Polo (32 page)

`Dear Mum,'
wrote Perdita that evening,
`I'm having such
a fantastic time. I hate, hate, hate the way the Argentines
treat their horses, but I adore them as people. They're
so larky and funny. Yesterday we beat the O'Briens,
an incredible turnaround. I got a cup, so at least I'm
bringing home some silver from Argentina. And since the
match, the Argies have been so nice and are taking me seriously as a player at last. There's an American here
called Luke Alderton. He's seriously nice too. He's going
back to Palm Beach next week after the Open and has
asked me to go with him and spend Christmas there.
It's a fantastic offer, as their high goal season starts in
January. And as Ricky's not coming back to England until March, there's nothing for
me
to come home to. Hope you
don't mind. Violet and Eddie'll be home, and I'd only
disrupt things.

Love, Perdita.

PS Hugs and kisses to Ethel and Gainsborough.'

    `That's the first letter I've ever seen you write to your mother,' said Luke when she gave it to him to post.

    Perdita's face shut down. `I keep telling you, we don't get on.'

    Luke still had eight more horses to buy for Hal Peters, so the haggling went on amicable but deadly, for the next four days. Going out into the yard the day before they were due to leave, Perdita was staggered when Raimundo asked her into his little wooden house for some
maté,
a herbal tea which gauchos drink out of a silver cup from a communal straw. Although Perdita thought it tasted like grass mowings peed on by a dog, she'd learnt enough tact in the last months to say it was delicious and to thank Raimundo for the honour.

    As she left his house, she stroked his lurchers who jostled against her, desperate to be petted, and looked at the ponies wandering loose under the gum trees in the twilight. She couldn't see Tero anywhere.

    `Has she been turned out in one of the paddocks?' she asked.

    `Alejandro sell her.'

    `To Victor?' asked Perdita, aghast. `She'll hate it. We must get her back.'

    `Is all right,' said Raimundo soothingly. `Senor Gracias got her very cheap as Alejandro theenk her hopless. It was the only one 'e did. Alejandro overcharge him for the rest.'

    Hurtling off to find Luke, Perdita threw her arms round his neck. `Oh, thank you, thank you. I'll persuade Ricky to buy her. Promise you won't sell her on. Oh, can I ride her in Palm Beach?'

    On their last night there was a massive barbecue called an
asado
under the stars. Luke pointed out the Southern Cross. Guitars strummed in the background. Everything was already packed as they were driving the horses to the airport first thing in the morning. In thirty-six hours, thought Perdita, I'll be in Palm Beach. She was so nervous and excited she fed all her dinner to the lurchers.

    `Those dogs will go into mourning when you leave,' said Alejandro. `Try this.' He put some stringy-looking white meat on her plate.

    `Ugh!' said Perdita. `Tastes like chewing gum without any flavour. What is it?'

    `Intestine,' said Alejandro. No worse than 'aggis. I had 'aggis once in England. It looked like sheet. When I eat it, I wish it was.'

    Perdita laughed. `My stepfather was Scottish. He used to recite poems to haggises, stupid dickhead.'

    `We will all mees you,' said Claudia sadly to Luke. `You'll see us in Palm Beach in less than a month,' said Luke.

    `It won't be the same. We will not be together every day. Who will mend my washing machine and the children's bicycles? Who will tell them stories at night?'

    As pudding arrived, a beautiful cake of meringues, peaches and cream, Perdita's mind started to wander. Was she doing the right thing staying with Luke in Palm Beach and obviously sooner or later bumping into Chessie and Bart? Would Ricky ever forgive her for fraternizing with the enemy? Would Chessie still be as ravishing? Perdita was worried, too, because her image of Ricky was becoming increasingly remote. She kissed his photograph every night, but often panicked because she couldn't remember what he was like. Her heartache had certainly lessened. Would seeing Chessie trigger off all this hurt again? Absent-mindedly she fed a piece of meringue to a hovering lurcher.

    `The Eenglish are a strange people,' said Alejandro. `They love their dogs more than their 'usbands. We Argentines are more romantic. Love is for always.'

    Having seen that Claudia was deep in conversation with Luke, Perdita cracked back, `But not necessarily with the same woman.'

    `In Argentina,' went on Alejandro, the firelight flickering on his swarthy, wrinkled face, `we 'ave a saying. "With you, bread and onions". It mean eef you really love someone, money doesn't matter. Just being with them, even if you only have bread and onions to eat, is enough.'

    `Sure,' said Luke, who'd been listening with half an ear, `I'd go along with that.'

    `Crap,' and `Bullshit!' howled Angel and Perdita simultaneously. `Money ees essential,' said Angel emphatically. `Particularly eef you've once 'ad it. I go to Palm Beach to find very rich, beautiful woman.'

    Perdita grinned. `I'm going to marry the richest man I can stand.'

    Luke's face was in darkness. He turned back to Claudia.

    Later, fuelled by Bourbon, Alejandro became very sentimental.

    `I haf to tell you, Luke, Angel, even Perdita eef she learn to control the temper, you are the three best pupil I ever have. But Luke,' his voice softened, `will always be my
amigo
and special friend. One day Senor Gracias, you step into my boots as the greatest back in zee world.'

    Luke was touched, but not too carried away the following morning not to check the horses they were taking with them. Alejandro tried to distract him by merrily checking and re-checking the bill.

    `Wiz inflation at one hundred per cent, eet's probably gone up in the last five minutes,' he kept saying, as he fingered his calculator like a lute player.

    But Luke was not to be deflected. At the back of the lorry he discovered that Alejandro had substituted a donkey of an old mare for Fantasma. Only after much Argy-bargy and histrionic protestation that Luke was utterly `meestaken', Fantasma was located, muzzled, hobbled, but still trying to kick out, in an old pigsty at the bottom of the garden, with grey dapples ringing her white coat.

