Polo

might as well get a suntan. Going upstairs to fetch her bikini, she heard the telephone and took it in the drawing room. It was Grace, probably just back from a shopping binge at Ralph Lauren, sounding distinctly chilly. Learning Ricky was in London, she asked to ‘speak with Frances’.

‘Speak to, not with, you silly cow,’ muttered Chessie. ‘Doesn’t trust me to pass on messages.’

She was about to go in search of Frances when she noticed a lighter square in the rose silk wallpaper above the fireplace. It was a few seconds before she realized that the Munnings had gone. Valued at ?30,000, it had been given to them as a wedding present and was a painting of Ricky’s Aunt Vera on a horse. Ricky must be flogging it in London in order to buy another pony.

‘I don’t believe it,’ screamed Chessie, storming into the hall, where she found Will applying strong-arm tactics to the frantically struggling stable cat as he tried to spray its armpits with Right Guard.

‘Stop it,’ howled Chessie, completely forgetting about Grace at the other end.

Ricky returned around six. He had managed to get ?10,000 for the Munnings. He knew it was pathetically little, but at least it had enabled him to buy from Juan a dark brown mare called Kinta who’d previously been a race horse, whom he’d always fancied and with whom Juan had never clicked.

He felt absolutely shattered. Now yesterday’s adrenalin had receded, he could feel all the aches and pains. He was in agony where Jesus had swung his pony’s head into his kidneys and where a ball had hit his ribs. His stick hand was swollen where Victor had swiped at him, and there was a bruise black as midnight in the small of his back where Jesus’s bay mare had lashed out at him scrabbling to regain her feet after that last fall.

Chessie waited for him in the drawing room, fury fuelled by his checking Mattie and the other ponies before coming into the house.

‘Hi, darling,’ he said, ignoring the gap above the fireplace, ‘I’ve got another pony.’

‘How dare you flog Aunt Vera?’ thundered Chessie. ‘Half of that money belongs to me, how much did you get?’

‘Ten grand.’

‘You were robbed.’

At that moment Will erupted into the room.

‘Daddy bring me a present?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Ricky, handing him a half-size polo stick for children.

Will gave a shout of delight, and, brandishing it, narrowly missed a Lalique bowl on the piano.

‘Just like Daddy now.’

Chessie clutched her head. ‘Oh, please, no,’ she screamed.

5

Chessie’s froideur with Ricky didn’t melt. But he was kept so busy getting acquainted with Kinta, now known as the ‘widow-maker’, tuning her and the other ponies up for the first Gold Cup match next Thursday, playing in medium-goal matches and worrying about Mattie, who didn’t seem to be responding to treatment, that he hardly noticed until he fell into bed. Then, when he was confronted by the Berlin Wall of Chessie’s back, he tended, after his hand had been shuddered off, to drop into an uneasy sleep, leaving Chessie twitching with resentful frustration all night.

Grace made it plain that she was livid with Chessie for leaving her hanging on the telephone. Bart had made absolutely no attempt to get in touch with Chessie – perhaps he was still sulking because she had thwarted his plans by giving Perdita a lift home. Surprised how anxious she was to see him again, Chessie went along to the Thursday match and deliberately dressed down, in a collarless shirt and frayed Bermudas, held up with Ricky’s red braces, to irritate Grace. Alas, the grooms were all tied up with the ponies and her baby-sitter had gone to Margate, so she was forced to take Will and his new, short polo stick with her.

Will was a menace at matches. Having grabbed a ball, he proceeded to drive it into Fatty Harris’s ankles, Brigadier Hughie’s ancient springer, David Waterlane’s Bentley, and finally a lot of little girls playing with a doll’s pram, who all burst into noisy sobs. This was drowned by Will’s even noisier sobs when he saw his father umpiring the first match between the Kaputnik Tigers and Rutminster Hall. Wriggling out of Chessie’s grasp, he rushed on to the field and was nearly run down by Jesus the Chilean. Juan and Miguel were on epic form, and after a frenzied last chukka of bumps and nearly fatal falls, Rutminster Hall ran out the winners by 10–6.

Victor Kaputnik, whose gloating when he won was only equalled by his rage when he lost, could be heard yelling furiously at the twins and Jesus as they came off the field. Chessie was about to wander down to the pony lines in search of Bart when he emerged out of a duck-egg blue helicopter, followed by Grace, extremely chic in brown boots, a brown trilby and a fur-lined trench coat, her glossy, dark hair drawn back in a French pleat.

After last week’s heatwave, a bitter north wind was flattening the yellowing corn fields, turning the huge trees inside out, driving icy rain into the eyes of the players and horses, and putting the easiest penalty in jeopardy. Despite this, there was a good crowd to watch the second match between the Alderton Flyers and the Doggie Dins Devils, who included the notorious Napier brothers, an underhandicapped Australian and Kevin Coley, their appalling petfood billionaire patron.

Not being able to face an hour with Grace, Chessie was thankful when the Carlisle twins bounded up, teeth brilliantly white in their mud-spattered faces, and insisted she watch from their car. Will, who adored the twins, immediately stopped crying.

‘Aren’t you flying home with Victor?’ asked Chessie.

‘No, he’s pissed off with us because we were late. I’ll go and get us a drink,’ said Seb.

As the Alderton Flyers rode on to the field, all wearing polo-necked jerseys under their shirts, Chessie was glad of the warmth of the twins’ Lotus. Listening to the whistling kettle sound of Victor’s black-and-orange helicopter soaring out of the trees, she turned to Dommie: ‘I don’t know why you’re looking so smug about losing.’

‘Oh, we’ll catch up,’ said Dommie. ‘There are four more matches in the draw. Don’t tell Victor. He thinks we were late because of the traffic. Actually we were selling a pony for about three thousand pounds more than it’s worth. Seb had just lied that its grandsire was Nijinsky when I walked in and said it was Mill Reef, but we got over that hurdle.’

‘Who bought it?’ asked Chessie idly.

‘Phil Wedgwood.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Chessie. ‘He rang Ricky yesterday. Said he’d just sent the mare Ricky sold him in May to the knackers because she had back trouble and could he buy another. Ricky loved that mare so much he hung up on him. Now Phil’s bought one from you – Jesus!’

‘I don’t think your husband’s got his act together commercially,’ said Dommie. ‘He’s got to learn to care less about ponies and more about patrons. Victor is so thick we sold one of his own ponies to him the other day. Quick! Duck! Here comes the Head Girl!’

Through the driving rain, both suitably clad for the weather, came Sukey and Grace going towards Bart’s limo, which had been driven independently to the match for them to sit in. Grace nodded coolly. Sukey, who was carrying a camera, tapped on the window: ‘I was hoping to video the match, so Drew could isolate his mistakes afterwards, but the visibility’s so awful. Bad luck on losing, Seb.’

‘I’m Dommie.’

‘Oh, sorry. I can never tell you two apart.’

‘I’ve got the bigger cock,’ said Dommie.

Chessie giggled. Sukey firmly changed the subject. ‘We’ve had the Daily Express at home all morning, doing a feature on Drew. You’d never dream how many rolls of film they used.’

‘They wanted to do Ricky and me,’ said Chessie furiously, ‘but Ricky was far too uptight to let them in on the morning of a match.’