s pie for supper, not because Ricky wanted it, but to give herself something to do. A smell of frying onion, garlic, peppers and minced lamb drifted through the house. Ricky had pulled down the blue and white striped blinds so the hovering press couldn’t see in. For a second Rupert and Daisy stared at each other, both unable not to think of the night they had spent together. How could I? thought Rupert. Daisy looked utterly wretched, her red eyes vanished beneath red swollen lids as though they’d been stung by ants, her face blotchy from crying. An old grey sweater of Ricky’s couldn’t disguise the weight that had dropped off her.

  ‘Oh, Rupert, I’m so sorry.’ All Daisy could think of was how incredible that such an attractive man should once have screwed her all those years ago.

  ‘So you fucking should be!’ Rupert hurled his fury like acid in her face. ‘Why the hell didn’t you have an abortion?’

  ‘I didn’t have the money.’

  ‘You can’t prove Perdita’s my child. Bas has got black eyes just like hers. She could have inherited her riding skills from him or Billy. Bob Riley was almost an albino.’

  ‘I’m not going to say she’s yours,’ whispered Daisy. ‘I just said I was drunk, and can’t remember anyone there. It’s so awful. You and Taggie have been so sweet to me.’

  ‘Perdita’s completely fucked up Taggie’s chances of having or adopting a baby, an
d what about the effect on Tab and Marcus? God, I’m going to sue her into the next world. I’ll ruin her if it kills me.’

  Daisy started to cry and throw whole carrots into the frantically spitting onions and mince.

  ‘It’s burning, lovie.’ Ricky crossed the room and turned off the gas. ‘Let’s leave it and have a drink.’

  As Daisy collapsed on to a kitchen chair with her face in her hands, the twins bounded in.

  ‘Hello, Daddy,’ said Dommie, grinning at Rupert.

  ‘Orgy, porgy, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them pregnant,’ said Seb. ‘Christ, I’m starving.’ Grabbing a spoon, he started eating the mince out of the frying pan. ‘What I feel most sorry for you about, Rupert, is having that frightful little shit, Red Alderton, as a son-in-law.’

  ‘It’s not funny,’ shouted Rupert.

  ‘Well, it’s not Daisy’s fault,’ shouted back Ricky, getting a bottle out of the cupboard, splashing whisky into four glasses and giving one to Daisy.

  ‘I don’t want a drink,’ said Rupert.

  ‘All the more for me,’ said Dommie, tipping Rupert’s share into his glass. ‘Are these for Wayne and Kinta?’ He picked the whole carrots out of the frying pan.

  ‘I said it’s not Daisy’s fault,’ repeated Ricky icily.

  ‘Bloody is,’ said Rupert. ‘Fucking hippie bringing up her fucking children by Dr Spock rules, letting them run wild, and everything hang out. If she hadn’t spoilt Perdita rotten, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘Balls,’ yelled Ricky. ‘Perdita just happens to have inherited your sodding awful nature.’

  ‘Who tried to bail you out of prison, and appealed against your conviction?’ demanded Rupert in outrage.

  ‘Below the belt,’ said Seb.

  ‘So was Rupert’s dick,’ giggled Dommie. ‘You shouldn’t go round screwing girls when they’re stoned.’

  ‘This isn’t getting anyone anywhere,’ said Ricky. ‘Are you going to admit paternity or not?’

  ‘Like hell I am. I’d rather father a mamba.’

  ‘With Red geeing her up, she may easily take you to court,’ said Seb.

  ‘Let her,’ said Rupert flatly. ‘After what she’s done to my children and Taggie twice, I’ll bury her.’

  Rupert’s children were not the only ones affected. Violet was devastated, particularly when her boyfriend’s parents suddenly withdrew a long-standing invitation to spend a weekend at their house. At Eddie’s prep school the rest of his form trooped down to the kitchen and read the cook’s copy of The Scorpion.

  ‘Common Entrance, Common Entrance,’ chanted Blair-Harrison, the most evil boy in the class. ‘Your mother seems to have a communal entrance.’

  And Eddie had hit Blair-Harrison across the classroom breaking two of his flawless front teeth. One of Dancer’s minders had brought Eddie back to Robinsgrove where he had fished and shot clays and apparently happily watched television. But after midnight, long after Daisy had been knocked out by one of Ricky’s pills, Ricky found Eddie sobbing his heart out.

  ‘How could Mum let all those blokes stick it in her?’

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ said Ricky. ‘Someone got her drunk and drugged her.’

  Eddie clenched his fists. ‘I’m going to kill Perdita.’

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ said Ricky grimly.

  He wanted nothing more than to concentrate on his polo. His house had been besieged by press for forty-eight hours, and when he went to the Rutshire to play practice chukkas the following day they were ten deep round the clubhouse waiting for him.

  For once the expletives were worse off the field than on. The twins, losing their tempers, had started hitting balls at the reporters’ ankles, and the police had been called. Miss Lodsworth had for once been on Apocalypse’s side and had driven The Times cameraman off with her shooting stick. Decorum, the bull terrier, had bitten both The Scorpion and the Guardian.

  Ironically Ricky had become the hero of the press. The cameraman with Beattie Johnson had taken a photograph of Ricky throwing Beattie out of the window and sold it to the Sun who’d put it on their front page.

  Over in Palm Beach Perdita was on the rack. Electric gates and Rottweilers kept out the press, but not the feelings of utter horror at what she’d unearthed. Talk about Pandora’s boxing ring.

