Polo. Part 1

Polo.

by Jilly Cooper

1.

Queen Augusta's Boarding School for Girls has a splendid academic reputation, but on a sweltering afternoon in June one of its pupils was not paying attention to her English exam. While her cla.s.smates scribbled away, Perdita Macleod was drawing a polo pony. Outside, the scent of honeysuckle drifted in through the french windows, the cuckoo called from an acid-green poplar copse at the end of the lawn. Perdita, gazing out, thought longingly of the big tournament at Ruts.h.i.+re Polo Club where the semi-finals of the Ruts.h.i.+re Cup were being played. All her heroes were taking part: Ricky France-Lynch, Drew Benedict, Seb and Dommie Carlisle, the mighty Argentines, Miguel and Juan O'Brien, and, to crown it, the Prince of Wales.

Fretfully, Perdita glanced at her exam paper which began with a poem by Newbolt: 'And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,' she read, she read, 'Or the selfish hope 'Or the selfish hope of a of a season's fame, season's fame, But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote - Play up! Play up! and play the game!' Play up! Play up! and play the game!'

'Are Newbolt's views of team spirit outdated?' asked the first question. Perdita took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote 'Yes' in her disdainful blue scrawl, 'the schoolboy in the poem must be an utter jerk and a poofter to boot to prefer his captain's hand on his shoulder to a season's fame and a ribboned coat.'

She put down her pen and thought how much she'd like a ribboned coat, one of those powder-blue blazers, braided with jade-green silk. Hamish, her ghastly stepfather, never gave her nearly a large enough allowance. Then she thought of fame. Perdita wanted to be a famous polo player more than anything else in the world. Being at a boarding school, she could not play in the termtime and had so far only achieved the first team of a suburban pony club of hopelessly low standard. When her family moved to their splendid new house in Ruts.h.i.+re in the autumn, however, she'd be able to have a pony and join a good club like Ruts.h.i.+re or Cirencester just over the border.

G.o.d, she was bored with this exam. She lit a cigarette, hoping it would encourage her form-mistress, who was adjudicating, to expel her. But, despite the furious wavings of paper by the swot on her right, her form-mistress didn't react. She was far too engrossed in Perdita's Jackie Collins, which she'd confiscated the day before and round which she'd now wrapped the dust jacket of Hilary Spurling's biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett.

Perdita took another drag and glanced at the next question: 'Do you find the poems of Thomas Hardy unduly preoccupied with death?'

It wasn't an afternoon for death. Perdita slid through the french windows across the sunlit lawn. Once out into Rutminster High Street, she tugged out the tails and undid the top b.u.t.tons of her s.h.i.+rt, hitched up her navy-blue skirt a few inches and wrinkled her navy-blue socks. Conscious that men fancied schoolgirls, she left on her black and pink striped tie, but loosened her hair from its tortoisesh.e.l.l clasp so it cascaded white-blond down her back, eliciting wolf-whistles from two workmen mending the road.

Perdita stuck her nose in the air; her sights were set higher than roadmenders. She was a big girl for fourteen, tall and broad in the shoulder, with pale, luminous skin and a full, sulky mouth. A long Greek nose and large, very wide-apart eyes, as dark as elderberries, gave her the look of a creature of fable, a unicorn that might vanish at any moment.

The main gates of Ruts.h.i.+re Polo Club were swarming with police because of the Prince's visit. Taking a short cut, Perdita clambered over a wall to the right, fighting her way through the undergrowth, scratching her legs on brambles and stinging nettles, until she reached the outskirts of the club. A vast emerald-green ground stretched ahead of her. On the right were the pony lines, where incredibly polished ponies, tied to iron rails in the shade of a row of horse chestnuts, were -stamping, nudging, flattening ears at each other and aiming kicks at any fly eating their bellies.

G.o.d, they were beautiful, thought Perdita longingly, and curiously naked and vulnerable with their hogged manes and bound-up tails.

Beyond the pony lines stood the little clubhouse with its British, American and Argentine flags. Beyond that reared the stands and the pink-and-white tent for the sponsors' lunch before Sunday's final. Cars for today's semi-final already lined both sides of the field. Polo fever had reached an all-time high this season due to the Prince's impending wedding to Lady Diana Spencer.

