Polo

Jaime’s conscience was troubling him. There was only a minute left and Miguel was messing around joking with the other umpire, his brother-in-law, making a great play of teeing up the ball. Jaime caught sight of Perdita’s anguished face. She’d played so well and she was so much prettier than Mrs Juan – and he was, after all, a susceptible Argentine. Shutting his eyes, waiting for a thunderbolt to descend, he blew a foul on Miguel for wasting time. When all the O’Briens closed in on him he appealed to the third man, who woke up with a start. Deciding that the O’Briens were getting above themselves, he upheld Jaime’s decision. Giving the O’Briens no time to reassemble themselves, Luke lofted the ball over their heads, slap between the posts.

With a minute to go the score was tied. The throwin was murder, sticks going everywhere. Luke felt Fantasma wince as the ball hit her smack on the knee, but such was her courage that she limped for only a few paces, then set out again, vroom, vroom, vroom, to defend her own goal.

The clock showed only twenty seconds left as Luke saved the Mendozas from certain defeat with another backshot. Swinging round, he streaked up the field like a man on a motor bike, outrunning Juan’s black thoroughbred, passing the two O’Brien cousins. What a glorious horse! Any minute he expected her to take off like Pegasus.

Leering like some terrible shark, Miguel was now coming towards Luke and Fantasma at right-angles. Luke waited until the last moment to pass to Patricio who passed to Perdita.

I’m going to score at last, she thought joyfully, then groaned in horror as she hit wide. They were all in the goalmouth now, raising such a dust with their flailing sticks that no-one could see. Five seconds to go. Then, miraculously, Perdita saw the ball six feet in front of her. One of the O’Brien cousins was looming in through the smokescreen on her right. Clambering halfway up Cuchilla’s neck, only just managing to stay on by clinging on to the martingale with her left hand, she lunged forward and, with a one-handed billiard-cue shot, ignoring the pony crashing in on her left, she shunted the ball between the posts. She would have fallen under the pounding hooves if someone hadn’t grabbed her primrose jersey, ripping it apart in the process so her slim brown shoulder was laid bare, and tugged her back into the saddle.

Coughing and spluttering, she swung round, reluctant to take her eyes off the jubilantly waving red flag, then realized in amazement that it had been Angel.

For a second they glared at each other, then yelling, ‘We’ve beaten the O’Briens,’ they fell into each other’s arms.

29

Having drunk a great deal of champagne, they drove home in a manic mood, yelling, ‘Juan O’Brien’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his cock goes pumping on,’ and howling with laughter. It was a beautiful evening, a great stretch of brown-flecked cloud lay like a turned-down sheet over an endless blue blanket. They had each been given a little silver cup. Perdita’s lay between her thighs, clinking against Luke’s. Angel clutched his and in its reflection he occasionally examined an eye that was turning purple where Miguel’s elbow had caught him. Luke drove, his heart simultaneously bursting with pride and heavy with foreboding. Hanging from the windscreen was the red, white and blue rosette Fantasma had won as Best Playing Pony. Even though she’d nearly savaged the VIP presenting the awards when he tried to pin it on her headcollar, everyone wanted to buy her now. Alejandro might even overcome his greed and hang on to her himself. Worse still, Angel’s arm lay along the back of the seat, grazing Perdita’s hair. Was he going to lose her and Fantasma, wondered Luke. Then he told himself not to be absurd. Neither was his to lose. As he listened to Angel and Perdita re-living every stroke of the game, it never occurred to him to mind that it had not occurred to either of them that he had set up every goal they scored.

‘Juan asked me for my card,’ said Angel.

‘He asked me for other things,’ said Perdita. ‘Stupid prat. I don’t like used men. I wouldn’t touch him with a pitchfork.’

‘Don’t talk to me of peetchforks,’ shuddered Angel. Then, waving airily at the pampas, ‘My great-grandfather used to own all this land. We was in charge of the frontier. To the North to Buenos Aires it was civilized, to the South it was Indian. My great-grandfather and the Army destroyed the Indians. They were ’orrible – very non- U.’

Perdita giggled. ‘You make Margaret Thatcher sound like Karl Marx. How long did it take to tattoo that heart on your arm?’

‘About a bottle of wheesky,’ said Angel.

Perdita screamed with laughter.

Oh Christ, thought Luke, I meant to bring them together, but not that much.

‘Give us a poem, Luke,’ said Perdita. ‘Something to cool us down.’

Luke thought for a minute.

‘Whose woods these are I think I know,’ he began. His voice was hoarse from the dust and shouting.

‘His house is in the village though:

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.’

Listening, Perdita thought about snow in Rutshire and battling through the drifts to take hay to Ricky’s ponies.

‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ went on Luke with a slight break in his voice,

‘But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.’

I’ve got miles to go before I sleep, thought Angel, until I get to England and avenge Pedro’s death.

‘Eagle,’ said Luke, pointing to a quivering dot in the sky.

‘There are three good things about the Argentines,’ said Angel, ‘their nature: birds, flowers and theengs; their women, and their individuality. But they are very ghastly in a crisis.’

‘You were pretty good today,’ said Perdita. ‘I think the Argentines are the loveliest, funniest people in the world.’

Later they went to a local night-club to celebrate. Sharon Kaputnik, regal in midnight blue with her red hair piled up on top, was practically held together by sapphires.

‘If you threw her into the river,’ murmured Luke, ‘she’d sink like Virginia Woolf.’

‘Alejandro’s the wolf,’ said Perdita. ‘He’s had his hand up her skirt all dinner. I don’t know if it’s a compliment to Alejandro’s right-arm muscles or the beef that he can cut it up with a fork.’

Victor, as usual adoring the sound of his own voice, was slagging off the O’Briens.

‘All Argentines are crooks.’

‘Alejandro’s not laike that,’ said Sharon, whose eyes were getting rather glazed.

‘Nevair,’ said Alejandro, whose hand was still burrowing.

‘Miguel boasted they’d win easy today,’ went on Victor.

‘Easily, Victor, easily,’ corrected Sharon. ‘You ought to learn to talk proper, laike what I do.’

‘She very beautiful,’ whispered Angel.

‘She’s hell,’ hissed Perdita. ‘All you Argentines are too stupid to see how naff she is – and someone should get Alejandro a finger bowl.’

‘All ay’m interested in is buyin’ that lovely waite pony, Fandango,’ said Sharon.

Luke, aching all over from bangs and bumps, was overwhelmed with tiredness. The strain of captaining the team was now telling on him. A bang on the ankle, which was now so swollen he couldn’t get a shoe on, ruled out any dancing, so he was forced to watch Perdita and Angel joyfully celebrating their armistice on the dance floor.