road. And just because Miguel O’Brien had switched to a new, ludicrously expensive, lightweight saddle, why did all Drew’s ponies need one too?
Drew had never been extravagant, but he couldn’t see the point of parsimony for parsimony’s sake, so he had decided to look for a patron, some ignoramus who would pay him a long salary to coach him and look after his ponies. Kevin Coley was rumoured to be fed up with the dreadful Napiers and looking for a new senior professional. Trace Coley was impossibly spoilt, but Drew felt he could handle her. It was therefore in his interest to be the coach responsible for toppling South Sussex this afternoon.
While the South Sussex team, by invitation of Kevin, were all lunching on lobster, gulls’ eggs, out of season strawberries and champagne in the Doggie Dins’ Tent, half a mile away in one of Lord Cowdray’s cottages, the Rutshire were having a team meeting. The curtains were drawn so they could see the video that Drew was playing of their semi-final against the Quorn. Drew leant against the wall, his thumb on the control button.
‘Today we have one problem – you have to mark the other guys or we’ll lose. You should never be more than two horse-lengths away from your man at any time. You
‘I’ll try,’ said Mike, who had a hoarse voice like a braying donkey, the gentle timidness of a Jersey cow, and blushed every time he was spoken to.
Drew turned to Perdita, who was deciding whether to race to the loo and be sick again.
‘Remember you’re playing polo, not solo, Perdita. Their back, Paul Hedley, is quite capable of storming through and scoring, so stay with him. And, above all, no tantrums. South Sussex may be ludicrously over-confident, but we can’t beat them with three players.’
Then, to Perdita’s squirming embarrassment, he replayed the clip of her rowing with the umpire three times, freezing the frame of her yelling with her mouth wide open, until her team-mates were howling with laughter and rolling round on the floor. A shaft of sunlight coming through the olive-green curtains wiped out the picture.
‘Let’s go and have lunch,’ said Drew.
Daisy hung about until Drew and the team came back to the Land-Rover. Sukey had done everyone proud, and the Lombard boys, who were Labradors when it came to food, were soon wolfing smoked salmon quiche, marinated breast of chicken, mozzarella in brown rolls, ratatouille and potato salad made with real mayonnaise.
Mike, who’d gone greener than the minted melon balls provided for pudding, and Perdita, who was lighting one cigarette from another, couldn’t eat a thing.
‘You must get something inside you,’ insisted Sukey bossily, ‘and you too, Daisy.’
I’d like your husband’s cock inside me, Daisy was absolutely horrified to find herself thinking. It was only because Drew had remembered she liked vodka and orange and had poured her two really strong ones. In her present vulnerable state she was hopelessly receptive to kindness.
‘Oh, where’s Ricky?’ moaned Perdita for the millionth time.
‘Don’t be too upset if he doesn’t come,’ said Drew in an undertone. ‘I know he wants to, but all these children riding and such family solidarity may be too much for him.’
He’s so sweet to her, thought Daisy gratefully, getting out her sketchbook as Drew took the team off to the pony lines to tack up.
Sukey firmly screwed the top on the vodka. ‘You’re driving. I expect you’d like coffee now instead of another drink.’
‘Aren’t you nervous?’ said Trace Coley fondly, as Randy accepted a glass of brandy.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Mike Waterlane’s their only decent player, and he’ll go to pieces as soon as his father turns up.’
David Waterlane drove his Rolls-Royce with the leaping silver polo pony on the front towards Cowdray. He had made the mistake of going via Salisbury because his bride of six months, who was twenty years younger than him, wanted to look at the cathedral. As they drove through rolling hills topped by Mohican clumps of trees and moved into the leafy green tunnels of Petersfield, his bride, who’d been primed by Drew, put her hand on her husband’s cock and suggested that it would be more fun to stop and have their picnic in a field than join the crowds at Cowdray. It was only two o’clock, they’d seen the parade many times before, and Mike’s match wouldn’t start before 4.15.
Ponies tacked up in the pony lines yawned with boredom as their owners gave them a last polish. Mothers cleared up the remnants of picnics. Fathers looked up at the uniform ceiling of grey cloud and decided to put on tweed caps instead of panamas.
Mrs Sherwood, Randy’s and Merlin’s mother, divorced, with a Brazilian lover, and too glamorous for words in a peach suede suit, was talking to Kevin Coley, who looked like a pig with a thatched, blond tea-cosy on its head. Kevin, in turn, was being watched by his wife, Enid, who had gaoler’s eyes, was more regal than the Queen, and in her spotted dress looked like a Sherman tank with measles. Daisy marvelled that she and Kevin could produce a daughter as pretty as Trace.
Cavalcades were riding quietly down to the ground, past trees indigo with recent rain, and cows and horses grazing alongside the faded grey ruins of the castle with its crenellated battlements and gaping windows. Of the fifty teams taking part in the parade, only eight were playing in the four finals, but there was still the prize for the best-turned-out team to be won.
The ground, a huge stretch of perfect emerald turf, was bordered to the north by fir trees and to the south by mothers having fearful squawking matches about the authenticity of various junior teams who weren’t allowed to ride bona fide polo ponies.
‘Tabitha Campbell-Black’s pony played high goal at Cirencester!’
‘No, it didn’t!’
‘Yes, it did!’
Brigadier Canford, Chairman of the Pony Club, and lover of pretty girls, was less amused to be stampeded by Valkyries.
‘The Beaufort are cheating. They’ve back-dated membership of their Number Four. He’s American and only been in the country two weeks.’
‘The Bicester are cheating too. I’ve just caught them trying to ditch their weak link and import a brilliant boy from Rhinefield Lower who doesn’t have a team.’
‘Ladies, ladies,’ said Enid Coley, joining the group of howling mothers. ‘Polo is only a game.’
‘And she’ll have the South Sussex team manager stoned to death at dawn with vegetarian Scotch eggs if they don’t win,’ murmured Bas Baddingham who’d just rolled up and was kissing Daisy.
At two forty-five the parade began. On they came: chestnut, bay, dark brown, dappled grey, palamino, the occasional extravagantly spotted Appaloosa, ears pricked, tack gleaming, stirrups and bits glittering.
Daisy marvelled at the shifting kaleidoscope of coloured shirts, and the great, ever-moving millipede of ponies’ legs in their coloured bandages. Many of the riders wore faceguards like visors in some medieval contest. Daisy wished she could paint it, but you’d need to be Lady Butler to capture that lot. Fatty Harris, Rutshire’s club secretary, seconded for the day to do the commentary, had had rather too good a lunch in the Doggie Dins’ Tent and was waxing lyrical over the ancient names.
‘Here comes the Beaufort, the Bicester, the Cotswold, the Vale of the White Horse, the Craven, the Shouth Shushex Shecond Team.’
‘Thought he’d have trouble with that one,’ said Bas.
‘And a big cheer for the Rutshire,’ went on Fatty Harris, ‘today’s finalists in the Jack Gannon.’
On came the Rutshire in their Prussian-blue shirts, Prussian-blue bandages on their ponies’ gleaming legs. Little Hermia, a changed pony after a fortnight’s attention from Perdita, danced and snatched at her bit in excitement.
‘She should have ridden Felicia in the parade,’ said Sukey disapprovingly. ‘Hermia doesn’t need hotting up.’
But Hermia’s the nearest she can get to Ricky, thought Daisy, and she’s still hoping he’ll turn up.
Next to Perdita rode Mike Waterlane on Dopey, a deceptively sleepy-looking pony, who was faster than a Ferrari and nipped all the opposition ponies in the line-out. Beyond him rode the Lombard brothers grinning broadly
