Polo

promptly lit a yellow Sobranie.

Bibi was still on the telephone, the bitch. If she was trying to get off with Ricky, there was no way Chessie was going to allow her to get off with Angel too. Turning her languorous, blue eyes towards him, she asked if he’d telephoned his family today.

‘I did,’ said Angel, who had finished his smoked salmon and was looking at Red’s discarded helping as longingly as the orange stable cat who had jumped on to the table.

‘That cat’s been trying to get at the goose all day,’ said Chessie, putting it back on the floor.

‘Cat?’ said Angel, clutching his smooth brown forehead. ‘That is “cat” in American?’ Then he started to laugh. ‘Zat is why I am so late. Of course it is gatto too. In Argentina we have the same word gatto for a jack. I ’ave my flat tyre on the freeway, I look up gatto in the dictionary, it say “cat”. I keep stopping drivers, and ask them if they have a cat in their car. They drive on as eef I am crazy man. My English is not very well, but I am learning it more better by Phoney-Lingus.’

‘That’s my husband’s perversion,’ said Chessie.

She is beautiful, thought Angel, and so sweet.

‘What part of America you come from?’ he asked.

‘I’m English.’

Suddenly wild-eyed and distraught, Angel rose to his feet: ‘Luke didn’t tell me.’

Chessie put a hand on his arm. ‘You’ve forgiven Perdita. Can’t you forgive me? I’m sorry about your brother. You must miss him dreadfully, particularly at Christmas. It was a horrible war.’

She was so beautiful, thought Angel, sitting down again, he could forgive her anything.

‘This is wonderful food,’ he said as Bibi floated back into the room, oblivious of black glances from Perdita and Chessie.

‘Who she talking to?’ asked Angel.

‘My ex,’ said Chessie bitterly.

‘El Orgulloso?’ said Angel in disbelief. ‘He not interested in ugly cow like that. She look like an ’orse, and not a very pretty one.’

‘Ricky likes horses better than anything else. Perhaps that’s the attraction.’

Looking down the table, seeing his dramatically under-handicapped ringer mauling his wife, Bart toyed with the idea of sacking Angel on the spot, but, having played practice chukkas with him yesterday, decided he was too good to kick out so early in the season. Used to calling the conversational shots, he had to confess himself beaten by Auriel as she regaled him with stories of famous movie stars she knew – namely, herself.

Bibi, having also left her mousse, was bitching to Red in French about the dishonesty of Miguel and Juan. ‘They’d installed four boarders at the barn and were charging them $800 each a month – straight into their own pockets.’

‘And the reason Juan came back for the Geldof match was to charge Dad expenses for screwing Sharon Kaputnik,’ answered Red, also in French.

‘This one doesn’t seem much better,’ added Bibi dismissively. ‘The way he’s mauling Chessie, he’s just another jumped-up gigolo.’

Whereupon Angel butted in perfect French.

‘I have never asked money for my sexual services,’ he told Bibi coldly and turned back to Chessie.

Red was highly amused; Bibi went scarlet. Angel needed putting down, but not like that.

The goose was even better than the smoked salmon.

‘This turkey is simply delicious, Francesca,’ said Auriel, feeding large slices to the slavering Yorkshire terriers. ‘The white meat is so subtly flavoured.’

‘I used truffles under the skin,’ said Chessie, grateful for any praise. ‘Ricky’s father used to pronounce it Truefles,’ she added idly.

‘True was the one thing you weren’t to Ricky,’ said Red nastily.

‘It’s all awesome, Chessie,’ said Luke, who was eating a lot, despite not being hungry.

Bart was off the telephone to Sydney at last.

‘To my beautiful and gifted wife,’ he said raising his glass.

‘To the second Mrs Alderton,’ said Red, draining his glass.

‘Yes – to Mom,’ agreed Bibi.

They had a pause before pudding.

‘I’m gonna make a full-scale assault on American Airlines,’ Bart told Auriel.

‘My agent says I’m his favourite client,’ said Auriel. ‘He’s closing a deal with a really good author to write a book on the Auriel Kingham Phenomenon.’

‘Seeking control of the company,’ went on Bart.

‘I’d like to write my own autobiography, but I don’t have the time,’ went on Auriel.

‘By November I’d purchased nearly five per cent of American Airplanes. Do I hold on to the stock as investment, do I go for control of the company?’ went on Bart.

‘Dustin says he can’t wait to make a movie with me,’ confided Auriel, ‘about a beautiful sophisticated woman whose son’s college friend falls madly in love with her.’

‘Or do I sell out for a nice profit?’ asked Bart.

‘Traditionally, older men have always married younger women, right, like you and Francesca. But getting it on with younger guys is definitely a thing of the future,’ said Auriel.

Bart forgot about American Airplanes. ‘Red needs sons,’ he said brusquely.

Auriel smiled warmly into Bart’s eyes. ‘That’s ungallant, Mr Alderton. What makes you think I couldn’t give them to him? Why, the bellboy in the elevator this very morning was saying, “You don’t look a day over twenty-five, Miss Kingham.”’

‘I wonder if I ought to get my face elevated,’ said Chessie, examining herself in her spoon.

Angel, who normally hardly drank, got very giggly. ‘Just looking at you geeves me zee duck bumps,’ he told Chessie.

How dare he flirt so blatantly in front of Dad, thought Bibi. Looking at her stepmother, luminous skin like ivory in the candlelight, one beautiful bare shoulder so close to Angel’s lips, her hatred bubbled over. Look at those emeralds glittering like drops of creme de menthe. The new dinner service must have cost a fortune not to mention the blue silk dress. She was sure it was Ungaro. Chessie was fleecing Bart as she had fleeced Ricky. She was like bindweed that delicately but lethally winds itself round a delphinium until it snaps.

‘This Barsac is truly amazing,’ said Auriel, assuming Bart had chosen it. ‘You have as much a taste for fine wines as fine pictures.’

‘It is good,’ said Bart. ‘Ninety-four years old in fact.’

‘Older than both your ages put together, fancy that,’ said Chessie from the other end of the table.

Red’s eyes slid towards Perdita. ‘Nice, isn’t she?’

Perdita shrugged. ‘Auriel’s jolly boring. What d’you see in her?’

‘Very good in bed,’ said Red, picking up one of the polo ponies pulling Father Christmas’s sleigh and mounting it on the pony in front. ‘I’m learning a lot. You can never be too good in bed.’ He let his eyes run over her body. ‘The better you are the more you can manipulate people and I’m very expensive.’

‘But you’re rich,’ said Perdita, admiring his flawless cheekbones.

‘Ten million? That’s just a piece of chicken shit.’

Perdita giggled in disbelief.

‘To exist here you need at least a hundred million,’ said Red.

‘You’re quite different from Luke.’

‘Sure,’ said Red. ‘I have no principles at all.’

Bart came off the telephone from Tokyo again.

‘Now we can have pudding,’ said Chessie coldly.

‘Sorry, honey. You can keep the phone.’ Bart put the receiver down on the table beside her. Immediately the other telephone rang.

‘Sydney again, Dad,’ said Bibi.

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Chessie. ‘Shut up, you utterly bloody thing,’ she added hysterically as the first telephone