and a water tower completely submerged in variegated ivy.
Instantly out of the front door charged a man a foot smaller than Luke, but with a barrel-chest as big. He had a huge Beethoven head of black curls, a brown face scorched with wrinkles by an unrelenting sun, small dark eyes and a smile like a slice of water melon, which showed a lot of gold fillings. He wore old jeans, espadrilles and a torn blue T-shirt through which spilled a lot of black chest-hair. Throwing open his arms, he gave a great roar of laughter.
‘
Then, peering round the side of Ricky’s arm, he caught sight of Perdita and his little black eyes brightened even more.
‘And this is Perdita. She is certainly very OK.’ Seizing her hand, he looked her up and down. ‘Why you waste your life on polo? Find a nice billionaire instead.’
‘I want both,’ said Perdita.
Alejandro gave another bellow of laughter.
‘Good girl, good girl. I speak very well English, don’t you theenk? Come and see my ponies.’ About to lead them back towards the stables, he lowered his voice and said to Luke, ‘Did you get it?’
Luke nodded and, getting a red jewel box out of his jeans’ pocket, handed it to Alejandro just before a beautiful woman came out of the house. She had heavy lids above huge, dark, mournful eyes, a wonderful sculptured, aquiline nose, a big, sad, red mouth and long, shiny, blond hair with dark roots showing down the middle parting. She also had a wonderful bosom, a thickening waist and very slim brown legs in leather sandals.
‘Reeky,’ she hugged him. ‘It has been so long, and this must be Perdita.’ A shadow of apprehension crossed her face, immediately replaced by a warm and welcoming smile. ‘What a beauty,’ she said, kissing Perdita on both cheeks. ‘I am Claudia, Alejandro’s wife. Let me show you your room. You must be tired.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Alejandro.
‘She ’as come ’alfway across the world,’ protested Claudia.
‘To see my horses,’ said Alejandro.
They went across a lawn down an avenue of mulberry trees, past a thickly planted orange grove.
‘To ’ide the chickens,’ explained Alejandro.
To the right, a lot of youths building a swimming-pool eyed Perdita with interest. Alejandro snapped at them to get on with their work. The stables were far more primitive than Perdita expected. A few words in Spanish had been painted on the tack-room roof.
‘It says, “Please don’t tether any horses to this roof, or they’ll pull it off’,’ translated Luke.
Dancer’s latest hit single, ‘Girl Guide’, was belting out of the tack room. A pack of emaciated lurchers with burrs in their rough dusty coats charged forward, whimpering and weaving against Perdita’s legs. But as she bent to cuddle them a small boy, brushing down a pony, picked up a lump of mud and hurled it at the dogs to drive them off. Perdita was about to yell at him when her attention was distracted by a man with a cruel leathery face wearing gaucho pants and a white shirt who was galloping a pony very fast round a tiny corral. The horse’s nostrils were vastly inflated and it was panting rhythmically as its hooves struck the hard ground. The man’s control was undeniable. She could hear the horse groan as he squeezed it with his calves.
‘That’s Raimundo the
‘Looks a nasty piece of work.’
‘Work isn’t the operative word. He’s acting busy because Alejandro’s here.’
In the yard an old man in a beret was clipping a pony’s mane. The pony was rolling its eyes but stood motionless because a young boy relentlessly twisted its ear. Other horses wandered loose among the gum trees, while still others were muzzled and tied up. They looked very thin, but well-muscled.
‘They’re playing this afternoon,’ explained Luke. ‘Argentines don’t feed or water their horses eight hours before a match. I guess they are thin, but again Argentines don’t like their horses to carry a lot of weight.’
Perdita grew increasingly boot-faced when every pony she tried to cuddle cringed away with terror.
‘They’re all headshy,’ she complained furiously.
‘Shut up,’ said Luke. ‘You’re here to learn not beef.’
