Polo (7 page)

    Very carefully he spooned the contents of the Chappie tin into Millicent's bowl and, putting it down, sprinkled biscuits over it. Then, as he walked towards the telephone and realized he'd scattered biscuits all over the floor, he started to shake, his thighs suddenly seemed to have a life of their own, leaping and trembling. His heart was crashing against his rib-cage.

    The telephone was dead, so he went over to Louisa's flat, where he found a young man in pink boxer shorts brandishing the garlic sausage, like a large cock, at a frantically giggling Louisa. Her giggles died when she saw Ricky.

    `Can I use your telephone?'

    Louisa nodded. `Use the one in the bedroom.' `Chessie's left me,' Ricky told Drew over the telephone. `Christ - I am sorry.'

    `Did you know anything?'

    `I'd heard rumours.'

    `Why the fuck didn't you warn me?'

    `I hoped it would blow over.'

    `Who's the man?'

   `You're not going to like this,' Drew paused. `Bart Alderton.'

    `Bart,' said Ricky incredulously, `but he's old enough to be…'

    `Her sugar daddy; that's what attracted her. Look, I'll come over.'

    `No - I'm going round to kill him.'

    `For Christ's sake, you're in no condition.'

    But Ricky'd hung up.

    Louisa was standing in the doorway, her eyes filled with tears.

    `I'm so sorry,' she stammered. `You oughtn't to drive. Wait till morning.'

    But Ricky pushed straight past her. Millicent, having wolfed her dinner and hoovered up the biscuits on the floor, was determined not to be left behind and jumped belching into the now mended BMW.

    It was a warm night. The clouds had rolled back leaving brilliant stars and a rising moon. As Ricky couldn't find the top of the whisky bottle, he wedged it in the side pocket, taking repeated slugs as he drove. He covered the twenty miles in as many minutes, overtaking two cars at once on the narrow roads, shooting crossroads. A cold rage had settled in. It wasn't Chessie's fault. Bart Alderton could corrupt anyone.

    The electric gates had not yet been installed, so Ricky was able to open the iron ones. Deer and sheep blinked in the headlights as he drove up an avenue of chestnuttrees. As he rattled over the second sheep grid, where the drive opened up into a big sweep of gravel, the beautiful seventeenth-century manor house, with its ruff of lavender and white roses clambering to the roof, was suddenly floodlit.

    Little Millicent quivered in the back as four Rottweilers came roaring round the side of the house, fangs bared, growling horribly, scrabbling at the car's paintwork with thick black claws. Taking another slug of whisky, Ricky got out of the car and, because he was totally unafraid, only stopping to pat a sleek, snarling head or mutter a casual `good dog', was able to walk unscathed through the pack and ring the door bell.

    A security guard answered. His shoulders seemed to fill the door.

    `Mrs France-Lynch?' said Ricky.

    `You've got the wrong house, buddy.'

    `I'm coming in to wait for her.'

    `Who's that?' called Chessie's voice.

    For a second the security man was caught on the hop. Shoving him aside, Ricky walked into the house. Chessie looked floodlit too. She was wearing a red silk dress, long-sleeved, high-necked and slinky, black shoes with four-inch heels, and huge rubies at her ears, neck and wrists. Her hair had been newly streaked, cut shorter and swept off her flawless face. Ricky caught his breath. She looked staggering. The tramp had become a lady.

    `How dare you barge in here?' Radiant with spite, Chessie moved towards him. `Get out. Bart'll be back in a minute, then we're going out - to Rubens' Retreat.' It was as though she was outlining the evening's whereabouts for a baby-sitter.

    `How long's this been going on?'

    `My being miserable? Since I met you, I guess.' `You're coming home.'

    `To that dump! I'm bloody not.'

    She caught a waft of whisky. Ricky was wearing a crumpled dark blue shirt and jeans. Unshaven, very brown, his black hair falling over his forehead, he looked savage and dangerous.

    Ricky dropped his eyes first and, aware of the hovering guard, turned left into the drawing room which had been

    exquisitely furnished in soft corals and yellows by Grace. All the cushions looked as if they had been blown up with bicycle pumps.

    `L-1-look, I know things have been difficult, but I love you.'

    `Do you now?'

    `I've been spending so much time on the ponies, so we could get straight. Things'll get better.'

    `Bullshit,' screamed Chessie hysterically. `Polo's a drug only curable by poverty or death, and you're hooked.' `We won today.'

    `So fucking what?' sneered Chessie. `Bart's still going to drop you.'

