If she’d hoped to placate Angel, she was quite wrong. Even more incensed, he stormed into the theatre, where Bibi, pale as her white nightgown, like a corpse in a morgue, lay on the operating table, surrounded by people in masks. Woosy from her pre-med, she was not too far gone to whip off the disfiguringly ugly bathcap.
‘What zee fuck?’ howled Angel. Then, stopped in his tracks: ‘What ’ave you done to your beautiful ’air?’
For, spilling over the white pillow, instead of the thick, shaggy, dark red curls was a long, sleek, totally straight, blonde bob.
‘Ees thees what Drew Benedict like?’ said Angel furiously. ‘He may prefer blondes, but ’e is no gentleman.’
Bibi burst into tears. ‘I love you so much. I figured if I had long blonde hair and a tiny nose like all the other polo wives, you might love me, too.’
Angel gave a groan. ‘I loff you as you are!’ Then, running a finger down her nose: ‘She is the theeng I like most about you. You are most beautiful girl I haff known. You geeve me the duck bumps. I haff nevair been more meeserable in my life. When you ran away, I theenk I die.’
And, seizing her hands, he covered them with kisses, and then he kissed her lips. There wasn’t a dry eye above the masks except for those of the plastic surgeon who was incensed at losing such a rich customer, and who had been intending to remodel Bibi’s entire body over the next few years.
‘I weel keel Drew Benedict,’ said Angel as he paused for breath.
‘Oh, please don’t,’ protested Bibi. ‘It was hopeless with him. I thought about you the whole time and how much I loved you.’
‘I ’urt you so bad,’ moaned Angel. ‘I was jealous of your work, I ’ate being a kept boy.’
‘You won’t be much longer,’ said Bibi. ‘If Dad goes belly-up, I won’t be an heiress any more.’
‘You won’t be anyway, after paying for all the equipment Rudolph Valentino’s just smashed up,’ said the plastic surgeon nastily, and he was even crosser when Angel just swept Bibi up and carried her out to the still- waiting taxi, banging on the door of the Impotency Support Group, yelling, ‘Keep eet up, two three four,’ as he went by.
70
Heeding Ricky’s advice, Perdita buried herself in work, standing in for his grooms when they took holidays before the Westchester, playing in low-and medium-goal matches. But she was still desperately pale, thin and unnaturally subdued.
Nor did the situation improve when Violet and Eddie returned from staying with schoolfriends not prepared to be as forgiving as Daisy and stepping warily round their perfidious sister. Soon they were at each other’s throats, all three thinking they had exclusive rights to the television, the bathroom and Violet and Perdita the use of Daisy’s rickety Volkswagen. Matters grew worse when Violet got straight As in her four A levels, was rewarded with money to buy a car by a delighted Biddy Macleod, and Violet’s schoolfriends rang the whole time comparing results and having endless discussions as to what they were going to do in their year out.
Eddie, blissfully unaware that Ricky had pulled strings with the muscular energy of a bell ringer to get him into Bagley Hall, a nearby co-ed, was half-terrified, half-excited at the prospect of boarding with girls in September. He had now reached adolescence, loving and co-operative one moment, moody, withdrawn and resentful the next.
There were compensations. Suddenly the small boy, who Daisy’d had to threaten within an inch of his life to pick up a toothbrush, was cleaning his teeth three times a day and bathing and washing his hair more often than Violet and Perdita. When he wasn’t counting his spots and perfecting a sexy pout in the mirror, he poured over
To add to Daisy’s problems, the puppies were crapping everywhere and chewing up everything and Sharon Kaputnik had to be painted. Not wanting to trouble Ricky or subject him to constant sexual harassment by painting Sharon in his attic, Daisy used the sitting room at Snow Cottage. This meant that every afternoon Sharon rose like Page Three incarnate from a sofa lined with Jaffacake crumbs, chewed crayon and puppy fur, surrounded by a sea of Coke tins, beer cans, mugs, kicked-off shoes and overflowing ashtrays, while being eyed by Eddie as he pretended to watch programmes on re-upholstering and re-runs of
Nor was Daisy any longer buoyed up by the prospect of seeing Drew again when the holidays were over. She found her thoughts turning more and more to Ricky, and how awful it would be when he finally went back to Chessie. He’d taken to dropping in late in the evening, often bringing a take-away, and was so wonderful at separating and shutting up the children.
‘If you’d ever umpired the Napiers, Bart Alderton and the O’Briens in the same match, you wouldn’t have any problems.’
‘Unfortunately, one can’t send one’s children off for arguing,’ sighed Daisy.
By the middle of August everyone was revving up for the Westchester, or West-Chessie-ter, as Daisy called it to herself. The English team had been confirmed: Ricky as captain, Drew and the Napiers; the same as the International, with the twins as reserve. Not an exciting team, but a solid one. Ricky detested the Napiers, but they were both nines and, under pressure from the BPA, he couldn’t see any way not to select them. He found the prospect deeply depressing, particularly as the very few practice matches they were able to organize were incredibly acrimonious. Rupert, who had high-handedly appointed himself unofficial team manager, because Venturer’s stake was so vast and because ‘although I don’t know that much about polo, I know all about winning’, was all too ready to put his show-jumping boot in and tell the players exactly where they were going wrong.
The ponies were due to fly out to California in mid-September to acclimatize them for the match which would begin the first week in October. With an eye to the extra buck, however, the Napiers and Drew had defiantly flown their horses out the third week in August to play in Oakbrook and in the US Open. This, as Ricky furiously pointed out, was the last way to rest them before the Westchester.
A week later Ricky got a telephone call from Charles Napier. His voice had the oily ingratiating timbre of a reporter about to ask a husband what he feels about his wife shoving off.
‘Ben and I want to level with you, Ricky. Frankly, we were fucked by the International. Five of our best horses were screwed up, not to mention Ben’s cracked collar-bone and my broken finger.’
‘So?’ said Ricky curtly.
‘That’s bad enough, but the Westchester’s a different ball game.’
‘In what way? It involves four people on either s-s-side trying to hit the ball through each other’s goal posts. Seems remarkably similar to me.’
Charles wasn’t to be deflected. ‘There’ll be three matches, three times as gruelling and much tougher opposition.’
‘It might help,’ said Ricky acidly, ‘if you rested your horses instead of carting them all over America.’
‘If you want the bloody truth,’ Charles dropped any attempt at amiability, ‘Ben, Drew and I are totally pissed off with putting ourselves and our ponies on the line for the honour of our country. Only women and horses work for nothing. We’re professionals.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘Don’t be so bloody sarky. We’re going on strike. None of us will play unless we get thirty grand each and a share of the TV action.’
Ricky sighed. Knowing there was absolutely no way Venturer or the big British and US sponsors could pull out at this stage, the Napiers and Drew, feeling they could easily afford the extra cash, were plainly determined to force his hand.
‘You still with me, Ricky?’
‘I was temporarily speechless. Have you bastards no idea of the honour of playing in the W-w-westchester? Have you no sense of history?’
