‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ yelled Rupert as he came off at half-time. ‘You select a bunch of kids who are playing like gods. You’re meant to lead them over the top and you’re being about as uplifting as a five-year-old jock strap.’
The temperature was still rising. Male hands applied oil to vulnerable female shoulders. The crowd was enjoying the sunshine but had lost bounce and were even doing the Spot the Ball competitions in their programmes. The bars were doing a roaring trade. The press wilted in the heat. Their cameras had become very heavy; they’d come all this way and there was no story. Red and Perdita were showing no sign of falling into each other’s arms, and Chessie looked stunned rather than stunning at such an English setback. All the animation had drained out of her face and she refused to talk, even to Bibi, who was reeling with joy because Angel had scored three of the goals.
Even the arrival of Dancer in Joan Collins’s private plane didn’t rouse the cameramen. Megastars were two a dime today. Fighting his way to the pony lines, Dancer found the English mounting their ponies for the fourth chukka. ‘To fink I’ve been stuck in an Alderton sardine tin for the last fifteen hours just for your sake, Ricky, only to find you’re nil-four down. Get yer fucking finger out.’
Then, seeing how ill Ricky looked: ‘It’s no big deal, sweetheart. If you lose and Chessie loves you, she’ll come back anyway.’
Ricky stared at him bleakly. ‘You think so?’
‘Course she will. She’s looking pretty cheesed off now. Here’s somefink to cheer you up,’ added Dancer.
It was a photograph of Little Chef in a polo hat and dark glasses.
Ricky laughed and turned it over, where Daisy had written,
‘When did you see her?’
‘Yesterday,’ said Dancer.
‘Move your ass, Reeky,’ yelled Alejandro, ‘everyone’s waiting.’
Shoving Little Chefs photograph into his breeches’ pocket, Ricky vaulted on to Kinta and galloped back on to the field.
At the beginning of the fourth chukka a machiavellian Red pulled up on the ball, convincing Alejandro that Seb had crossed him. Up went the American sticks. Alejandro awarded a penalty from the sixty-yard line, which Shark converted gloriously. The rest of the side crowded round him, their patting hands sinking into his fleshy back. Five- nil.
‘Good thing we dropped Luke,’ muttered Bart to Brad Dillon. ‘Shark’s playing great.’
He felt happier than ever before in his life. Red’s speciality, the fifth chukka, was coming up. Ricky and the Brits would be utterly humiliated and his beautiful Chessie would stay with him. Earlier he’d seen Grace hanging round the pony lines giving Red advice. She was still a handsome woman, but in the harsh Californian light, she looked sixty. For the millionth time, despite everything, Bart was glad he’d left her for Chessie, whom he adored and understood. She’d be utterly miserable going back to the unimaginative, inhibited Ricky, who was playing like a nought. With any luck, he might be put down. It was a joke he could ever be considered a ten.
As play started again, and they lined up for the throwin, a bored voice in the crowd called out: ‘Oh, come on, England.’
Perdita turned in fury: ‘We’re doing our best, you fucker,’ she screamed. ‘You try playing against this ape.’
The crowd shouted with laughter. In the ensuing melee Shark swung his pony’s head into Perdita’s ribs once too often.
‘You bastard,’ she yelled. Then, to herself: ‘Help me, God! We can’t let them win so easily!’
And from the spacious royal-blue firmament on high the Almighty seemed to answer by suddenly putting wings on her back and on her pony’s heels.
‘Cry God for Charlie, England and St George,’ she screamed to the others and, cannoning off Shark, then into Red, then stopping short, then wheeling away under their horses’ tails, she careered off and put a beautifully angled cutshot from twenty yards into goal. The crowd roared.
‘That’s better,’ pleaded Terry Hanlon. ‘Come on, you Brits in the crowd. Give the boys and the girl a chance. They need you.’
Thirty seconds later Perdita came pounding down again, whacking it to Seb, then racing ahead, picking up the ball again and sinking a big nearside neck shot.
‘Come on, Ricky,’ she yelled as she rode back to the centre, ‘we can’t do it on our own.’
Every time Red and Shark tried to ride her off now, she was too quick for them and they found they were bumping the breeze. Slowly the English, and particularly Ricky, steadied, and they ended the fourth chukka only 3-6 down.
‘Well done! Fucking marvellous,’ said an ecstatic Rupert. ‘Fantastic play, Perdita! Keep it up all of you. Your job in the next chukka, Seb, is to mark Red mindless. Stop him letting off any fireworks.’
The fifth chukka was uneven. Mike, rather than let Red score, fouled deliberately in the American goal-mouth, so that Shark had to go back to the sixty-yard line to take the penalty. Overcome by nerves, he hit wide.
‘Luke wouldn’t have missed that,’ Perdita taunted him.
Goaded and desperate to make his mark on polo history, Shark was determined to score from the Number Four position, and kept trying to bulldoze the British defence, leaving his own back door wide open and enabling Perdita and Seb to score twice more.
‘Corporal’s now been promoted to Warrant Officer Two,’ whooped Seb, triumphantly patting Dommie’s little brown pony as they cantered back for the throwin.
A second later the play was down near the English goal and an utterly rattled Shark mis-hit so the ball ricocheted off the boards over the back line.
‘You stay there, Fatty. I’ll be back in a minute,’ yelled Perdita at Shark as she belted off to take up her position as Mike hit in. The crowd howled with laughter.
‘Wash your mouth out with soap, Perdita,’ said Terry Hanlon, ‘but isn’t she playing well!’
Catching the other side off guard, Mike powered the ball to Ricky who, keeping moving to lure Angel away, broke off to the right to receive the ball, then before Angel could blink, backed it to a hovering Seb, who, swinging Corporal round, scored yet again.
‘Corporal’s an RSM now,’ whooped Seb.
Six-all to England on the bell.
The whole crowd were on their feet yelling their heads off as the teams went into the last chukka, and the Americans steadied and rallied.
‘England, England, England,’ chanted the galvanized British contingent.
Now they were into a frantic melee in front of the American goal. Angel somehow managed to clear and Ricky sent the fleet-footed Wayne after the ball. As he could hear Red thundering down on him, the only answer was to back it. Turning round in his saddle, a miracle of cool, Ricky took a lightning look at the posts, then, picking the left-hand one as a target, keeping his body steady and Wayne moving, leant over to the left until his head was level with Wayne’s gallant, pounding heart and raked the ball over the antheap of players slap between the posts. As the flag went up, the crowd gave a collective sigh of horror and ecstasy. Overheard by everyone, Chessie uttered a shriek of joy and raised a clenched fist in a Black Power salute: ‘Oh Ricky, darling, what a wonderful, wonderful goal,’ she screamed ecstatically.
The cameramen went berserk. They had a picture at last.
The English were also ahead at last. But with three minutes to go they could feel their ponies wilting. Spotty was panting like an obscene telephone caller and his brown patch foamed, under his breastplate, like an overflowing washing machine. Red and Angel had taken the opportunity when the last goal was scored to change ponies. The English problem was to stop either of them getting the ball. Next minute Mike gave his side a breathing space by clouting the ball firmly into the stands.
‘Unsporting but necessary,’ said Seb as the players lined up. ‘You’re learning, Mike.’
In the closing seconds a perfect eighty-yard drive from Red took the ball down to the English end where it was centred by Bobby Ferraro. One after another, yelling with frustration, Angel, Bobby, Shark and a furiously galloping-up Red tried to hammer the ball between the posts. As Mike cleared for England through a thick curtain of dust, a great groan went up from the stands. For once again Shark had left the American posts unattended. Taking