    Ricky bit his lip. `David's going to sponsor me next year, and I've almost certainly got a patron for Palm Beach.' `That still won't be enough to live on.'

    `I'll tap my father.'

    `Your father's a disgusting, crabby old man,' taunted Chessie, `and you're getting more like him every day. I'm not having you damaging Will, like Herbert damaged you, making you incapable of showing affection for anything but a horse. I'm surprised you noticed we'd gone.'

    Under the chandelier in the centre of the room, he could see she was uncharacteristically wearing a lot of make-up - making her look much harder. Bart's influence was already working.

    `And you think Bart's the answer,' said Ricky slowly. `I was fooled at the beginning. He'll crucify you; he's only interested in conquest. He beats up his horses; soon he'll do the same to you.'

    He already has, thought Chessie, stretching voluptuously. She could hardly sit down after Bart had spanked her that afternoon.

    `Bart's the most considerate man I've ever met.' Then, as Ricky raised his eyebrows, `and the best lover. He could give you a bit of coaching. I'm fed up with being married to a failure in and out of bed.'

    Ricky clenched his fists. For a second Chessie thought he was going to hit her. Mocking him with her enhanced beauty, she sauntered over to the drinks trolley, and with a totally steady hand poured herself a vodka and tonic. Herdress was so low-cut at the back that Ricky could see a violet bruise above the cleft of her buttocks.

    `I'll make a bargain with you,' she said, swinging round. `I'll come back to you the day you go to ten
and
win the Gold Cup.' She ticked the conditions off with long, scarlet nails.
`And
the day England win back the Westchester.'

    It was virtually an impossibility. No English player had gone to ten since before the war, and the Westchester Cup, the Holy Grail of Anglo-American polo, had remained uncontested in American hands since 1939.

    `You bitch,' whispered Ricky.

    `I agree, it's highly unlikely,' said Chessie. Her laugh sounded horrible, almost mad.

    `Daddy! Daddy!' Woken by the din, frightened by the shouting, Will, in pale blue pyjamas, trailing a huge, white, fluffy monkey, obviously the result of a trip to Harrods, ran into the room and threw himself into Ricky's arms. He was so excited he couldn't speak. Ricky clung on to his warm, chunky body, which smelt of talcum powder and shampoo, seeking sanity and comfort. This couldn't be happening. He couldn't let Chessie take Will away.

    `Did you bring me a present?'

    The cowboy suit was at home. Putting his hand in his jeans' pocket, Ricky pulled out a little silver pony with a detachable saddle and bridle that he'd been given as an extra prize for captaining the winning team. `Here you are.'

    `Horsie,' said Will, enraptured. `Horsie like Mattie.' Then, turning to Chessie: `Daddy stay the night?'

    `Daddy's going,' said Chessie icily, reaching for the bell.

    `Let me keep him for tonight.'

    `No,' said Chessie alarmed. `You'll kidnap him.' `What are you planning to do with him?'

    `Take him back to America of course, but we'll be back and forth to England all the time. Bart does so much business. I'm sure the lawyers will grant you visitation rights.'

    `Visitation rights?' said Ricky, enraged. `You're even talking like a fucking American now. He's my child, and I'm not having that bastard bringing him up. We're going home,' he said, pushing Will's blond fringe out of his eyes. Then, when Will looked doubtful: 'Millicent's in the car and you can see Louisa.'

    Aware of the security man hovering in the hall, Ricky made a dive for the french windows.

    `No,' screamed Chessie.

    `Mummy,' bellowed Will, suddenly scared.

    `Stop him,' yelled Chessie.

    But Ricky was already sprinting across the lawn, with Will bawling his head off, and next minute the BMW was careering down the drive, scattering Rottweilers. They met Bart coming the other way and had to mount the verge to pass him. Ricky was in luck. Bart, because he was coming to pick up Chessie, had left the gates open. Poor Millicent was bouncing around in the back.

    As stone walls and dusty August trees flashed by, Ricky knew he ought to fasten Will's seat belt, but all that seemed important for the moment was putting as much distance as possible between himself and Bart. There was a crossroads in half a mile where he could lose him. In mounting the verge he had spilt the whisky and the car reeked of drink.

    `Want Mummy!' howled Will. `Want Mummy!'

    `It's all right, darling, you're safe. Daddy loves you, you'll see Mummy soon. I've got a present for you at home.'

