Polo. Part 19

'Please let me see what Phil says,' whispered Perdita, whose face was now as white as Wayne's.

'Get out,' hissed Ricky, who needed all his strength to guide the staggering, cras.h.i.+ng Wayne into his box. 'Just f.u.c.k off.'

Phil Bagley arrived in a quarter of an hour.

'I was delivering one of Mark Phillips' calves,' he said indignantly. 'The things I do for you, Ricky. Now, where's this pony?'

As he went into his box Wayne was still pawing his belly. Then, slumping against the wall, he crashed to the ground.

'I'll give him a ma.s.sive jab of vitamin B,' said Phil when he'd examined him, 'and some Buscopan. It's obviously hurting him. Then we'd better get some fluids inside him. I guess it's twisted gut. Where's he been?'

'Escaped to Eldercombe, got into Miss L-L-Lodsworth's garden.'

'Jesus, you'd think he'd been programmed.'

As Phil loaded his syringe and Ricky tried to calm the terrified pony, whose eyes were quite glazed now, they heard frantic barking outside.

Next minute Miss Lodsworth's head appeared over the half-door, looking even more like a horse than Wayne. 'I've come to make a complaint.'

'Not now,' said Phil, who was holding the needle up to remove the air bubbles.

'p.i.s.s off,' muttered Ricky under his breath.

'I must speak to someone.'

'Can you wait somewhere else?' snapped Phil. I'm sorry, but we've got a critically sick horse here.'

'Sick, my eye,' thundered Miss Lodsworth, 'That horse isn't sick, it's dead drunk. It's just eaten all my cider apples.' There was a long pause. Crouching down, Phil sniffed Wayne's breath.

'I do believe you're right. How many apples d'you reckon he ate?'

'Close on a hundred.'

Ricky never thought he'd want to hug Miss Lodsworth. 'Are you sure?' he said, getting to his feet.

As he plunged the needle into Wayne's shoulder, Phil started to laugh. A second later, Dommie Carlisle, s.h.i.+vering slightly in just boxer shorts, appeared beside Miss Lodsworth.

'You've found him. Thank Christ. I've been looking everywhere. What's the matter with him?'

'p.i.s.sed as a newt,' said Ricky.

'I'm surprised you treat the matter so lightly,' bristled Miss Lodsworth. 'What about my apples?'

'He ought to have some painkillers,' said Phil, 'and we ought to get some fluids into him. Don't want him to wreck his liver.' But Wayne was sleeping peacefully.

'Better lay on some Fernet Branca for the morning,' said Dommie. 'I think I deserve a drink, Ricky.'

'You all all deserve a drink,' said Ricky turning to Miss Lodsworth. 'I'm frightfully s-s-sorry. I'll refund you for the apples, and any other damage. I haven't got any cider, but I can offer you plenty of whisky.' deserve a drink,' said Ricky turning to Miss Lodsworth. 'I'm frightfully s-s-sorry. I'll refund you for the apples, and any other damage. I haven't got any cider, but I can offer you plenty of whisky.'

Miss Lodsworth had had a long day. 'Oh all right, I haven't been inside this house since I used to come here to dances when your father was a boy. Not that he ever danced with me.'

After Ricky'd settled them in the drawing room with drinks, he went in search of Perdita. She wasn't on the wooden horse or in the yard or in the tack room. Little Chef tracked her down in the pink dusk at the bottom of the garden, with her arms round an apple tree, sobbing her heart out.

'Please G.o.d, make Wayne better,' she was saying over and over again, then started as Little Chef stood up on his stumpy back legs to lick her hand.

'I'm so sorry,' she wailed. 'Please give me another chance. I love it here so much. I promise not to cheek Frances and cut corners. I just love the ponies and Cheffie - and you - so much,' she couldn't stop herself adding.

In a year of working for him she had never cried or apologized. She looked so forlorn, so utterly defeated, her head drooping like a snowdrop, her wonderfully lithe body clinging almost orgiastically to the tree trunk. Ricky had to steel himself not to take her in his arms, but he would have been putting a match to a petrol-soaked bonfire, and he didn't want to hate himself any more than he did already.

