Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  At the throw-in, Drew got it out and passed it to Ricky who took off on Kinta towards the posts. Whipped by Red, somehow Tero caught up with them and grimly Red closed in to ride Ricky off. Tero, like the good pony she was, dropped her shoulder and shoved, but Kinta was almost twice the size and strength of her and she took the weight of the bump, flying through the air and nearly going down on her fore-end. As Brigadier Hughie’s binoculars shook in Perdita’s frantically trembling hands, Tero’s head seemed to be all white with lather. Her huge panic-stricken eyes rolled as Red yanked her round with all his strength to pick up the ball which Bart had backed upfield.

  ‘Bastard, stop him,’ screamed Perdita from the steps, but her cries were taken by the wind.

  ‘Sit down,’ yelled the crowd.

  Oblivious, hands to her face, she watched, demented, as Red whipped Tero almost the length of the field, his spurs glinting in the sunshine as they stabbed at the little mare’s sides like the needle of a sewing machine. At the last moment he passed to Angel.

  Angel, in turn, waited until Drew was almost on him before flicking the ball back to Red who, as Tero strained herself for a final, gallant effort, leaned right out of the saddle, stroking the ball between the posts, almost as an afterthought. 13-9 on the bell.

  The cheers ringing out politely for an American victory turned to cries of horror as, like some ghastly danse macabre, Tero appeared to lose all co-ordination and Red and she were both down rolling over and over. Red jumped to his feet. Somehow, lurching drunkenly, Tero staggered up, but she was heaving, shuddering and careering round totally disconnected, with all four legs sticking out straight.

  ‘Christ, she’s broken something,’ said Dommie in horror.

  ‘Heart attack,’ snapped Rupert.

  In an instant, Ricky and Drew had thrown their horses’ reins to the Napiers and were running towards her, followed by David Waterlane, Jesus, the other umpire, and Angel. Reaching her first, Ricky gently pushed Tero to the ground where she quivered convulsively and went still.

  Frozen with horror, Perdita at last found her feet and ran down the steps, jumping over the white fence, dropping Brigadier Hughie’s binoculars, Angel’s sombrero and her bag out of which spilled her passport, diary and all her make-up. With the wind in her screaming mouth, hair ribbing her blanched face, she raced down the pitch, past the stands, past horrified faces in the Royal Box, hurtling towards the little group, outstripping the vet’s van bringing the screens, pummelling Ricky and Drew out of the way. ‘Lemme get at her.’

  Falling to her knees and gathering up the pony’s head, which suddenly seemed as heavy as lead, she cradled it in her lap.

  ‘Tero darling, for Christ’s sake, you’re going to be OK. You’re just winded,’ she sobbed.

  But Tero’s once-loving eyes were staring and glassy. ‘Tero, Tero, please, please.’ Tears ripping her apart, Perdita dropped her head down on the pony’s, ‘You’ve got to be all right. You’re all I’ve got. I love you.’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s had it.’ Desperately trying to keep his voice steady, Ricky put a hand on Perdita’s head. She had loved Tero as he had loved Mattie.

  Hovering in the background, holding the others’ ponies, Bobby Ferraro and Shark instinctively removed their helmets in respect and sympathy. Red seemed quite unmoved, but Angel was less reticent. As the crowd, stunned and silent, watched the screens going round, he crouched down beside Perdita. Taking her in his arms, pulling her head on to his shoulder, crying himself, he gabbled half in Spanish.

  ‘She die playing best game of ’er life. People will always remember her.’

  ‘She can’t be dead,’ Perdita pleaded with the vet. ‘Make her better.’

  The vet shook his head. ‘Can’t, I’m afraid. Absolutely tragic, wonderful pony.’

  Perdita went absolutely still. For a second she watched the blood from Red’s spurs seeping down Tero’s damp, speckled flank, staining the emerald grass.

  ‘C’mon, Perdita,’ said Red in a shaken voice, holding out his hand. ‘It’s only a pony. Could have happened at any time,’ he added defensively.

  Angel had to hold on to Perdita to stop her clawing Red’s face.

  ‘Murderer,’ she hissed through white lips. ‘You made me let you ride her. You flogged her to death.’

  ‘Oh, pack it in, baby,’ said Red, not unkindly.

  ‘It’s you I’m going to pack in,’ sobbed Perdita hysterically, ‘and I’m not a baby any more and not your baby ever again. I’ve grown up in the last five minutes.’