Ringing Ground One and Ground Two behind the clubhouse were ma.s.sive ancient trees, their wonderful variety of green occasionally interrupted by the rhubarb-pink of a copper beech. With their lower branches nibbled level by itinerant cows, they looked like an army of dowagers in midi-dresses. To the north, through this splendidly impressive backdrop, could be glimpsed the rose-pink roof of Rutminster Hall, a charming Queen Anne manor house, home of Sir David Waterlane, a polo fanatic who owned the surrounding nine hundred acres.

Perdita scratched her nettle stings. The moment she was famous, she decided darkly, as an orange and black striped helicopter landed on the greensward behind the clubhouse, she would go everywhere by air. Envy turned to excitement as the helicopter doors burst open and two young players, both in evening s.h.i.+rts and dinner jacket trousers, jumped out. Instantly Perdita recognized Seb and Dommie Carlisle, otherwise known as the Heavenly Twins. Vastly brave, blond and stocky like two golden bear cubs, it was said that any girl in the twins' lives, and there were legions, had to play second fiddle to polo and the other twin.

Next moment a small, fat, bald man with the tiny mean eyes and wide jaw of a bilious hippo, who was wearing an orange-and-black polo s.h.i.+rt and straining white breeches, charged up bellowing, 'For Christ's sake, hurry up. The umpires are waiting to go on. We should have started five minutes ago. Why are you so late?'

'We started late,' said Seb Carlisle, putting his arm round the fat man's shoulders. 'Dommie had this terrific redhead.'

'No, Seb had this terrific brunette,' came the m.u.f.fled tones of Dommie Carlisle. Having whipped his s.h.i.+rt over his head to reveal a bronzed and incredibly muscular back, he nearly collided with the little fence round the clubhouse as he desperately tried to undo his cufflinks from the outside.

'Well, if I can be on time, I can't see why you b.l.o.o.d.y can't,' shouted the fat man, whom Perdita now identified as Victor Kaputnik. Originally Hungarian, Victor was a pharmaceutical billionaire and famous polo patron who employed the twins as professionals and whose helicopter and fuel had just transported them from London.

Polo players are rated by handicap, which ranges from minus two goals, which means an absolute beginner, to ten goals for the very top-cla.s.s player. This has nothing to do with the number of goals they may score, but is an indication of their ability. Although only twenty, the twins already had four-goal handicaps. Much of their energy was spent ripping off Victor Kaputnik. Longingly, Perdita watched them sprint into the clubhouse.

Outside, people carrying gla.s.ses of Pimm's or beer were drifting towards the stands. Perdita was dying for a c.o.ke and a sandwich, but she hadn't brought any money. She lit another f.a.g to take the edge off her appet.i.te. Looking at the scoreboard, she saw that today's first semi-final was a needle match between Victor's team, the Kaputnik Tigers, who were wearing orange-and-black s.h.i.+rts, and the Alderton Flyers, in duck-egg blue, who were all four sitting near a Lamborghini parked under a chestnut tree, zipping up their boots. There was The Hon. Basil Baddingham, a notorious roue with patent-leather hair and a laughing, swarthy face, who gave Perdita a terrific eyemeet, and Drew Benedict, a das.h.i.+ng blond captain in the Welsh Guards, with very regular features and eyes to match his blue s.h.i.+rt. And there, Perdita caught her breath, was her utter, utter G.o.d: Ricky France-Lynch, grimly fastening on his kneepads and refusing to exchange banter with the others. Ricky, who had the beautiful, lean, powerful body, the coa.r.s.e, black curls and the sensitive, yet virile, features of a Russian ballet dancer, was the best-looking player in England, and had a nine-goal handicap. The most talented and dedicated player, he was also the most tricky.

Not for nothing had the Argentine players nicknamed him El Orgulloso, El Orgulloso, the proud one. the proud one.

Standing slightly apart from the other three, swinging a polo stick furiously round and round, and champing to get into the fray, was their patron, Bart Alderton. An American airplane billionaire and the owner of television stations and newspapers, Bart was a still strikingly handsome man in his late forties, with thick grey hair, tinged with red like wolf's pelt and a belligerent suntanned face. One of the most renowned and feared predators in the world markets, where he snapped up companies before they could even blink, Bart had houses and strings of polo ponies in five countries. Known as the artful tax dodger, he seldom paid tax in any of them.

