Polo

17

Alone in his large draughty house, mourning Will, desperate for Chessie, panicking about his arm, Ricky’s hatred for Bart, obsessive, primeval, poisoning, living deep within him, grew like a beast. And so he took it out on Perdita. She didn’t mind him making her clean all the tack, or skip out the horses, or scour the fields for lost balls, or even put all the bandages and saddle blankets through the ancient washing machine that kept breaking down. But sometimes he seemed to invent tasks deliberately, scrubbing the inside and outside of buckets, and even cleaning the bowl of the outside lavatory. Worst of all, he wouldn’t let her near a polo stick.

Perdita raged inside and took it out on Daisy at home. But at the yard she behaved herself, knowing it was her only chance. Once a week, too, the sullen, protective, scrawny Frances drove Ricky to Rutminster to see his probation officer, which gave Perdita the chance to stick and ball on the sly, while Louisa kept cave. Louisa and Perdita had become inseparable.

In the spring Perdita retook and passed seven O levels. As a reward, Ricky allowed her to help Louisa get the ponies fit for the coming season, riding them up and down the steep Rutshire hills, trotting them along the winding country lanes.

One April afternoon they were exercising ponies along the chocolate-brown earth track which ran round the huge field of young barley which Perdita had escaped into after jumping the sheep grid the year before. It was a still, muggy day. Wild garlic swept through the woods like an emerald-green tidal wave. The sweet scent of primroses and violets hung on the air.

‘No one’s ever loved anyone as much as I love Ricky,’ said Perdita restlessly.

‘He’s thirty and you’re sixteen,’ protested Louisa.

‘I don’t care. I’m still going to marry him when he grows up. Christ, look at that.’

Perdita took hold of little Hermia who was still very nervous and even Wayne rolled his black-ringed eyes and raised his donkey ears a centimetre as a vast black helicopter chugged up the valley. Almost grazing the tips of the ash woods, it flew round the paddocks, over the stick and ball field and circled the battlements of Robinsgrove like a malevolent crow.

Coming out of the forage room holding a bucket of stud nuts, Ricky, in a blinding flash of hope, thought it might be a returning Chessie. Then he saw the four horsemen of the Apocalypse on the side of the helicopter as it dropped into a paddock beyond the corral, scattering ponies.

As the rotors stilled, the door flew open and out stepped a lean, menacing figure, entirely clad in zips and black leather. Heavily suntanned, his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses and his blond-streaked mane far more teased and dishevelled than Perdita’s.

‘Blimey,’ squeaked Louisa. ‘It’s Dancer Maitland. Why didn’t I stick to that diet?’

Dancer was followed by two heavies in tweed suits, with bulging muscles and pockets, who had great difficulty squeezing out of the door. As he reached Ricky, Dancer removed his dark glasses. His heavily kohled, brilliant grey eyes glittered with excitement.

‘From you ’ave I been absent in the spring,’ he drawled, ‘“Gaol Bird” was number one on the US charts this morning, so I fort it was ‘igh time I took up polo.’

Ricky just gazed at him.

‘Knew you’d get a shock when you saw me done up,’ said Dancer, raking a heavily metalled hand through his blond curls. Then he put his arms round Ricky and hugged him.

‘Grite to see you, beauty.’

‘It’s w-w-wonderful to see you,’ stammered Ricky.

‘’Ave you missed me?’

Ricky nodded. ‘To tell the truth I bloody have.’

‘This is Paulie and this is Twinkle,’ said Dancer, waving airily at the two heavies who were gazing hungrily at Perdita. ‘Them’s my minders. Very amenable, if I feed them fresh Rottweilers every morning. This place is somefink else. The ’ouse, and all the trees and that ravine.’ He gazed down the valley.

‘We ’ad a cruise round,’ he went on. ‘Who owns the big house on the edge of the village?’

‘Eldercombe Manor?’ asked Ricky. ‘Some awful old fossil called Bentley.’

‘How much land?’

‘About two hundred acres, including the village cricket pitch.’

‘Perfect,’ said Dancer. ‘Now I want to see all the ponies. That’s Wayne wiv the floppy ears, an’ Kinta wiv the bad-tempered face and li-el Hermia, she’s the shy one. You see, I remember everyfink you told me.’

