Polo

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘He’s had Mona, Lily and Annie,’ explained Seb. ‘Severally and together, and he’s so tired and relaxed he’ll sleep like a baby for the first time since he’s been out here.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ hissed David. ‘You’ve probably caught AIDS.’

  ‘It’s OK, Daddy,’ said Mike cheerfully. ‘I used a condominium.’

  Glancing at Rupert, Perdita saw that he had his head in his hands again, trying to disguise the fact that he was quite hysterical with laughter.

  73

  The second match was quite different. In losing his virginity Mike seemed to have shed his terrible nerves as well. Primed by Rupert with a vast slug of brandy when his father wasn’t looking, he played with unshakeable authority, sledge-hammering the ball upfield, tigerish on any loose balls and twice pounding down like a Panzer division to score splendid goals. Time and again, the US team took the ball right down the field, but the English wouldn’t let them score.

  Realizing Luke was the most dangerous player on the field, Seb and Dommie weighed in like the two musketeers, duelling with their sticks, hooking, bumping and stabbing the ball away from him, playing a stoically defensive game. With Luke pegged, Red and Angel’s life-support machine was cut off and they were unable to score. Ricky, on the other hand, hit form with a knock-out punch. Elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel, swift as a lurcher, always there to whisk the ball away when Mike or the twins made a frantic last-ditch clear, he played the game of his life.

  The crowd, reluctant to witness a second bloodbath, had halved, but now over and over again broke into spontaneous cheers. Umpires Juan and Jesus were so often distracted by Ricky’s virtuosity that they missed fouls on other parts of the field. At half-time the English were leading 7-3 and as word flew round the Californian coast that a tussle was in process, spectators started screeching in in their limos and helicopters swooped down out of the sky like gulls on a newly ploughed field.

  The temperature had also rocketed. Huge brown-bottomed clouds like dusty meringues gathered menacingly on the horizon beneath a royal-blue sky tinged with purple. But the English players and ponies under Rupert’s fitness regime were standing up well. Perdita envied the bikinis and sundresses all round her, as once again she sweated in the stands in her England gear.

  In the fifth chukka the English steeled themselves for Red’s and Glitz’s legendary bombardment. But due to Ricky’s sticking to Red like chewing gum to a dog’s fur, it never materialized. Bart was gnashing his beautifully capped teeth on the sideline.

  ‘Come on, England,’ screamed Chessie. ‘Well, I am English,’ she added defiantly to a shocked Bibi.

  Terry Hanlon, flown specially over from Cowdray to do the commentary, was so petrified of flying that he’d practically had to be doped before he would get on to the plane. But so encouraged was he by his country’s gutsy performance that he quite forgot his jet lag.

  ‘And the ball goes out of play. Sorry, Granny,’ he added as Red, in a fury of frustration, hit a ball straight into the stands. ‘If you watch the ball, you’ll never get hit by it. Hit-in to England. And there goes Ricky France-Lynch on his way to ten goals. Did you see the way he just stroked the ball under the nose of Red Alderton, and took it away, sending a lovely lofted pass to Dommie Carlisle? What a chance!

  ‘But here comes Luke Alderton,’ he went on, ‘steady as the Rockies, thundering down to ride Dommie off, but Dommie flicks the ball back to his captain who powers it between the posts. That’s 8-3 to England.’ Then, waiting for the cheers to subside, ‘You can’t fight the entire English side on your own, Luke.’

  With a wry grin, Luke lifted his stick in the direction of the commentary box.

  In the closing seconds of the chukka, however, the ball was once more bouncing towards the seemingly insatiable American goal-mouth. Frantic to clear, Bobby Ferraro opened his shoulders and let fly. Valiantly Dommie hurled little Corporal forward to block the shot. As if fired by a cannon, it smacked Dommie just below his kneepad as the bell went.

  ‘Oh, shit, shit, shit,’ he screamed, slumping over his saddle. To a man, the crowd winced. As the players gathered round and the ambulance roared up, Dommie had gone greener than the inside of an avocado pear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dommie, I’m real, real, sorry,’ said a horrified Bobby Ferraro.

  ‘My fault for riding into it,’ mumbled Dommie.

  Fortunately he was near the pony lines and, refusing any help from the ambulance, managed to ride Corporal off the field.

  ‘I don’t like the look of that,’ said the paramedic.