Fortunately Alejandro was concentrating on Ricky, boasting that every pony in the yard had been entirely responsible for clinching last year’s Argentine Open. They were distracted by a boy in his twenties cantering into the yard on a beautiful red chestnut. He had a bony, tortured face, angry, slanting peacock-blue eyes, bronze curls and a sallow complexion.
Wow! thought Perdita.
‘Angel,’ yelled Alejandro, ‘breeng that mare ’ere. I want Reeky to see ’er.’ Then with a touch of malice, ‘These are my friends, Reeky and Perdeeta. Isn’t she beautiful? Won’t she need the charity belt?’
Angel pulled up in horror and a cloud of dust, growled something incomprehensible, but undeniably insulting, threw down the reins, kicked his right foot out of the stirrup and, swinging it over the horse’s withers, jumped to the ground and ran into the house.
‘Zat is Angel,’ said Alejandro with a shrug, ‘still fighting zee Falklands War.’
Amazing cooking smells were drifting from the kitchen. Seeing Perdita beginning to wilt, Luke took her back to the house.
Ricky and Alejandro had to be dragged away from the horses to a lunch laid out on a blue-and-white checked tablecloth under the gum trees. They needed two tables to accommodate the ten children.
Ranging from twenty-one downwards, there were three boys, Patricio Maria, Luis Maria and Lorenzo Maria, followed by three ravishing plump girls, followed by four more boys, the youngest being little Pablo, who was three. All had the dark eyes and dark curls of their father.
Claudia exclaimed in delight over the presents Ricky had brought, which included a dark red cashmere jersey, a length of Harris Tweed, a striped silk Turnbull and Asser dressing gown and a Herbert Johnson tweed cap for Alejandro. Then she introduced her children to Perdita.
‘Don’t warry,’ said Alejandro with his great laugh. ‘I don’t recognize them myself sometime.’
‘Only the ones that play polo,’ said Claudia without rancour.
‘Have a wheesky, Ricky,’ said Alejandro, brandishing Ricky’s duty-free Bourbon. Then, when Ricky shook his head, ‘But you used to dreenk half a bottle before chukkas. It was your petrol.’
‘I’ve changed.’
‘Luke?’ asked Alejandro.
‘Not if I’ve gotta play this afternoon,’ said Luke, sitting down next to Perdita.
‘You are, because I’m not,’ said Alejandro, splashing whisky into his glass. ‘The opposition’s very weak today,’ he explained to Ricky, ‘but Luke is a good back. I must look after my laurel.’
Two silent maids served them. Perdita felt too tired to eat, but when she tried her steak it was pure poetry, tender as velvet, juicy as an orange, and so exploding with flavour that she was soon piling her plate with potato puree, tomato salad and geranium-red barbecue sauce.
‘I can’t believe this food,’ she said to Claudia five minutes later. ‘It’s wonderful.’
‘We in Argentina are very like the Breetish except in their cooking, which is ’orrible,’ said Alejandro, who was now wearing both his new dressing gown and the tweed cap over his black gollywog curls. ‘I like to dress like an Englishman.’
The talk was all of polo. Claudia didn’t contribute and concentrated on the younger children.
‘I love to play again in England,’ Alejandro said to Ricky. ‘When you theenk the ban will be lifted?’
‘I don’t know,’ sighed Ricky, who was eating hardly anything. ‘Prince Charles is Colonel of the Welsh Guards, which makes it very difficult for him. And there’s the security problem.’
‘That is a point,’ said Alejandro, looking round. ‘Where’s Angel?’
‘Not ’ungry,’ said Claudia, trying to force potato puree into little Paolo.
‘Not ’ungry, angry. Angel,’ he explained to Ricky, ‘was an ex-Mirage pilot. He ’ate the English, but when he gets to know Perdita,’ Alejandro smiled at her from under the peak of his cap, ‘he will forgeeve.’
Perdita, having taken far too much, was now feeding the rest of the steak to the shaggy lurchers who ringed the table, but kept their distance.
