Polo

27

One of the great debates raging through the Argentine polo world was whether Alejandro Mendoza was a greater player than the mighty O’Brien brothers, Miguel and Juan. Certainly the Mendoza family’s ambition in life was to beat the O’Briens. Over twenty years the two great polo dynasties had battled it out in the Argentine Open at Palermo. In the eighties the O’Briens, with Juan and Miguel on ten and their two cousins on nine, had predominated. The Mendozas, however, were biding their time. Alejandro had married at twenty. In two or three years Luis, Patricio and Lorenzo would be catching up with Miguel’s cousins, and by this time Miguel, who drank and ate too much, might well be over the top. And Juan – as Alejandro (who as one who lived in a glass house and was in no position to hurl polo balls) pointed out – might well have died of sexual excess.

Hardly an evening passed without one of the Mendozas gnashing their teeth over old videos of the Open and swearing: Death to the O’Briens. Alejandro was also very jealous that Miguel and Juan, aided by Bart Alderton’s fat salary, had started their own polo club, buying much of the adjoining land and selling plots to polo enthusiasts at vastly inflated prices.

Another hotly contested tournament was the Copa de Republic, a vast knock-out competition which went on all over the country from November to April. Played entirely on handicap, it meant that a team like the O’Briens, the aggregate of whose handicaps added up to thirty-eight goals, could be pitted against a team whose goals only totalled eight. This year, by some freak of fate, the Mendozas had drawn the O’Briens in the first round, and were due to play them at the latter’s new polo club forty miles away on the first Saturday in December.

On the Thursday Luis Mendoza pulled a groin muscle, so Luke had to take his place. On the Friday Lorenzo Mendoza lost his temper with a pony that kept going up with him. Pulling it over to frighten it, he failed to jump clear and the pony fell on him, smashing his thigh. Sobbing with pain and rage, he was carted off to hospital by an ashen Claudia and the family doctor, who’d been presented with a horse every time he delivered a Mendoza baby. Now Angel would have to substitute for Lorenzo. As a result, Alejandro, reluctant to face a rout, ducked out on Saturday morning complaining of an ancient back injury.

Perdita, covering the bottom of the lorries with straw to protect the ponies’ feet, suddenly heard Alejandro shouting that she better dig out a pair of clean breeches and polish her boots, as she’d be playing in the match that afternoon. Perdita went into shock horror. In five hours she’d be marking Miguel O’Brien – a gnat trying to curb an elephant. Her confidence was further eroded by both Patricio and Angel launching into a flurry of Latin hysterics that all the press would be there and why should the humiliation of a certain Mendoza defeat be quadrupled by having a stupid girl on the team. Whereupon Luke lost his temper and told them not to be such fucking chauvinists.

As a final straw, on going to change Perdita discovered she’d got the curse, which was invariably as bloody as Culloden on the first day. How ghastly if she bled through her breeches. The O’Briens’ club was far too new to have a Ladies’ Loo, and she was nearly out of Tampax. Storming out of her room, she went slap into Luke.

‘I’ll polish your boots,’ he offered.

‘I can’t play.’

‘Sure you can. Unknowns are always discovered in the Copa de Republic. It’s your big break.’

‘How can I play against Angel and Patricio as well as the O’Briens?’

‘Hush, hush.’ Luke drew her to him. As always his vast warmth steadied her. ‘Think how proud Ricky would be.’

Burying her face in Luke’s chest to hide her blushes, Perdita asked him if he knew the Spanish for Super Tampax, and if they could stop for some on the way.

‘I guess so,’ said Luke, putting a hand down to stroke her aching, knotted belly, ‘and some Buscopan too if you need it. Stop worrying – we’re on twelve, they’re on thirty-eight. All we’ve gotta do is stop them scoring twenty-six goals.’

They took two lorry-loads of ponies including Fantasma. Little Tero whinnied hysterically when she discovered she was being left behind. Angel drove the first lorry. Perdita sat between him and Luke, who was busy working out who should ride which pony in each chukka. A compulsive polo watcher, he was familiar with many of the O’Briens’ horses and would probably have to rearrange the list when he saw which ones they were playing.

‘You’ve gotta mark Juan,’ he told Angel. ‘He ought to be a twelve or a thirteen, he’s so good. He’s on to the ball before anyone else, but he conserves the energy of his horses.’

‘Unlike Reeky,’ taunted Angel, ‘who do too much and exhaust his horses.’

‘Don’t talk crap,’ said Perdita furiously.

‘Pack it in,’ snapped Luke, ‘and drive a bit slower. We don’t want to go up the ass of that flour lorry in front.’

