Polo (46 page)

    `Perhaps he's planning to hold a dance on her grave,' said Chessie, who was having a manicure.

    `And it's too late to get someone else.' Bibi crashed down a large, white jasmine someone had sent for the tombola.

    `Take a shower, honey,' said Bart. `I'll find you a partner.'

    The moment she was out of earshot, he dialled the barn.

    `I guess I've gotta thank you for saving Bibi's life,' he said to Angel.

    `Is nothing.'

    `For a start, I want you to have dinner with us tonight.' Angel said he had a previous engagement.

    `Cancel it.'

    `Mrs Miguel ask me to deener.'

    `I'll square Mrs Miguel. She'll understand.'

    Angel was outraged, particularly as Mrs Miguel had also asked Shark Nelligan's groom, Samantha, and Angel would have had Samantha on a plate as well as the
asada
Mrs Miguel must be already cooking.

    Having dressed for dinner frequently at home, Angel was further incensed when Bart ordered him to wear a tuxedo.

    `The hire-shop's open on Worth Avenue, and for Chrissake don't get a coloured shirt or a made-up tie, and see you shave properly, and don't be late. Bibi'll expect you around half seven. You're going to the ball, Cinderella.'

    Bart summoned Bibi out of the shower. She was wrapped in a pink towel, her soapy hair rising in a unicorn horn above her head. She had a glorious body and wonderful shoulders, reflected Bart. Such a pity she covered them up with all those butch suits and baggy dresses.

    `I've found you a guy - Angel. Luke tells me he saved your life.'

    `Did he tell you why he saved my life?' said Bibi, suddenly hysterical. `Because he was ponying five horses and they carted him and we nearly lost the lot. I'd rather have
no
partner than him. Anyway, I'll be too busy organizing things. And he's a hick. He may have flown Mirages, but he's got no savvy. He'll probably roll up in jeans.'

    `I sent him to Worth Avenue,' said Bart, `and I called them to make sure he hires the right gear.'

    Bibi was thrown into a turmoil. I hate him, she thought furiously, he's my social and professional inferior. I must not let myself be fazed.

    But instead of the black-and-white sack-dress, which made her look like an overweight zebra, she picked from her wardrobe a clinging, coral-pink dress which had a short skirt and was cut low back and front. She'd bought it to wow Ricky in LA, but had never had the guts to wear it. Chessie and Bart had gone off to a drinks party and, in a rare act of charity, Chessie had sent her maid, Esmeralda, who used to be a beautician, to help Bibi dress.

    `Oh, Miss Bibi, just let me make you look gorgeous.'

    By half past seven Bibi was ready. Her mane of hair flopped dark red and curly round her face and down her back. Replacing her heavy spectacles with contact lenses, she had allowed Esmeralda to draw kohl round her big, brown eyes and apply three layers of black mascara. She'd always been embarrassed by the size of her mouth and painted well inside it as Grace had taught her, but tonight Esmeralda took the lipbrush round the full outline and filled it in with bright coral.

    The voluptuousness of Esmeralda rubbing moisturiser and brown make-up into her back and shoulders, with those magic fingers that daily massaged Chessie, had made Bibi realize with a pang how much she craved the caress of another human being.

    Her red shoes had spike heels which she would plunge into Angel's feet if he started cheeking her. Then she put on her diamonds, chandeliers at each ear, stones as big as marbles round her neck and left wrist. Inherited from Grace's mother, they lit up her sallow skin, which the coral dress had already warmed.

    `You look beautiful, Miss Bibi,' cried Esmeralda in ecstasy. She'd always felt Bibi got a raw deal.

    `If only my nose weren't so big.'

    `You crazy?' said Esmeralda. `No one worries about a Borzoi having too big a nose.'

    Bibi was so excited she thought she'd faint. I am waiting for a man I really really want, she thought. Then Angel ruined it by arriving an hour late, by which time Bibi had drunk three-quarters of a bottle of champagne to steady her nerves. She needed it. Angel, with his bronze curls slicked back to show off the exquisite bone structure of his forehead, temple and cheek bones, his beautifully planed cheeks and jaw denuded of stubble and his eyes flashing like an angry Siamese cat, completely took her Gold-Spotted breath away. How could such angelic features conceal such a black heart?