But when Ricky took him into a nearby paddock where a dozen ponies came racing up and, at the sight of Ricky’s bucket of stud nuts, started flattening their ears, barging and kicking out at each other, Dancer edged nervously closer to Ricky.

‘Can we get a taxi back to the yard?’

‘They won’t hurt you, although they might hurt each other,’ said Ricky. ‘Stop it,’ he snapped, punching Willis on the nose as the big bay lashed out at little Pilgrim.

Once he was safely on the other side of the post and rails, Dancer said that, now he was here, it was time for his first lesson. Four or five minutes later he emerged from the house with his hair tied back in a pony tail, wearing a black shirt, breeches and boots.

‘Look at the length of those legs,’ sighed Louisa, ‘I’m going to convert him.’

‘I’m surprised Ricky hasn’t ordered him to take off his make-up,’ snapped Perdita, who felt wildly jealous of Dancer.

‘Potential patron,’ explained Louisa. ‘Ricky wouldn’t mind if he wore blusher and a miniskirt.’

‘These boots ’ave never been on an ’orse before, and neither ’ave I,’ boasted Dancer, as Ricky took him through a games room, crammed with golf clubs, ski boots, tennis rackets and polo sticks, to a room with netting walls and floors sloping down to a flat oblong on which stood a wooden replica of a horse. Every time the ball was hit it rolled back so it could be hit again. Before he jiggered his arm, Ricky would spend half an hour a day in here practising his swing. Dancer on the wooden horse was a revelation – long legs gripping the slatted barrel, new boots in the stirrups, shifting effortlessly in the saddle. He had a marvellous eye and sense of timing; he met the ball right every time.

‘Cowdray an’ ten goal ’ere I come,’ he screamed, getting more and more excited. ‘I can fucking do it! We can start getting some ponies right away. Now let’s try a real ’orse.’

‘You may not find it quite so easy,’ said Ricky gently. ‘Tack up Geoffrey,’ he added to Perdita.

Geoffrey was known as the ‘hangover horse’ because he was the kindest, easiest ride in the yard and from the days when Ricky used to drink heavily, had always seemed to know when his master was somewhat the worse for wear. You could trust a dead baby on Geoffrey.

‘All right, gimme a stick,’ said Dancer, when Perdita had lengthened his stirrup leathers.

‘Try without one to begin with,’ advised Ricky.

‘Don’t be daft, I’ve cracked it,’ said Dancer, riding into the corral.

Even on the gentle Geoffrey, however, he fell off seven times, with escalating screams of rage and elation.

‘I can’t control this fucking machine,’ he yelled at Ricky. ‘It’s got no steering, no brakes, and I can’t get my foot off the accelerator. Give me another one.’

‘Just walk to start with,’ shouted Ricky, and, as Geoffrey jerked his black head to avoid being hit in the eye, he added, ‘Stop brandishing that stick like Ian Botham. You’ve got to take it slowly.’ He grabbed the relieved pony’s bridle and removed Dancer’s stick. ‘There’s no problem teaching you to play polo, but you’ve got to spend the next six months learning to ride. The aim is to keep the patron out of traction. Now get your ass down in the saddle, get your heels down and your knees in.’

By the end of an hour Dancer had fallen off twice more, was bruised as black as midnight and utterly hooked.

‘What d’you fink?’ he asked Perdita, as he rode into the yard. ‘Am I going to make it?’

‘Gaol Bird’ was blaring out of the tack room wireless.

‘You couldn’t be a worse polo player than you are a singer,’ snapped Perdita.

Back in his black leather trousers, wearing two of Ricky’s jerseys, Dancer prowled round the drawing room, clutching a huge Bacardi and Coke and looking at the cups and the photographs.

‘What an ’eritage! Christ, I ache all over, you fucker. When can we go and buy some ponies?’

‘We can’t yet.’ Ricky put another log on the fire. ‘We’ve got enough ponies here. If you’re serious we can spend the summer teaching you to ride, and if it works out, see about buying ponies in the autumn.’

‘You’re stalling,’ said Dancer, shivering and edging towards the fire. ‘Arm still playing up?’

Ricky shrugged. ‘I’ve still got no feeling and no strength in my last three fingers.’

‘I’ve got just the bloke for you.’

