by Jilly Cooper
No novel could distract her so she turned again to Luke’s poetry book. Emerson made her cry. She certainly hadn’t given all to love, only to the pursuit of fame and riches. And there was Robert Frost:
‘But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.’
Would she ever sleep peacefully again without Luke? Despairingly she turned back to Shakespeare:
‘In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of a tiger.’
That was Luke to a T. She remembered him declaiming those lines on the way to the Queen’s Cup. Again she could hardly read on:
‘The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit and upon this charge,
Cry “God for Harry! England and St George!”’
If she learnt it by heart it might send her to sleep. She jumped at a knock on the door. It was Rupert carrying two whiskys.
‘Perhaps I better check Red Alderton isn’t lurking in the wardrobe,’ he said with a faint smile as he sat down on her bed.
For a second they gazed at each other as if into a mirror looking for likenesses. We be of one blood ye and I, thought Perdita.
‘You look about twelve,’ said Rupert.
Perdita blew her nose noisily on a Kleenex. ‘You don’t have to be nice to me just because you’re going to drop me.’
‘I’m going to do no such thing. Taggie’s just given me the first bollocking ever, told me to come and say I’m sorry. Actually I was sorry, anyway. I’ve behaved like a shit.’
‘I deserved it,’ said Perdita in a choked voice. ‘I deserved everything. I’ve behaved horribly since the day I was born and now I’m paying for it.’
‘Your ponies don’t think so,’ said Rupert gently. ‘They absolutely adore you and so would everyone else if you gave them a chance.’
‘I’ve been so awful to Mum and you and Taggie, and, worst of all, to Luke. How could those dickheads drop him?’
‘Lucky for us they have,’ said Rupert. ‘Shark’s a killer, but he’s nowhere near Luke’s class. There’s no-one else who can do the things Luke can do under pressure.’
‘It makes me so mad.’
‘Good,’ said Rupert. ‘Now listen to me. The Americans dropped Luke because he’s too much of a gent to take you out. Your sole task tomorrow is to show the world how stupid they were. Without Luke, we’ll bury them.’
‘Look at this,’ roared Ricky storming into Rupert’s bedroom the next morning and thrusting the Daily News under his nose.
‘You might bloody knock,’ grumbled Rupert, hastily drawing the duvet over Taggie’s voluptuous naked body.
‘When Francesca Alderton left her husband Ricky France-Lynch, captain of England, six years ago,’ he read, ‘and ran off with airline billionaire, Bart Alderton, she taunted her former spouse with a challenge that she would only come back to him on certain conditions: if he won the British Gold Cup, which he did earlier this year, went to ten, the highest rating for a polo player, which he’s tipped to do later this year, and won back the Westchester Cup for Britain. Will he achieve this second rung at Eldorado Polo Club this afternoon? Red Alderton must feel he is riding with the responsibility of his father’s marriage and happiness in his pocket.’
Rupert looked up. ‘Great stuff,’ he said blandly, ‘and at the worst it’ll ensure that everyone in England and America will tune in to see the result of your marriage. Think of the viewing figures.’
‘Who leaked it?’ thundered Ricky.
Rupert shrugged. ‘How would I know?’ His eyes didn’t quite meet Ricky’s. ‘You had any breakfast? You really should eat something, today of all days.’
‘Don’t get off the subject,’ said Ricky furiously. ‘What’s that piece going to do to Chessie?’
‘She’ll love it,’ said Rupert soothingly. ‘You know how she laps up publicity and I’ll tell you something else: the New York Over-Eighties Polo Club have invested in a television set for the first time in their history so they can watch the match.’
‘Stop taking the piss,’ exploded Ricky. Then, turning to Taggie: ‘If you don’t want to be a widow, you better keep your husband out of my way.’
Despite Rupert’s air of insouciance, however, he was worried he might have gone too far. At the team meeting beforehand, Ricky seemed totally out to lunch, his eyes staring, his face dishcloth grey, the lines round his mouth and between his eyebrows so heavy they looked as though they had been etched with a dagger. He seemed to be taking nothing in as Rupert harangued them.
‘Go to the man, force every play, make every play a hard one, don’t let anyone set up to hit the ball, stop them gaining possession. The Americans are so hot every goal you score’ll be a victory. Each time you stop Shark backing the ball you’re worth nine goals, Perdita.’