Today Bart was determined to wipe the floor with his old rival Victor Kaputnik, whom Bart had taken a girl off many years ago, and who in revenge last year had appealed to the Monopolies Commission and blocked Bart's taking over a leading British airplane manufacturer.

Victor had brought down a new bimbo who he was keen to impress and was equally anxious to win.

Bart had Drew Benedict, Basil Baddingham and Ricky France-Lynch on his team for the English season. Bart liked Drew and Bas, who were amateurs, suitably deferential and prepared to socialize with him for the sake of having all their bills picked up. Ricky, who earned a long salary playing for Bart as a professional, was an entirely different proposition. Bart resented Ricky's arrogance and detachment. He was incommunicative before matches and disappeared home like smoke afterwards. Today he'd even refused to have a team meeting, arguing that there was no point when Bart never did anything he was told.

It further irritated Bart, as the teams walked down to the stretch of green behind the back line where the grooms were warming up their ponies for the first chukka, that all the girls gazed at Ricky, not at him.

The Alderton Flyers were shortly joined on the field by the Kaputnik Tigers, who consisted of Victor Kaputnik, who'd just taken out his teeth and had a slug of brandy to steady his nerves, the Carlisle twins, who erupted on to the field as joyous as otters, and a nine-goal Chilean player called Jesus, who lived in Victor's house and coached him every day and with whom Victor had just had a blazing row, because the Chilean had run up a 5,000 telephone bill, ringing his girlfriend in Chile.

'Talk about Chile con carphone,' said Seb Carlisle, collapsing with laughter, as the two sides formed up on the halfway line.

A second later the umpire, in his striped s.h.i.+rt, had thrown the white ball in, sticks slashed and cracked, stirrups c.h.i.n.ked and expletives flew as the players struggled to get it out, followed by a hailstorm of hooves on the dry ground as everyone hurtled towards goal.

Blocking a cut-shot from Jesus, Ricky took the ball back upfield, changing direction three times to fox the opposition. As he hurtled towards goal in a cloud of dust, the obvious pa.s.s was to Drew on his right. Looking towards Drew, Ricky flicked a lovely under-the-neck shot round to Bas, who slammed the ball between the posts.

'b.l.o.o.d.y marvellous,' screamed Perdita, jumping up and down. The rest of the crowd clapped languidly.

As the Tigers edged ahead, however, it was plain to Perdita, who was watching every stroke, that Bart was a much better player than Victor, who despite the Chilean's coaching, just cantered about getting in everyone's way. Ricky, she realized, was much the best player, but his team-mate, the blue-eyed Drew Benedict, normally the most dependable of players, must have been celebrating too heavily last night. Missing pa.s.s after pa.s.s, he was having the greatest difficulty in controlling the Chilean's dazzling aggression.

2.

Sitting in the stands with the sun behind them, sat the wives and girlfriends of the players, but all wearing dark gla.s.ses, so no one could see if they were bored. Bart Alderton's wife, Grace, a puritan mother in her forties, had breeding and old money and did a huge amount for charity. Marrying her after ditching his loyal and loving first wife had given Bart the connections and the extra cash to turn him into a billionaire. Described by Basil Baddingham as the only social grace Bart had acquired on the way up, Grace was wearing a Cartier watch, a string of pearls and a purple silk dress printed with pansies. Her dark hair was drawn back in a bun, and a straw hat with a purple silk band shaded her austere but beautiful face. Grace considered suntans both vulgar and ageing. In her soft white hands lay a red notebook in which she kept the score and recorded every botched shot and missed penalty during the game and the name of the Alderton Flyer responsible.

Next to Grace sat Sukey Elliott, who'd got engaged to Drew Benedict the day before - hence Drew's hangover. She seemed to remember every match played and goal scored by Drew in the last two seasons. A keen horsewoman herself, Sukey was the sort of girl who could get up and do the ponies if Drew had a hangover. Sukey had a neat, rather than an exciting, figure, and a horsey, not unattractive, face. Her light brown hair was taken off her forehead by a velvet bow. She was wearing a blue-spotted s.h.i.+rt-waister dress for the party Lady Waterlane always gave in her beautiful house across the park on the Thursday evening of Ruts.h.i.+re Cup Week.