‘I’ve seen three specialists,’ said Ricky wearily. ‘They all say rest it.’

‘You could fucking rest it for ever,’ said Dancer. ‘We’ve got to get you to ten an’ get the Westchester back, an’ you’re not getting any younger. My friend Seth Newcombe practises in New York, best bone man in the world.’

‘I can’t leave the country.’

‘Mountain better come to Mahomet,’ said Dancer. ‘Seth’ll fly over if I ask him nicely. He’s been after me for years.’

‘I’m not being carved up by some old queen,’ said Ricky outraged.

‘Think he might deflower you under the anaesthetic?’ said Dancer. ‘Don’t be so pig-’eaded.’

Seth arrived in England by private jet the following Saturday. Dancer’s helicopter transported him and his X-ray equipment to Robinsgrove. A charming WASP with the gentlest hands and the whitest cuffs Ricky had ever seen, he examined Ricky’s arm for ten minutes, then said he’d like to operate immediately.

‘I think there’s a trapped nerve. You must be in a lot of pain.’

‘Can you guarantee a one hundred per cent success rate?’ asked Ricky belligerently.

‘No, but you won’t get the strength or feeling back into your hand if you just leave it. And you’ll certainly never get to ten, or nine, or eight, or even seven. I know a bit about polo. I used to play at the Myopia Club in Boston for years.’

‘Christ, I hope he wears spectacles when he carves me up,’ said Ricky.

A week later Ricky went into a clinic in Harley Street. The operation took several hours. Dancer and Perdita waited in a private room so Dancer wouldn’t get mobbed and, as the day wore on, Perdita’s animosity evaporated and she and Dancer clung to each other for reassurance. Perdita, despite Ricky’s admonition, smoked one cigarette after another. Dancer, stuck into Bacardi and Coke, was in an even worse state.

‘What happens if he’s really fucked up?’

‘Seth said he won’t,’ said Perdita.

‘He’s such a sod, I don’t know why we love him so much.’

‘I ache for him in bed every night,’ sighed Perdita.

‘I ache every night from falling off his bloody ’orses.’

‘Pity Seth can’t give him a heart transplant at the same time to get him over Chessie,’ said Perdita. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t like you to begin with. I guess I was jealous.’

‘I like you,’ said Dancer. ‘You’re going to play on my team when Ricky gets better. Black’s a great colour wiv your eyes.’

Both jumped as Seth came into the room still in his green gown. He looked elated but desperately tired, his eyes were bloodshot beneath the green cap.

‘Well, we untrapped the nerve – that prison hospital made the most godawful cock-up – and re-set the elbow. Touching wood,’ he leant down to touch the table and, realizing it was veneer, shuddered and touched a picture frame, ‘he should get back all the strength of his fingers and make a one hundred per cent recovery.’

Dancer burst into tears.

‘Can we see him?’ asked Perdita, as she and Seth mopped him up.

‘No point. He’ll be out like a light for the next few hours.’

‘When can he play again?’

‘Well, he’ll have to be patient. A little low goal next year, high goal perhaps in 1985.’

While Ricky was in hospital, Dancer had not been idle. Rolling up at his bedside a few days later, he looked very smug.

‘Well, I’ve got my yard,’ he said, putting a large jar of caviar and a bunch of yellow roses down on the bed.

‘Where is it?’ snapped Ricky.

‘Eldercombe Manor.’

‘Jesus! How did you fiddle that?’

‘I went to see Lady Bentley. Nice lady. Said she was fed up wiv providing tea for all the villagers and their visiting teams every Sunday. I told her, “That’s the trouble wiv noblesse oblige, it flamin’ nobbles you.” Anyway your mate Basil Baddingham has been very co-operative. He’s ’andled the deal and says I’ll get planning permission for everyfing.’

Ricky groaned. ‘You’re crazy.’

‘No, we’re not. All we need is a stack of brown envelopes filled wiv dosh. Bas says the Council’s completely bent, that’s why they’re called Councillors because they counts the money they get in bribes every day.’ Dancer roared with laughter.

‘How much did they sting you?’ asked Ricky, disapprovingly.

‘Nearly a million, but Bas reckons it’ll be worf four million by the end of the eighties. There’s rooms we can knock froo for a recording studio, and uvver rooms we can knock froo for parties. An’ a nice piece of flat land where we can build a polo field.’