  ‘Give me a bucket of Novocaine,’ gasped Dommie, trying not to scream with pain as Ricky, Seb and a demented Louisa lifted him down from Corporal. ‘I’ll be OK in a minute.’

  ‘You can’t go back into that hell-hole,’ said Louisa aghast.

  Rupert agreed and, sprinting along the edge of the boards, yelled up to Perdita in the stands to get her kneepads on.

  The only person, in fact, who was happy when Dommie insisted on playing on was Bart. Slapping a clenched fist into his other palm, he moved round the American team. ‘Now we can zap them. Ride into the little bastard’s knee as often as possible. Force him to retire and we can get the girl in.’

  ‘Don’t be so fucking unsporting, Dad,’ said Luke in outrage. ‘You could put the guy out of the game for good.’

  ‘Safe journey, my darling.’ Louisa’s voice broke as Dommie rode back on to the field to deafening applause.

  Dommie was as brave as his own bull terrier, but the blow had smashed his left knee and the pain was clearly unhinging him. As Red and Angel unleashed a fusillade of shots, the crowd, who had no idea quite how badly Dommie was hurt, kept up a continuous roar of encouragement. As the score drew level, Dommie, battered by the inevitable rough and tumble, grew greener and greener. Ricky was torn. He ought to protect Dommie but, aware that the Westchester was fast slipping out of his grasp, the only answer was to forget him and plunge into the fray. Thirty seconds later, with a glorious cut shot, he put England ahead. Now it was a question of staying there.

  Despite the punishing heat Perdita shivered, encased in an ice-cold sweat. Padded and gloved, with her stick resting against the white fence below the stands, she expected any moment to have to leap on to Dommie’s beautiful, fickle pony, Bardot, who was known to be as tricky as she was fast.

  ‘I must read the play,’ she kept telling herself grimly.

  As poor Dommie came down the field it was like watching a bird trying to fly with two broken wings. But slowly, as she forced herself to concentrate, she became aware that Luke, unlike the rest of the US team, was contradicting Bart’s orders and as the man who should have been marking Dommie, and despite the undeniable advantage it would have given him, was deliberately not riding Dommie off on the side of his damaged knee.

  There, Dommie had the ball again and Luke, who could have bumped him into the stands, laboriously rode round to hook him on the other side.

  Glancing at Perdita, Taggie noticed that tears were pouring down her face. Gently she put her hand over Perdita’s.

  ‘Luke’s the one, isn’t he?’

  Perdita nodded. ‘I guess he always has been,’ she muttered, ‘but I’ve only just realized it, and now it’s too late.’

  As the teams lined up, jostling and shoving, for the throw-in, Dommie’s agony was so blinding he thought he’d faint. Pain was in the mind. He must push himself through the pain barrier and go into mental overdrive.

  Bardot, his chestnut mare, fond of batting her long eyelashes and giving a colossal buck when chastised, was for once behaving impeccably and carrying her master as smoothly as a Rolls-Royce. When Mike, menaced by Angel and Red, hit the ball upfield ahead of him, Bardot swung round to follow it. Alas, Red didn’t have any of his brother’s scruples. Seeing Dommie pounding towards goal looking for an offside drive, Red cannoned into his smashed knee with his pony’s right shoulder. Howling with pain, Dommie had to cling on to Bardot’s neck to stay on.

>   ‘You fucker!’ Hysterical with rage, Seb rode straight at Red, slicing the ball away from him towards goal. But Luke was too quick for Seb. Riding him once more off the ball, he turned the play with a staggering sixty-yard backshot.

  With ten seconds on the clock, everyone collided in a cloud of dust in front of the British goal, the Americans frantic to whack it home so the game could go to a seventh chukka. Looking for his backhand in a tangle of threshing sticks, Ricky kept his cool. As he cleared for England, saving the game on the bell, everyone crashed over the line, sending a goal post flying in the process and all ending up in a great heap.

  ‘You OK, Dommie?’ yelled Seb in anguish through the dust.

  ‘Fine,’ said Dommie, who’d dismounted. ‘I’m just hanging on to my horse.’

  ‘The only problem,’ said Seb as the dust cleared, ‘is that it’s my horse you’re hanging on to.’

  ‘Then where’s Corporal?’ said Dommie, looking round puzzled.