    Will's sobs subsided a little. Ahead the River Fleet gleamed in the moonlight. As they hurtled towards the bridge, Ricky put a hand on Will's leg to steady and reassure him. Next moment the moon slid behind a big, black cloud. Too late, he saw, in the pale glow of the headlights, a fox cub racing down the middle of the bridge towards him, its eyes yellow and panic-stricken. Instinctively Ricky swung to the left and hit the side of the bridge head on. Over the almighty crunch, he heard Will scream, felt an agonizing pain in his elbow and then blackness.

    The two speed cops reached him before Bart. Millicent was whimpering in the back. Will was killed outright, his neck broken by the impact of the dashboard. Ricky was unconscious, the gash down the side of his face pouring blood, his right arm in a curiously vulnerable position. You could smell whisky all over the car.

    `Plastered,' said one of the traffic cops, shaking his head, `and neither of them wearing seat belts.'

    Then, as the moon came out, he noticed the polo stickers on the windscreen and the little silver pony clutched in Will's hand.

    `Christ, it's Ricky France-Lynch,' he said.

    As his companion rang for an ambulance, he tried to coax Millicent out of the back. Seeing Ricky's licence on the floor, he flipped through it.

    `Thought as much,' he muttered. `Two drunk-driving charges already. They'll clobber him for manslaughter, poor sod. He thought the world of that kid, poor little bugger.'

8

    Nearly four months after William France-Lynch was killed in a car crash and his father arrested on charges of manslaughter and drunken driving, Perdita Macleod broke up for the Christmas holidays. Having been expelled from Queen Augusta's for carousing with the Carlisle twins and walking out of her English exam, she had been dispatched to an even stricter and more expensive boarding school. Only the threat that she wouldn't be given a polo pony for Christmas had prevented her running away.

    To the bliss of breaking up was the added thrill that her mother and stepfather had at last moved into Brock House, a rambling medieval rectory on the RutshireGloucestershire border. Six miles from Rutshire Polo Club, it was, even more excitingly, only two miles from Eldercombe, the village in which Ricky France-Lynch lived. Although the poor darling, Perdita reflected bitterly, was still cooling his heels in Rutminster gaol awaiting trial.

    Terrified lest her mother would be eccentrically dressed or, even worse, blub in `Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem', Perdita had failed to send home the invitation to the end-of-term carol service, merely telling her to pick her up afterwards. Perdita was normally too idle to lift anything heavier than a cigarette, but today, in the hope of a lightning getaway, she had lugged her trunk, her record player, carrier bags full of posters, dirty washing, polo magazines, holiday work (some hope), Vivaldi the hampster and a yucca called Kevin down three flights of

    stairs and piled them up outside her school house.

    Alas, just as everyone was spilling out of chapel - identikit mothers in on-the-knee suits, identikit fathers in fawn coats with brown velvet collars - Perdita's mother, Daisy, rolled up in an absolutely filthy, falling-apart Mini and immediately started tooting and waving like a rainbow windmill. Abandoning the car and blocking everyone's way, she ran across the tarmac to fling her arms round her daughter.

    Finally Perdita, crimson in the face, was able to wriggle free and start hurling carrier bags into the car, as the held-up traffic tooted and everyone, particularly the fawn-coated fathers, stared in amazement.

    Why, thought Perdita savagely, does my mother have to be so wacky, and so demonstrative, and, even worse, look half the age of any of the other mothers? Daisy in fact looked adorable. In her early thirties, she had the round, grave, dark brown eyes, the rosy cheeks, the long, straight, shiny brown hair parted in the middle, and gaudy taste in clothes of a Matrioska doll.

    But when she stopped worrying and smiled, her eyes had the joyous sparkle and her mouth the dark pink bewitching softness of Hogarth's Shrimp Girl. Today she was less gaudy than usual. Trying to catch a landscape in a certain light before she left, she had forgotten to take off her painting smock or wash the Alizarin crimson off her hands and looked as if she'd been killing a pig. On her left cheek was a large splodge of burnt sienna, which she'd used to capture the faded ginger of the oak woods beneath the new house.

    `Oh look, there's Blue Teddy,' cried Daisy, in her slightly breathless voice which squeaked when she got excited. She propped Perdita's ancient teddy bear up between Kevin the yucca and the record player. `Now he can see out of the window, it's such a ravishing drive home. Oh, there's Miss Osbourne,' went on Daisy, scrabbling in the back as she saw Perdita's house mistress bearing down on them. `I bought her a bottle of Bristol Cream.'

    `No, Mum, she's an old bitch,' hissed Perdita. `For Christ's sake, get in, we're holding up the traffic.'