    Unfortunately, as Luke led her out the heavens opened, as though the River Plate had been diverted on to the yard, and all the dapples ran.

    Alejandro was philosophical. `I cannot 'elp it eef my grooms want me to 'ang on to a good horse,' he said as he waved them off.

    Angel shook his head. `The Argentines are a people very
simpaticos,
but utterly irresponsible.'30

    The flight was a nightmare of delays, misroutings and arguments with officials over the authenticity of papers and Fantasma's irritable inability to keep her hooves to herself. Then, on the way to Miami, Tero went berserk and nearly kicked the plane out. She would have had to be put down if Luke hadn't calmed her with a shot and, almost more, with his solid, inevitably reassuring presence.

    Having groggily settled the horses when they arrived, Perdita fell into bed and slept for twenty-four hours. Waking alone in a very comfortable double bed, she had no idea where she was. Groping for a light switch, she realized she was in Luke's bedroom. The only furniture apart from the bed was a chest of drawers and a record player. The colour in the room was provided by the books, which covered the walls and much of the carpetless floor, but in orderly piles. Four whole shelves were devoted to tapes and records, mostly classical, and Luke must have bought every book on polo, albeit second-hand. The rest of the books seemed to be poetry and novels, American, English and translations from every European language, including Latin and Greek.

    Opening the curtains, Perdita was almost blinded by sunshine. Blinking, she realized she'd been sleeping in the attic of an L-shaped barn. To the right she could see a row of loose boxes and behind them a stick-and-ball field with floodlighting so horses could be worked after dark. Beyond were paddocks dotted with pines, gums and palm trees. She could see Tero and Fantasma grazing contentedly. They'd become even more inseparable after the ordeal of their first flight.

    Below her in the yard, Luke, stripped to the waist in a pair of faded Bermudas, was talking nonsense to a pony as he hosed the soap suds off her dark brown coat. A Siamese cat with blue eyes and a blue collar weaved voluptuously between his legs, watched jealously by a ferocious-looking black mongrel who had gone berserk when Luke got home yesterday.

    `Who's that pony?' Perdita shouted down.

    Luke glanced up and smiled. 'Ophelia - came from Miguel O'Brien just a year ago. When I first walked into her stable she used to turn her back on me, put her head down in the corner and shake. You couldn't put a halter on her.'

    `How d'you sort her out?'

    `Handled her very gently. Let her get away with a few things. All she needed was a little TLC.'

    Perdita remembered how all the ponies had come racing in from the paddocks and nearly sent Luke flying yesterday. She'd never seen horses so affectionate and so relaxed. The mare was flattening her ears now as Luke hosed under her headcollar. Then, unbuckling it, he gave her a gentle pat on the rump and sent her trotting off into the paddock to join the others.

    `What time is it?' she asked.

    `About half-eleven.' Luke squinted up at her. `If you can get your ass into gear, we've been invited to lunch by my father.'

    `I've gotta wash my hair,' squeaked Perdita, feeling quite unable to face Chessie. `And all my clothes are dirty. I suppose I could wear my new leather trousers.'

    `I wouldn't, you'll be far too hot,' said Luke. `Borrow one of my shirts, second drawer down. You'll find coffee next door, orange juice in the ice box, and, after Argentina, the shower's like Niagara.'

    `My father wants to discuss the Fathers and Sons final tomorrow,' said Luke as he drove into Palm Beach. `The beauty of this tournament is that families are forced to bury the hatchet once a year in order to play in it.'

    After the poverty and primitive barbarity of the pampas, Perdita couldn't believe Palm Beach. On either side of the road reared up vast ficus hedges like ramparts of green fudge. Occasionally, through towering electric gates, she caught a glimpse of pastel palaces so like blocks of ice-cream that she expected them to melt in the burning sun. Occasionally down a side road she caught a glimpse of the ocean. Apart from the odd security guard, no-one was around in the streets. Limousines, stealthily overtaking, made Luke's dusty pick-up truck look very shabby. In

    the back, a security guard in himself, sat Luke's ferocious mongrel, who growled every time an increasingly nervous Perdita leant towards Luke to check her reflection in the driving mirror.

    `He's worse than Fantasma,' she grumbled.

    `Let him get used to you,' said Luke. `He's kinda over protective where I'm concerned. He came from Juan's yard. When the Argies go home, they often abandon a dog.'

    `Bastards,' said Perdita. `What's his name?'

    `Leroy, because he's big and black and from the South.' `Is Red coming to lunch?' asked Perdita.

    `I guess not. He got his picture on the cover of
People
magazine this week as polo's bad guy and Auriel Kingham's toyboy. The piece inside was less pretty. A charitable interpretation would be that the reporter stitched him up, but I recognize Red's style in most of the snide quotes.'

    `Like what?'

    Luke shook his head ruefully. `Describing Chessie as an ageing bimbo and as shallow as a paddling pool, saying she was such a gold digger she must have majored in opencast mining, and that Dad has to employ all his security guards ready gelded.'

    `Golly,' said Perdita in awe, `I adore him already.' `Chessie is OK,' said Luke firmly.

    Oh, please make her have gone off, prayed Perdita.

    As Luke swung round the corner, on the right, towering above the ficus battlement was the biggest palest pink house in the road.

    `There you are, Alderton Towers,' said Luke. `It used to be eight houses. Dad knocked down three to extend the garden. This one belongs to him and Chessie, the one beyond's kept for servants and guards, another's for guests, and the other two for Red and Bibi.'

    `What about you?' asked Perdita, thinking indignantly about the tiny kitchen and the bedroom overcrowded with books.

    `I make my own way,' said Luke.

    Bart's gates were swarming with press who were being almost kept at bay by two large guards.