'It's OK,' he said gently. 'He's not ill, just drunk. He'd helped himself to Miss Lodsworth's cider apples.'

'Oh, my G.o.d! Will he be OK?'

'Fine, except for a thumping hangover. But you can't afford to make mistakes like that. He might have got on to the motorway.'

'Like Little Chef,' shuddered Perdita, starting to cry again. 'That's what makes it so awful.'

'I over-reacted,' said Ricky dropping a hand on her hair. 'You can start full time next week if you like.'

'Oh, you are lovely.' Seizing his hand, Perdita covered it with kisses. 'I could make you better. I really do love you.'

Ricky felt dizzy. It was so long since he'd wanted someone like this.

'No, you don't,' he said firmly. 'You ought to be meeting more boys your own age, not lechers like Bas and the twins. If you're coming to work here full time, you're b.l.o.o.d.y well going to join the Pony Club.'

19.

Polo is largely a matter of pony power. Having left the Army, Drew Benedict had spent a great deal of Sukey's money buying really good ponies. With these he turned his game around and was gratified when his handicap was raised to eight in the autumn listings a year later. The following year, after an excellent May and June playing for David Waterlane, Drew felt he ought to put something back into the game. He therefore agreed to coach the Ruts.h.i.+re Pony Club for the polo champions.h.i.+ps, the finals of which were held at Cowdray at the end of July. Drew also quite liked an excuse to get away from Sukey on summer evenings. Used to commanding platoons, he was determined to knock the Ruts.h.i.+re teams into shape. One of his crosses was Perdita Macleod, who had now been working full time for Ricky for nine months and felt she knew everything.

Perdita, on the other hand, even though she was playing with seventeen to twenty-one year olds, regarded playing for the Pony Club as deeply infra dig. infra dig. She loathed being parted from Ricky for a second, and Felicia, the ponies Ricky and Drew had lent her were still very green She loathed being parted from Ricky for a second, and Felicia, the ponies Ricky and Drew had lent her were still very green Consequently she never stopped bellyaching to Daisy about how all the other Pony Club members had at least three ponies, and how humiliating it was having to hack to meetings when everyone else rolled up either in the latest horse boxes with grooms, or driving Porsches with telephones. Nor, she told Daisy, did that 'b.l.o.o.d.y old geriatric' Drew Benedict ever stop picking on her, and all the other boys in the team were such wimps. 'One of them started crying yesterday, when I hit him with my stick. It was only because he was using his elbows all the time. I tried to explain to Drew, but he just sent me off.'

'Aren't any of the boys attractive?' enquired Daisy hopefully.

'Not compared with Ricky,' snapped Perdita, 'and they all think Drew's absolutely marvellous, because he's an eight and a Falklands hero and all. He's such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'You're always saying that about Ricky,' said Daisy reasonably.

'But I'm madly in love with Ricky, so I put up with it.'

It was nearly two and a half years since Hamish had walked out on Daisy and she could no longer claim to be madly in love with him, but she missed the presence of a man in her life, and her self-confidence was in tatters. By some miracle she had hung on to her job with the Caring Chauvinist, but she found it exhausting coping with that, and running the house, and looking after Perdita, and more and more after Violet and Eddie. Now Wendy had a daughter, called Bridget, after Biddy Macleod, Hamish seemed less interested in his older children. Snow Cottage simply wasn't big enough for all of them, particularly when Perdita, who still hadn't forgiven her mother, was always banging doors and making scenes.

Daisy, ever hopeful and optimistic, however, still made heroic efforts to win Perdita round. She couldn't afford a car yet, but on the day of the final trials for the Pony Club Champions.h.i.+ps, which were held at Ruts.h.i.+re Polo Ground, she and Ethel took two buses and walked a mile in pouring rain to lend Perdita support.