  She had become so thin the huge sapphire slid off her finger easily. Flying through the air, the departing bluebird of her happiness, it crashed into Red’s chest.

  ‘Let her go. She’s outlived her usefulness,’ growled Bart, as, leaping to her feet, Perdita fled past the battlements of shocked faces, many of them in tears. Desperately looking for a way out, she paused in front of the Royal Box.

  ‘He killed her,’ she screamed. ‘Did you see Red kill her?’

  Security guards and officials moved forward solicitously, but Taggie Campbell-Black was too quick for them. Stepping over the little white fence, she ran forward, tugging off her crimson shawl, wrapping it round Perdita. ‘I’m so sorry. She was such a sweet pony. You poor darling, please don’t cry. You’re coming home with us.’

  ‘Who? What?’ Perdita gazed at Taggie not registering.

  ‘Rupert and I are taking you home,’ explained Taggie, putting her arms round Perdita’s shoulder.

  But the next minute Rupert had joined them. Rage that England had blown the match and Venturer possibly millions, bracketed with an almost pathological loathing of Perdita, made him totally irrational.

  ‘Leave her fucking alone,’ he yelled at Taggie. ‘She’ll bite you like a rabid dog. You don’t owe her anything.’

  Taggie went very white, but stood her ground.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ she pleaded. ‘Look what’s happened to her. She needs you, Rupert.’

  ‘I’ll take her,’ said Ricky, pushing his way through the fast-gathering photographers. Taking Perdita from Taggie, he turned to Rupert. ‘When are you going to stop being so pig-headed and recognize your own child?’

  It was part of the meticulous Guards Club organization that within seconds the afternoon was on course again. Ricky caused a few raised eyebrows and several accusations of bad sportsmanship when he missed the presentation. This was probably just as well because a jubilant Bart, making thumbs-up signs to Chessie in the stands, gloated so obscenely to the hovering press, predicting that America would annihilate England in the Westchester.

  The object of all this conflict, the Coronation Cup, with its crown-shaped lid, gold, writhing serpent handles and patterning of laurel leaves and strange faces, rose serenely from its green baize table.

  ‘What a huge pot,’ boomed Miss Lodsworth. ‘Not Hughie’s, that cup!’

  Silently the British team lined up, long-faced, eyes cast down, utterly gloomy, a total contrast to the laughing, overjoyed Americans. Out came Princess Diana in a silk dress that seemed woven from light blue and dark blue delphinium petals, her high heels sinking into the grass. Up went Bart to get the Cup, which was so heavy that the Chairman of Cartier had to help the Princess hand it to him. Bart had to wipe away a tear as the band played the Stars and Stripes.

  Bobby Ferraro was so overwhelmed to meet the Princess that he seized her hands and kissed them, to the delighted screams of the crowd. Angel followed Red. His Falklands banner was tucked inside his shirt, but he was so appalled by Red’s callousness to Perdita and that Red could now joke and smile so devastatingly down at the Princess that he forgot to bring it out. Angel had planned so many gestures of revenge, but all the loathing he felt towards the British seemed to evaporate when he went up to get his clock in its red velvet box and gazed into the kind, blue eyes of the future Queen of England and saw the red roses in her faintly flushed cheeks. Her detective fingered his gun.

  ‘Whaddid she say to you?’ whis
pered Bart furiously when Angel finally floated back to the line-up.

  ‘She say she very sorry my brozzer was keeled in Malvinas,’ said Angel. ‘She ’ear he was jolly good player like ’er ’usband, and Argentine pilots was very brave, and her brother-in-law had flown ’elicopters in the Malvinas and how worried his mother was about heem and she knew how much I must mees Pedro, and,’ Angel added casually, ‘you can stuff your bloody job.’

  But Bart wasn’t listening. ‘Shut up,’ he snapped. ‘I’m going to be photographed with the Princess.’

  There was some booing when Angel won the Pegasus Award, a soaring golden horse for the Player of the Match, but deafening cheers when, posthumously, Tero won Best Playing Pony.

  ‘Keep it for Perdita,’ said Red when his groom collected the huge, dark maroon rug. ‘It’ll cheer her up when she cools down.’

  They were outside the bar, surrounded by an admiring crowd, when Bart asked Angel, who was edging the top off a magnum of champagne with his thumbs, what he’d been about to say.