    Perdita! Have a good Christmas.' A group of classmates, to whom Perdita, with her beauty, outwardinsouciance and murderous wit, was a source of constant fascination, peered in through the window.

    `Are you Perdita's friends?' asked Daisy, who'd never been allowed to meet any of them. `How lovely! We've just moved to Rutshire. Perhaps you'd like to come and stay in the holidays.'

    The tooting was getting deafening.

    `Mum, for God's sake,' shrieked Perdita.

    `By-ee,' shouted Daisy, windmilling to Miss Osbourne and the group of girls as she set off in a succession of jerks down the drive, narrowly avoiding ramming the car in front as she stopped to admire the trailing yellow twigs of a willow tree against an angry navy-blue sky.

    `Can't think what's wrong with the car,' said Daisy as it ground to a halt and died just inside the school gates. The tooting became even more acrimonious as she frantically tried the ignition.

    `Need any help?' The father of Lucinda Montague, Perdita's sworn enemy, reeking of brandy from his office party, popped his head inside the car.

    `It won't budge,' said Daisy helplessly.

    "Fraid you've run out of petrol.'

    Daisy, who always found the wrong things funny, went off into peals of laughter. Perdita put her head in her hands. It was not until four fathers, all roaring with laughter, who'd also obviously been to office parties, lifted the Mini out of the way and Miss Osbourne had provided a can of petrol, and they'd reached the slow lane of the motorway, and Daisy'd apologized a hundred times, that Perdita thawed enough to light a cigarette and ask what the house was like.

    `Oh, gorgeous,' said Daisy, thrilled to be forgiven. `You cannot believe the views. This morning the whole valley was palest cobalt green with frost, and the shadows of the bare trees were… '

    `Do Eddie and Violet like it?' interrupted Perdita who was bored rigid by `Nature'.

    `Adore it! There's so much space after London.' `I bet they've bagged the best rooms.'

    `Every room is best. We're going to be so happy. You've already been asked to a Pony Club Barn Dance.'

    `I wouldn't be seen dead,' said Perdita scornfully. No-one who'd bopped the night away with Jesus and the Carlisle twins would lower herself to a Pony Club hop. `When can we get my pony?'

    `Well, I rang the twins as you suggested. They're in Argentina, but their groom put me on to a man outside Rutminster, who's got a bay mare. If you like her, subject to a vet's certificate, you should be able to have her right away, although Daddy may think you should wait till Christmas Day.'

    `That's stupid. Christmas isn't for ten days. I could be schooling or even hunting her by then. How much are you prepared to pay?'

    `I can't see Daddy going much above Ł500.'

    `You won't get a three-legged donkey for that,' snapped Perdita, stubbing out her cigarette and lighting another one.

    `The move's been dreadfully expensive,' began Daisy hopefully. `Perhaps if your report's good… '

    `Don't be fatuous. Daddy doesn't give a shit about my reports! Now if it were Violet or Eddie… '

    `That's not true,' protested Daisy, knowing it was. `When's Granny Macleod arriving?'

    `Twenty-third,' said Daisy gloomily.

    `That's all we need. Now she's a widow, she'll be more ghastly and self-obsessed than ever.'

    Daisy knew she ought to reprove Perdita, but she had never got on with her mother-in-law herself and was dreading having her for Christmas. Bridget Macleod, in her turn, had never forgiven her daughter-in-law for having what she referred to as `a past'.

    Nearly sixteen years ago, when she was only seventeen, Daisy had become pregnant while she was at art college. Her parents were so appalled when they learned the circumstances in which the baby was conceived that they threw Daisy out. Eventually Daisy gave birth to a daughter, and called her Perdita - `the lost one' - because she knew she couldn't afford to keep her. In utter despair, while going through the legal process of adoption, Daisy had met a trainee barrister, Hamish Macleod. Hamish was one of those stolid young men who grew a beard and had a

    flickering of social conscience during the sixties, which was firmly doused by the economic gloom of the seventies.

    Moved by Daisy's plight, rendered sleepless by her beauty, Hamish asked her to marry him so that she could keep the baby. Daisy had accepted with passionate gratitude. Hamish was good-looking and seemed kind; she was sure she could grow to love him - anything to keep Perdita. Hamish's family - particularly his mother, Bridget - were appalled. Scottish, lower-middle class, rigidly respectable, they branded Daisy a whore who had blighted their only son's dazzling career at the Bar. They had threatened to black the wedding unless Daisy put on a wedding ring and pretended that she was a young widow whose husband had been killed in a car crash.