Perdita, however, was deeply embarra.s.sed to see her mother arriving in unsuitably colourful clothes and dripping wet hair, like a superannuated hippie. Why the h.e.l.l couldn't she turn up in a Barbour, a headscarf and a Volvo like everyone else's mother? Nervous because she was due to play in two chukkas' time, Perdita refused even to acknowledge Daisy's presence.

Momentarily the rain had stopped. It was a hot, very muggy evening. The sun, making a guest appearance between frowning petrol-blue clouds, floodlit the dog daisies and hogweed in the long gra.s.s and turned the pitch a stinging viridian. A sweet waft of lime blossom mingled with the rank, s.e.xy smell of drying nettles and elder flowers.

Daisy had brought her sketch pad, but found it difficult to capture the action and hold on to a straining Ethel. Perhaps she could let Ethel off. There seemed to be an awful lot of dogs around for her to play with. Liberated, Ethel frisked with a Jack Russell in a red, spotted scarf and wolfed up a half-eaten beefburger bun. Then, as the players came thundering down the boards, she joined the stampede, trying to steal the ball and nearly bringing down the pony of a fat child with pigtails, whose mother promptly started yelling at Daisy.

Fortunately her torrent of abuse was diluted by a downpour of even more torrential rain. All the mothers raced for their Volvos as the players struggled over to another part of the field. Sheltering her sketch pad under her s.h.i.+rt, Daisy looked helplessly around. She had no mackintosh. She'd just managed to catch a joyously soaked Ethel when a blond man with a flat cap pulled over his straight nose asked her if she'd like to sit in his Land-Rover.

'It's all right. I don't mind the dog.'

Ethel clambered into the back and s...o...b..red down his neck.

'You are kind,' said Daisy gratefully. 'Being a Pisces, Inormally love rain, but this s.h.i.+rt's a bit see-through when it's wet.'

She was wearing a fringed dark purple midi-skirt and a pink muslin s.h.i.+rt from the early seventies, which had tiny mirrors sewn into it, and which was clinging unashamedly to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her dark hair fell damp and straight, just grazing her nipples.

'You look like Midi Ha Ha,' said the blond man, smiling slightly, but when Daisy unearthed a bottle of made-up vodka and orange from the chaos of her bag he shook his head.

Helping herself, Daisy noticed he never took his eyes off the play and was now turning on the windscreen wipers to watch a dark-haired boy coax a fat roan pony down the field. 'That child's definitely team potential, but the pony's an absolute b.i.t.c.h, I must have a word with his parents. And Christ, that pony's improved since last year.' Then, consulting a list on the dashboard, 'No, it hasn't, it's another pony. Do you want my coat?'

'I'm fine.' Daisy took another swig out of her bottle. 'Midi Ha Ha. Laughing Vodka. At least I can't be done for being drunk in charge of a setter.'

'Nice dog,' said the blond man, putting back a hand and rubbing Ethel behind the ears.

'Isn't she?' agreed Daisy, who was beginning to perk up.

She noticed that the man was very handsome in a stolid, heavy-lidded, way. She would have to mix Manganese blue with a little Payne's grey to get the colour of his eyes. He had a lovely mouth and lovely muscular thighs. Daisy suddenly wanted to check her face, and when he went off at the end of the chukka to talk to the next group playing, which included Perdita, she toned down her rosy cheeks and drenched her neck with Je Reviens, but failed to put the top back on properly, so it stank out the Land-Rover.

'Je Reviens,' said the blond man, sniffing as he got back inside. 'And I did.'

'You're too young to have a child playing?' asked Daisy, fis.h.i.+ng.

'Yes.' Checking the list of players again, he opened the car door, yelling, 'For Christ's sake, Mark, you're not on your man.'

'Ought to be called Un-Mark,' said Daisy, taking another swig. 'I'm dying to find out which is Drew Benedict.' 'Really?'

'Ghastly old fossil,' went on Daisy happily. 'He's giving Perdita such a hard time. I would have thought having worked for Ricky for nearly two years, she might be allowed to evolve her own style.'

She offered the diminis.h.i.+ng bottle to him again. Again he shook his head.

'How'd you get on with Ricky?' he asked.