Sukey would make the perfect army wife, always showing a charming deference to the wives of superiors, in this case Grace Alderton. But even more valuable in Drew's eyes, Sukey possessed a hefty private income which, after marriage, would enable him to resign his commission and play polo full time.

'We're thinking of having our wedding list at either the General Trading Company or Peter Jones or Harrods. Which would you suggest?' Sukey asked Grace.

On Sukey's left in the row below sat Victor's bimbo, a red-headed night-club hostess called Sharon, whose heavy eye make-up was running and whose uplifted b.r.e.a.s.t.s were already burning.

'Blimey it's 'ot,' she said to Sukey. 'Why do the 'orses keep b.u.mpin' into each uvver?'

Grace would have ignored Sharon, regarding her as both common and part of the opposition. Sukey was kinder and enjoyed imparting information.

It's called a ride-off,' she explained. 'When a ball is. .h.i.t, it creates its own right of way, and the player who hit it is ent.i.tled to hit it again. But if another player puts his horse's shoulder in front of that first player's horse's shoulder, and a good horse will feel the pressure and push the other horse off the line, then the second player takes up the right of way. If you cross too closely in front of another rider - like someone shooting out in front of you on the motorway - it's a foul.'

'Ow, I see,' said Sharon, who plainly didn't. 'And why does the scoreboard say Victor's team's winning when there seem to have been more goals down the uvver end?'

'That's because they change ends after each goal,' said Sukey kindly, 'so no-one gets the benefit of the wind.'

'I could do with the benefit of some wind,' said Sharon, fanning herself with her programme. 'It's bleedin' 'ot.'

'It is,' agreed Sukey. 'Would you like to borrow my hat?'

Grace Alderton thought Sukey was a lovely young woman who would make a splendid wife for Drew. She did not feel at all the same about Chessie France-Lynch who rolled up halfway through the fourth chukka in a coloured vest, no bra, frayed denim bermudas and torn pink espadrilles, clutching a large gla.s.s of Pimm's and a copy of Barchester Towers. Barchester Towers. Chessie, who had bruised, scabious-blue eyes, and looked like a Botticelli angel who'd had too much nectar at lunchtime, made no secret of the fact that she found polo irredeemably boring. Being stuck at home with a three-year-old son, William, polis.h.i.+ng silver cups and taking burnt meat out of the oven, because Ricky hadn't got back from a match or was coping with some crisis in the yard, was not Chessie's idea of marriage. Chessie, who had bruised, scabious-blue eyes, and looked like a Botticelli angel who'd had too much nectar at lunchtime, made no secret of the fact that she found polo irredeemably boring. Being stuck at home with a three-year-old son, William, polis.h.i.+ng silver cups and taking burnt meat out of the oven, because Ricky hadn't got back from a match or was coping with some crisis in the yard, was not Chessie's idea of marriage.

'You've missed an exciting match, Francesca,' said Grace pointedly.

'I'd have been on time,' grumbled Chessie, 'if that goon in the bar didn't take half an hour to make a Pimm's.'

'Better go and help out,' said Commander Harris, the club's secretary, known as 'Fatty', waddling off to the bar.

'To help himself to another drink, the disgusting old soak,' said Chessie. 'Congratulations,' she went on, sitting down next to Sukey. 'When are you getting married?'

'In September, so that Drew can finish the polo season.'

'When did he propose?'

'On Sunday. It was so sweet. He asked me to look after his signet ring before the match, then put it onmy wedding-ring finger, and said would I, and now he's bought me this heavenly ring.'

'Nice,' said Chessie, admiring the large but conventional diamond and sapphires. 'Drew must have had to flog at least one of Bart's ponies to pay for that.'

Grace's red lips tightened, and even more so when the players, who always seemed to be playing on some distant part of the field, for once surged over to the four-inch-high wooden boards (as the sidelines are known in polo) near the stands. Ignoring Ricky's yells to leave the ball, Bart barged in, missed an easy shot and enabled Seb Carlisle to whip the ball away to Dommie, his twin, who took it down the field and scored.

