Bart was outraged when Bibi drifted into the office at eleven in the morning, still in her coral dress, absolutely bowlegged from screwing, with stars in her eyes far brighter than the diamonds still in her ears. Having languorously closed a deal with a Japanese for twenty-five Skylarks, she went home to bed.
‘You ordered Angel to take good care of me,’ was her only explanation, ‘and, oh boy, he obeyed you almost to the french letter.’
She woke early in the evening adrift with love and, having showered and washed her hair, drove down to Worth Avenue where she bought a wildly expensive, skin-tight, rust-red cotton sweater and tight, off-white jeans. Putting them on, she dropped her $2,000 pin-striped suit in the waste basket and set off for the barn.
As she drove up the colonnade of Iceberg roses, the ground was littered with white petals. Bart liked them swept up on the hour and Bibi was about to give the grooms a rocket, then thought what the hell – it was roses, roses all the way.
Rounding the corner, she found ponies running all round the orange grove and stick-and-ball field and the barn deserted except for two lugubrious-looking men in shiny dark suits.
‘How in hell did you get in here?’ she snapped, trying to catch the $30,000 Glitz who clattered past her covered in drying suds, tail still wet whisking water everywhere, with his duck-egg-blue lead rope flying.
‘We’re from Immigration,’ said the taller and seedier of the men. ‘We’ve got occasion to believe,’ he consulted his notebook, ‘one Rafael Solis de Gonzales is working here without a work permit.’
Bibi’s heart plummeted. She had a sick feeling her father must have tipped them off.
‘Not here,’ she said firmly. ‘I know all the grooms – only by their given names admittedly, but we don’t have a Rafael.’
‘Answers to the name of “Angel”.’
‘No way,’ gasped Bibi, hoping she wasn’t going scarlet.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a trainer on the end of a slim brown ankle hanging down from one of the rafters of the nearest box. All the grooms must be hiding up there.
‘Everyone’s out in the exercise ring with the ponies,’ said Bibi, quickly walking away from the stables. ‘I’ll make enquiries and call you tomorrow.’
‘Seems weird having horses of this quality running loose,’ queried the taller Immigration Officer.
Fortunately the second, less repulsive, Immigration Officer had a date with his wife’s best friend in half an hour.
‘Right,’ he said shutting his notebook. ‘But you better getcha act together by tomorrow.’
‘You can come down now,’ Bibi shouted up into the rafters as soon as they’d gone. Tentatively, grooms and low-goal foreign players clambered down.
‘Where’s Angel?’ asked Bibi sharply.
‘Gone,’ said Juan’s cousin, rubbing his back where a rafter had dug into him. ‘He caught the six o’clock flight out of Miami.’
Bibi clutched on to one of the white pillars.
‘What did you say?’
‘Herbie from the polo office called at lunchtime, saying Emigration ’ad been tipped off, and were after him, and on their way down.’
‘They search his room,’ said Miguel’s cousin, ‘and found one thousand buck cheque from Mr Alderton.’
‘Shit,’ said Bibi. ‘Did he leave a forwarding address?’
‘’E didn’t have time. But Alejandro know where he live.’
‘Who tipped off Immigration?’
‘Herbie say it was Mr Alderton’s secretary.’
Bibi was devastated. Going home, she cried herself into total insomnia and by dawn had decided to fly to Buenos Aires. Angel hadn’t been paid for the first fortnight of April. He’d left clothes behind at the barn, and she wanted to apologize for Bart shopping him – but these were excuses. She knew she couldn’t live without him.
Miami Airport had been reduced to even worse chaos than usual by polo players who’d been knocked out of the World Cup returning home to Argentina. It was hard to tell if the airport officials were more bemused by the amount of luggage Alejandro and his family had accumulated (which included two vast van loads of prams, toys, furniture, polo sticks, and Worth Avenue clothes which would be flogged for five times their value), or by the bullying of Alejandro’s mistress.
‘Mr Mendoza and his sons must each have five seats to sleep in,’ she was yelling. ‘They’re international polo players who need their sleep.’
Having acquired Angel’s address already from Alejandro, Bibi sauntered into First Class. Wrapped in her own thoughts, she was oblivious of the everflowing champagne, the caviar, the poached salmon, the free scent, the washing kit, the rests for head and feet, the interested glances of businessmen across the gangway.
But when she went to the john she peered round the iron social curtain which divided First from Economy and for the first time saw the red-faced mothers trying to quieten fractious children and puking babies, the men leaning snoring into the gangways, all packed together like sardines, and breathed in the hot foetid air with a shudder. She thought of Angel sitting there last night and vowed he would never go Economy again.
Back in her seat, deeply apprehensive about the morrow, Bibi concentrated on the guidebook, which was so badly translated that she nodded off until six thirty. That was the longest sleep she’d had in months. Waking she felt more cheerful and able to cope.
Reaching Buenos Aires, she booked into the Plaza Hotel, showered and washed her hair, and put on a new, short and clinging, shocking-pink cotton jersey dress. It was the beginning of autumn and the great dark green trees outside were beginning to turn. As she bowled along in a taxi, the wide roads, heroic statues and bosky parkland reminded her of a lusher Paris. The taxi driver didn’t freak out when she told him her destination; perhaps he was used to driving into the slums.
‘This can’t be right,’ she said five minutes later as he drew up outside a row of beautiful mid-nineteenth- century houses with exquisite wrought-iron balconies on the edge of a park.
‘
Uncharacteristically overtipping, heart hammering, Bibi went to the door. There beside the bell was the name Solis de Gonzales in copperplate. Perhaps Angel’s mother worked as a maid. Bibi rearranged her mental picture to an ancient retainer, still in black and wrinkled like a prune, but with a white apron and depended upon by all the family.
She pressed the bell.
‘
‘Is Angel – I mean Rafael there?’
‘You are not tax inspector?’ said a female voice in fluent, but husky, broken English.
Bibi felt sick. Perhaps Angel lived with a rich mistress. But the woman who answered the door of the private lift, although a charming blonde in a cashmere grey twin-set which matched her eyes, was well into her fifties. The pearls at her neck, and the rings flashing on the hand she extended, were not those of a poor retainer.
‘Come in,’ she smiled at Bibi. ‘Angel go out. He’ll be back soon. Would you like some coffee?’ She tugged a black embroidered bell pull.
‘Please,’ said Bibi, who was gaping at the apartment. At a glance she noticed a Sisley, a Pissarro and a Utrillo of a mackerelled sky, as well as marvellous eighteenth-century oils of dogs, horses and hunting scenes. Making up three sides of a square with the fireplace were white sofas with grass-green and violet cushions to match a beautiful black, violet and green carpet which covered most of the polished floor. On a big, polished table in front of a huge mauve vase of michaelmas daisies were silver-framed photographs of beautiful people playing polo or leading in racehorses. There was Angel as a solemn little boy. There were Pedro and Angel together, arms round each other’s shoulders. Beyond the park outside, which was criss-crossed with rust-pink paths and dotted with trees smothered in shocking pink blossom, huge flat-roofed buildings rose like liners out of an ocean of dark green.
‘It is so beautiful here,’ stammered Bibi. ‘Are you Angel’s mother?’
‘No, I am his Aunt Betty. His mother is in Rio, I theenk, or perhaps Paris. She marry an Italian. Where you stay?’
‘The Plaza.’
‘Angel’s grandmother, my mother, live there. You will perhaps have tea together.’
