Polo

of Billy and Janey Lloyd-Foxe’s children. As the two-year-old daughter had nearly smashed up Ricky’s house on the first sitting while Janey got happily plastered, Daisy had worked thereafter from photographs and had just painted Billy’s late mongrel, Mavis, as a dog cherub up in the sky. As a background she’d used the particularly tranquil view from Ricky’s balustrade of perpendicular woods and jade-green fields dotted with ponies grazing westward towards the setting sun. Not wanting to disturb Ricky, she slipped out of Robinsgrove by a side door. There was an air of tremendous bustle and excitement about the yard because practice chukkas were starting at the Rutshire tomorrow. She paused for a second to watch the twins, Mike Waterlane and Ricky working out fiendish strategies to fox the opposition.

The twins, back from Palm Beach, were dazzlingly blond and brown and shouting their heads off as usual. Despite the high spirits, however, they’d been training incredibly hard together. No-one was going to take the Gold Cup away from them this year.

It was a spellbinding evening. Two grey geese and a squad of pale yellow goslings broke the turquoise surface of the lake. Three days of rain after a spate of warm weather had brought out the white cherries and the bluebells in a sapphire mist on either side of the ride. The poplars, shiny, acid-green, were wafting the scent of balsam down the valley. Crows nesting in Ricky’s beeches had splattered the wild garlic leaves like milk of magnesia on green hangover tongues. Daisy had heard the cuckoo through the open window of her studio all day. She felt quite faint with happiness. Ricky had become such a friend recently and her painting was going wonderfully. Perdita was due back in three weeks and surely couldn’t sustain the feud for ever; and Daisy was expecting Drew that evening. By the law of sod, if ever she glammed herself up and washed her hair Drew had to back down at the last moment. Today she’d chanced it and put on a dark green jersey he’d bought her and her best jeans. She was in luck, for there outside the cottage was Drew’s BMW. Splashing through the last twenty yards of watermeadow, she clambered over Ricky’s padlocked gate, raced up the path, then gave a gasp of disappointment. For outside the door was not Drew, but a glamorous, if slightly grubby-looking, blonde, wearing rather too much eye make-up for daytime, a creased denim suit and scuffed black shoes with the steel high heels escaping from the leather. With her was a man carrying a camera with the leering face of a drunken vulture and snowdrifts of scurf on the shoulders of his shiny grey suit.

‘Mrs Macleod?’ said the girl, as though she was about to sell Daisy insurance. Ethel, for once, bristled and started to growl.

‘We’re from The Scorpion,’ the girl went on. ‘Can we have a word?’

‘What about?’ stammered Daisy.

‘It’d be easier inside.’

Daisy opened the front door.

‘Don’t you ever lock up?’ asked the girl.

‘Nothing to steal,’ said Daisy. ‘Look, if it’s about Red and Perdita, I’ve got nothing to say.’

‘Well, it is.’ The girl dumped her bag on the kitchen table. ‘Perdita told Simpson Hastings in Florida yesterday that she’d no idea who her father was.’

‘Oh, no,’ Daisy licked her lips, eyes darting from the girl to the man. ‘Perdita’s father was killed in a car crash. He never knew I was pregnant.’

‘That’s not what Perdita told Simpson,’ interrupted the girl cosily.

She opened her notebook but made no notes because a tiny tape recorder was rotating in the breast pocket of her denim suit.

‘What a nice kitchen. I love all the flowers. Perdita said you went to a party in 1966 and everyone got stoned and screwed each other and you got pregnant as a result.’

‘She couldn’t have said that,’ mumbled Daisy, groping for the kettle switch.

‘D’you want to read the exact words?’ The girl produced a rather crumpled newspaper proof from her bag. It smelt of Femme. Daisy was too shocked to take much in. Her legs wouldn’t stop trembling.

‘I loathe my mother,’ she read. ‘She must have been a tart to sleep with all those men. She claims she was stoned but that’s her story. She’s lied to me for years that my father was killed in a car crash.’

