‘Christmas presentable,’ said Luke. ‘Wouldn’t even need gift-wrapping. He’s very glamorous.’
‘Good,’ said Chessie. ‘Might put your rotten brother’s perfectly straight nose out of all those joints he smokes. Is he coming?’
‘Haven’t seen him.’
‘How’s your shoulder?’
‘So, so,’ – which means bloody painful, thought Chessie – ‘I’ll be off games till mid-January at least. I’ll miss the Challenge and the January cups and have to put in a substitute for the Sunshine League.’
‘Christ,’ said Chessie, appalled. ‘That’s losing serious money. Let Bart help out. You know he’s dying to.’
‘Nope,’ said Luke firmly.
‘And is it true you’re squeezing into one of those grooms’ caravans while Perdita hogs your bed? I can’t believe you haven’t bonked her yet.’
Luke laughed. ‘Making ponies taught me one thing – to be patient. If you bump young horses too early they’ll throw in the towel.’
Chessie sighed. ‘You love her, don’t you? She’s a lucky girl.’
Luke, in fact, was fighting depression. A caravan was indeed not the ideal place for a shoulder injury or for lying awake night after night wracked by desire. Out of the tack-room window he’d just seen Perdita flying off to the mail box, desperate for a word from Ricky. She pretended it was because she was frantic for him to buy Tero who was improving by the day, but Luke understood that all the loving kindness of Christmas and pop songs singing ‘I just called to say I love you’ every five minutes on the radio made her miss Ricky more than ever.
Luke’s heart was even heavier because he’d had to sell a favourite pony that morning. It was the only way he could feed his other ponies and pay the grooms’ wages and give them Christmas presents and take Perdita out in the evening, which was what she expected after long days schooling all his ponies.
In addition, Perdita, having screwed up Red and Auriel by spilling the beans about Lucy Chalmers, was getting increasingly uptight about meeting Red tomorrow at Christmas dinner. Finally Luke had spent an agonizing two hours yesterday trying to comfort his ex-girlfriend, Cassandra Murdoch, who was coming apart at the seams.
Chessie spent a fraught and joyful Christmas Day doing what she did best in the world after sex – cooking, keeping the kitchen staff in a flurry, stuffing a fresh goose with truffles, creating an exquisitely delicate smoked salmon mousse in the shape of fishes, one for each person, and finally, as it was Christmas, making a surprise pudding which she knew Red adored.
By seven-thirty she was really pleased with herself. The ten-foot Christmas tree which grazed the top of the
Bart, who’d spent the day working and stick and balling, absolutely adored it, principally because of the tremendous effort the chronically lazy Chessie had made to please him.
She was wearing a duck-egg-blue watered-silk dress, very clinging to emphasize the fragility of her body and leaving one arm and shoulder bare to show off the flawless tawny-gold skin. The colour, which exquisitely enhanced her bruised-blue eyes and her greenish-gold curls, had never suited any of his players, even Red, so well.
‘Christ, you look miraculous.’ Bart put his hands under the diagonal of duck-egg-blue silk to stroke a small pointed breast which seemed to leap upward at his touch. He noticed that the scheming minx had left her neck and wrists bare in anticipation of his present and he loved her for it.
‘Open it before the others arrive,’ he said roughly, taking a blue velvet box out of his white dinner-jacket pocket.
Even Chessie gasped. It contained a pendant, bracelet and earrings of emeralds as big as wrens’ eggs.
‘Oh, Bartholomew,’ breathed Chessie. ‘They
‘Very old,’ Bart couldn’t resist boasting. ‘The stone of the pendant comes from Louis XIV’s sword.’
They had drinks outside. Now that the blazing heat of the day had given way to a suavely cool, beautiful evening, Christmas didn’t seem so impossible. A pale, luminous, prairie sky arched overhead, the palm trees rattled and on the velvet air drifted a heady scent of orange blossom, Chessie’s Diorissimo and merrily roasting goose stuffed with truffles, which was driving the lean, stable cat crazy as he weaved himself around Chessie’s bare brown legs. The frogs and crickets croaked to a counterpoint of contented snorts from Bart’s ponies who’d had an extra Christmas helping of carrots and molasses.
Chessie put a hand, cold from clutching her vodka and tonic, in Bart’s.
‘I love you,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve started my New Year’s resolution a week early. I won’t bitch all evening.’
Bibi arrived first and dropped a pile of presents unceremoniously under the tree to stress the insignificance of the occasion. With her frumpy black dress which bypassed every curve, her lack of jewellery and make-up, and her hair scraped back, she looked like a minor character in a sixth-form production of Lorca. What was the point of dressing up for her father and two brothers, when Skipper, her boyfriend, had stood her up yet again? Getting into the office at 4.30 a.m. every day for the last year so that she could handle the 7.30 a.m. calls coming from New York had drained her emotionally and physically. Even the knowledge that, against all the odds as a woman, she’d managed to settle a strike of 650 mechanics this week didn’t lift her spirits.
She made no comment on Chessie’s decorations beyond remarking acidly there had certainly been some changes, and why didn’t they stick up the blue Argentine flag to match. Then, as she kissed her father, she caught sight of Chessie’s emeralds.
‘Emptying Cartiers
‘That’s the best Christmas present I’m gonna get,’ said Bart delightedly. Then, as Bibi asked for a Perrier: ‘This is a celebration, for Chrissake,’ and he filled her glass with champagne.
Again to exclude Chessie, Bibi started discussing a fax that had just come in from Hong Kong. She would reserve the heavy sniping for later when Red arrived. The growing tension was broken by the arrival of Perdita, Luke and Leroy, who had a red bow round his thick neck and who promptly chased the stable cat up a palm tree and collapsed panting on the floor. Luke, as black as his dinner jacket under the eyes, still had his arm in a sling.
‘Just a formality,’ he explained as he kissed Chessie. ‘Stops people clutching it.’
His bottle-brush hair, slicked back in the shower, was beginning to stick up. Spiky hair, unspiky personality, thought Chessie. ‘Those are lovely cufflinks,’ she added.
‘Perdita bought them for me – and a shirt,’ said Luke, not adding that he’d given her money to buy them, and all the other presents she was happily putting under the tree.
Having made no comment about Chessie’s duck-egg-blue dress, Bibi went into ecstasies over Perdita’s cream silk trouser suit.
‘You look sensational. You must have been jet lagged last time we met. And you have terrific dress sense.’
‘Not me – Chessie,’ said Perdita simply. ‘She took me to Worth Avenue and pointed me at the right shops. I’m sorry about wearing trousers, but my legs are so bruised from practice chukkas.’
‘You’ve heard Red and Auriel are officially kaput?’ Bibi asked Luke.
‘Can’t say I’m not pleased,’ admitted Bart, ‘and Grace was going bananas.’
‘Shall we call and tell her?’ Bibi picked up one of the portable telephones.
Chessie bit her lip.
‘I think you’re a shade premature,’ said Luke, trying not to laugh as Leroy went into a frenzy of barking as the most stretched limo in the world drew up and out jumped an Indian chauffeur in a turban to open the doors for Auriel, Red and two Yorkshire terriers. Luke only just grabbed Leroy’s collar in time.
‘I am not ready for this. I am truly not ready for this,’ screeched Auriel. ‘Don’t forget to get all those gifts out of the car, Raschid. This must be the most glorious barn ever, and the perfume of the orange blossom is just like
