Bas.
Now Bart’s got Chessie
The whole west had turned a brilliant rippling vermilion. Silhouetted black against it, a poplar copse looked like Daisy’s paintbrushes neatly stacked in a jamjar after a day’s work. The little moon had turned gold.
‘Well,’ said Bas, ‘are you going to come in with us or not?’
If Chessie had really loved him, reasoned Ricky, she would have come back by now. Rivers of blood had flowed under the bridge since she had left him. On the other hand he could go to ten, he could win the Gold Cup, and now there was a possibility to win the Westchester. He was still utterly obsessed with burying Bart. It was worth a try.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But Venturer putting so much money in scares the shit out of me. You sure you can afford it? The Americans are virtually unbeatable on their own territory.’
‘Well, that should please the Americans if they’re putting up most of the money,’ said Rupert sensibly.
‘Well, I wouldn’t waste money on Perdita,’ said Ricky harshly. ‘Her form’s going to plummet once she starts playing with Bart and Red. They’re both so hooked on winning, they’ll gee her up rather than calm her down, and she’ll get more and more explosive.’
‘Great,’ said Rupert rubbing his hands. ‘Tantrums fill stadiums. Look at Nastase. Look at McEnroe and Botham.’
‘Look at you,’ said Bas. ‘You were the biggest crowd-puller of all times.’
‘I don’t pull crowds any more,’ said Rupert, gathering up his car keys. ‘I only pull Tag.’
56
Palm Beach was staggered by the change in Red. The ultimate party animal was in bed by midnight and up at seven, and for the first time in his life really working at his polo. As barns filled up with grooms and horses, and patrons went on crash diets getting ready for the season proper which began in January, it was noted that Red and Perdita were spending six or seven hours a day stick and balling, concocting devilish strategies to fox the opposition and working on Perdita’s new ponies and the whole Alderton Flyer string.
‘Must be even more desperate to bury the opposition than his father,’ said Shark Nelligan cynically. ‘Just to prove the Alderton Flyers can manage without the O’Briens.’
Perdita, vastly cheered that Tero had made a miraculous recovery and would be able to play again later in the season, was less happy when she had to spend hours being photographed for Ferranti’s by the exceedingly famous but equally temperamental photographer they’d employed.
‘God, they ought to give the VC to models,’ she stormed. ‘It’s so bloody boring – and the lies! “Last roll” indeed. The fucker only takes so long because he’s getting a thousand dollars an hour.’
The results of such conflict, however, were hauntingly beautiful.
‘Everyone will be dabbing Perdita on their pulse spots come February,’ crowed Red.
As a reward, the weekend before the Fathers and Sons match Red took Perdita to stay at Bart’s house in Colorado. Falling over and into Red’s arms, Perdita took to skiing as enthusiastically as she had to sex.
The Tuesday after they returned home, Perdita was easing her aching bones in the jacuzzi after a long day in the saddle when Red walked in. Instantly she felt her exhaustion vanish and her stomach churning like the warm waters around her. She never stopped wanting him.
Sitting on the edge of the jacuzzi, he soaked the arm of his shirt as his fingers crept downwards, light and expert as a pastry cook.
‘I’m gonna screw you,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘and then we’re going out. Bibi and Angel are back from Argentina. I called Bibi and said we’d drop by for a drink, and then all go out to dinner.’
Bibi’s and Angel’s barn was grudgingly agreed by the polo community to be the most beautiful in Palm Beach. Built and perfected over the past eighteen months, it consisted of a charming, white, Regency-style house with a grey roof, a garden full of sweet-scented flowers, a walled swimming-pool kept permanently at 100°F, tennis courts, squash courts, a helicopter pad, and a hundred yards away at the end of a perfect lawn, a lemon-and- orange grove ringing stables for thirty horses. Beyond were paddocks, stick-and-ball fields and a complete polo pitch, surrounded by gums and palm trees.
‘Must have cost Bibi an arm and a legacy,’ said Red, as the blaring din of Status Quo from his car clashed and collided with Phil Collins pouring out of Bibi’s and Angel’s house. A pungent mix of jasmine, orange blossom and philadelphus mingled with a delicious smell of beef, herbs, wine and garlic.
‘Perhaps we’re eating in after all,’ said Red.
‘I haven’t seen Angel in two years.’ Perdita checked her reflection in the driving mirror.
Ferranti’s had taught her to make up her eyes and she was drenched in the scent which had been named after her. Her hair, which had nearly grown back to her collar bones, was streaked blond and black, her face was smooth and brown as treacle toffee from skiing. She was wearing a clinging, elongated, orange T-shirt. She hoped Angel would think she had grown beautiful.
Angel, however, opened the door in a pair of jeans and a white hot rage, his bronze curls tousled, his peacock-blue eyes blazing. She had forgotten his capacity for implacable loathing.
‘What zee fuck you doing he-ar?’ he spat at them. ‘You fucking ’orrible beetch, Perdita. I never want to see you again. Don’t darken my doormat, none of you.’
And he launched into a torrent of French, Spanish and English, telling Perdita exactly what he thought of her for running out on his beloved
‘For Chrissake, Angel, there wasn’t anything between Perdita and Luke. It was totally one-sided. He was mad about her, not her about him.’
‘It’s true, Angel,’ stammered a shaken Perdita. ‘I knew Luke liked me, but I had no idea how much until Deauville, and by that time I was in love with Red.’
‘You take everything from heem, his money, his horses, his time, his heart.’
‘I suppose he’s been dumping,’ said Red. ‘There are two sides.’
‘Luke never dumps,’ snarled Angel. ‘He never says one word against you, Perdita. It’s everyone else.’
‘Oh, don’t be an asshole, Angel,’ said Red in a bored voice. ‘Cut out the macho-Latin crap. Luke’s not complaining: why should you? Where’s Bibi?’
‘Working late,’ said Angel bleakly. ‘Where else?’
‘Well, let us in. I want a drink. Perdita’s going to be your sister-in-law. There’s enough feuding in our family as it is and we’ve all got to play together on Thursday.’
Angel was gazing at Perdita, at the long, dark eyes, liquid with tears, the trembling coral-pink mouth. He could see the curve of her breasts and the tuffet of her bush in that clinging orange dress. He detested her, but she had grown incredibly beautiful, and Angel was, after all, an Argentine.
‘OK, come in.’ Totally unsmiling, he stood back.
Inside were scenes of Petronian debauchery. In a room to the left Jesus lay on the patchwork quilt of a huge double bed with a sleeping, naked blonde beside him. Dropping cigarette ash into Bibi’s pot-pourri bowl, he was ringing up different parts of the world on Bibi’s three telephones in several languages and trying to organize next season’s matches.
‘Treble-dating, as usual,’ said Red.
Through the french windows they could see a couple of Alejandro’s sons and their girlfriends cavorting in the swimming-pool. In the sitting room Juan O’Brien, with one hand inside the dress of a brunette who was certainly not his wife, and several more of Alejandro’s Sons and their cousins were sitting round on Bibi’s flowered chintz sofas, drinking wine, eating a very late lunch of boeuf Provencale and watching the video of the Argentine Open, which once again the O’Briens had won by a narrow margin. The air was blue with cigarette smoke.