Ethel, having climbed heavily on to the kitchen table, was now licking the blonde’s face.

‘Don’t be disloyal, Ethel,’ said Daisy in a high, unnatural voice.

‘But I love dogs,’ protested the blonde.

‘Dogs get on with dogs, I suppose,’ said Daisy. ‘Sorry, that was frightfully rude. I can’t read any more.’

Racing upstairs to the loo, she retched and retched until she thought she would bring up her hammering heart. Then she cleaned her teeth and wiped her face, closing her eyes desperately trying to still the trembling. As she returned to the kitchen the blonde said: ‘We thought we’d give you a chance to put your point of view.’

‘I’ve nothing to say. Oh, poor Violet and Eddie.’

‘Your kids,’ said the blonde consulting an earlier page in her notebook. ‘They’re at boarding school, aren’t they? Let’s all have that cup of tea.’

Daisy filled the kettle and switched on the gas, but didn’t light it. After a couple of seconds the blonde leapt forward with her lighter.

‘Don’t want to blow ourselves up. We’d make it very worth your while. You could do with a new washing-up machine and a lovely conservatory out into the garden, and a new car – that Volkswagen is on its last legs and we could help with the school fees and a really nice holiday so you could escape from all this.’

Then, as Daisy looked at her uncomprehendingly: ‘We’re talking five or six figures.’

‘It’s a lovely car,’ said Daisy, thinking that Drew had given it to her. ‘It goes perfectly well.’

‘Perdita says a man called Jackie Cosgrave hosted the orgy.’ The blonde was getting down mugs and the tea caddy. ‘Is he still around?’

‘No,’ said Daisy in terror. ‘I haven’t seen him since that winter.’

A flash lit up the room.

‘You’re awfully young to have a twenty-year-old daughter,’ leered the photographer.

‘I was only seventeen,’ sobbed Daisy. ‘Please don’t take pictures. I don’t remember anyone at the party. I was so drunk, but that doesn’t make it any better. Please go away.’

They all jumped as the kettle whistled and the telephone rang.

It was Drew. ‘Thank Christ I’ve got you. I wish you’d stop working up at Ricky’s.’

‘The Scorpion are here,’ gasped Daisy. ‘Perdita’s told them about the orgy and that she hasn’t a clue who her father is.’

‘Fucking bitch,’ said Drew absolutely appalled. ‘Oh, my poor darling. Don’t say anything to them.’

‘They’re in the house.’

‘I’ll come straight over.’

‘Oh, please.’ Then, after the first blessed relief: ‘No, you mustn’t. It isn’t safe. Sukey, the children . . . ’ She stopped, realizing she’d probably said too much.

‘I’ll ring Ricky,’ said Drew. ‘Look, I love you. It’ll be OK. Don’t worry.’

The flash bulbs were going like mad. Gainsborough crashed fatly in through the cat door, then crashed out again in dismay.

‘Have you got any photographs of yourself when you were seventeen?’ asked the blonde, opening a drawer.

‘Get out,’ shrieked Daisy.

‘Hard for Perdita, not having a father. No wonder she’s screwed up,’ said the blonde losing some of her cosiness.

Kinta had never been encouraged to run away before but, as Ricky, alerted by Drew’s telephone call, picked up his whip, the mare thundering down the valley, crushing cowslips and cuckoo flowers, jumping the bustling stream as it twisted and turned and sending up twelve feet of spray, frightened even herself.

Hearing a thud of hooves, Daisy glanced out of the window. For a second she thought Ricky was going to jump the gate. The skid marks were six feet long after Kinta jammed on her brakes. Next minute her reins had been knotted to the bars and Ricky had vaulted over the gate. As he came through the door his face, jeans and check shirt were splashed with mud and he was so angry that at first he couldn’t get any words out.

Instinctively the blonde’s hand rose to lift her tousled hair and wipe away the shine beneath her eyes and on the sides of her nose. Ricky crossed the room and put his arms round Daisy. ‘It’s all right, pet.’