Within a week Little Chef was running the yard, bringing in the ponies from the fields, doing tricks for pony nuts, retrieving lost balls from the undergrowth, then running on to the field and dropping them when there was a pause in play.
He also learnt not to scrabble Dancer’s leather trousers and who was welcome in the yard, biting the ankles of visiting VAT men, growling at Philippa Mannering when, ever hopeful, she dropped in on Ricky, and lifting his leg on the probation officer’s bicycle.
He adored Perdita, but Ricky was his great love, and gradually as the ugly little dog limped after him, barking encouragement during practice chukkas, and even hitching a lift on the back of a pony in order not to be separated, Ricky succumbed totally to his charms.
And when the vet came to take out Little Chef’s stitches, it was Ricky who held the wildly trembling dog in his arms. Any visiting player who was foolish enough to make eyes at Perdita, or disparaging cracks about Little Chef’s appearance, got very short shrift.
By the beginning of August Ricky’s arm was so much better that he was able gently to stick and ball. By the end of August so excessive had been the overtime paid the builders and excavators that Dancer and his gaudy retinue were able to move into Eldercombe Manor.
Miss Lodsworth had a busy summer. When she wasn’t inveighing against cruelty to ponies and disgusting language at Rutshire Polo Club, and furiously ringing up Ricky to complain about Perdita thundering ponies five abreast down Eldercombe High Street, she was writing to Dancer, to grumble about cheeky builders, truculent security guards, and Alsatians chasing her cat, Smudge. Nor was she amused by helicopters with flashing lights landing like fireflies at all hours, nor the deafening boom of all-night recording sessions.
Worst of all, some sadist of a landscape designer had slapped down Dancer’s stick-and-ball field right next to her house, so she not only had fairies at the bottom of her garden, but also a microcosm of Rutshire Polo Club. As Commissioner for Rutshire, how could she hold dignified get-togethers with her guides when expletives and polo balls kept flying over her hawthorn hedge?
Nor did any of the rest of the Parish Council come to her aid. The Vicar, who was a closet gay, and the local solicitor, who reckoned that such development would triple the price of his house, both thought Dancer was splendid.
Dancer, however, was warned well in advance that Miss Lodsworth would be holding an All-Rutshire Jamboree in her garden on the first Saturday in September and had promised there would be no stick and balling that afternoon. A perfect day dawned. Rising early, Miss Lodsworth prayed that it would continue fine and her guides would find enjoyment as well as fulfilment in their Jamboree. Believing in economy, Miss Lodsworth had already baked rock and fairy cakes and spread hundreds of sandwiches with crusts still on with Marmite and plum jam which was cheaper than strawberry. Nor was Coca Cola or Seven-Up allowed. Her guides would have lemon squash because it was better for them and less expensive.
Creaking up from her knees, Miss Lodsworth snorted with indignation. Even on a Saturday Dancer’s bulldozers were still knocking down trees and flattening hillocks to extend one of the loveliest cricket grounds in England into a polo field. Just after lunch, as she was wriggling into her guide uniform, which had grown somewhat tight, Miss Lodsworth looked out of the window and saw a girl not wearing a hard hat clattering five ponies down the High Street.
It was that fiendish Perdita Macleod. Now she had pulled up outside the village shop and was yelling to them to bring her out an ice-cream. The Vicar’s wife, who had parked on a yellow line while her gay husband went into the shop to get a treacle tart, got such a shock when Wayne stuck his big, hairy white face in through the window that she jumped out and ran away. A traffic warden, finding an empty car, gave the Vicar a parking ticket.
Clattering on, trying to hold five ponies and eat an ice-cream, Perdita was not amused to hear whoops and noisy hooting behind her. It was Seb and Dommie Carlisle packed into their Lotus, with two sumptuous brunettes, and a bull terrier spilling out of the luggage compartment.
Aware that she was hot and sweaty and her hair was escaping from its towelling band, Perdita greeted them sulkily.
‘We’re going to see over Dancer’s
‘I haven’t got a bikini.’
‘That’s the last thing you’ll need. See you later.’
When she got back to the yard, however, Ricky had other ideas.
‘What the fuck were you doing taking out five ponies at once? I’ve just had Miss Lodsworth
The Jamboree was in full swing. Guides were marching, pow-wowing, flag-waving and singing stirring songs as Dancer showed the twins over a totally transformed Eldercombe Manor. As they progressed through the great hall, which was now a recording studio, and practice rooms and six master bedrooms, with bathrooms and jacuzzis
‘I want a mistress bedroom,’ said Seb, bouncing on one of the huge double beds.
Outside they admired a pink brick yard for twenty ponies, which looked like three sides of a Battenburg cake, and an indoor school, completely walled with bulletproof mirrors.
‘Bas said it looked like a tart’s bedroom,’ said Dancer cheerfully.
‘He’s seen enough of them,’ said Dommie. ‘How the hell did you get planning permission?’
‘Bas and I gave a little drinks party for all the local planning committee. An’ greased their palms so liberally their glasses kept sliding out of their ’ands.’
‘And there were German Shepherds abiding in the fields,’ said Seb, keeping a close hold on Decorum, his bull terrier, as Twinkie the security guard prowled past with an Alsatian. ‘But this is designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.’
‘It will be when my ponies arrive next week,’ said Dancer cosily.
Soon the twins and their brunettes and various glamorous hangers-on were all stripped off round the pool. Miss Lodsworth, exhorting her guides to greater endeavour in this modern world, was having great difficulty making herself heard over the din of Dancer’s group, who were warming up in the recording studio.
Seb, standing on the top board with binoculars, was peering into Miss Lodsworth’s garden in excitement.
‘That blonde one looks very prepared to me. Lend a hand, darling,’ he shouted. ‘Isn’t that what girl guides are supposed to do?’
‘I wish someone would lend me a farm hand,’ said Dancer’s interior designer sulkily. ‘Wilhelm won’t speak to me since I chucked his Filofax in the jacuzzi.
‘Now they’re doing semaphore,’ said Seb. ‘Get me a goal flag, Dancer, then I can signal, “Do you screw?” to that blonde.’
‘She’ll tie a clove hitch in your willy if you’re not careful,’ said Dommie.
‘Then it’ll be a guided missile!’ Collapsing off the diving board with laughter at his own joke, Seb just managed to keep the binoculars above the water level.
Meanwhile over in Snow Cottage, Daisy Macleod, trying to fill up her painting jar, found there was no water in the tap. In the house above her, Philippa Mannering, who wanted to wash her hair before the dinner party to which Ricky had refused to come yet again, found not only no water in the tap but that the washing-up machine had stopped in mid-cycle. Over at Robinsgrove, finding no water to hose down the ponies, Perdita put them in their boxes and, having given them their hay nets and filled up the water buckets from the water trough, raced off to Dancer’s for a swim.
Wayne, Ricky’s favourite pony, had such a low threshold of boredom that he had a special manger hooked over the half-door so he could eat and miss nothing in the yard at the same time. The yard escapologist, he had
