Polo

Bibi’s mind was reeling. ‘Is Angel OK?’

‘He arrive very mad,’ said Aunt Betty, rolling her big grey eyes. ‘He say his boss reported him to Immigration, so he catch next plane. Angel is very impulsive. He regret it, I think. He play polo well?’

‘He plays wonderfully,’ said Bibi. ‘On my father’s team. There was some misunderstanding. I’ve come to beg him to come back.’

This girl is not so plain after all, thought Aunt Betty as the maid came in with coffee, and a plate of croissants and greengage jam. She has good clothes and she love Angel.

Bibi’s eyes returned to the paintings. That was definitely a little Watteau in the corner. Her father would go berserk.

Not having eaten for forty-eight hours, and suddenly feeling dizzy, she sat down and took a croissant.

‘But I don’t understand. Angel’s so poor.’

‘Angel have very extravagant family. He had to sell family land to pay his father’s debts after the Malvinas war. The family has not forgiven him. I would help heem out, but my husband, the brother of Angel’s father, is very tight,’ she rubbed her thumb and forefinger together like a cicada, ‘he go through all my cheques. He would keel me if I gave Angel money but he is away in Europe, so Angel can stay ’ere till he get back.’

‘This is delicious coffee,’ said Bibi gazing into its sable depths. ‘Angel could be a great polo player – but he is so proud.’

Aunt Betty shrugged. ‘We are the eighth-generation Spanish-Irish. Angel have all zee aristocratic insteencts of his father and grandfather, but no money to back it up. It’s difficult for him to, how you say, lick the bottom. When he was eighteen, his mother was so worried about him, she sent heem to a psychiatrist. After two sessions, the shreenk say there is nuzzing I can do: Angel have indelible superiority complex.’

Bibi started to laugh, then jumped out of her skin-tight dress as the lift clanged outside the door.

Reaching for her bag, she frantically fluffed her hair and daubed blusher on her blanched cheeks.

‘I leave you,’ said Aunt Betty.

‘Please don’t,’ said Bibi in panic. ‘He may still be mad at me.’

Angel looked pale and desperately tired, and went paler still when he saw Bibi.

‘Why you ’ere?’

‘To say I’m sorry – to ask you to come back.’

‘Nevair. Your father, he betray me.’

‘Why don’t you both go for a walk in the park? Take the Mercedes, Angel,’ said Betty.

Angel gazed moodily at the maniacal traffic which roared and raced round them and said nothing until they passed a vast heroic statue of a field marshal in a Napoleonic hat astride a prancing horse with a woman with flowing hair in a long dress leaning against the plinth.

‘That is one of my relations on my mother’s side,’ said Angel.

‘Trust an Argentine to ride while the woman walked. I expect she was searching for his fifty-two,’ said Bibi.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ snapped Angel.

Grudgingly he showed her the airport which the anti-pollution lobby were clamouring to close down, and the great Hippodrome at Palermo, where the greatest polo tournament in the world, the Argentine Open, took place, and then down the Avenida del Libertador, full of embassies and softened by huge trees.

‘My cousin Sylvestre lives there.’

‘How beautiful,’ said Bibi, impressed.

‘Not beautiful,’ growled Angel, ‘just beeg. I show you better house.’

Five minutes later he drew up outside some huge iron gates, flanked by a high spiked fence. Inside loomed a truly beautiful house built at the turn of the century and influenced by the petits hotels of France. The gravel path up to the peeling, dark green front door was choked with weeds. Two lichened urns spilled over with pale pink geraniums. A lawn on the right grew three feet tall and was filled with nettles and willow herb. Angel opened the front door with a latch key.

‘I lived here as a boy,’ said Angel as they wandered from room to vast room. ‘In the holidays we went to the country. This was the Chinese room where the tradesman come and my grandmother pay the bills. This was the drawing room where Pedro and I were allowed down for tea with my parents.’

On the walls was a sepia mural of gods and goddesses. The frame of a vast mirror was covered in gold leaf. The glass itself was so coated with dust that Bibi’s reflection gazed back at her softened, huge-eyed and strangely beautiful. Workmen had left beer cans on the marble fireplace.

‘Who does it belong to now?’

‘It has been bought by a foundation,’ said Angel bitterly. ‘Different designers will decorate each room free to show off their skills, a landscape gardener will redesign the garden to suit the time the ’ouse was built. The public will pay to see over it. The money will go to open a clinic. I wish they give it to me to buy ponies.’

‘You must have been so happy here,’ said Bibi humbly.

‘I didn’t appreciate it then. When the sun shone we were always trying to get to the camp to play polo. My grandmother’s ’ouse down the road has been turned into a school.’

In the garden, two huge trees were covered in the same shocking pink blossom.

‘What’s that tree?’

‘Jacaranda,’ said Angel. ‘No, zat’s blue. It’s called pala borracho, that is drunken stick. It means the end of the summer.’ Standing behind her, he could feel her legs quivering and see the languorous curve of her waist into her hips. What a backview! If she never turned round he could love her. There was an old mattress in the corner. Angel turned her round to face him. Her breasts were pretty lovable too.

‘Why you come here?’

‘To see you.’

‘Where you stay?’

‘The Plaza.’

‘Ouf, don’t tell my grandmother. She’ll try and borrow money off you.’

He examined her face. She wasn’t beautiful, and Argentine men want to feel proud of their wives, and he was reluctant to admit how much he’d enjoyed making love to her and how he now longed to throw her down on the dusty mattress in the corner and set her alight again. He knew she was crazy about him and he could manipulate her like a bendy toy. Her vast income could buy him the best horses and if he took American citizenship he could beat the Argentine ban and play in England. Suddenly he had a vision of the languid British officer with the cold Falklands light falling on his even colder face with the butt of jaw and the turned-down, curiously unemotional, blue eyes. He also remembered the voice which grew softer as it became more brutal: ‘You do want to play polo again, don’t you, Rafael? The sooner they operate on that knee of yours the better. Just give me a few details.’

They hadn’t tortured him except to allow him no morphine and to make him stand on his damaged knee hour after hour. Then, after he’d fainted and come round, the British officer had continued talking: ‘There’s no way Argentina can beat the Brits. No-one will know what you tell us. It’ll just end the war quicker and fewer of your mates will get killed. I play polo too. My handicap would probably have gone up to seven if it hadn’t been for this bloody war. Polo’s an addictive game.’

‘Angel, are you OK?’ Bibi was suddenly terrified of the expression on his face. ‘You’re miles away.’

‘About 1,800 miles,’ said Angel tonelessly.

Bibi took a deep breath. ‘D’you think it’s possible to fall in love in forty-eight hours?’

‘Is possible in forty-eight seconds,’ said Angel and pulled her into his arms.

Under the dusty chandelier, her hair was a light bay.

‘I want to marry you,’ mumbled Bibi into his bomber jacket which said World Cup 1985 on the back. ‘If it didn’t work out, we could always get divorced, but at least you could stay in the States. We could find a home and a barn of our own, away from my father, and you wouldn’t have to work for him any more.’

Angel put up his hand to still her trembling lips.

‘I don’t want to be keeped.’

‘You wouldn’t be,’ sobbed Bibi. ‘It’d be your money too. I’ve got loads for both of us.’

Angel felt quite choked himself. ‘You’re so sweet. You won’t boss me around? I can wear the trousers?’

‘Sure you can.’

Angel looked at her watch. ‘We have time.’