    Daisy, after fifteen years of marriage, still looked absurdly young. Kind, sympathetic, dreamy, hopelessly disorganized, she had become increasingly insecure, because Hamish, who had now left the Bar and become a successful television producer, never stopped putting her down and complaining about her ineptitude as a mother, her lack of domesticity and her lousy dress sense. Subconsciously, he'd never forgiven her for having Perdita illegitimately and hit the roof if she looked at other men at parties. He also ruthlessly discouraged her considerable gifts as a painter, because they reminded him of her rackety art-student past and because he considered there was no money in it.

    Nor could he ever forgive Perdita for her strange beauty, her bolshiness and her dazzling athletic ability. Throughout the marriage he had pointedly lavished affection on the two children, Violet and Eddie, now aged thirteen and eight, whom he and Daisy had had subsequently. Less glamorous than Perdita, they were sweeter-tempered and better-adjusted.

    Daisy's fatal weakness was a reluctance to hurt anyone. She had tried and tried to screw up the courage to tell Perdita the truth about her birth, but, terrified of the tantrums this would trigger off, she had funked it, feeding her the official line that her father had been killed in a car crash. `We were so in love, darling, but he never knew I was pregnant.'

    Daisy dreaded the day when Perdita might want to know the name of her real father. At least her blinkered

    obsession with polo and ponies had some advantages. Aware, however, that Hamish didn't love her, Perdita tried to trigger off a response by behaving atrociously. Matters weren't helped by Bridget Macleod's ability to beam simultaneously at Hamish, Violet and Eddie, and freeze out Daisy and Perdita. This reduced Daisy to gibbering sycophancy and Perdita to utter outrageousness.

    Dark thoughts about her mother-in-law's impending visit occupied Daisy until darkness fell, by which time they had reached the village of Appleford where several cottages in the High Street already sported holly rings and the village shop window was bright with crackers and Christmas puddings. Brock House lay a quarter of a mile on, its gates flanked by pillars topped by stone badgers. Bumping down the pitted drive Daisy reached a fork. To the left, past vast unkept rose bushes and a dovecote, lay farm buildings which had been converted into garages, stables and a tackroom with paddocks behind. To the right, flowerbeds edged with box and a paved terrace led down stone steps to the back of Brock House. Shaggy with creepers, long and low, with its little lit-up windows, the house had a secretive air. On the far side, beyond a large lawn edged with herbaceous borders, the land dropped sharply into the Appleford Valley, thickly wooded with oaks and larches, and famous for its badger sets.

    Inside was chaos. Daisy had made heroic attempts to get straight after moving, but now the children had come home bringing their own brand of mess. Violet and Eddie were in the kitchen, and greeted their elder sister guardedly.

    `What's for supper?' asked Eddie, who was circling advertisements in
Exchange and Mart.

    `Chicken casserole and chocolate mousse to celebrate Perdita's first night home,' said Daisy.

    `There was,' said Violet. `You left the larder door open and Gainsborough got at the chicken. Then he was sick. I cleared it up, and I got some sausages from the village shop.'

    Thank God for Violet, thought Daisy. Violet Macleod had inherited Daisy's sweet nature and round face and Hamish's solid figure, freckles and curly, dark-red hair, which clashed with her high colour when she blushed. Shealso had beautifully turned-down amethyst eyes, which, she pointed out ruefully, matched her plump purple legs. Less bright than Perdita, she did much better at school because she was hard-working and methodical and because she knew you needed straight `A's to become a vet. Violet spent much of her time sticking up for her father and grandmother and protecting her mother from Perdita's tantrums. She was now combing the recently sick, long-haired ginger tomcat, Gainsborough, who was mewing horribly.

    `Stop it,' said Violet firmly. `You know fur balls make you sick.'

    Eddie, at eight, looked not unlike a bouncer in a nightclub. Slightly dyslexic, hugely entertaining, he was interested in making a fast buck and enjoying himself. He had already found another prep schoolboy across the valley with whom to spend his time. His current ambition was to have a gun for Christmas. Daisy was dragging her feet because she felt Eddie might easily murder his elder sister.

    `Give us a fag, Perdita,' said Eddie as Perdita got out a packet of Silk Cut.

    `Eddie!' said Violet, shocked. `You are much too young.' `Want us to show you round?' asked Eddie.

    Unloading the car, listening to the thundering feet and yells of excitement as the children raced along the passages, Daisy prayed that in this house they would at last be a really happy family.