The temperature had soared and it was intensified down at the polo ground by more than five hundred of the world’s press, who’d invaded the club in search of a story. Everywhere cine-cameras whirled, tapes rotated, notebooks filled up with superlatives and speculation. Looking up at the mountains as they drove to the game, Perdita had an uneasy feeling that the wrinkled sleeping elephants would wake up and stampede the pitch and that the day would end in terrible disaster.
The press fell on the British team as they got out of their car, but Ricky walked through the lot of them.
‘Like trying to interview a rock face,’ wrote a girl from the Mail on Sunday petulantly. ‘I hope El Orgulloso comes before a fall.’
An old man on a stick tottered towards him. ‘Ricky France-Lynch? Your father lent me a pony for the 1939 Westchester. Damn fine player. Hardest man I ever had to mark. Is he still . . .’
Leaving him in mid-sentence, Ricky walked on down to the pony lines where the horses were tied up in the shade of straw palisades.
‘I’m sorry,’ Perdita apologized to the old man. ‘He gets funny before a big game. I know he’d love to hear about his father afterwards.’
Hollywood was out in force. Once again Perdita thought she’d never seen so many beautiful girls – it must be all that orange juice. But still the brightest star in the firmament was Chessie. She was wearing a scarlet dress and scarlet shoes, but over her slender brown arm she carried a fringed black silk shawl.
‘If I’m in mourning at the end of the game,’ she told the frantically scribbling reporters with an equivocal smirk, ‘I’ll put on the black shawl.’
The match kicked off with an amazing show of Hollywood glitz. Pale mauve and dark blue balloons, the colours of the team, were let off in their thousands. Blue-and-mauve hot-air balloons floated overhead, giving great snorts and making any dog that had been brave enough to face the heatwave bristle and cower. Helicopters trailed good luck messages. Vintage cars circled the field bearing celebrities. Pop stars, bands and cheerleaders, flashing more flawless golden limbs, entertained the happy, excited crowd. Ferranti’s, who’d done an about-turn, handed out free bottles of ‘Perdita’ in the stands. Revlon countered with red carrier bags containing bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The Americans were way-out favourites, but the odds were shortening on the Brits as the American team led the parade on to the field, following the glittering gold instruments of the band.
Gazing at the lounging, willowy elegance of Red’s back, catching frequent glimpses of his perfect profile as he flashed smile after lazy smile at the swooning girls in the crowd, Perdita could only marvel that he’d once had the power to hurt her so much. Then, as they drew up in front of the hastily run-up Royal Box, where the Prince, slightly pink in a lightweight suit, stood smiling down at them, she noticed the size of Shark Nelligan’s shoulders, his brawny arms and his walrus torso rolling over his leather belt, and shivered. Soon he’d be waiting for her like his namesake in a still lagoon. For the first time in her career she was terrified, not just that she’d let down her country, but that s
he might also be killed. If only it were Luke. She couldn’t see him or Leroy anywhere in the crowd.
No-one by contrast was happier in the parade than Spotty. Incensed to watch his friends Wayne and Kinta going off to the earlier matches, he now had a chance to show off. Revelling in the laughter and cheers of the crowd, who’d been told by Terry Hanlon he was an all-American pony, he flashed his long brown legs beneath his white rump, rolled his white eyes at the band and deliberately let off a volley of the loudest farts to embarrass his mistress as she circled in front of the Prince after her name was called.
Tero would never have done that to me, thought Perdita with a stab of anguish.
Frank Sinatra and Dancer were to have sung their individual National Anthems, but Dancer’s plane had been diverted with engine trouble, to the disappointment of the English team, so Frank Sinatra sung them both, which brought a tingle to everyone’s spine.
‘Shit, Alejandro’s umpiring!’ said Seb. ‘He’s bound to favour Angel.’
‘I’m going to be sick,’ said Mike in a faint voice.
‘Well, be sick in your hat,’ said Seb briskly. ‘We don’t want slippery patches on the grass.’
Still under the careful eyes of the security guards, the Westchester gleamed on its red tablecloth. The television cameras were rolling, a semicircle of cameramen hovered on the edge of the stands solely monitoring Chessie’s behaviour.