    With one of those diamonds I could buy half a dozen ponies, thought Angel sourly, as he paused to admire the beautiful pale pink house, the pale turquoise sweep of swimming-pool, the tree house in the multi-branched grasp of the ficus, the blue-decked lawn going into the ocean and the other wonderful houses peeping out of the trees on the opposite bank. Bad luck to live in Fairyland, reflected Angel, when you didn't look like a princess. All the same Bibi looked much better than he expected, and her breasts were amazing; tawny smooth and full in that tight coral dress and he'd never dreamt the rest of her was so slim.

    `We're not going in that,' she said in horror, as Angel opened the door of his filthy Mini. `We go in mine.' `No, in mine.' Angel took her arm firmly.

    Bibi was about to jump away, but the sureness of his touch made her feel very unsteady on her red heels. For a second they glared at each other. Bibi dropped her eyes first and, getting meekly into his car, threw a wicked-looking pair of spurs he'd left on the passenger seat into the back.

    `You going to use those on me?' she spat, trying to control the hopeless thumping of her heart.

    `Not unless I 'ave to.' Leaning across her to lock the door, Angel deliberately brushed her breast with his arm. `I only keep them for big matches.'`And I'm only a low-goal friendly?'

    Angel switched on the ignition. `Nothing friendly about you,' he said.

    It was a hot, muggy evening. The ball was held in the garden of a house which reared up ghostly white in the moonlight like the Taj Mahal. Faint stars dotted a gleaming grey sky like children kept up too late. Vast oblong cars dropped off their passengers outside a big blue and white striped marquee. One of the men valet-parking looked at Angel's Mini in disdain and took the keys from him by the tag, as though they were some particularly mangled shrew the cat had brought in. Lurking
paparazzi
went beserk when they saw Bibi with such a handsome stranger.

    `Look this way, Miss Alderton. Smile, Miss Alderton. Who's your escort, Miss Alderton? What's he been in, Miss Alderton?'

    Angel looked as though he was going to smash all their

    cameras, so Bibi hustled him into the marquee.

    `He's called Angel,' she shouted over her shoulder. `Can you spell that, Miss Alderton?'

    Bibi had worked hard. The marquee looked enchanting. Palms were banked at each end. Round the edge were tables draped in long, pale pink tablecloths, topped with pink roses, pale blue delphiniums and white freesias. A pale pink balloon rose from each da-glo pink number. The floor was covered in green astra-turf, which kept catching the high heels of the women, so their swooping progress towards one another was not unlike that of mechanical dolls. Their faces were doll-like too, thought Angel, beautiful, tremendously overmade-up, and unsmiling because smiles betrayed lines round the eyes. Their jewels glittered in the candlelight, but although they made a lot of noise as they chattered away, like the Everglades outside, there was no real communication between them. And their eyes swivelled continually and rapaciously to see if anyone over their partners' shoulder was richer, more famous or more interesting.

    Bibi, used to attending parties like this with Trust Fund Babies who were perfectly at ease and tended to know everyone, was worried Angel would be gauche and out of place. But although she was kept frantically busy,

    organizing the tombola, finding people's seats, seeing the waitresses kept the Moët circulating, and working the room herself because half the people in the room hadn't yet bought Alderton airplanes, every time she glanced across at Angel he had been collared by another predatory lady and was looking quite at ease.

    Fighting her way to his side, she introduced him to a Master of Foxhounds from Virginia in a red coat, who announced that the hunting season went from September to December.

    `Pity it's over,' said his mettlesome wife, gazing hungrily at Angel. `We must have a dance later. Argentines have such a wonderful sense of rhythm. I've got a big, big, day tomorrow,' she went on. `I'm organizing Adopt a Handicapped Animal Day.'

    `Does that include Lame Ducks?' drawled Chessie, ravishing in black lace, who had popped up on Angel's other side.