  ‘I say you can stuff your bloody awful job,’ said Angel politely. ‘You don’t treat players or ponies nice enough and you haff as you say outleeve the usefulness,’ and he aimed the spurting fountain of champagne straight into Bart’s absolutely furious brick-red face.

  Back at Snow Cottage Daisy was still numb with misery over Sukey’s revelations. She was glad Ricky was at the International. If he’d seen her reddened eyes, he might have got the truth out of her. In the afternoon she tried to pull herself together and clean the house. She even forced herself to go into Perdita’s bedroom. The scarlet walls were bare since Perdita’d pulled down all Ricky’s photographs. A bluebottle crashed exhausted against the window pane. Perhaps she ought to take a lodger, a nice girl student from the Agricultural College, to keep her company on the long, lone evenings ahead. She mustn’t start crying again; there was enough damp in the cottage. It was a while before she heard the telephone. Crashing downstairs to get to it in time, she still prayed it might be Drew. But it was Taggie Campbell-Black. Her soft growling voice was unmistakable and she was stammering badly.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but Tero had a heart attack in the International and died.’

  ‘Oh, God! Darling little Tero and poor, poor Perdita,’ whispered Daisy aghast.

  ‘She’s broken it off with Red. Ricky’s bringing her home to you. We would have brought her, but Rupert wasn’t very keen, I do hope . . .’ Taggie was desperate to be fair and not disloyal to Rupert.

  ‘Of course I understand. I’m so sorry. It’s so kind of you to ring.’

  Utterly desolate, Daisy collapsed on to a kitchen chair. In the middle of the table was a blue jug filled with meadowsweet. Nothing would ever grace a meadow more sweetly than Tero. Remembering the time the little pony had tiptoed into the kitchen during Christmas dinner and the delighted little nudges Tero used to give her in the back to ask for toast and Marmite, Daisy burst into tears.

  But after a few minutes she was forced to pull herself together. Perdita was coming home: she must get ready. In panic and trepidation, she scurried round, hoovering frantically, finding hot water-bottles, making up Perdita’s bed with clean sheets and all Violet’s blankets and putting the jug full of meadowsweet on her bedside table.

  There was Ethel barking and the sound of a car drawing up. Steeling herself for Perdita’s Force Ten rage, Daisy came slowly downstairs, but all her fears vanished as a thin, grey ghost with anguished funeral-black eyes ran through the door and collapsed, sobbing hysterically, into her arms.

  ‘Oh, Mummy, Mummy, how’ll I ever survive without Tero?’

  Relief turned to horror as Daisy felt how thin she was. Following her in, still in breeches, boots and his dark blue England shirt came Ricky, who put a reassuring hand to Daisy’s cheek.

  ‘She’ll be OK. Give her a stiff drink. I’m going to ring the doctor.’

  In the sitting room Perdita collapsed on the sofa. ‘What’ll happen to her now?’ she asked wildly.

  ‘She’ll go straight to heaven, of course. No pony was gooder,’ mumbled Daisy.

  ‘But that’s no good for her.’ Perdita’s sobs redoubled. ‘The only heaven for Tero was where I was.’

  James Benson, the smooth, private GP from Cheltenham, who’d been Rupert’s and Ricky’s doctor for years, was just going out to drinks but couldn’t resist a chance to look at Rupert’s supposedly illegitimate daughter, and her mother as well, and arrived in his Mercedes. She certainly had the Campbell-Black bone structure – rather too near the surface at the moment.

  ‘She’s seriously underweight and in shock,’ he told Daisy and Ricky as he came downstairs. ‘I’ve given her a shot and something to make her sleep, but I think we should keep her heavily sedated, slowly reducing the dose over the next few days. I should keep these locked up,’ he added, as he handed Daisy anti-depressants and sleeping pills. ‘One can’t be too careful.’

  Then, noticing Daisy’s own pallor and reddened eyes, ‘Are you going to be all right? I don’t think you should be alone.’

  ‘I’ll look after her,’ said Ricky.

  ‘I’ll just nip home and check the horses,’ he said when James Benson had gone, ‘and have a shower. I must smell like a rambler’s crotch.’

  Daisy flushed. ‘You don’t have to come back. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Don’t do anything. I’ll bring a take-away and some drink.’

  ‘I’m honestly not hungry.’