'Never see him. I just pay his farm manager our rent. He rides past occasionally. He still looks pretty miserable, but Dancer seems to have cheered him up, and the specialist says he'll definitely be playing again next year.'

'Then we'll all have to look to our laurels,' said the blond man, 'but he's not a good teacher. Too impatient and introverted, too obsessed with his own game.'

He's got a s.e.xy voice, thought Daisy, soft and very quiet. She wished she knew if he were married.

'There are lots of boys playing,' she said in surprise. 'Perdita seems to be the only girl.'

'Boys tend to avoid the Pony Club, because they're always being told to keep their toes up and clean tack. Give them a stick and ball and it's a different story. Some of them are pretty b.l.o.o.d.y impossible when they arrive. No idea how to play as a team or to think of other people. Most of them get far too much pocket money.'

'Not Perdita's problem,' said Daisy.

'Nor enough discipline. Parents' marriages are so often breaking up.'

'Hum - Perdita's problem,' sighed Daisy whose tongue had been totally loosened by drink on no lunch. 'Everyone keeps telling me she needs a father. But it's tricky if you're a single parent - isn't that a ghastly expression? If you go out at night looking for a father for your children, everyone brands you a wh.o.r.e. People like Philippa Mannering and Miss Lodsworth. D'you know them?'

'Only too well.', 'And if you're too miserable because you've been deserted, people think you're a drag and don't ask you to parties. And if you're too jolly, wives think you're after their husbands. I feel like taking a pinger to parties tostop myself talking to anyone's husband longer than two minutes. Even girlfriends I know really well get insanely jealous. Mind you, the husbands think you're after them as well. If you don't have a man, even the plainest ones think you're dying for it.'

'And are you?' asked the blond man, who was watching Perdita jump the boards and execute a particularly dazzling back shot. 'Good girl, she kept her head down.'

'Not really, but on lovely days you're suddenly overwhelmed with longing to be in love again.'

He turned and looked at her. Did she detect compa.s.sion or was it slight wistfulness in those incredibly direct blue eyes? She was just thinking how easy he'd be to fall in love with, and that she really mustn't start cradle-s.n.a.t.c.hing when he said, Perdita's seriously good. She's already been picked for the Jack Gannon, that's the eighteen to twenty-one group. But she ought to apply for a Pony Club polo scholars.h.i.+p.'

'What'd that entail?'

'Six months in New Zealand or Australia. The BPA pay for her ticket out there and put her in a yard. She'd get pocket money. In return she'd look after the ponies, school them and play polo.'

'Oh, how wonderful,' sighed Daisy, thinking longingly of the peace at home; then added hastily, 'For Perdita, of course.'

'They have to be heavily vetted beforehand, so they don't let the side down. Some winners in the past have been temperamental and failed to get up in the morning, but on the whole they go out as boys and come back as men.'

'I hope Perdita doesn't grow hairs on her chest,' giggled Daisy. 'Sorry, I'm being silly. It's a wonderful idea, but I'm sure Drew Benedict won't allow it.'

'Why not?'

'He thinks she's useless.'

The blond man looked faintly amused. 'There's the bell,' then, as a woman strode past in plus fours with an Eton crop, added, 'and there's the DC. I'd better go and have a word with her.'

'Looks more AC to me,' said Daisy, draining the last of the vodka and orange.

The sinking sun had appeared again, gilding the wheat fields and splodging inky shadows in the rain-soaked trees. Daisy got unsteadily out of the Land-Rover. Next moment Ethel nearly pulled her over as Perdita galloped up.

'h.e.l.lo, Mum. You've got tomato skin on your front tooth. What on earth were you talking to Drew about for so long.'

'Drew?' said Daisy faintly. 'But you said he was old.'

'So he is, at least twenty-nine, but I really like him now. He's picked me for the Jack Gannon, and I'm four months under age, and he says Hermia's really improved.'

Daisy was almost too embarra.s.sed to accept a lift home from Drew.

'I had no idea,' she mumbled.

'I'll have to be a bit nicer to Perdita in future,' he said drily.