have not seen her since you left Lion Kop, he said, and he dropped Mark's hand. Without another word, he turned and walked away.
For the first time he went slowly and heavily, swaying against the drag of his bad leg, shuffling like an old man a very tired old man.
Mark wanted to run after him, but his own heart was breaking and his legs would not carry him.
He stood forlornly and watched Sean Courtney limp away into the trees.
The Natal Number Two came in along the line, his pony's hooves kicking up little spurts of white markinglime like a machine gun traversing, and he caught the ball two feet before it dribbled out of play.
He leaned low out- of the saddle and took it backhanded under his pony's neck, a full-blooded stroke that finished with the mallet high above his head, and the ball rose in a floating arc, a white blur against the stark blue of summer sky.
From the club house veranda, and the deck-chairs beneath the coloured umbrellas, applause splattered above the drum of hooves, and then rose into a swelling hum as they saw that Derek Hunt had anticipated.
He was coming down in a hard canter with Saladin not yet asked to extend. Saladin was a big pony, with a mean and ugly head that he cocked to watch the flight of the white ball, his over-large nostrils flaring so the shiny red us membrane flashed like a flag. The eye that muco watched the ball rolled in the gaunt skull, giving the horse a wild and half -crazed air. He was of that raggedy roan and grey that no amount of currying would ever brighten into a gloss, and his hooves looked like those of a cart-horse.
He had to lift them high in the ungainly action that was quickly carrying him ahead of the hard-running Argentinian pony at his shoulder.
Derek sat him as though he were an armchair, idly penduluming his stick from his wrist, his pith helmet hard down over his ears and strapped up tightly under the chin. His belly bulged out over the belt of his breeches, his arms were long and thick as those of a chimpanzee, covered in a thick fuzz of ginger hair. The skin was heavily freckled and had a raw red look between the freckles, as though it had been scalded with boiling water. His face was the same raw painful looking red, tinged by the purplish glaze of the very heavy drinker, and he was sweating.
The sweat glistened like early dew on his face and dripped from his chin. His short-sleeved cotton singlet looked as though he had been caught in a tropical downpour. It clung to the thick bearlike shoulders, and was stretched so tightly over his bulging paunch and so transparent with wetness, that you could see the deep dark pit of his belly button from the sidelines.
At each jar, as Saladin's hooves struck the hard-baked earth, Derek Hunt's great backside in the tight-fitting white breeches quivered like a jelly in the saddle.
Two Argentinian ponies were cutting across field to cover, their handsomeriders olive-skinned and dashing as cavalry officers, ridingwithhuge verge and excited Spanish cries, and Derek grinned under his bristling ginger mustache, as the ball started its long plummeting curve back to earth. Christ, drawled one of the members on the club house steps. The ugliest horse in Christendom. And he raised his pink gin to salute Saladin. And the ugliest four-goal handicapper in the entire world on his back, agreed the masher beside him. Poor bloody dagoes should turn to stone just looking at them. Saladin and the Argentinian Number One arrived at the drop of the ball at exactly the same moment. The Argentinian rose in the saddle to trap the fall, his white teeth sparkling under the trim black pencil-line of his mustache, the smooth darkly tanned muscles of his arm bulging as he prepared to go on to the forehand drive, his sleekly beautiful pony wheeling into line for the shot, nimble and quick as a ferret.
Then an extraordinary thing happened. Derek Hunt sat fat-gutted and heavy in the saddle and nobody could see the touch of rein and heel that made Saladin switch his quarters. The Argentinian pony cannoned off him as though she had hit a granite kopje, and the rider went over her head, going in an instant from balanced perfection to sprawling windmilling confusion, falling heavily in a cloud of red dust, and rolling to his knees to scream hysterical protest to the umpire and the skies.
Derek leaned slightly and there was the tap of mallet against bamboo root, a gentle almost self-err acing little tap, and the ball dropped meekly ahead of Saladin's slugging, hammering head.
It bounced once, twice, and then came up obediently for the next light tap that kept it hopping down the field. The Argentinian Number Four swept in from the right, with all the smooth-running grace of a charging lioness, and the roar of the crowd carried across the open field, spurring him on to make the challenge. He shouted a wild Spanish oath, his eyes flashing with excitement.
Smoothly, Derek changed the mallet from his right hand to his left, and tapped the bouncing white ball on to his off-side, forcing the Argentinian to increase the angle of his interception.
The instant he was drawn, Derek cropped hard, lofting the ball in an easy lob high over the Argentinianis head.
He said, Ha! but not loudly, and touched Saladin with his heels. The big ugly roan stretched out his neck and extended, with Derek moving now to help him push.
They ran past the Argentinian as though he had indeed turned to stone, they left him floundering in their wake and picked up the ball beyond him. Tap! Tap! And tap again, he ran it down through the exact centre of the stubby goal-posts and then turned and trotted back to the pony lines.
Chuckling so that his belly bounced, Derek swung one leg forward over Saladin's neck and slid down to the ground, letting him go free to the grooms. I'll take Satan for the next chukka, he shouted in that beery throaty voice.
Storm Courtney saw him coming, and knew what was going to happen. She tried to rise, but she was slow and clumsy, the child in her womb anchored her like a stone. One for the poor, what! shouted Derek, and caught her with one long, ginger-fuzzed, boiled red arm.
The sweat on his face was icy cold and smeared down her own cheek, and he smelled of sour beer and horse. He kissed her with an open mouth, in front of Irene Leuchars and the four other girls, and their husbands, and all the grinning grooms, and the members on the veranda.
She thought desperately that she was going to be ill. The acid vomit rose into her throat, and she thought she was going to throw up in front of them all. IDerek, my condition! she whispered desperately, but he held her under his one arm as he took the bottle of beer that one of the white-jacketed club servants brought on a silver tray, and, scorning the glass, he drank straight from the bottle.
She struggled to be free, but he held her easily with immense and careless strength, and he belched, a ripping
