The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

miracle, on the bell Elmer managed to coax the ball between the posts.

All Elmer’s senators, flown down by private jet, who’d been wondering what the hell to say to him after the game, cheered with deafening relief. The company cameraman decided not to shoot himself after all. At last he had a clip he could show at the sales conference and later he was able to film Elmer brandishing the huge silver cup while his beautiful wife clapped so enthusiastically that she spilled champagne down her pink skirt.

Back at Elmer’s barn, Lysander, having drunk a great deal of Moet from the cup, hazily checked the legs of his ponies, thanking them profusely as he plied them with Polo mints. He then thanked the grooms with equal enthusiasm and passed round the individual magnum of Moet he’d been given as a member of the winning team.

‘You’re certainly flavour of the month,’ said Astrid. ‘Elmer reckons you’re the best Brit he’s ever played with. He wants you to stay on for the Rolex next month.’

In moments of excitement Lysander could do little more than open and shut his mouth.

‘Really?’ he gasped finally.

‘Really!’ Pretending to buckle under the weight, Astrid handed him a sheaf of faxes. ‘Here are your racing pages.’

‘I’d forgotten those!’ Lysander gave a whoop of joy. ‘Now I can have a bet.’

‘No you can’t!’ Seb marched in, already changed, with his hair slicked back from the shower. ‘It’s nearly midnight in England and the only thing racing at the moment is the very unblue blood through Elmer’s veins. In between copies of Sporting Life the fax managed to spew out confirmation of his Jap deal. Elmer is several million bucks richer now and he wants to party. So move it.’

‘But I want to get pissed with this lot.’ Lysander gazed wistfully at Astrid.

‘Lysander,’ said Seb wearily, ‘you want to play polo for a living. If you’re prepared to be charming and diplomatic, you can brownnose your way into riding some of the most fabulous horses in the world, but for a start lay off Elmer’s wife and his grooms.’

‘He sure is the cutest guy,’ sighed Astrid as Lysander was dragged protesting away.

2

The party was held in one of the soft brown houses clustering round the polo field. Male guests ranged from lithe, bronzed, professional polo players of all nationalities to rich businessmen, some of them patrons, some of who merely liked to be part of the polo scene. The women included glamorous groupies of all ages, wearing everything from T-shirts and jeans to strapless dresses showing off massive jewels.

The feeling of jungle warfare was intensified by the forest of glossy green tropical plants in every room and by the fact that all the professionals were on the prowl for rich patrons, and the patrons, despite having wives present, were stalking the prettiest groupies who were, in turn, hunting anything in trousers.

Loud cheers greeted the arrival of the Safus team.

‘If you have oats, prepare to sow them now,’ murmured Seb as the cheering died away and a hush fell over the room.

‘Talk about Elmer’s angels,’ drawled a predatory blonde in a fire-engine-red dress licking her scarlet lips.

Elmer, mean little eyes flickering with rage, was the only person who didn’t laugh. He’d kept on his brown boots and white breeches which the game had hardly marked, so that everyone should know he was a polo player, but had changed into a clean blue Safus polo shirt. As groupies started edging through the vegetation towards the rest of his team, Elmer, competitive as ever, was determined to annex the prettiest. Soon he was bosom to pectorals with a mettlesome brunette called Bonny whose bottom lip protruded more than any of the scented orchids massed in the centre of the living room, and whose buttocks swelled out of the briefest white shorts like an inverted Nell Gwyn.

Refusing to admit how blind he was without glasses, Elmer had to peer very closely to see the logo on her jutting orange T-shirt.

‘If you can read this,’ he spelled out slowly, then peering even closer, ‘You’re a dirty old man.’

Bonny shrieked with laughter. Reluctantly Elmer decided to join in. ‘That’s kinda neat.’

‘Yours is neater,’ said Bonny. ‘That deep blue is just great with your eyes. Has anyone told you how like Richard Gere you are? I’d give anything for a Safus T-shirt.’

‘Swappyer then,’ said Elmer.

‘He’d never have stripped off in public,’ muttered Seb, ‘if he hadn’t got a Barbados suntan and just lost ten pounds, none of it admittedly off his ego, on a pre-season crash diet. Jeees-us.’ He choked on his drink as Bonny’s head disappeared into the orange T-shirt and her upstretched wriggling arms showed off a pair of magnificent brown breasts.

Elmer’s eyes were popping like a garrotted Pekinese. The orange T-shirt, once he had wriggled into it, clashed with his port-wine face but in no way doused his lust.

‘I see your picture every time I pick up the Wall Street Journal,’ Bonny was now telling him. ‘But you are so much cuter in the flesh.’

‘The flesh is weak where lovely young women like you are concerned,’ said Elmer thickly.

The logo on Lysander’s faded grey T-shirt read:

Sex is evil,

Evil is sin,

Sin’s forgiven

So get stuck in.

He was getting drunker by the minute and had now been cornered by two stunning but interchangeable suntanned blondes.

‘Did you fly commercial?’ asked the first.

Lysander looked blank.

‘She’s trying to figure if you came over by private jet, preferably your own,’ explained the second.

‘Oh, right,’ said Lysander. ‘No, I flew Virgin. The air hostesses were really sweet.’

‘Surprised they were still intacta with you on board,’ said the first.

Glancing round for a waitress with a bottle, Lysander caught sight of Martha Winterton. Shaded by a vast yucca, she was chatting mindlessly to a senator’s wife and trying not to watch Elmer. Her desolation was tangible.

‘You’re not really a good friend of George Bush?’ Bonny was growing more raucous. ‘I would just love to meet him.’

‘It could be arranged.’ Elmer’s pudgy right hand was surreptitiously stroking her left buttock as they leant side by side against a dragged yellow wall.

The senator’s wife had drifted off to talk to Butch Murdoch. Martha was gazing despairingly into her empty glass. Oblivious of Seb’s stern warning that trespassers would be put on the next plane, Lysander crossed the room.

‘Have you dried off?’

Martha jumped. Her huge eyes, the clear brown of Tio Pepe held up to the light, were swimming with tears. It was a second before she recognized him.

‘Oh sure — it was so dear of you to bring me that blanket.’

She had a husky, hesitant voice. Her creased white shirt still clung to her body. Her dark hair, which had dried all fluffy, was pulled back in a bandeau making her freckled face look even thinner.

‘You needed a lifeboat,’ said Lysander.

‘I could use one now.’

‘Have a drink first.’