‘I
Ricky blushed and was about to return to Daisy in the garden when he knocked over the nude of Drew which had been leaning inward against the kitchen table.
‘My God,’ he exploded.
‘I quite agree,’ said Violet. ‘That is definitely one for the log basket.’
76
A very subdued Perdita returned from Palm Springs. She was delighted – despite Daisy’s apprehension – that her mother and Ricky were getting married, but their almost incandescent happiness only emphasized her utter desolation. The telephone rang constantly with patrons suddenly finding a hole in next year’s team for a five-goal player. But she accepted nothing. She just thought about Luke and cursed herself for not having had the courage to tell him how much she loved him. But surely if he’d felt anything he would have come forward. Perhaps he did love that cool, stylish lawyer with the warm eyes. Daisy was spending most of her time up at Robinsgrove which gave Perdita the chance endlessly to watch videos of the Westchester and marvel at Luke’s unselfishness and his sheer bloody-minded tenacity.
Ricky and Daisy had wanted a quiet wedding at Rutminster Register Office, but as usual the carnival took over and every polo player in the land – except Drew who’d been banned by Ricky – seemed to have rolled up with polo sticks to form a guard of honour outside Eldercombe Church. Daisy wore a dark green velvet suit with a pillbox hat which kept sliding off her newly washed piled-up hair. She looked so radiant no one noticed the ladder in her tights nor the inch of red silk petticoat hanging beneath her hem, nor the mud on her heels from taking the puppies out in the garden before she left.
Rupert, who, on the Chairman of Revlon’s advice, had gone liquid before the stock exchange crash which occurred a few days after the final of the Westchester, insisted on throwing a party for them afterwards. Eddie, euphoric to be out of school and at the prospect of endless fishing and shooting ahead, confided to Perdita in a lull in the service that Taggie and Rupert were planning a surprise party for her twenty-first birthday next week and he hoped to wrangle another day off school. But this did little to raise Perdita’s spirits. Then, to crown it, they sang ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ during the signing of the register. When they came to the bit about the
Rupert found her, oblivious of the icy wind and a lurking circle of press, sobbing pitifully against a yew tree and hustled her into his car.
‘I didn’t mean to screw up Mum’s wedding,’ she choked, ‘but I can’t bear it.’
Rupert got a hip flask out of the dashboard.
‘I brought this to steady Ricky’s nerves. Forgot he didn’t drink. Have a great slug. Warm you up. Look, I know how ghastly these things are.’ He put a hand on her heaving shoulders, appalled by the jagged edges of collarbone and shoulder-blade. ‘I never really understood unhappiness until I thought I wouldn’t end up with Tag.’
‘Luke’s like Taggie,’ sobbed Perdita. ‘They’re both seriously good people.’
‘And prodigals like you and me are far too insecure to find happiness with any other kind of person. You turned Luke down once – told him never to come near you again. You’ll have to make the first move.’
Putting a hand in his inside pocket he drew out a Coutts cheque book and a fountain pen.
‘It’s your birthday next week. We’re both Scorpios.’
‘I know. Eddie said you might be giving me a party. It’s really kind but I couldn’t.’
‘Sure,’ said Rupert. ‘But you can’t stop being twenty-one. I’ve been meaning to settle some money on you. Ricky’s always said the thing that you craved most was financial security. This should be a start.’
In his big blue scrawl he wrote her a cheque for ?100,000.
Over in Florida, Luke was slowly going out of his mind with misery. Seeing Perdita at Palm Springs had made everything a million times worse. He had finally levelled with Margie, telling her it could never work out. Now he wanted to slink into his lair and die. But, with Red disappearing with Chessie and Angel shoved off with Bibi to play in the Argentine Open, there was no-one to cope with the Herculean task of comforting a maddened, desperately humiliated Bart.
For not only had Bart lost his wife, but his fortune as well. In his obsession with polo he had neglected his business and totally failed to anticipate the stock market collapse. Black Monday had cost him over a billion and chopped the value of Alderton Airlines by ninety-five per cent. Bart had also borrowed heavily to take over oil and property companies, gold mines, theatres and big department stores. Now these had to be sold off for virtually nothing, most of them to a gloating Victor, when the Wall Street merchant banker withdrew a $330,000,000 loan which Bart desperately needed to help lower his enormous interest charges at other banks. He had also had to sell his five houses and put
Bart was very unpopular, so no friends came forward to bail him out, particularly in the polo world. Ponies he had spent $100,000 on were now being sold off for a fifth of the price. He had enough to live on and would no doubt claw his way back one day, but he couldn’t support a polo team.
The only good thing that had come out of the whole sorry business, reflected Luke, was that his father and he had at last become friends.
One Friday afternoon at the end of November Luke was down at
A slender, dark brown filly, with one white sock and a white star who turned both ways automatically, she was such a natural she reminded Luke of Fantasma, when he’d ridden her back from the river after her first, maddened bucking-and-bolting spree in Argentina. He wondered, as he wondered every day, how she was and prayed Alejandro’s grooms hadn’t broken her glorious, cantankerous, tempestuous spirit. A warm breeze shook the ‘For Sale’ sign hanging forlornly outside the barn and sent a waft of orange blossom towards him.
Oh, Perdita, he thought hopelessly. To him, she truly was the Lost One now.
He was roused from his black musings by a groom telling him that Angel was ringing from Buenos Aires in a complete panic. Alejandro, the captain of the Mendozas’ team for which Angel was playing in the Argentine Open, had broken his leg in the semi-final.
‘It’s the final on Sunday,’ begged Angel. ‘Alejandro say you only back in zee world who can stand in for heem.’
‘I have no horses,’ said Luke in despair. ‘Alejandro’s got my best one.’
‘Eef you come and play the Open, Alejandro say you can buy back Fantasma. He say she never go as well for him.’
But, the blissful prospect of getting Fantasma back apart, the moment Luke agreed to play he regretted it. He knew it was every polo player’s dream to play in the Open and no American had ever reached the final. But he didn’t feel up to it. There was no way the Mendozas’ team, which consisted of Angel and Alejandro’s two sons, Patricio and Lorenzo, could win without Alejandro, particularly when they were pitted against the might of Juan and Miguel O’Brien and their cousins Kevin and Seamus, all ten-goal players who’d beaten them five years running. The two teams detested each other and there had been endless squabbles over officials and umpires being bribed and both teams threatening to pull out. Fans would turn up on Sunday to see them tear each other apart. No-one ever shook hands at the end of the game.
Besides Luke didn’t want to go to Argentina. It reminded him far too poignantly of Perdita. Making matters worse, Bart insisted on coming too to lend support, which was the last thing Luke needed, as Bart, unused to being poor, would make a fuss about travelling Economy and not staying in five-star hotels.
They had great difficulty landing at Buenos Aires because there had been a coup and the airport was on strike. Although the whole town was sky-blue with jacaranda blossom, soldiers with cigarettes hanging out of their