    `You OK?' Bibi asked Angel.

    `Don't be unflattering,' said Chessie. `I'll look after him. Your father wants you to go and chat up George Ricardo, Bibi. He's not struck by Alderton Lightnings enough yet. She looks quite good tonight,' she admitted, as Bibi sulkily retreated into the centre of the room.

    Angel shrugged. `OK eef you cut off her head.' Chessie laughed. `Not very kind.'

    `I 'ate leetle Hitlers,' said Angel moodily.

    `It's in the blood,' sighed Chessie. `Bart is the biggest bully, and Grace is appallingly bossy, never stops trying to improve people. It's rubbed off on Bibi. She always goes out with such wimps, they never answer back. Oh God, Bart's glowering at me.
He's
wildly jealous of you. Hasn't forgiven me for chatting you up on Christmas Day.'

    Angel flushed slightly. `It was best part of dinner.'

    Looking across, Bibi went cold. Not content with enslaving Ricky and her father, Chessie was out to catch Angel as well. By a hasty shifting of place cards, Bibi made sure she and Angel were nowhere near her and Bart.

    Unfortunately, when they sat down she discovered that on Angel's right was a beautiful, very tarty woman, withtanned shoulders rising out of a turquoise taffeta, strapless dress, turquoise toe and finger nails, and turquoise pearls to match.

    `My husband's thinking of sponsoring a polo team,' she said, squeezing Angel's arm. `How would you like to come and play for us?'

    `He plays for my father,' snapped Bibi. Champagne and longing had made her more aggressive.

    Angel had been drinking Perrier. Starving, he wolfed his own egg mayonnaise and ring of caviar, and then Bibi's.

    Continuing to drink, Bibi tried to pump him about Miguel and Juan.

    `I don't want to talk about them,' said Angel. 'Eef I tell you, you will run to your father, and why you interrupt when ozzer people,' he nodded at the tarty woman in turquoise, `want me to play for them?'

    `She says that to all good-looking players. She hasn't got a husband.'

    `What prospect do I 'ave wiz you? Your father say to me, eef you stick at one, you go on playing wiz me, eef you go up, you're fired. If I play well, I lose my job; eef I don't, I get fired anyway.' He gazed moodily at a quivering pink balloon, `Full of 'ot air, like everyone in Palm Beach.'

    Angel had such a big mouth, thought Bibi, that when he yawned he looked really bored.

    Stuffed breast of chicken followed and every time she tried to engage him in conversation, a new vegetable was plonked between them. Once again Angel wolfed everything on his plate, and Bibi ate nothing.

    `Are you sleeming? You don't need to.' Angel looked her up and down. `You look good tonight. Why don't you look like that all the time?'

    `I could hardly wear this dress to the office.'

    `You'd get better results,' said Angel, forking up her chicken.

    `I want to be taken seriously as a woman.'

    `No-one know you're a woman in those 'orrible suits. Why you deliberately make youself look awful with those beeg glasses and your hair scraped back? I nevair knew you had a body before this evening. Why you 'ide it?'

    `I don't know,' mumbled Bibi.

    `Because you're frightened of sex. You don't think anyone will love you except for zee money.'

    `And would they?' asked Bibi with a sob.

    `Of course, if you stop hurling zee weight around.' Leaning across, Angel pinched the turquoise woman's roll, spread it thickly with butter and tipped salt over it.

    `That's so bad for you,' reproached Bibi.

    `Zere you go again. Stop trying to improve people.'

    Across the room Bart was singularly unamused to see his grossly underhandicapped ringer getting on far too well with his daughter. He should never have let them sit by themselves. Detesting small talk, he'd intended spending dinner talking polo with Angel.

    `What's a toyboy?' boomed the Queen of England's second cousin who was sitting on Bart's right. `You Americans, Mr Aldgate, are so good at remembering names.'

    Bibi felt as though for twenty-two years she'd been a ship wrecked at the bottom of the ocean which is suddenly aware far above of a sun warming the surface.