Polo

started to ring again. Furiously she snatched it up.

‘Go away!’ Then, suddenly, in the candlelight her face lost all its expression.

‘Hi,’ she drawled. ‘Did you ring here about two hours ago?’ It was as though a huge thorn had been tugged out of her side. ‘I thought not,’ she smiled luxuriously at Bibi who had turned an ugly maroon.

Ricky, having mindlessly sat through Down and Out in Beverly Hills three times surrounded by other lonely people, was now at a party in Beverly Hills surrounded by blondes, but lonely as one can only be at Christmas. Ringing on the flimsy pretext of finding out how Perdita was getting on, ready to hang up if he got Bart, he had come through to the only blonde he had ever loved.

‘How are you?’ asked Chessie.

‘OK,’ said Ricky flatly. Then he was almost sobbing, ‘No, I’m f-f-f-ucking not. I m-miss you.’

‘Me too.’

‘Are you coming to England this summer?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I see you?’

‘Of course, whenever.’

Then, aware Luke and Bibi were listening: ‘She’s fine. I’ll pass you on to her. Perdita – it’s Ricky.’

Perdita turned away from Red like a dog who hears the crunch of his master’s car on the drive. ‘He’s rung to talk to me?’ she stammered.

‘No-one but you,’ lied Chessie.

Shooting round the table, Perdita picked up the cordless telephone like a baton in a relay race and hurtled into the night.

Outside the frogs stepped up their croaking.

‘What a pity you can’t kiss one of those frogs and turn it into a prince, Bibi,’ drawled Chessie. ‘It might make you less bad-tempered. Ricky said he definitely didn’t ring earlier.’

Perdita came back ten minutes later so insulated with happiness she put the glittering blue Christmas tree in the shade.

‘Ricky was on terrific form, really, really cheerful. Palm Springs must have done him so much good, he can’t wait till next season, nor can I. I can’t wait to get Spotty and Tero home.’

Luke suddenly looked grey and exhausted.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Chessie softly, running a hand down his cheek. ‘You’re much nicer than any of them. Perdita’ll realize it one day.’

With everyone on diets for the polo season, Chessie had decided against Christmas pudding or hard sauce or pecan pie, and then irrationally settled for something far more fattening: sweetened whipped cream shaped like a polo ball, rolled in melted chocolate, and then coated in coconut.

‘Oh, how darling,’ said Auriel. ‘Chessie must have known it was your favourite dessert, Red. They always make it for him at the club.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ snapped Red. ‘Suddenly I feel sick.’

‘Oh, poor baby,’ Auriel was all concern. ‘I better take you home.’

The smaller of the Yorkshire terriers was sick.

Chessie flushed. ‘I should have forgotten you weren’t on solid foods yet, Red, and provided you with a bottle of Cow and Gate.’ Then turning, spitting with rage, to Auriel: ‘It must be such a drag picking him up from play-group every day. Don’t forget to put the baby alarm on when he goes to sleep tonight. Revolting little toyboy.’

Auriel, however, oblivious of the sniping and able to forgive a potential customer, was telling a deliriously happy Perdita about her new range.

‘You were saying you couldn’t wear a dress because of the bruises. In my range we’ve invented a cream which completely disguises them. I’ll mail you some.’

‘You ought to send some to Chessie,’ drawled Red. ‘Then she could use it on her ass – Mrs Regularly Beaten.’ There was a shocked pause.

‘Pack it in,’ snapped Luke.

‘What are you talking about?’ stammered Chessie.

‘Your little hang-up,’ said Red, ‘about having pain before pleasure. We’ve all heard smacks and screams coming from your bedroom.’

He got no further. Seizing him by the collar, Bart had hauled him to his feet.

‘Don’t you speak to Chessie like that,’ he bellowed. ‘I won’t KO you, I’d probably kill you. But you get out of my house – now.’

The glasses jangled, the rafters shook. Leroy shot trembling under the table. The second Yorkshire terrier was sick.

‘Don’t touch him,’ screamed Auriel.

‘I’m only stating facts,’ said Red laughing as he drifted towards the door. ‘Truth shouldn’t hurt – anyway I thought that was what turned Chessie on.’

‘Get out,’ yelled Bart, ‘and you can forget about playing on my team in England this summer until you learn some manners.’

37

Back in Rutshire, Daisy was dreading Christmas all on her own. Eddie and Violet were flying off to LA to spend a week with Hamish, Wendy, little Bridget and a two-month-old addition to the family called Fergus.

‘I must keep cheerful until they go,’ Daisy kept telling herself as she took the bus into Cheltenham to buy them Christmas presents. ‘I mustn’t cling. I must stay jolly for Ethel and Gainsborough.’

Her boss, the Caring Chauvinist, had sourly given her the afternoon off. After all, Christmas was his busiest time, but Daisy had managed to escape from the office party before he started chasing her round the desks. An added grievance was that she’d already had an afternoon off early in the month to show her paintings to a London gallery.

‘I really like your work,’ the owner had told her. ‘I could easily sell your paintings if you used brighter colours.’

Daisy gazed dolefully out of the bus on frost-bleached fields, bare trees, khaki stubble, beige houses and grey woolly sheep all blending in. She thought how hard it was to paint brightly in winter, particularly when all the money she’d saved to buy a car had been spent on mending the washing machine, and her hair needed cutting and she was seven pounds overweight. Even three years after Hamish had left her she still suffered from wildly ricocheting moods. Only that morning she’d wept to find a list – ‘Toads, Eddie’s tooth, Gainsborough’s mouse, sunset’ – which she’d once scribbled down as topics to keep the conversation going with Hamish at dinner. She had forgotten how demanding, bad-tempered, and intolerant Hamish had been. The breakdown of the marriage she now felt had been all her fault.

Suddenly, out of a ploughed field, rose four magpies.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a toyboy, thought Daisy longingly.

‘What d’you want for Christmas?’ her mother had asked the day before, and Daisy’s mind had gone completely blank, because all she wanted was a man. She’d tried going into pubs, but she always drank too fast out of nerves, then had to hide her empty glass in her skirt, so men didn’t feel they had to buy her a drink. There were a few party invitations, but without a car she had to rely on lifts. She’d even been to a Gingerbread meeting for single parents last month, but all the men had beards and kept insisting they weren’t remotely chauvinistic, but very caring. Daisy had got off with the only attractive man, who’d afterwards turned out to be married and only posing as single to take advantage of lonely women.

Cheltenham was hell – absolutely packed with people grumbling about the difficulty of parking their expensive cars and spending fortunes. The post-Christmas sales were already on. I’m a marked-down dress no one wants,