  Still smarting with rejection that Rupert had turned her down so summarily on finding her in his bed, she had been plagued since then by embarrassingly erotic dreams about him. But now the scalding hot lava of humiliation was pouring over her as she realized she’d tried to bed her own father.

  Red the unpredictable, however, was absolutely delighted. Any novelty and strangeness excited him.

  ‘What a good thing you didn’t get him into bed in Florida,’ he said gleefully. ‘He’d probably have negated the pill and impregnated you.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting,’ screamed Perdita. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have tried to pull him that night. If you hadn’t been getting off with that girl from Vanity Fair, I’d never have got pissed and spilled the beans to Simpson Hastings.’

  It was a further source of irritation that no-one believed she hadn’t taken a massive pay-off from The Scorpion. Red caught the short back ends of her hair, yanking her head back, his eyes blazing with desire.

  ‘Rupert’s mega-bucks, just think what we can screw him for.’

  ‘We can’t prove he’s my father.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever heard of genetic engineering? I wonder if my mother will feel differently now she knows you’ve got some good blood.’

  Letting go of her hair, he began to stroke the back of her neck. It was hopeless. He just had to touch her to make her dripping.

  ‘Be nice to me, Red. I need you so badly. Don’t leave me.’

  Red pushed her back on to the press clippings which littered his dark blue triple bed, and with one practised hand undid the top button of her jeans.

  ‘I’m not quitting, baby. You’re just getting interesting.’

  Afterwards, having plugged her between the legs with a handful of scrumpled press clippings, Red fell asleep. Feeling hopelessly twitchy and in need of comfort, Perdita rang Luke at the hospital only to learn that he had discharged himself that afternoon. So deep was her self-preoccupation that she didn’t even question the utter insanity of such an action, and promptly telephoned him at his barn. ‘Oh, Luke, I’ve done such a terrible thing.’

  ‘I guess you have,’ said Luke and hung up. Then, turning back to Margie: ‘That was Perdita. I can’t handle her at the moment.’

  Fantasma and Leroy, delirious to have him home, had followed him into the tack room. After the first ecstatic welcome, both seemed to sense how excruciatingly painful his hand was and just wanted to be near him as quietly as possible. Leroy sat on his feet to stop him ever going away again. Fantasma rested her pink nose on his good shoulder, blowing adoringly down his neck. On the tack-room wall was a photograph of her racing round the paddock without saddle or bridle as white and as swift and as beautiful as summer lightning.

  Luke took a slug of the quadruple brandy Margie had just given him. ‘I gotta sell her,’ he said.

  He had learnt that afternoon that Hal Peters had been voted off his own board and gone spectacularly belly-up. Not only had he not paid Luke’s salary since January or for the last half-dozen horses Luke had bought for him, but far, far worse, he had let Luke’s medical insurance lapse, so there would be massive hospital bills to be paid. That was why – despite doctors and sobbing nurses practically restraining him with a strait-jacket – Luke had walked out of hospital that afternoon.

  ‘You’ve got to sue,’ implored Margie. ‘I’ll defend you for free.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘He hasn’t got any money to pay me.’

  ‘Then go to your father.’

  ‘He’s in enough shit as it is,’ said Luke wearily.

  ‘You bloody stubborn Taurean,’ stormed Margie, ‘lend him Fantasma. Lend him
all your ponies. If he’s that anxious to smash Ricky this summer, he’ll pay anything.’

  ‘There’s no way I could ever pay my medical bills and pay him back.’

  His hand was agonizingly painful and he was slowly coming to terms with the fact that he might never play polo again. The only honourable way he could pay his debts and see the grooms right was to sell the ponies.

  61

  At the end of April eighty-five suitcases, fifty-five polo ponies, sixteen grooms, a mountain of tack and polo sticks and a fleet of maids and secretaries were flown in a special Alderton Jumbo over to England. A week later, when everything had been unpacked and made ready for them in Bart’s ravishing Sussex house, Chessie, Bart, Red, Perdita and Angel flew over in Bart’s new private jet – the Alderton Quicksilver. Specially designed to dispel rumours that Alderton Airways were going belly-up, it crossed the Atlantic in three hours and was as gleamingly silver as its name. Bart was hoping to raise the money in Europe to market it next year.

  Inside the Quicksilver the atmosphere was as highly charged as usual. Red, failing to hide his dislike of his stepmother, had taken Perdita into one of the back bedrooms. Chessie drank a whole bottle of champagne, because Grace only drank water on flights and because she was still furious with Ricky for giving such public sanctuary to Perdita’s frumpy mother. Bart put aside the balance sheets he ought to be digesting before his meeting with European Electronics tomorrow and read a computer print-out on his ponies.

  Perdita, having stuffed her face with caviar, was now lying post-multi-orgasmic in Red’s arms and thinking this really was the life. She and Red had just returned from four magic days in Hawaii where his sexual inventiveness had overwhelmed her. On the Rupert front things had gone unnaturally quiet, with the press switching their attention to a Royal scandal and the lawyers locked behind closed doors. Was Rupert going to sue? Was Perdita going to push for recognition and a massive settlement? It was a war of nerves. She was apprehensive about her reception in England. Sooner or later she’d have to bump into Ricky, her mother, and probably Rupert. But she felt insulated by Red’s love. If she was going to be the new Mrs Alderton, what did it matter if she was née Campbell-Black?