‘I didn’t realize it was going to be a tented wank,’ said Drew, as Sukey applied a dash of pink lipstick. It was not yet dusk, but the drive up to Kevin’s mock Tudor house was lined with lit-up toadstools. The front door was flanked with the famous Moggie Meal cat and the Doggie Dins terrier. Six foot high and floodlit, they winked, mewed and yapped when the door bell was rung. Inside, maids in black took coats for tickets, and told everyone to go through the lounge as Mrs Coley was receiving in the pool area.
Perdita listened to her mother grinding gears and going on and on and on about how marvellously Perdita had played and how it had been the proudest moment of her life, and how everyone from Rupert to Brigadier Canford said what a great future she had and Drew this and Drew that. And of course, being Daisy, she was quite unable to resist telling Perdita the thrilling news which she mustn’t tell
‘Just think,’ she raved on, as they drove past honey-suckled hedges and trees covered with reddening apples, ‘six months in New Zealand. Hot springs and Kiwis and,’ Daisy couldn’t remember anything else about New Zealand, ‘oh yes, Maoris, of course.’
‘Maori, Maori quite contrary,’ said Perdita gloomily.
Why wasn’t she flying back to Robinsgrove with Dancer and Ricky? She didn’t want to go to New Zealand. She’d die if she was parted from Ricky for five minutes. He’d been so lovely, and her shoulder still burned where he’d put a hand on it after the game. If she stayed in England with him, she’d learn much faster than shovelling horse-shit in New Zealand and being made to get up early in the morning. Getting up early was only worth it if she were going to see Ricky.
‘I wonder if you’ll be in South Island or North Island,’ said Daisy, narrowly avoiding ramming the car in front which had braked suddenly.
‘Oh, shut up, Mum, I want to think.’
By the pool at Chateau Kitsch, which was as blue as Enid Coley’s hostess gown, Trace, who’d changed into a slinky black dress, was having a row with Randy Sherwood.
‘How dare you kiss Perdita Macleod in front of everyone?’ she hissed.
‘Because I want to screw her,’ said Randy unrepentantly. ‘I bet she’s a virgin, and she’d be volcanic in the sack.’
Perdita had just walked in. She was still wearing muddy breeches, black socks and Merlin’s polo shirt. Her hair was scraped back in a pony tail, her face was smeared with mud. What was the point of tarting up if Ricky wasn’t there? Ignoring Randy’s imperious wave, she walked over to talk to Mike Waterlane.
On the edge of the pool, knowing there was a possibility of Kevin sponsoring Drew, Sukey was chatting up Enid Coley. Perdita remembered Sukey being just as deferential to Grace Alderton three years ago, the first time she’d seen Ricky in the flesh. I can’t go to New Zealand, she thought.
The food being handed round was quite awful – muesli sticks, unsalted nuts, prunes, figs, sliced bananas. Huge jugs of fruit juice were being pressed on guests, rather than booze.
Randy Sherwood edged up to Perdita.
‘My mother’s just gone off with Rupert Campbell-Black,’ he said. ‘I think he is the coolest guy in the world, and the richest. I wouldn’t mind him as a stepfather.’
Reaching out for a vegetarian Scotch egg, and hurling it at his brother, Randy added casually, ‘Will you have dinner with me tonight?’
But Perdita wasn’t listening; she was far too engrossed in Sukey’s conversation with Enid Coley.
‘When one thinks of the number of miserably displaced children from broken homes who’ve been given a sense of purpose by the Pony Club,’ Sukey was saying, then, lowering her voice, ‘take Perdita Macleod. She was a little horror when Drew took her over – but look how she played today.’
‘Given one or two shocking lapses of behaviour,’ snorted Enid Coley. ‘Mind you, it can’t have helped working all this time for Ricky France-Lynch. He is the rudest, most arrogant man I’ve ever met. I mean, who does he think he is? I totally understand his little wife going off with Bart Alderton. Kevin and Bart do a lot of business together.’
‘He did lose a child,’ said Sukey.
‘Because he was drunk. From all Bart says, he was rude and arrogant before that. That’s what stopped him getting to the top.’
‘What did you say?’ said an icy voice.
Beneath the mud smears, Perdita was as white as a new polo ball. She was shaking with rage, there was fifth-degree murder in her eyes.
Sukey started. ‘Oh, Perdita, I’d no idea you were there.’
‘We were saying,’ said Enid, without looking over her hefty lurex shoulder, ‘that Ricky France-Lynch’s personality stopped him getting to the top.’
‘Well, you’re going to the bottom, you disgusting old bag,’ screamed Perdita, and the next moment she had butted Enid in the small of a very large back right into the swimming-pool. Jumping in after her, Perdita pulled off Enid’s wig to reveal scant grey wisps and pushed her under the water, where the aquamarine hostess gown billowed up to display fawn pop socks at the end of fat, purple legs.
‘How dare you slag off Ricky?’ screamed Perdita. ‘How dare you? How dare you?’
Everyone was shouting. There were even some cheers. Next minute, Kevin, Drew and Randy Sherwood, who was laughing his handsome head off, had jumped into the pool and were trying to prise Perdita away.
‘Stop it,’ said Drew, pinning her arms behind her back and grimly increasing the pressure until she gasped with pain and let go.
‘Did you hear what she was saying about Ricky?’ she cried hysterically.
‘You’re not helping him by behaviour like this,’ snapped Drew.
For a second Perdita struggled with him, then watched with mixed emotions by Sukey, Daisy and a drenched Randy Sherwood, she collapsed sobbing in his arms. ‘No one understands Ricky like I do.’
22
Ricky was so furious with Perdita for deliberately sabotaging her scholarship that he gave her the sack.
Even the sight of Little Chef and the ponies longingly looking out for her every morning didn’t make him relent.
‘He’s a hard man,’ said plump Louisa, who also missed Perdita dreadfully. Only the sullen, scrawny Frances was delighted.
At home Perdita behaved more atrociously than ever before, storming round the house, refusing to get a job and screaming at Violet and Eddie when they returned bronzed from a month in LA with Hamish and Wendy. Nor were matters helped by Violet gaining ten ‘A’s in her O levels, losing a stone and getting her first boyfriend, who rang her constantly at all hours of the night from Beverly Hills. Violet and Eddie then went back to their respective boarding schools, paid for by Granny Macleod, which only stepped up Perdita’s paranoia and jealousy.
At the end of September Violet came home for a long weekend and Perdita was so bloody-minded that in despair Daisy escaped to Harvest Festival for an hour of peace. Eldercombe Church was packed. Miss Lodsworth, who organized the flower rota, had excelled herself. Huge tawny chrysanthemums big as setting suns, gold dahlias like lions’ manes, yellow roses, sheaves of corn, briar and elder glowing with berries all brought a glow to the ancient yellow stone. Every window-ledge was crammed with apples gleaming like rubies, vast vegetable marrows and pumpkins and, more prosaically, tinned fruit, sardines and baked beans. Some joker had even added a tin of Doggie Dins.
Daisy also noticed, as she slid into an empty pew at the back, that the church was unusually full of attractive women. There was Philippa Mannering looking avid in a beautifully cut check suit and a brown beret at a rakish angle. There was the pretty girl from the village shop wearing an emerald-green dress more suited to a wedding. Exotic scent mingled with the more religious smells of incense, furniture polish and veneration. Putting paid to