  ‘Corporal was in the last chukka,’ explained Seb, ‘and he played so well, he’s been promoted to Sergeant.’

  Dommie giggled, but as he let go of Seb’s pony he collapsed on to the ground like a rag doll. ‘I think I’ve fucked my knee.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Seb shakily. ‘You’ll love hospital. The food’s terrific.’

  ‘I could murder a T-bone,’ said Dommie and passed out.

  With Dommie critically ill in a Palm Springs’ hospital with concussion and a splintered knee, Perdita would have to play in the final match. The BPA were singularly unamused and dispatched Brigadier Hughie prematurely to La Quinta to drum some sense into the wayward English squad. Storming into the Villa Victoria at twilight the following evening, sweating in a creased, wool, pin-striped suit, he found them totally euphoric.

  Having learnt that the operation had been successful and Dommie would be playing again in a few months, they now felt able to celebrate yesterday’s victory properly. Hughie’s jaundiced view of Rupert’s playboy attitude and Ricky’s deviant captaincy were further exacerbated when he found everyone plastered on Harvey Wallbangers, singing rugger songs and resting their aching bones in the swirling waters of the jacuzzi.

  ‘This is worse than an orgy,’ spluttered Hughie over the deafening blast of Dancer’s latest LP, ‘and Sharon Kaputnik ought to put on a bathing dress,’ he added as he took Rupert and Ricky into the house.

  ‘Do them good to unwind,’ said Rupert. ‘They’ve got four days to sober up.’

  ‘Not how we’d have done it in Singapore,’ chuntered Hughie, ducking as a pineapple came flying through the french windows. ‘Anyway, it’s time you chaps came to your senses. You had a damn good win yesterday, but don’t push your luck. The Napiers are playing in Argentina and quite prepared to fly up here if we pay their expenses and give them ten grand each; and Drew’d be an even better bet. He’s cooling his heels in Rutshire.’

  Ricky, who unlike everyone else, was entirely sober, had had an agonizing twenty-four hours worrying about Dommie. The thought of Drew in Rutshire cooling his heels, and no doubt warming his hands on Daisy’s welcoming body, did nothing to improve his temper. ‘I’m captaining this team, Hughie, so bugger off.’

  ‘You really prefer a slip of a girl to a fit very experienced nine-goal man?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rupert evenly. ‘I’ve always been heterosexual.’

  ‘What, what! Don’t be flippant,’ exploded Hughie. ‘You can’t put in a girl against those thugs.’

  ‘Those thugs might back off a little because she is a girl,’ went on Rupert reasonably. ‘Now, really do bugger off, Hughie, and play Scrabble or have a hot tub with Mrs Hughie, I bet they didn’t have those in Singapore.’

  Rupert, in fact, was reeling with relief. Assured of a third match, Venturer were likely to make a killing. The British and American sponsors were delighted Perdita was going to play. Such a beautiful, tempestuous, controversial figure would certainly pull in the crowds.

  Next day Rupert flew to New York and, after five hours closeted with chief executives and vice presidents, managed to persuade NBS to cancel coverage of an ice hockey match and to transmit the match live instead of recording it for a later date. In England people could watch it if they got up at four o’clock in the morning or see an edited version the following evening. Rupert was considerably aided by the press who pointed out the piquancy of Perdita having to play against her ex-lover and who all showed close-ups of her crying in the stands as she watched the match.

  ‘Still in love’ wrote The Scorpion in delight. ‘Rupert’s wife comforts grief-stricken Perdita as she sobs for Red the Rat.’

  Bart, on the other hand, was in a towering rage that the Americans had lost the second match. Always on the hunt for a scapegoat, he blamed it entirely on Luke for not riding Dommie off. Red went even further. The morning after the match he rang Brad Dillon, the American team manager.

  ‘Can I speak to you in utter confidence?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘My brother Luke’s been crazy about Perdita Macleod for years.’

  ‘I thought he was shacked up with Margie Bridgwater.’

  ‘Maybe he is, but he’ll still have to mark Perdita on Sunday. And if he’s too much of a wimp to ride off Dommie Carlisle, he’ll never carve up Perdita. Why don’t you bring back Shark? He’s never had a scruple in his life.’

  ‘This is your own brother we’re talking about,’ said Brad disapprovingly. ‘Luke is a very fine player.’

  ‘Sure he is and I just adore him, but he’s too soft.’

