orange juice, sunshine, blond beaches and all the time in the world to train ponies and make love. Perdita needed her swollen head examined.
‘I’m looking forward to meeting your dream machine,’ he said.
‘Fantasma?’ Luke’s face softened. ‘She’s a once-in-a-lifetime mare. I’m two goals better when I ride her, and she’s so clever. If I play her in jeans, she’ll buck me off, but if I put on boots and whites and a polo shirt, she knows she’s going to a match and becomes the soul of responsibility.’ He blushed slightly. ‘I guess I just adore her.’
Having heard from Ricky how pushed Luke always was for cash, Dancer started picking polish off his nails.
‘Now about dosh, I was finking . . .’ After all, he had sent the lawyers and the accountants packing and it was his money ‘. . . about $100,000, plus all expenses, airfare for you and the ’orses, and of course a car, and you’ll stay with Ricky.’
‘That sounds just about OK,’ said Luke, trying to be cool. Then he laughed a slow, rumbling, infectious laugh. ‘Jesus, man, it’s fantastic, beyond my wildest dreams, and they’re pretty wild sometimes. You sure?’
‘Course,’ said Dancer. ‘Fuck the lawyers! And it’s a grand every time we win.’
For a second Luke frowned. ‘My father does that. Makes players super-aggressive.’
‘Your father wins a lot of matches,’ pointed out Dancer, ‘and he’s coming to England this year. What’s he going to say about you playing for the enemy?’
‘That’s my problem,’ said Luke.
45
The weeks until Luke left for England were the longest of his life. He made a day chart and through sleepless nights read a lot of poetry, and for the first time stick and balled in jeans in the hope of getting a decent tan, but merely ended up with more freckles. He had, however, played more magnificent polo, managing with Angel’s and Fantasma’s help to power Hal Peters’ Cheetahs to the Finals of the Rolex and the World Cup. Here he was only beaten by the O’Briens and his father, who was predictably foaming at the goal-mouth that Luke was off to play for Ricky. Hal Peters, who had very reluctantly released Luke for the summer, said he would be praying daily that Luke would not succumb to Dancer’s wicked ways.
Sitting on Concorde, being plied with champagne and caviar which he was too excited to eat, Luke wasn’t sure he hadn’t already succumbed. His only sadness was that Leroy wasn’t sitting beside him in a collar and tie. The hulking black dog had seemed to shrink to pug-size as he crept into Luke’s suitcase, burrowing frantically under the new sweaters bought for an English summer, gazing up at Luke with despairing eyes. Luckier were Fantasma and the rest of Luke’s ponies, who, having completed quarantine, would be over with the grooms in a fortnight. Normally Luke would have insisted on travelling with them, but fortunately Fantasma had at last suspended hostilities with Lizzie, Luke’s comely head groom, and grudgingly allowed her to look after her when Luke wasn’t around. His longing to see Perdita again and Dancer’s increasingly frantic pleas to come and sort out Apocalypse had also sent him on ahead.
Luke was so nervous and excited at the thought of Perdita coming to meet him that he had drenched one shirt with sweat. He took another from his overnight bag. Yellow and white striped, it came from Worth Avenue and had been given him with a honey-coloured silk tie ‘to match his eyes’ by Lizzie and the other grooms for his birthday, the previous day.
It had never occurred to Luke to match something to his eyes. He considered his mug too ugly to be enhanced by anything he wore. At least the Concorde Johns were big. Usually he could hardly get his shoulders through those buckling doors. It was a beautiful shirt, but his hands were shaking so much he couldn’t do up the cufflinks, so he rolled up the sleeves and left off the honey-coloured tie.
It seemed strange to leave New York in blazing lunchtime sunshine and arrive three hours later in the middle of the English night – like plunging into Hades. He anticipated a long wait at customs. Seeing polo sticks, officials invariably imagined drugs or illegal currency and tended to disembowel everything. But under Dancer’s aegis he was whizzed straight out into the airport, his knees hardly able to carry him, his crashing heart bruising his ribs, walking past the eager faces, searching everywhere for Perdita. But she wasn’t there. It was as though Miguel O’Brien had clouted a penalty two slap into his belly. Twenty minutes later the crowd had dispersed. Fighting despair, exhaustion and post-champagne depression, Luke mindlessly gazed at
Then he caught his breath, for, pummelling her way through the crowd forming to meet the next plane, scowling with fury like a winning yachtsman pegged by a sudden squall, came Perdita. There was a smudge on her cheek, her hair was escaping from its plait, she still wore breeches, boots and a ripped polo shirt, but, as choirs instinctively turn eastwards in the Creed, everyone swivelled round to gaze at her.
‘Bloody, bloody traffic,’ she screamed. ‘I’ve been in a traffic jam on the M4 for over an hour, and when I parked the car outside some dickhead in a peaked cap rushes up and tells me I can’t, so I left it. I expect it’s been towed away by now with Wayne’s bridle just back from the menders in it. Christ, I hate this country.’
‘Hush, sweetheart. I’ve come 3,000 miles and I’d like to say hello.’ Luke held out his arms and she went into them. For a second she was rigid with rage, then she relaxed against him. Her hair smelt of sweat, the stables and cigarette smoke, but her clear, white forehead glowed like the moon. Then she looked up and grinned.
‘I am really pleased to see you. I need you so badly.’
‘You do?’ asked Luke, madly encouraged.
‘To sort out my game,’ said Perdita. ‘I’m playing like shit, and that asshole Ricky won’t let me near the ball.’
Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Luke laughed.
‘You haven’t changed.’
‘I didn’t have time. I came straight from the yard. D’you know, the Kaputnik Tigers thrashed us 8-0 yesterday, and Victor didn’t do a bloody thing all the match. Oh yes he did, he fell off.’
Luke went to bed deeply depressed. Ricky had welcomed him guardedly and without any friendliness, making it clear he was the boss of Apocalypse and would only seek Luke’s advice if he needed it.
After Florida in the nineties, Robinsgrove seemed bitterly cold. As a polo player, Luke was used to lousy accommodation, but there was something particularly chilling about Ricky’s spare room, with the heavy, dark furniture, bare floors, apple-green walls and a royal-blue Best Playing Pony blanket instead of a counterpane. There were no flowers, and a pile of yellowing 1981
Woken next morning by the cuckoo, however, he looked down Eldercombe Valley and freaked. Below him lawns, dotted with daisies, flowed into an orchard foaming with coral-pink apple blossom, then into paddocks full of buttercups and sleek, grazing ponies, then falling into the jade-green ride which fell three-quarters of a mile down between wooded cliff walls to the little cottage where Perdita lived. The sweet scent of the montana clambering round his window and the primulas and dark red wallflowers below were fighting a losing battle with the rampant reek of the wild garlic which was sweeping the woods in an emerald-green tidal wave.
And whoever wakes in England,
Wandering downstairs in search of breakfast, he paused to examine the photographs in the hall. Christ, that was a Westchester team beside the grandfather clock. He found Ricky drinking black coffee, feeding pieces of sausage to Little Chef and making lists matching ponies to players for the medium-goal match at the Rutshire Polo Club that afternoon.
‘This house is incredible,’ said Luke. ‘And the view from my room is to die for, and who are all those guys in the photographs in the hall?’
‘Oh, various relations,’ said Ricky, uninterested.
