26
Luke had temporarily routed Raimundo and Angel, but their animosity towards Perdita, if less overt, was in no way abated. To give Perdita a break, Luke took her away the following Saturday to see a high goal match at the famous Hurlingham Club which left her speechless with wonder, then on to Buenos Aires to an English production of
Her only comments at dinner afterwards as she gorged herself on tournedos, raspberries and cream and St Emilion were that Shylock was almost as beady about money as Alejandro and that Bassanio was a wimp.
‘Portia’d have done much better with that suitor who talked about his horse all the time. At least he’d have given her some decent ponies.’
Luke, who knew the play backwards, had been moved to tears by the moonlit love scene between Lorenzo and Jessica. A lemon-yellow half-moon was hanging overhead as he and Perdita left the restaurant. But any hope he might have had of sliding his arm round her and trying a tentative first kiss on the drive home was scotched when she fell asleep the moment she got into the car.
Her white dress had fallen off the shoulder nearest him, her skirt was rucked up to mid-thigh, her hair rippled silver. With her scornful mouth softened by sleep and pale eyelids hiding her furious eyes, she looked as vulnerable as she did desirable. Wracked with longing, Luke drove through the grey lunar landscape, only broken by occasional white towns or ebony clumps of trees.
Up at five and sleeping badly of late, Luke kept his mind off Perdita and himself awake on the long straight roads, as he had done so often in the past, by concentrating on a particular horse. This time it was Maldita, a grey mare who had slipped into the yard already broken as part of a job lot a few weeks ago.
Alejandro was allergic to greys, particularly the whiter ones. His father had been paralysed by a fall from a white stallion. On the one recent occasion when the Mendoza family had got near winning the Argentine Open, it had been on a grey mare that Alejandro had missed the clinching penalty. His phobia had spread to his grooms when Raimundo’s even crueller predecessor had broken the leg of a grey filly, hurling it to the ground for branding, and the following day he had died of snake bite. Whenever they passed a grey on the road, the grooms crossed themselves.
The iron grey, Tero, got by because her coat was almost black, but Maldita was so dazzlingly white, except for a sprinkling of rust-brown freckles on her belly, that she looked as though she’d been through the car wash. At fourteen hands she was on the small side for polo, with a lovely intelligent head, wide-apart dark eyes, clean legs and a smooth, effortless stride. Unfortunately she was as bitchy as she was beautiful, lashing out with teeth and hooves at any human who came near her, and bucking them off if they tried to get on her back. Even when Raimundo strapped one of her back legs to her belly to stop her kicking, she struck out with the other leg and, crashing to the ground, laid about her with her front legs and teeth.
Alejandro was all for putting a bullet through this she-devil’s head and dispatching her to the nearest abattoir. Luke, however, who was a genius with difficult horses, begged to be allowed to have a crack at her.
He had begun by putting Maldita in a stable with no straw and taking water and feed to her every eight hours, then, when she went for him, immediately removing them. After twenty-four hours she was so hungry that she dived her pale pink nose into the bucket instead of at him. Two days later she allowed him to stand in her stable while she ate. Starving her until the next evening, he coaxed her with pony nuts into a stall which Raimundo used for branding and saddling bigger horses, which was so narrow she couldn’t turn round. Tying her lead rope so tightly she couldn’t move her head, Luke had climbed up and approached her from above. Talking softly the whole time, he slowly ran his hands over her, caressing, gentling and scratching up and down her mane where once her mother would have lovingly nibbled her, then progressing to her back and flanks. After the first minutes of trembling outrage, Maldita had stopped behaving as though his fingers were red-hot pokers and reacted almost voluptuously to his touch. Luke wished Perdita were as responsive. At the end of half an hour, back in her box, he rewarded her with hay and water.
After a week of such treatment, he mounted her, sending her into the same orgy of bucking that had dislodged the grooms and all the Mendoza boys. Finding she couldn’t unseat him, she paused for breath, anticipating her next devilry. She was so small, and Luke so long in the leg, he looked like some father riding a seaside donkey to amuse his children.
‘You won’t need a mallet on that one,’ shouted Alejandro. ‘You can kick the ball with your feet, or if you miss, that beetch will kick it for you.’
Unnerved by Alejandro’s great roar of laughter, Maldita had taken off into the pampas, somehow miraculously missing rabbit holes and fallen logs as she hurtled along. Luke sat still and gave her her head, amazed that the more she warmed up, the faster she went, staggered by the distance she could carry his 190-pound bulk in the burning sun.
After nearly four miles she ran into the river that bordered Alejandro’s land, which was so deep she was forced to swim. On the opposite bank, Luke rolled off her back and lay on the grass. The heaving mare glared back at him, too exhausted to move. Afterwards he hacked her quietly home and was further amazed that she responded to his legs and hands and had the perfect mouth and balance of a made polo pony. It didn’t stop her lashing out at him with her teeth and back legs as he unsaddled her, but he felt he was making progress and, the next day, stick and balling her he found she was a natural. In her dark-eyed pallor and arrogant bloody-mindedness, she reminded him of Perdita. If she could trust one human, he felt, she could achieve anything. Driving home from the theatre he pondered his next move. Seeing General Piran ahead, he decided to try her in practice chukkas tomorrow.
It was past three o’clock, but the tack room light, besieged with huge crashing moths, was still on. Raimundo’s shaggy lurchers swarmed round Perdita as she staggered groggily out of the car.
‘I’ve never been so exhausted in my life. Christ, what’s that?’ she shrieked, as fat Umberto, clearly drunk and absolutely terrified, lurched out of the shadows brandishing a gun.
‘What in hell’s the matter?’ said Luke, taking the gun from him.
‘Maldita, she is dead,’ gabbled Umberto in Spanish.
‘What!’ howled Luke.
Raising his hands in panic, begging Senor Gracias not to shoot him, Umberto whimpered that Maldita had developed colic that morning.
‘We fight all day to save her.’
‘What did you try?’ demanded Luke furiously.
‘Everything, enemas, catheters, fluids to hydrate her. All impossible, she more busy fight us than the colic. She get up, she get down, she roll, she kick the stomach, like crazy woman. We try real hard.’ Then, seeing the expression on Luke’s face, Umberto indignantly lifted his loose trousers up above his boots to display two huge purple bruises: ‘What you think these are, love bites?’
‘What did the vet say?’
‘A lump of sand block her gut.’
‘When did he last come?’
‘This afternoon. He no come back. His daughter getting married this evening.’
‘Then where the fuck’s Alejandro? Humping in BA, I suppose.’
‘He didn’t even went,’ explained Umberto, who couldn’t ever have imagined Senor Gracias being so angry about anything. ‘He go to wedding of vet’s daughter.’
‘Along with everyone else, I guess,’ said Luke. ‘Why didn’t anyone take her to the veterinary hospital? They could have operated.’
‘Alejandro say she too weak,’ said Umberto, leaving unspoken the truth that Alejandro would be too mean to fork out the equivalent of $5,000 for a green and vicious mare.
‘Where is she?’ asked Luke.
‘In the first paddock under the gum trees. Alejandro tell me shoot her if pain get too bad. He say best stable for that mare is a coffin.’ Umberto crossed himself. ‘But bad luck to kill white horse. Anyway she already die, she not move for twenty minutes.’
Followed by Perdita, who only half understood what was going on, Luke sprinted out to the paddock.