'When I say f.u.c.king leave it, Bart, for f.u.c.k's sake leave it,' Ricky's bellow of exasperation rang round the field, eliciting a furious entry in Grace's red book and an extremely beady glance from Miss Lodsworth, a local bossy boots and one of the whiskery old trouts always present at polo matches.

'It was my ball,' shouted Bart. 'I paid for this f.u.c.king team, and I'm going to hit the G.o.ddam ball '

To lighten the atmosphere, as the players cantered back to change ponies after the fourth chukka, Sukey warmly informed Chessie that Ricky had already scored two splendid goals.

'Good,' said Chessie lightly. 'We might not have black gloom all the way home for a change. He still won't talk, mind you. Even if he wins, he's too hyped up to say anything.'

Sukey's total recap of the match was mercifully cut short by the arrival of one of Bas Baddingham's gorgeous mistresses, a long-haired blonde called Ritz Maclaren. She and Chessie proceeded to gossip noisily about their friends until Grace hushed them reprovingly and asked Chessie what she intended to wear for Lady Waterlane's party that evening.

'What I've got on,' said Chessie. 'Until Ricky's father relents and gives us some cash, or Ricky gets his polo act together, I can't see myself ever affording a new dress. It's the ponies that get new shoes in our house' - she waved a torn espadrille hanging on the end of a dusty foot at Grace - 'not me.'

'It's not very respectful to Lady Waterlane not to change,' reproved Grace. To which Chessie replied that Clemency Waterlane would be so busy wrapped round Juan O'Brien, her husband's Argentine pro, that she would hardly notice.

'I can't think why David Waterlane doesn't boot Clemency out,' said Ritz Maclaren, who was calmly removing her tights.

'Terrified Juan would go as well,' said Chessie. 'David told Ricky there was no problem getting another wife, but he'd never find another hired a.s.sa.s.sin as good as Juan.'

'Oh, good shot, Ricky,' cried Sukey. 'Do watch, Chessie; your husband's playing so well.'

As the bell went to end the fifth chukka, Perdita raced down to the pony lines to catch a glimpse of Matilda, Ricky France-Lynch's legendary blue roan, whom he always saved for the last chukka.

Ponies that had played in the fifth chukka, which, except for Victor's, had had every ounce of strength pushed out of them, were coming off the field, drenched in sweat, nostrils blood-red as poppies, veins standing up like a network of snakes. Bart's horse, having been yanked around, was pouring blood from a cut mouth, sending scarlet froth flying everywhere.

Grooms instantly went into a frenzy of activity, untacking each pony, sponging it down, throwing water over its head, taking down its tail. Other grooms were loading already dried-off ponies from earlier chukkas into lorries for the journey home, while still others were leading them round, or just holding them as they waited to go on, quivering with pitch-fright, while their riders towelled off the sweat and discussed tactics for the last chukka.

'That Ricky France-Lynch's got a wonderful eye,' said the security man who was looking after the Prince's Jack Russell.

He's got wonderful eyes, thought Perdita wistfully. Deep-set, watchful, dark green as bay leaves and now, as they lighted on Matilda, his favourite pony, amazingly softened.

Before a game Matilda got so excited that her groom could hardly hold her. Snorting, neighing shrilly, kicking up the dust with stamping feet, watching the action withp.r.i.c.ked ears, her dark eyes searched everywhere for Ricky. As he walked over, she gave a great deep whicker of joy. They had hardly been separated a day since she was a foal. She was the fastest pony he'd ever ridden, turned at the gallop, and once, when she'd bucked him off in a fit of high spirits, had raced after the rider who had the ball and blocked the shot. There wasn't a player in the world who didn't covet Matilda. And now Ricky was going to need all her skills: the Alderton Flyers were three down.

The last chukka was decidedly stormy. Ricky scored two goals, then Drew and Bas one each, putting the Flyers ahead. Then Bart, frantic he was the only member of the team without a goal, missed an easy shot and took his whip to his little brown pony.