Back at the pony lines Perdita glanced at Ricky. He looked really ill. Was he that worried about losing Chessie? What a tragedy that Dancer hadn’t arrived in time to cheer him up.
‘Good luck, you chaps,’ said Brigadier Hughie.
‘Good luck,’ chorused Louisa and the grooms. They had worked so hard and once their precious charges were on the field they could only pray.
‘Just rattle them in the first chukka,’ said Rupert, then adding to Perdita, as she changed off Spotty on to one of David Waterlane’s ponies, a grey mare called Demelza, ‘Shark’s wildly overweight. He’s going to feel the heat.’
It was only as they lined up for Paul Newman to throw in the first ball from the back of a Cadillac that Ricky realized he’d forgotten to bring Chessie’s red rose – not even a petal in the bottom of his boot.
‘Come on, you guys,’ screamed Perdita, suddenly excited. ‘Imitate the action of a tiger.’ The next minute the ball – a special bright yellow one to show up on television – crashed into the shifting blockade of ponies and riders and the final of the fourteenth Westchester Cup was off.
74
In fact the Americans played such a dazzlingly aggressive game in the first half that Luke’s absence wasn’t obvious, and by half-time they were leading 4-0. Taking no prisoners, Shark Nelligan rode Perdita off with such violence that all the breath was knocked out of her body. When she got near the ball his long, beefy arms hooked her stick, and every time she tried to stop him clearing he somehow barged the quarters of one of his huge horses into her. Seb and Mike pressed the battle without let-up, doing their best to stem the American advance, but Ricky’s game was definitely off. He had no aggression, his passes didn’t connect or went straight to the opposition, and the few stabs he made at goal went wide.
‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ yelled Rupert as he came off at half-time. ‘You select a bunch of kids who are playing like gods. You’re meant to lead them over the top and you’re being about as uplifting as a five-year-old jock strap.’
The temperature was still rising. Male hands applied oil to vulnerable female shoulders. The crowd was enjoying the sunshine but had lost bounce and were even doing the Spot the Ball competitions in their programmes. The bars were doing a roaring trade. The press wilted in the heat. Their cameras had become very heavy; they’d come all this way and there was no story. Red and Perdita were showing no sign of falling into each other’s arms, and Chessie looked stunned rather than stunning at such an English setback. All the animation had drained out of her face and she refused to talk, even to Bibi, who was reeling with joy because Angel had scored three of the goals.
Even the arrival of Dancer in Joan Collins’s private plane didn’t rouse the cameramen. Megastars were two a dime today. Fighting his way to the pony lines, Dancer found the English mounting their ponies for the fourth chukka. ‘To fink I’ve been stuck in an Alderton sardine tin for the last fifteen hours just for your sake, Ricky, only to find you’re nil-four down. Get yer fucking finger out.’
Then, seeing how ill Ricky looked: ‘It’s no big deal, sweetheart. If you lose and Chessie loves you, she’ll come back anyway.’
Ricky stared at him bleakly. ‘You think so?’
‘Course she will. She’s looking pretty cheesed off now. Here’s somefink to cheer you up,’ added Dancer.
It was a photograph of Little Chef in a polo hat and dark glasses.
Ricky laughed and turned it over, where Daisy had written, ‘Good luck and love from everyone at Snow Cottage.’
‘When did you see her?’
‘Yesterday,’ said Dancer.
‘Move your ass, Reeky,’ yelled Alejandro, ‘everyone’s waiting.’
Shoving Little Chefs photograph into his breeches’ pocket, Ricky vaulted on to Kinta and galloped back on to the field.
At the beginning of the fourth chukka a machiavellian Red pulled up on the ball, convincing Alejandro that Seb had crossed him. Up went the American sticks. Alejandro awarded a penalty from the sixty-yard line, which Shark converted gloriously. The rest of the side crowded round him, their patting hands sinking into his fleshy back. Five-nil.
‘Good thing we dropped Luke,’ muttered Bart to Brad Dillon. ‘Shark’s playing great.’