‘The village have been playing cricket on that for generations.’

‘Well, they’ll have to watch polo now.’

‘And Miss Lodsworth, the village bossyboots, will be next door marshalling the Parish Council like a tiger. She’s not going to like her girl guides being corrupted by all your musicians.’

Dancer grinned. ‘Sounds kind of fun. Bas didn’t mention any incentives in the hand-out about under-age schoolgirls. And talking of schoolgirls, I just love that Perdita. I watched her stick and balling this morning. Never missed the goal posts once.’

‘She is not supposed to be playing.’

‘You can’t hold her back,’ protested Dancer. ‘Why are you so foul to her?’

‘Got to bash the stems of roses to get the water in,’ said Ricky flatly.

‘She told me about losing ’er pony,’ said Dancer. ‘Fort I might buy her another one.’

‘You will not,’ snapped Ricky, suddenly looking pale and tired. ‘I can only just control her as it is. I got complaints about her from Miss Lodsworth only last week – taking seven ponies up Eldercombe High Street to save making two journeys so she could get back and stick and ball. And she gives them too much road work, so they won’t get dirty and she won’t have to waste time scraping off the mud. Every time my back’s turned, she picks up a stick.’

‘Probably want to sleep wiv her,’ said Dancer slyly. ‘That’s why you’re so ’orrible.’

‘The only thing I’m interested in is getting Chessie back,’ snapped Ricky.

He was bitterly ashamed that, having been assured by Seth that his arm would recover, he was still overwhelmed with black gloom.

The day before Ricky was due home the ancient washing machine finally croaked because Perdita had overloaded it with saddle blankets and Frances had made such a scene that Dancer whipped Perdita off to Rutminster to buy Ricky a new one as a welcome-home present.

‘We don’t want him any crosser wiv you than he already is,’ said Dancer, as they stormed back to Eldercombe along the motorway.

Perdita adored Dancer’s car, a gold Ferrari, fitted with all the latest gadgets including a synthesizer, a CD player, whose speakers were blaring out ‘Gaol Bird’, and two telephones.

‘Let’s try ringing each other up,’ she suggested; then she gave a scream. ‘Look! There’s a little dog running along the verge. It must have been dumped. Stop, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Can’t stop ’ere,’ protested Dancer.

‘You bloody can. Get in the left-hand lane.’

Then, for a second the traffic slowed down to allow cars to turn off at Exit fifteen and Perdita was out of the Ferrari, narrowly avoiding being run down by a Lotus, and on to the grass track in the centre of the motorway. Tears streaming down her face, she belted back the way they had come, looking desperately for the little dog. Cars were hurtling past her in both directions. How could the little thing possibly survive? Her heart was crashing in her ribs as she stumbled over the uneven divots.

Just when she felt she couldn’t run another step, she saw the little dog again. He had huge terrified eyes with bags under them like a basset, and one ear that stuck up and the other down, and a long, dirty grey body and stumpy legs. He wore no collar, and was poised, absolutely terrified, on the far side of the right-hand traffic lane. Perdita didn’t call to him, but, seeing her, he suddenly dived into the traffic, narrowly missing a milk lorry and a BMW and only avoiding a Bentley because it swerved to the left, causing great hooting and screaming of brakes. Now the dog was racing down the green track ahead of her. Two hundred yards away loomed a Little Chef restaurant.

‘Oh, please God, let him make it,’ sobbed Perdita.

Stumbling on, ignoring the wolf whistles and yells of approval from passing drivers, she watched in anguish as the dog decided to make a dive and plunged into the traffic again. Trying to avoid a Volvo going at 100 m.p.h. he was hit by the front of an oil lorry which knocked it on to the hard shoulder.

Perdita gave a scream of horror, which turned into joy as the dog stumbled on to three legs and dragged himself into the safety of the restaurant.

Oblivious of cars, forgetting Dancer, Perdita somehow crossed the road and sprinted the last hundred yards. The dog was nowhere to be seen but, following a trail of blood, Perdita found him underneath a parked lorry. His eyes were terrified, his lip curling, his little back leg a bloody pulp.