'It was your b.l.o.o.d.y fault, not the pony's,' howled Ricky, to the edification of the entire stand, 'and for Christ's sake get back.'

Evading Drew's clutches yet again, Jesus, the Chilean, thundered towards goal. In a mood of altruism and probably seeing a chance to be forgiven for the 5,000 telephone bill, he put the ball just in front of Victor, his patron, who, connecting for the first time in the match, tipped it between the posts and levelled the score to cheers and whoops from all round the ground. Victor immediately waved his stick exuberantly at his red-headed night-club hostess, who was just thinking how much better looking every man in the field was than Victor.

'Why's Victor's 'orse wearing so many straps? It looks like a bondage victim,' she asked Sukey.

'The saddle has to hold if you're going to lean out of it,' explained Sukey patiently.

'Ride hard, hit hard, and keep your temper,' said Brigadier Hughie, the club chairman and bore who'd just arrived.

Contrary to this advice, Bart, incensed that Victor had scored, proceeded to ride the fat little Hungarian off the ball at such a dangerous angle that Bart was promptly fouled and the Tigers awarded a forty-yard penalty. Bart then swore so hard at the umpire that the penalty was upped to thirty yards, which Jesus had no difficulty driving between the posts, putting the Tigers ahead again.

In the closing, desperately fought seconds of the game Jesus got the ball and set off for goal, his bay mare's hooves rattling like a firing squad on the dry ground. Ricky, on Matilda, belted after him and had caught up when the bay mare stumbled. As the bell went Matilda cannoned into her and ponies and riders crashed to the ground in front of the stands to the horrified gasps of the crowd. As the dust cleared, Ricky and Jesus could be seen to have got to their feet. The Chilean's bay mare got up more slowly and, after an irritated shake, set off at a gallop for the pony lines. Matilda, however, made several abortive attempts and, when she finally lurched up, her off fore was hanging horribly.

Oblivious of the whiskery old trout Miss Lodsworth complaining noisily about the disgusting cruelty of the game, Perdita watched helplessly, tears streaming down her face. On came the vet's van; the crowd fell silent. As screens were put round the pony, Fatty Harris, the club secretary, somewhat unsteadily joined the little group. Victorious but grim-faced, with Dommie Carlisle unashamedly wiping his eyes, the Kaputnik Tigers rode back to the pony lines where the grooms of the great Argentines, Juan and Miguel O'Brien, and their patron, Sir David Waterlane, were warming up ponies for the next match in which they were playing with the Prince of Wales.

Behind the screen, however, an argument was raging.

'You're not putting Mattie down,' hissed Ricky. 'If it's a cannon bone, we can slap her into plaster. I want her X-rayed.'

'She'll be no use for polo,' protested the vet.

'Maybe not, but I'm b.l.o.o.d.y well going to breed from her. It's all right, lovie,' Ricky's voice softened as he stroked the trembling mare.

'Give her a shot of Buscopan,' advised Fatty Harris. 'Don't be f.u.c.king stupid,' snapped Ricky. 'If you kill the pain, she'll tread on it and make it worse.'

'Got to get her off the field, Ricky,' said Fatty fussily, his breath stale from too many lunchtime whiskies. 'Prince's match is due to start in ten minutes. Can't hold it up.'

Utterly indifferent to the fact that in the end he held up the Prince's match for half an hour, and that most of the spectators and some of the players regarded himas appallingly callous for not putting Matilda out of her agony, Ricky, helped by Drew and Bas, gently coaxed the desperately hobbling mare into a driven-up horse box. Ricky would stay inside with her, while one of his grooms drove them the eight miles home, to where the vet would bring his X-ray equipment.

Green beneath his suntan, shaking violently and pouring with sweat, Ricky spoke briefly to his wife Chessie when she came over and hugged him. Chessie had often been jealous of Matilda in the past; now she could only pity Ricky's anguish.

'I'm desperately sorry, darling. When'll you be back?' 'Probably not at all. I'll ring you.'

'But what about Lady Waterlane's reception?' asked an outraged Bart, who had just joined them. 'You can't miss that.'

Ricky looked at Bart uncomprehendingly.

'13-13-b.u.g.g.e.r Lady Waterlane,' he said coldly.