He felt happier than ever before in his life. Red’s speciality, the fifth chukka, was coming up. Ricky and the Brits would be utterly humiliated and his beautiful Chessie would stay with him. Earlier he’d seen Grace hanging round the pony lines giving Red advice. She was still a handsome woman, but in the harsh Californian light, she looked sixty. For the millionth time, despite everything, Bart was glad he’d left her for Chessie, whom he adored and understood. She’d be utterly miserable going back to the unimaginative, inhibited Ricky, who was playing like a nought. With any luck, he might be put down. It was a joke he could ever be considered a ten.
As play started again, and they lined up for the throwin, a bored voice in the crowd called out: ‘Oh, come on, England.’
Perdita turned in fury: ‘We’re doing our best, you fucker,’ she screamed. ‘You try playing against this ape.’
The crowd shouted with laughter. In the ensuing mêlée Shark swung his pony’s head into Perdita’s ribs once too often.
‘You bastard,’ she yelled. Then, to herself: ‘Help me, God! We can’t let them win so easily!’
And from the spacious royal-blue firmament on high the Almighty seemed to answer by suddenly putting wings on her back and on her pony’s heels.
‘Cry God for Charlie, England and St George,’ she screamed to the others and, cannoning off Shark, then into Red, then stopping short, then wheeling away under their horses’ tails, she careered off and put a beautifully angled cutshot from twenty yards into goal. The crowd roared.
‘That’s better,’ pleaded Terry Hanlon. ‘Come on, you Brits in the crowd. Give the boys and the girl a chance. They need you.’
Thirty seconds later Perdita came pounding down again, whacking it to Seb, then racing ahead, picking up the ball again and sinking a big nearside neck shot.
‘Come on, Ricky,’ she yelled as she rode back to the centre, ‘we can’t do it on our own.’
Every time Red and Shark tried to ride her off now, she was too quick for them and they found they were bumping the breeze. Slowly the English, and particularly Ricky, steadied, and they ended the fourth chukka only 3-6 down.
‘Well done! Fucking marvellous,’ said an ecstatic Rupert. ‘Fantastic play, Perdita! Keep it up all of you. Your job in the next chukka, Seb, is to mark Red mindless. Stop him letting off any fireworks.’
The fifth chukka was uneven. Mike, rather than let Red score, fouled deliberately in the American goal-mouth, so that Shark had to go back to the sixty-yard line to take the penalty. Overcome by nerves, he hit wide.
‘Luke wouldn’t have missed that,’ Perdita taunted him.
Goaded and desperate to make his mark on polo history, Shark was determined to score from the Number Four position, and kept trying to bulldoze the British defence, leaving his own back door wide open and enabling Perdita and Seb to score twice more.
‘Corporal’s now been promoted to Warrant Officer Two,’ whooped Seb, triumphantly patting Dommie’s little brown pony as they cantered back for the throw-in.
A second later the play was down near the English goal and an utterly rattled Shark mis-hit so the ball ricocheted off the boards over the back line.
‘You stay there, Fatty. I’ll be back in a minute,’ yelled Perdita at Shark as she belted off to take up her position as Mike hit in. The crowd howled with laughter.
‘Wash your mouth out with soap, Perdita,’ said Terry Hanlon, ‘but isn’t she playing well!’
Catching the other side off guard, Mike powered the ball to Ricky who, keeping moving to lure Angel away, broke off to the right to receive the ball, then before Angel could blink, backed it to a hovering Seb, who, swinging Corporal round, scored yet again.
‘Corporal’s an RSM now,’ whooped Seb.
Six-all to England on the bell.
The whole crowd were on their feet yelling their heads off as the teams went into the last chukka, and the Americans steadied and rallied.
‘England, England, England,’ chanted the galvanized British contingent.
Now they were into a frantic mêlée in front of the American goal. Angel somehow managed to clear and Ricky sent the fleet-footed Wayne after the ball. As he could hear Red thundering down on him, the only answer was to back it. Turning round in his saddle, a miracle of cool, Ricky took a lightning look at the posts, then, picking the left-hand one as a target, keeping his body steady and Wayne moving, leant over to the left until his head was level with Wayne’s gallant, pounding heart and raked the ball over the antheap of players slap between the posts. As the flag went up, the crowd gave a collective sigh of horror and ecstasy. Overheard by everyone, Chessie uttered a shriek of joy and raised a clenched fist in a Black Power salute: ‘Oh Ricky, darling, what a wonderful, wonderful goal,’ she screamed ecstatically.