Polo

Perdita disapproved of everything about Red. He shouldn’t have stolen the job of his friend and fellow American, Bobby Ferraro. He shouldn’t keep trying out horses, laming them, playing the hell out of them in a couple of chukkas, then handing them back saying they were no good. His grooms worked for him for next to nothing because he was so handsome, and, even worse, on the field he was the soul of dishonesty, endlessly manufacturing fouls, and avoiding a sixty, if a ball crossed the line, by tapping it back and claiming it hadn’t gone over.

The twins were wild enough, but in the company of Red they became impossible, whooping it up all night, with groupies coming out of their ears.

In the weeks running up to the Gold Cup one prank followed another. The twins, for example, pinched Victor’s helicopter just as he was about to fly to Frankfurt for a Board Meeting in order to scour the countryside for a missing Decorum whom they were convinced had been stolen for pit-bull fighting.

Then there was the Saturday afternoon they all got drunk round the pool and set off in Victor’s open Bentley with Red lolling naked between the twins and using a road map as a figleaf. Stopping an old lady by a T-junction they asked her to show them the way to Rutminster on the map, which she did until the map slipped upwards and she ran shrieking into the nearest beechwood. Next they passed a deaf old man on a bike and asked him the way to Rutminster. When the old man, who was deaf, didn’t answer immediately Red shot him with a starting pistol, whereupon the old man had a mini-heart attack and fell off his bike. A yokel taking Victor’s car number reported the incident to the police, who needed a lot of hush money. Victor was absolutely furious.

Even worse, Red held his birthday party in Victor’s house. Victor had expected two dozen people. Nearly two hundred turned up and all treated Red as the host. Decorum ate one of Victor’s toupees, mistaking it for a hamster.

‘This is a genuine surprise party,’ Red kept saying, ‘because I asked everyone when I was looped and I have no idea who’s coming.’

Apocalypse boycotted the party and went to bed early. Perdita, who longed to go, felt incredibly cheated. She was fed up with working long hours for a measly salary. At nineteen she wasn’t getting any younger and she wanted some fun. It further irked her that she must be the only girl in the South of England whom Red hadn’t made the slightest pass at.

The afternoon after the party Apocalypse met the Tigers in the opening match of the Warwickshire Cup which was played at Cirencester and was, after the Queen’s Cup and the Gold Cup, the most prestigious tournament of the year. It was Luke’s first match back and he was still feeling groggy. Ricky, laid low by a vicious bout of flu, was also very weak and a lot more of their horses had fallen by the wayside in the Royal Windsor.

But, as Victor was the only member of the Tigers’ team who wasn’t still plastered from the night before, Apocalypse had no difficulty thrashing them 12-1 and going on to win the entire tournament. As the three-week- long toil of Gold Cup matches started at the end of June, at last giving Ricky a chance to win the first leg of his bet with Chessie, he grew increasingly remote. Perdita had abdicated any hope of his love, but it still hurt that he might be seeing Chessie on the sly. He had certainly hit miraculous form.

49

And so Apocalypse – the hottest favourites for years – came to play the Tigers in the finals of the Gold Cup. The Alderton Flyers, who’d never reconciled their differences since the Queen’s Cup, were playing Kevin Coley’s Doggie Dins in the second match for third place.

The long, hot summer had taken its toll. With pitches burnt brown from the hose-pipe ban and harder than the M4, a pony with four sound legs was as rare as an icicle in the tropics. Kinta was lame, Ophelia was lame, so were Tero, Willis, Sinatra, Hermia and Portia. Of the equine stars, only Spotty, Wayne and Fantasma soldiered on. Apocalypse were down to stick-and-ball horses; even fat Nigger, Ricky’s oldest pony, would have to be loaded up and taken to Cowdray.

The day before the match Ricky grew increasingly picky and bloody-minded. At sunset, to avoid coming to blows, Luke took Fantasma for a gentle ride round Ricky’s estate, admiring the red-gold barley and the sudden, bright mauve flash of willow herb against the darkening trees. He also noticed conkers on the horse chestnuts as big as golf balls, and realized with a shiver that the season was nearly over. After Deauville he’d have to leave Perdita and return to Florida. Earlier in the week, having a drink with Daisy, he’d asked her idly if she knew whether he was going up.

Daisy had blushed and said that on the grapevine (which, translated, meant on the pillow beside Drew) she’d heard that all the Apocalypse team were going up: Luke and Ricky to nine, Dancer to two and Perdita in a great leap to four. This meant their aggregate would be twenty-four, too high to play together any more in England. He would have to declare himself in Deauville. He and Perdita seemed to be growing further and further apart. She was very abstracted. He dared not think with whom.

Inattentive, he was nearly unseated as Fantasma gave a shrill, alarmed whinny like a skirl of bagpipes and went up on her hind legs. Luke saw nothing in the grassy ride to frighten her except an old disused tractor. She was obviously picking up Ricky’s pre-match nerves. But by the time he got back to Robinsgrove her fetlock had swollen to three times its size like a vast white beachball.

Phil Bagley, summoned immediately, was totally flummoxed until he shaved away some of the hair, saw small fang marks and diagnosed adder bite.

‘She won’t die,’ he reassured a demented Luke, ‘but she certainly can’t play tomorrow. I’m terribly sorry. You’ve lost your lethal weapon.’

‘At last she’s met something that bites worse than herself,’ snarled Ricky.

He couldn’t actually blame Luke for Fantasma not being sound, but he had to kick out at someone. Emerging trembling with rage from her box, he saw the young girl groom, who’d only started that week, gingerly trying to pick out one of Spotty’s hind hooves.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he roared at her, ‘you’re supposed to lift the hoof with your left hand, and just lay it along your thigh – like this.’ He picked up Spotty’s foot.

Giving Ricky a reproving look for shouting, Spotty calmly removed his hoof from Ricky’s thigh and placing it in the small of his back, gave a brisk shove, catching Ricky off-guard and spreadeagling him on the ground. Perdita made the mistake of screaming with laughter.

His dignity bruised more than anything else, Ricky picked himself up. ‘You bloody animal.’ He raised his fist at Spotty.

‘Don’t you touch my pony,’ screamed Perdita, seizing the yard broom.

‘Knock it off both of you,’ yelled Luke.

‘This is my yard.’

‘And you’re not fit to run it!’ Luke lowered his voice. ‘Jesus, man, simmer down. God knows where your head was in the final of the Queen’s Cup, but we don’t want a repeat performance tomorrow. Perdita’s got Champions and International Velvet out of the video shop to keep you quiet. Just fuck off and watch them and give us all a break.’

For a moment Luke expected Ricky to land him one, then he swung round and stalked into the house.

Gazing mindlessly at International Velvet ten minutes later, Ricky felt bitterly ashamed of himself and wished he had as nice a nature as Nanette Newman. What a fucking awful example to set to Perdita and the grooms. Sitting grimly through both films, he was continually distracted by visions of Chessie, exquisite in her pale green suit, taunting him that he hadn’t even won the first leg of his bet.

He woke in tears to find himself gazing at a black leaping screen. It was dark outside. He’d better go and apologize yet again. But he found Luke slumped at the kitchen table, fallen asleep over The Maltese Cat, a hardly touched ham sandwich on a plate beside him.

It was still impossibly hot as Ricky wandered out into the yard. The air was heavy with meadowsweet and the night-scented stock Louisa had planted in the stable tubs this summer around the geraniums. Overhead the sky