Polo

found herself knocked backwards by a huge, juddering, black, rubber bullet. It was Leroy who’d slipped his lead and, bashing his tail back and forth like a hooked salmon, was frantically licking her face.

‘Oh, darling,’ she moaned, clutching his wonderfully solid body. Then, on his forehead she breathed in a scent, sharp, sophisticated with musky overtones which unsettled her far more than the waft of orange blossom had yesterday. She got a sudden vision of Luke in hospital doubled up with pain.

‘Leroy, you’re incorrigible,’ said a cool voice. ‘If you’re going to assault the opposition, you’ll have to stay in the truck.’ Perdita found herself looking up into the lean, olive-skinned face of Margie Bridgwater, the beautiful girl who’d been sitting on Luke’s bed in hospital. She was wearing white jeans, loafers and a red shirt and the brilliant sunshine bounced joyfully off her blue-black hair.

‘Hi, Perdita,’ she said drily. ‘Congratulations on making the team.’

‘Thanks,’ muttered Perdita, collapsing beside Taggie.

‘Yes, congratulations, Perdita,’ called Chessie and Bibi, who were sitting above Margie, both looking thoroughly over-excited.

‘I do hope you win,’ added Chessie in a much-too-audible whisper. ‘I’m knocked out Luke’s been picked,’ she added to Margie. ‘About bloody time.’

‘What’s Luke doing now?’ asked Bobby Ferraro’s wife.

‘Running a green pony clinic in Florida,’ said Margie proudly. ‘He’s managed to pay off all his debts. That son-of-a-bitch Hal Peters has run away to Chile so he can’t be extradited.’

‘I’d have helped Luke out if I’d known,’ said Chessie, ‘but he’s so proud he never told anyone until it was too late. Where are you staying?’

‘Luke hates hotels because they won’t take Leroy,’ said Margie, stroking Leroy’s panting shiny head, ‘so we’ve rented a condo.’

‘He’s so lovely, Luke,’ said Chessie.

‘Why d’you think I’m with him?’ said Margie.

Looking down, Perdita found her nails had drawn blood in the palm of one hand. How dare they discuss Luke as if he was a new biography they were all enjoying?

‘Oh, look,’ said Taggie, as a burst of band music echoed round the mountains. ‘Here come the teams.’

The first match, as Red and the entire polo world had predicted, was a massacre. From the moment Bob Hope threw in the ball from the back of a Cadillac, Ricky knew it would be a tough game and that he, as the most dangerous player in the English team, would take the punishment. For six chukkas it seemed the Americans took positive pleasure in harassing the hell out of him. Particularly violent whenever he got the chance was Red, who seemed less interested in scoring, which he should have been doing from the number two position, than in paralysing Ricky. Time and again Ricky found himself forced off the ball, crushed between the explosive, unpredictable Angel and the sleek, viciously smiling Red, who jabbed his elbows into Ricky’s ribs as though he intended to puncture his heart.

On the rare occasions Ricky did get through, like a gundog finally escaping the shackles of a bramble thicket, there was Luke solid as the Rockies backing ball after ball such an incredibly long way that they invariably fell ten yards in front of goal beside the one American player that was loose. And when the English got rattled and started fouling, he hit four glorious penalties from the sixty-yard line.

Luke, whose horses had all been sold to pay his debts, was riding Bart’s ponies, which, as Ricky suspected, he had been tuning up for days with all the skill of a Ferrari mechanic. Because of his height and endless legs he still gave the air of a father riding a seaside donkey to amuse his children. But his hands were so light, and so supple was his thirteen-stone bulk that he managed to shift it like a contortionist. For the first time he had the chance to show the world how brilliantly he could ride when given top-class horses. Apart from Fantasma his own ponies had only been good because he’d trained them so well.

But his air of calm was deceptive. A despairing Dommie, who was supposed to be marking him and who had hardly touched the ball at all, saw Luke setting off upfield yet again. Unable to catch him because he was riding one of Bart’s fastest ponies, an exquisitely pretty little bay thoroughbred mare, Dommie panicked and ran Corporal into Luke’s mare broadside.

There was a sickening thud as the mare hit the ground and lay still. Leaping to his feet, Luke seized a horrified Dommie by his dark blue shirt and pulled him down off a quailing Corporal.

‘You goddamm asshole,’ he roared, lifting his huge fist.

‘Luke, for Chrissake, don’t hit him,’ howled Red, galloping up. Then, as the bay mare scrambled to her feet: ‘Pony’s only winded.’

For a second the fist trembled in the air.

‘You goddam asshole,’ said Luke more gently. Then, seeing how terrified Dommie was looking, he started to laugh and let him go, whereupon Juan O’Brien awarded a free goal to the Americans. Rupert put his head in his hands.

‘Unlike Luke to flip his lid,’ said Chessie to Bibi. ‘Must be more strung up than he looks.’

But Bibi was cocooned in happiness. She was expecting a baby by easily the most dashing man on the field, who, between blowing kisses in her direction, was making Seb Carlisle’s life a misery by scoring all the goals. The most miserable man on the field, however, was Mike Waterlane, who’d spent the last twenty-four hours on the loo, whose mallet had developed an allergy to the ball and who, like a policeman on point duty, had waved every American player through. With Ricky pegged like Gulliver, the young English team lost direction and ran out the losers 3-13.

Poor Ricky plunged into another nightmarish week as the clamour of his detractors intensified. Colossal recriminations followed from the sponsors and the two polo associations. Ricky, by his bloody-minded obstinacy, had sabotaged the Westchester. The press carved him up, baying for the return of Drew and the Napiers to prevent the second match being a complete joke.

Drew was quoted as saying he would make himself available but that ‘It would be rather like joining the Titanic in mid-voyage’ which didn’t improve Ricky’s temper. Rupert stood by him staunchly in public, but, in private, the rows were awful and shook the white walls of the Villa Victoria. If the Americans won the second match the third would be cancelled which meant Venturer would lose a fortune in television rights and sponsorship money. Worse still, David Waterlane insisted on flying over to sort things out. He arrived around midnight on the eve of the second match and was even more incensed to discover that Mike had been out since lunchtime with the twins.

Perdita, who’d valiantly tried to keep everyone’s spirits up during the week, had retreated to her room to avoid the brickbats. She’d been unable to concentrate even on Dick Francis since she’d arrived, but, flipping through the paperbacks she’d scooped up at random before she left, she discovered an old poetry anthology of Luke’s. Outside, the delicious spicy smell of Taggie’s paella had been overwhelmed by the sweet, voluptuous scent of orange blossom and stephanotis. A shooting star careered across the indigo sky. Croaking tree-frogs harmonized sexily with Bob Marley, throbbing and pounding out of the outside speakers. Perdita started flipping through the anthology. It fell open at Emerson:

‘Give all to love,

Obey thy heart,’ read Perdita.

‘Tis a brave master,

Let it have scope,

Follow it utterly.’

She had difficulty reading the last verse because she was crying and because Luke had written the word ‘Perdita’ in the margin:

‘Though thou loved her as thyself

As a self of purer clay.

Though her parting dims the day

Stealing grace from all alive.

Heartily know

When half-gods go,

The gods arrive.’

Red had been a half-god, she thought bitterly, and he’d gone. And she’d been a half-god and left Luke. That was why he was now with Margie Bridgwater, who was as clever as she was good and beautiful and Perdita