  ‘Don’t be even sillier. You can’t have two skeletons in one house.’ Then, more gently, seeing Daisy’s face quivering as she bent over the sink, ‘It’s all right, lovie, the worst’s over. She’s home.’

  69

  It has been said that the real crime passionnel occurs when the other woman finds out about the other woman. But Daisy didn’t hate Bibi Alderton or any of Drew’s alleged legions of girlfriends; she just felt terribly sad. She was also worried sick about Perdita. She had dreaded a return of the old Perdita, denuding her wardrobe and the fridge, pinching all the hot water and drowning the church bells at Eldercombe with her tantrums and her record player. But this new Perdita, who had no desire to eat, or dress up or wash her hair, or play music, worried her far more. She wasn’t even interested in Ethel’s puppies and just sat gazing at old photographs Daisy had kept of Tero, watching the August sunlight drying the dew on the cobwebs and listening to the urgent bustle of the Frogsmore under the house. Lucky Frogsmore to be so sure where it was going. Perdita had no idea.

  Her eyes flickered with hope each time the telephone rang – but it was never Red, only endless press and television people, and all her temporary enemies: Dancer, David Waterlane, Bas, Brigadier and Mrs Hughie, even Miss Lodsworth, all of whom suddenly, after Tero’s death, had become friends again. The twins sent a congratulations card from Deauville with the words ‘Good Red-dance’ inside. Chessie wrote a carefully worded note asking Perdita to tell Ricky to do better in the Westchester than the International. Sharon Kaputnik sent huge mauve chrysanthemums. Taggie, hearing Perdita wasn’t eating, arrived with the most delicious smoked salmon quiche. Drew wrote to her from Sotogrande. Feeling awful, Daisy sneaked in when Perdita was asleep to see if she were mentioned in the letter, and felt even worse that she was not.

  Realizing Perdita’s utter despair, Daisy reproached her with nothing. Ricky had no such reticence. Ten days after Tero’s death, he had an extremely humiliating lunch with Rupert and Bas in the Venturer boardroom. Fuelled by Château Lafitte, they had told him exactly what they thought of his performance in the International and that England had better bloody well get their act together before the Westchester. Seeking gentle comfort, Ricky dropped in on Daisy on the way home.

  ‘I’ve just seen a rabbit in your vegetable patch,’ he told her.

  ‘Must have been on a suicide mission,’ said Daisy.

  Ricky smiled. The crows’ feet light up his eyes like rays of the sun, thought Daisy. In an attempt to snap out of
her depression, she had bought some very expensive paper and, having spread it out on the hayfield of a lawn, was trying to cut it into pieces. But even when she secured it with two books, it kept rolling up.

  ‘I’ll hold it,’ said Ricky, taking the other end. Noticing a tawny-orange butterfly landing on the Michaelmas daisies, he added, ‘Look, a painted lady.’

  ‘I’m a painting not-quite-a-lady,’ sighed Daisy.

  The next minute Ethel emerged from the stream and, followed by her puppies, bounced across the paper leaving black footmarks everywhere.

  ‘Oh Ethel, you stupid idiot,’ screeched Daisy, then, as Ricky shoved Ethel out of the way, ‘I’m sorry, darling. Good dog, I didn’t mean to shout at you. I can paint on the other side.’

  Amused, Ricky watched her cutting with the scissors. Her hair was piled on top of her head with a green ribbon, but escaping tendrils softened her sweating face. She was wearing red denim shorts, secured with a safety pin, and a purple and white striped bikini top, quite inadequate to contain her big, golden breasts, which, also shining with sweat, were flopping all over the place. She was so busy cutting, her pink tongue clenched between her teeth, that she bumped straight into Ricky.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She blushed scarlet.

  ‘I’m not complaining . . .’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ It was Perdita at the side door, hysterical with rage. ‘There’s a note here that Bibi rang. Why the fuck didn’t you wake me? You knew I wanted news of Red. How can you be so fucking stupid?’

  ‘That’s enough.’ Getting to his feet, Ricky seized her by a chunk of her greasy, lifeless hair and, leading her into the sitting room, shut the door and pushed her down on the sofa.

  ‘It’s about time the pussy-footing stopped,’ he said grimly.

  Perdita opened her mouth to scream, her tongue so white, her teeth looked yellow by comparison.

  ‘Shut up,’ went on Ricky. ‘Have you no idea how many people you’ve screwed up in the last year?’

  ‘I didn’t know Simpson Hastings was a journalist.’