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Perdita was absolutely appalled that Taggie had lost the baby, but, secretly, what upset her most was that Rupert, whom she had always hero-worshipped, had rejected her sexually and, because of this, she had lost points with Red. But she tucked it under the mattress of her mind alongside her treatment of Luke and her running out on Ricky and tried to forget it. She had much to occupy her. Obsessive, power-driven, the Alderton Flyers swept through the Palm Beach season unbeaten. Many people thought Red and Angel played better together than the O’Briens. They were less powerful physically, but younger and took more risks. Red, riding the legendary Glitz, won Most Valuable Player and Best Playing Pony in every match. Angel, getting $10,000 a win from Bart, which helped pay his gambling debts, had turned himself into a lean, mean, killing machine. The games were fantastically violent. All the other teams, furious that Bart had spent so much on ponies, were determined to beat them. In retaliation, Red and Angel had taught Perdita every dirty trick in the book. She got so terrified before matches that she grew more and more histrionic, while the media gleefully followed every tantrum.
Red egged her on. Nocturnal, sybaritic, self-indulgent, he could sleep anywhere, and, if he’d gone to bed late, could sleep in before a big match until lunchtime, have a huge steak or a toot of cocaine for breakfast and go on and play with no nerves. Perdita, on the other hand, went crazy with stage-fright.
In the past, too, Luke had always listened if she had a problem with a pony or was worried about her game. Red wasn’t interested. He wanted to do all the talking. Then, when she wanted to have her say, he was off out of the room.
Nor were matters helped by Grace rolling up at every game and going into ecstasies every time Red touched the ball, but wincing at Perdita’s expletives and her botched shots, which made her miss the ball more than ever. Chessie, furious at Grace’s presence, stayed at home sulking, spending money and playing tinker, tailor with the caviar. Angel, sulking because Bibi wasn’t there, or because she was there and criticizing him, stepped up his flirtation with Innocenta, all of which went down in Grace’s little book.
Miraculously, because Luke was playing for Hal Peters at the Royal Polo Club at Boco Raton Perdita didn’t bump into him.
Few people realized quite how much Luke suffered. He went on buying runts off the race track and making them under the arc lights until he was so tired he fell off them. He played polo with the same attack and won matches for Hal Peters. He joked with the other players and grooms and listened to their problems. He never talked about himself and appeared outwardly unchanged, except for a twenty-five-pound weight-loss, which hardly showed on his massive frame. Because he was unhappy, he didn’t see why the rest of the world should suffer.
Alas, music and reading, his great loves, no longer comforted him. Mozart and Mahler were impossibly painful. Biography and history were bearable, except that he read the same page over again, but poetry tore his guts out. Unable to sleep, tormented by visions of Perdita in Red’s arms, he slumped in front of the television, but if any love story or programme about animals or children came on, he found himself racked with tears and had to switch off. Repeatedly he chided himself with Emily Bronte’s lines that
And it was difficult to forget Perdita when every newspaper carried pictures of her and Red entwined and laughing: ‘
The two things that saved Luke were Fantasma and Leroy, who had become inseparable. The ugly black mongrel slept in the beautiful grey pony’s box, leaping in and out of her half-door, never being savaged or kicked by her, never in return nipping her nose or her fetlocks, proudly leading her out to the paddock with her rope between his snapping, long, white teeth.
Both of them wandered round the yard after Luke, both ganging up if any invader threatened him. Fantasma, given the chance, would have clambered up the narrow stairs into his bed. Sensing Luke was miserable, Leroy would rush in rattling a box of Bonios to make him laugh, or scrape his arm with his paw, gazing up with the crescents of white beneath his big brown eyes, as if to say, ‘You still have me.’ Often Luke woke from bad dreams to find Leroy licking away his tears.
He knew it was childish, but since Perdita had left him he couldn’t bear to be parted from Leroy. So he only went to places that allowed dogs, turning down all invitations to work abroad, which would have helped him to forget, going everywhere by lorry, instead of flying, so Leroy could sit barking beside him.
It was the last tournament of the Palm Beach season with six crack teams playing each other over ten days for a huge silver cup topped with rearing silver horses. On the hottest Sunday of the year the Alderton Flyers were only leading the O’Briens by two goals at half-time. After weeks of no rain, the ground was as hard and dusty as a volcanic crater. The only liquid came from the sweat which poured off pony and player, and from the diet Coke with which the teams slaked their parched throats. Huge white clouds gathering on the horizon suggested a storm to come.
Perdita had had a lousy first half, not helped by a ball on her arm in the second chukka which was now agony. No-one had noticed, but she wasn’t going to complain in case the others dismissed her as a whinging female. As she cantered back to the little tent where the other Flyers were taking a break, she saw them standing in a huddle outside looking deadly serious, except Red, who was sitting down wiping his face with a yellow towel, while the ever-adoring Grace massaged his shoulders. Bibi, in a check suit, had obviously just come from the office. Perdita hugged and gave Spotty a Polo before handing him over to a groom. Aware she was tomato-red in the face and dripping like a defrosting fridge, and not wanting Red to see her like that or be subjected to a pep-talk from Grace, she seized some anti-bruise cream from the first-aid box to rub into her arm and lay down on the unyielding ground, using her hat as a pillow.
Then she heard Bart say, ‘Well, for Chrissake, don’t tell Perdita.’
‘Tell Perdita what?’ The dust made her hoarse.
‘Nothing,’ snapped Red, not glancing round.
‘What?’ Perdita jumped to her feet and saw that Bibi was crying.
‘Nothing.’ Grace had all the charm of a steam-roller with brake failure. ‘We were saying you’re not on your man, and please centre the ball when you back it, and you’re tapping it too much. It’s meant to be hit.’
They were looking at her as if she was a lunatic that needed humouring.
‘Oh, piss off,’ snarled Perdita. Then, seeing Grace’s face: ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Alderton, but what mustn’t I be told?’
‘It’s Luke,’ sobbed Bibi, whose mascara was streaked by sweat and tears.
‘There’s been a slight accident,’ said Grace coolly.
Suddenly the rock-hard ground had no substance beneath Perdita’s feet.
‘He’s OK,’ said Bart, who was thinking only of his polo match.
‘He hasn’t tried to k-kill himself?’ whispered Perdita.
‘Don’t give yourself the bloody air,’ snarled Angel.
Red, who’d gone very pale, was lighting a Black Sobranie with a trembling hand.
‘Bobby Ferraro hit him with a ball yesterday,’ he said. ‘Broke his hand in three places. Bobby’s new patron, Pip Gilson, had Luke flown to New York. They’ve just operated and taken fifty chips of bone out of his hand.’
Perdita flinched, then thinking she was going to black out, sat down, nearly missing the edge of one of the duck-egg-blue canvas chairs.
‘Will he be able to play again?’
‘Too early to say,’ said Bart.
‘I must go to him,’ said Perdita desperately, peeling off her gloves. ‘Why weren’t we told yesterday?’