‘It’s all right, darling.’ Gradually she edged towards him, but when she put out her hand, he snapped and cringed away. Perdita tried another tack. Crawling out, she explained what had happened to the driver of the lorry and asked if she could have a bit of his lunch. Grinning, he gave her half a pork pie. At first the dog looked dubious, then slowly edged forwards and gobbled it up, plainly starving.

‘More,’ yelled Perdita.

By the time the dog had finished the pork pie and eaten three beef sandwiches, several drivers were gathered round admiring Perdita’s legs.

‘You’ve got to help me catch him,’ she said, peering out, her cheeks streaked with oil. ‘He’ll bleed to death if we don’t get him to a vet.’

The dog was finally coaxed out with a bowl of water, so frantic was his thirst. The first lorry driver gave Perdita an old blanket to wrap him in, the second offered to drive her to the nearest vet and went off to borrow the Yellow Pages from the restaurant. The third was suggesting the RSPCA might be better when Dancer screamed up in his Ferrari.

‘Fuckin’ ’ell, Perdita, fort you’d been totalled.’

All the drivers had to have Dancer’s autograph for their wives and tell him what a bleedin’ shame he’d been put inside before he and Perdita finally set off for the vet’s. Perdita had to hold on to the little dog very tightly as he shuddered in her arms. Despite the blanket, he bled all over Dancer’s pale gold upholstery. Mercifully the vet was at the surgery. Putting the dog out, he operated at once. The leg needed sixty stitches. Once again Dancer and Perdita waited.

‘He won’t have to lose the leg,’ said the vet as he washed his hands afterwards, ‘but he’ll have very sore toes for a bit. You can pick him up tomorrow.’

‘What are you going to do with him?’ Dancer asked Perdita.

‘Give him to Ricky. He’s got to learn to love something new.’

Getting home to find Little Chef, as he was now known, in situ, Ricky was absolutely furious.

‘I do not want another dog, and, if I did, it would be a whippet. That must be the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen.’

‘He’s sweet,’ protested Perdita. ‘He’s had a bad time’ – like you have, she nearly added.

‘A dog is a tie.’

‘Not a very old school one in Little Chef’s case,’ admitted Perdita. ‘But mongrels are much brighter than breed dogs and you need something to guard the yard. Frances is getting very long in the tooth.’

Little Chef hobbled towards Ricky. The whites of his supplicating, pleading eyes were like pieces of boiled egg. His tail, instead of hanging between his legs, was beginning to curl.

‘I don’t want a dog,’ said Ricky sulkily. ‘It broke Millicent’s heart every time I went away. I’m not into the business of heart-breaking.’

‘Could have fooled me,’ drawled Dancer. ‘I’ve gotta go. I’ve got a concert.’

‘So have I. Dancer’s got me a ticket,’ said Perdita, scuttling out after him. ‘See you tomorrow. Just give him a chance.’

Left alone with Ricky, Little Chef limped to the door and whined for a bit. When it was time to go to bed, Ricky got Millicent’s basket down from the attic and put it in front of the Aga.

‘Stay,’ he said firmly.

Little Chef stayed.

Upstairs he had difficulty getting out of his clothes. Across the yard, he could see a light on in Frances’s flat. She’d be across in a flash if he asked her. Since the operation he’d had terrible trouble sleeping. To get comfortable he had to lie on his back with his left hand hanging out of the bed.

His body ached with longing for Chessie. For a second he thought of Perdita, then slammed his mind shut like a dungeon door. That could only lead to disaster. Frances’s scrawny body was always on offer, but on the one night when despair had driven him to avail himself of it he hadn’t even been able to get it up. That was why she was so bitter.

He turned out the light, breathing in the sweet soapy smell of hawthorn blossom. Through the open window the new moon was rising like a silver horn out of the jaws of the galloping fox weather-vane. Before he had time to wish, he jumped out of his skin as a rough tongue licked his hand. In the dim light he saw Little Chef gazing up at him beseechingly.

‘Go away,’ snapped Ricky. Then, as the dog slunk miserably away, ‘Oh all right, just this once.’

But when he patted the bed, Little Chef couldn’t make it, so Ricky reached down and helped him up. Immediately he snuggled against Ricky’s body, giving a sigh of happiness. For the first time in years, both of them slept in until lunchtime.