‘Just to bring back some stupid pot your ancestors couldn’t manage to hang on to. Ten losses on the trot, wasn’t it? Well, we don’t want to make it eleven.’
‘Look,’ Ricky was trying not to lose his temper, ‘I’ll try and get you ten grand each, but not a cent more. Venturer can’t afford it.’
‘Surely Rupert could take out a mortgage on his fifty house?’
‘Let me talk to Drew,’ said Ricky grimly.
There was another long pause. Ricky could almost hear the sweat bubbling on the palm of Charles’s great, red, meaty hand as he clapped it over the receiver. After an age Drew came on.
‘You’ve spent nearly thirty grand on this telephone call already,’ snapped Ricky. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a friend of mine.’
‘I am. I also have a living to make.’
‘Bullshit. You’re just fucking greedy. You wouldn’t expect to be paid for the Olympics.’
‘I would if I were likely to screw up my best horses.’
Then Ben Napier seized the telephone.
‘Thirty grand or no deal,’ he said roughly. ‘And that’ll only replace a couple of ponies.’
‘OK,’ said Ricky. ‘I’m dropping the lot of you.’
‘You can’t,’ said Ben, outraged. ‘We’ve flown our ponies over specially.’
‘To play in the Open. Go screw yourselves.’
‘The BPA will go apeshit.’
‘Good,’ said Ricky and hung up. He didn’t think he’d ever been so angry in his life.
He was unprepared for the storm which broke over his head. Venturer and the BPA went into shock horror to a man and called an emergency meeting in London the next day.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ howled Rupert. ‘They can’t have any television rights, but we could easily have raised another ninety thousand pounds. That’s peanuts. We could even stretch to one hundred and fifty thousand.’
‘It’s immaterial,’ said Ricky wearily. ‘I was always worried about this team. There were too many chiefs and not an Indian in sight. I could never have made it gel.’
‘Remember in Karachi, we had an Indian chappie, brilliant player, but hopeless if you gave him any responsibility,’ mumbled Brigadier Hughie. ‘Perhaps you’d feel happier if Charles was captain, Ricky.’
‘I don’t take orders from gorillas,’ said Ricky. ‘If you don’t let me pick my own team, I’ll drop out.’
David Waterlane, who had a bad back from an excess of Sharon-shagging, hit the roof. ‘Don’t be bloody silly. Who the hell did you have in mind?’
‘Seb and Dommie.’
‘Ludicrously inexperienced,’ snapped David, throwing his cigar butt at the half-open window and missing. ‘And far too erratic.’
‘Mike Waterlane,’ added Ricky with the faintest smile.
‘Mike!’ said David dumbfounded. ‘D’you think he’s up to it?’
‘Easily,’ said Ricky. ‘I’ve played all summer with the three of them and,’ scowling round the room, defying anyone to challenge him, ‘I’m going to take Perdita Macleod as reserve.’
Leaving the meeting in uproar, Ricky drove to Rutshire Polo Club where the last match of the season – always an elegiac occasion – was taking place. It had been raining. As he arrived, the drying boards were shimmering in the sinking sun, which was also warming the feathering willowherb. The huge, domed trees round the pitches were echoed by the grey-blue clouds of a Constable sky as a red tractor chugged back and forth weighed down by bales of straw. Perdita, her hair now shoulder-length and in a net, was watching the second match with Dommie and Mike Waterlane, who had a silver cup under his arm. Little Chef bounced ahead to greet his friend Decorum, the bull terrier, who grinned down at him, triangular eyes genial, tail going like a
‘How did you do?’ asked Ricky.
‘Buried them 17-1,’ said Dommie.
‘Thank Christ for that.’
‘Corporal won Best Playing Pony. We’re thinking of promoting him,’ crowed Dommie.
Seb lay stretched out on the bonnet of his Porsche, his head on the windscreen, his newly washed hair flopping. He had changed into white jeans and a pale blue bomber jacket and had a glass of whisky in one hand and his portable telephone in the other. He opened a bloodshot eye and grinned at Ricky.
‘
‘Reselecting the team for the Westchester.’
‘Who’s in it?’
Ricky told them.
‘Yippee,’ yelled Dommie, chucking a ball twenty feet in the air.
‘Good Lord, I must ring Daddy,’ said Mike Waterlane, going as scarlet as the Virginia creeper now smothering the clubhouse.
Perdita, turning to stone, always became most angry when she was frightened. ‘I won’t go. I can’t believe it. I’m not up to it. Whose bloody stupid idea was it to select me?’
‘Mine,’ said Ricky calmly.
‘But I’ll have to play against Red.’
‘Stop over-reacting,’ said Seb. ‘You’re only reserve. We’re much too tough to get injured.’
‘Not unless you get a few early nights,’ said Ricky, removing Seb’s whisky and emptying it on to the grass. ‘Annabel’s is going to miss you, Seb.’
To the shock horror of Venturer and the BPA were added next day the furious protests of the British and American sponsors and the American Polo Association, who all felt Ricky was making a total mockery of the Westchester. The thirty-five-goal English team had struggled in the International. How did Ricky imagine he could field a bunch of babies with a team aggregate of twenty-six against the might of the Americans in their own country? The media were equally outraged.
Frantic preparations ensued in the next week. Good horses about to be turned away had to be wheedled out of other owners and flown over to America for Mike and Perdita in case she had to play. Longingly she thought of the six ponies Red had given her. He’d probably be riding them against England. At least she still had Spotty, but he was in a frightful temper, as was Wayne. Announcing that they were both much too fat and that Argentines won matches because their horses carried no spare flesh, Rupert had put both ponies on a rigorous diet. Much to Ricky’s irritation, Rupert was in fact supervising the diets of all the ponies. He also insisted that all the team took the equivalent of a Marine’s assault course to get fit, but even he couldn’t make Ricky go out jogging.
Hell, thought Perdita a day later, as she gritted her teeth to stop herself crying, is being coached by Rupert Campbell-Black. God, he was sarcastic as he rode up and down, blue eyes narrowed, whip tapping his boots, not missing a trick, the nerve-gas hostility in no way abated, the drawling commentary more bitchy than ever.
‘I see Ricky’s given you a second chance,’ had been his first bleak words to her. ‘I certainly wouldn’t.’
For two chukkas, each time anyone missed a ball or a stab at goal it was greeted with sighs of ‘Oh dear, a Perdita pass again’. After shouting at her every time she picked up her stick, he called her over.
‘Stylistically you’re not bad,’ he said softly. ‘You’ve got most of the shots.’
Perdita looked up in amazed relief, a compliment at last.
‘It’s a pity,’ Rupert raised his voice, ‘you’re so fucking useless at selecting which shot and when.’
Perdita went crimson.
Two minutes later he was yelling, ‘For Christ’s sake, hook him, Perdita,’ as Seb scorched towards goal. Then as Seb scored, ‘What’s the point of hooking air? Why the fuck didn’t you catch up with him?’
‘I was twenty yards behind when he started off,’ stammered Perdita.
‘Then you catch up with him. You’re very deceptive. You’re even slower than you look.’
Then, after she’d let Seb through a third time, ‘Come here, Perdita.’ Oh God, how she dreaded that soft, bitchy, upper-class ring. ‘This is a pony,’ Rupert touched Spotty’s neck with his whip. ‘Rather an unattractive one,