  ‘Sort of guy who reads poetry in the evening,’ mused Brad Dillon. ‘Could be you’re right, Red. I asked Luke to stick and ball with me in Greenwich early one morning a few weeks ago. He wasn’t in the lobby at eight-thirty so I went upstairs and banged on his bedroom door. Can you beat it, Red, he was still in bed, drinking a Bourbon and, even worse, reading a book.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Red in triumph. ‘He’s got a bad attitude.’

  Brad Dillon had no difficulty persuading the other selectors. ‘Gentlemen, I’m afraid this is no time for gentlemen. Shark’s our man.’

  At lunchtime the APA issued a press release that Luke would be dropped for the final game.

  It was the night before the match. Mike Waterlane, having spent the afternoon in his prospective stepmother’s arms while his father played golf, slept like a hound puppy after his first day’s hunting.

  Seb, on the other hand, had had a very bad four days. Demented when Dommie was injured, he had cried his eyes out when the hospital assured him his brother was out of danger. Always the confident, assertive twin, who’d pinched Dommie’s girls and bossed him about for twenty-six years, he now found himself totally lost both on and off the field. How many times before big games had he woken Dommie up to chat and bolster his own confidence? Now, feeling horribly alone, he tried to concentrate on James Herriot. Lucky, lucky Rupert to have Taggie in bed with him. He wished suddenly he was lying in Daisy Macleod’s arms, pillowed on her soft breasts. He’d definitely ring her when he got home.

  Nor could Ricky get to sleep. He wished he could go down to the stables and discuss tactics for tomorrow’s match with Wayne, but security, triggered off by tremendous press interest and the Prince’s impending arrival, was incredibly tight and he didn’t want to wake the ponies.

  At last the Westchester was within his grasp. Under the eye of two security guards the Cup had been on display in the clubhouse yesterday – huge, silver and ungainly with its jug-eared handles and horses rearing out of the side. In his gloomier moments he had to admit that, even if England did their best tomorrow, it wouldn’t be enough to beat the Americans. Perdita was simply not as good as Dommie and without Dommie, Seb would be not even half as good as usual. But miracles happen. In moments of true inspiration sides could reach heights never achieved before. It was up to him as captain to instil into them the belief that they could.

  And if, by the thousand to one chance, they
did win, what then? He still hadn’t got to ten. He had seen Chessie at a distance over the last few days, shining more brightly than ever before, silencing rooms and dividing crowds by her beauty. Then, this evening, a florist’s van had delivered a single red rose in a Cellophane box.

  ‘Darling Ricky,’ said the card, ‘Carry this red rose of England next to your heart tomorrow. Good luck and my love goes with you, Chessie.’

  The rose was now languishing in a tooth mug, its head drooping in the heat. Nor did it smell. He felt the inevitable sick churning. He mustn’t let nerves get to him, he had to calm the others. Switching on the television, he found a weatherman saying that the hurricane that was ravaging Florida, tugging up trees by the roots, ripping off roofs like milk bottle tops, was relentlessly moving towards England. It gave Ricky the excuse to pick up the telephone.

  ‘D-d-daisy, it’s Ricky. Sorry to wake you. Yes I’m fine. Perdita’s fine too – a bit uptight but that’s to be expected. Well, they’re not screaming at each other. R-r-rupert’s trying to be patient. How’s Little Chef?’

  When Daisy said he was eating at last – rump steak and chocolate – Ricky laughed and said he’d reimburse her.

  ‘Look,’ he went on, ‘I rang to say there’s a bloody great hurricane on its way to you. I don’t want you to walk through the woods. There’s a lot of dead trees in there that might get blown down.’

  Perdita couldn’t sleep either. Frantic excitement that she was going to be the first woman ever to play for England and even better play against Luke, had been utterly doused when she heard he’d been dropped. How could the bastards do that when he’d played so impeccably in the first two matches?

  On the chair she’d already laid out her newly washed dark-blue England shirt and white breeches, along with her lucky belt, lucky socks, lucky pants and lucky bra, which Taggie had mended for her and which had broken once before when she’d been playing with Luke and he’d called out, ‘Tack time’, and stopped the game, fiddling with his curb chain until she’d managed to fix it. Oh God, why did everything come back to Luke? She must rise above her misery. She fingered the red rose of England on her shirt. Winning tomorrow must be her only thought.