your swing; keep watching the ball; head over the ball.’
Crack! Stick and ball connected in an exquisitely timed shot.
‘Bingo!’ Perdita threw her stick into the air, ten feet high, and caught it. ‘That was perfect.’
‘You hit it too late, and don’t throw your stick in the air. It’s dangerous.’
‘Better a stick in the air than a stick-in-the-mud!’
The galloping fox weather-vane was motionless in the swooning heat. Beneath it the stable clock said two fifteen. She had been riding for two hours, nearly twice the length of a normal match.
‘We’ll try one more thing,’ said Ricky.
Louisa led out two ponies – Willis, a huge bay, invaluable because he had the best brakes in Rutshire, and Hermia, a little chestnut mare Ricky had bought in Argentina in 1981, who was very green and terrified of everything.
Ricky mounted Willis. Perdita clambered wearily on to Hermia. Her ribs and shoulders were agony, her back ached, her thighs were raw where the sweating jodhpurs had rubbed them. Her hands could hardly hold Hermia’s reins as she followed Ricky a hundred yards down a wooded lane, past an empty, leaf-strewn swimming-pool. Here, in two and a half acres of lush, green grass, framed by midge-filled trees, lay Ricky’s stick-and-ball field.
Next year’s tiny catkins were already forming on the hazels. Ricky noticed the reddening haws and remembered how little Millicent used to shut her eyes to avoid the prickles as she delicately picked the berries off the thorn trees. Overwhelmed with bitterness at the hand fate had dealt him, he saw no reason why he should show others any mercy.
‘Now, do everything I tell you,’ he yelled to Perdita as he kicked Willis into a gallop. The big bay’s stride was longer than Hermia’s and Perdita had to really motor to keep up. Halfway up the field, Ricky shouted, ‘Turn!’
‘He’s crazy,’ raged Frances in anguish. ‘If he has a fall, his arm’s buggered for good.’
Four times Ricky raced up and down the field, executing sharper and sharper turns. Now he was hurtling towards two orange-and-white traffic bollards which served as goal posts up the other end.
‘Ride me off,’ he bellowed.
Perdita spurred Hermia on, but she was just too far behind. Ricky’s knee and the shoulder of his horse hit Hermia so hard that she seemed to fly four feet through the air. Perdita was still reeling when Ricky turned and was riding back. ‘Ride me off again.’
The fourth time Perdita was knocked clean out of the saddle and only stayed mounted by clinging to the mare’s neck.
‘Bastard,’ she screamed as she righted herself.
But by now Ricky had reached the opposite end of the field. ‘Now ride towards me. Towards me! Towards me! Don’t duck out! Keep going!’
The mighty Willis was thundering at them like a Volvo on the motorway. Perdita could feel Hermia quailing and about to bolt. It was all she could do to keep her on course.
She could see Willis’s red nostrils as big as traffic lights, his white-edged eyes, the flashing silver of his bit. They must crash, they must.
‘Stop,’ yelled Ricky, swinging Willis to the left. Obedient to their masters, Willis and Hermia skidded to a halt, so close that Hermia’s head brushed Willis’s quarters, and Perdita was deposited on the grass, all the breath knocked out of her aching body.
‘You bloody fool,’ she croaked.
‘I told you not to sit so far forward. Get up, you’re not hurt.’
‘I know I’m bloody not, but
Just for a second Ricky smiled.
‘At least you’ve given me back my nerve. Go and have a shower and we’ll have lunch.’
‘Doesn’t look so sexy now, does she?’ said Frances spitefully, as a dusty, blood-stained Perdita hobbled into the yard, wincing as she led Hermia.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Joel.
‘She’s jolly brave,’ said Louisa. Kind-hearted and admiring, she followed Perdita into Hermia’s box.
‘You OK?’
‘Fine.’ Perdita leant against the wall, fighting back the tears.
‘I’ll see to Hermia,’ said Louisa, ‘and show you where the shower is.’
After she’d found Perdita a towel and some soap, she handed her a pair of pants and a long, white T-shirt with bananas and oranges embroidered on the front.
‘I thought you might want to change.’
‘Thanks,’ said Perdita slowly. ‘Sorry I was bloody beforehand. I was absolutely shit-scared.’
‘Needn’t have been,’ said Louisa. ‘Joel and I thought you did brilliant. The hot water’s erratic, but there’s plenty of cold.’
Twenty minutes later Perdita joined Ricky in the kitchen. He was drinking Coke, eating a slice of ham between two pieces of white sliced bread and reading
Louisa’s T-shirt, several sizes too big for her, fell to a couple of inches above her knees. Her hair, wet from the shower, was slicked back, the alabaster skin was without a scrap of make-up. Her nose was swollen, her big curved mouth looked as though bees had stung it, and her wary, dark eyes were still bloodshot from the dust.
‘That’s better. You look like a human,’ said Ricky. ‘If you ever turn up tarted up like that again, you go straight back to your play-pen. What d’you want to drink?’
‘Vodka and tonic,’ said Perdita, chancing her arm.
‘Not if you’re going to play polo. Most top players hardly drink or smoke,’ he added, removing her packet of cigarettes and throwing it in the bin.
‘There were four in there,’ said Perdita, outraged. ‘Anyway, the twins smoke.’
‘They’re not top players – yet.’
Armed with a glass of Perrier and a ham sandwich, Perdita wandered round the kitchen, stopping before a photograph of Herbert on a pony.
‘Who’s that?’
‘My father.’
‘Any good?’
‘He was a nine,’ said Ricky. ‘Won the Inter-Regimental Cup seven times in a row and played in the Westchester.’
‘Oh,’ sighed Perdita.
‘Why d’you want to learn polo?’
‘I want to go to ten,’ said Perdita simply.
Looking down at the remains of his ham sandwich, Ricky found he was suddenly not hungry and threw it in the bin.
‘I don’t think it’s possible,’ he said. ‘With timing and skill a girl could hit the ball as far as a man. You could train your ponies even better, but it’s the riding-off and the violence that’s the problem.’
‘I’m nearly five foot seven,’ protested Perdita. ‘That’s bigger than lots of the Mexicans or Argentines.’
The telephone rang. One of the grooms must have picked it up because next moment a boot-faced Frances had put her head through the window.
‘It’s Philippa Mannering,’ she snapped at Ricky. ‘Would you like to go to kitchen supper tonight?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Tomorrow? The next day?’
‘Sorry, I can’t.’
Frances shrugged her shoulders and disappeared.
‘Ghastly old bag, that Philippa,’ said Perdita. Then, when Ricky didn’t react, ‘Her house overlooks ours. She’s always peering through the trees with her binoculars. She wouldn’t suit you. She’s a nympho, wear you out in a week.’
‘Thank you for the advice,’ said Ricky tartly.
I fancy him so much, thought Perdita, I’ll never be able to eat again.