Angel’s fingers drummed angrily on the steering wheel as he gazed moodily at the long, straight road ahead of them. Suntanned now, he no longer looked as though he was dying of jaundice. Bronze tendrils stuck to his forehead. Lean jaws, continually chewing gum, were covered in stubble. He might have shaved for a match, thought Perdita; the girl in the petrol station must have a skin like garlic sausage.

‘Look at those sheep grazing under that pylon,’ said Luke quickly, trying, too late, to distract Perdita’s attention from another dumped dog, cringing and terrified, at the side of the road.

‘Stop!’ she screamed in anguish. ‘We can’t leave him.’

Hunched over the wheel, Angel accelerated.

‘Aren’t there any Dogs’ Homes in this shitty country?’ demanded Perdita.

‘We don’t need them,’ snarled Angel. ‘As a nation, we drive very fast which solve the problem. Perdida means stray in Spanish,’ he added contemptuously.

Rigid with hatred, they sat a foot apart, with Perdita rammed against Luke. But, as her shirt grew soaked in sweat, she was obliged to edge nearer Angel, who looked at her as if she were a tarantula.

Realizing they were both going through the roof with nerves, Luke put down his notes and tipped his battered panama over his snub nose.

‘Listen, my children, and you will hear,’ he began in his deep husky drawl, ‘of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-five.

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that day and that year.’

‘Put a sock in it,’ grumbled Perdita.

‘Spik Spanish,’ said Angel fretfully.

A grin spread across Luke’s freckled face. ‘You’ll love this poem, Angel. It’s all about a crushing Brit defeat.

‘A hurry of hooves on the village street,’ he went on,

‘And beneath from the pebbles in passing a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet.

That was all! and yet through the gloom and the light

The fate of a nation was riding that night.’

As he related the heroic tale of Paul Revere’s gallop through the night to alert the Americans to the arrival of the British Redcoats, the forty miles flew by and Perdita and Angel strained to catch every word.

‘That was great,’ said Perdita in amazement when he’d finished. ‘Where d’you learn that stuff?’

‘In school when I had time to kill.’

‘Give us something else.’

Luke laughed and put on an English accent:

‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile

This day shall gentle his condition.’

‘Nice,’ said Perdita. Then under her breath, ‘But nothing’s going to gentle Angel!’

The ponies, who always had an uncanny knowledge that they’d reached their destination, were stamping and scraping the floor in the back.

‘And here’s Le Cloob O’Brien,’ announced Angel.

They turned into a dirt track flanked by very young gum trees. On either side in various stages of development were yellow houses with crinkly red roofs like Swiss chalets. The club house, which looked like a turreted Ruritanian castle, had white walls, grey roofs, flawless pitches front and back, but as yet no windows, nor, as Perdita suspected, a Ladies’ loo, or changing room. She changed in the lorry with Martina, a sorrel mare with four white socks, who was never let out until the last moment, as she was driven so crazy by the flies. Perdita was trembling so badly that she could hardly zip up her boots. She felt a stone overweight with the Super Tampax and all the Kleenex stuffed inside herself. The once-crocus-yellow polo shirt, now faded to primrose with a huge maroon satin Number One on the back, was almost falling to pieces. It had been worn the last time the Mendozas beat the O’Briens in the Open and on every occasion they had met since. Trying to put her head through a sleeve, Perdita nearly ripped it further.

Luke let her out. The primrose yellow suited him, she thought. It emphasized the sleepy honey-coloured eyes in his brown face and the yellow streaks in his reddy-gold hair. He looked in terrific shape too. The massive shoulders and chest tapered down to the lean cowboy hips and long legs.

The O’Briens looked in even greater shape. Everywhere, Perdita seemed to see the emerald-green colours they had chosen to emphasize their Irish origins, which were worn by players, grooms and supporters alike. Both their lorries were green, and so were their lead reins, anti-sweat sheets, buckets and bandages, and there were green braids on their splendid horses’ tails, which were left down until the last moment to protect them from the flies.

Perdita felt her stomach disappear. There was Miguel, huge and thick-set with a permanently hard ugly smirk on his face, and lithe, handsome Juan, whom she’d last seen being forcibly ejected for bonking his host’s wife at the Waterlanes’ party, both swinging their sticks round and round to loosen up their shoulders.

Then she noticed a vast woman with a swarthy dead-pan face and black hair drawn back into a bun, who was standing near the O’Briens with grimly folded arms.

‘Who’s Sitting Bully?’ she asked Luke.

‘Juan’s wife.’ Then, at Perdita’s look of incredulity, ‘Known as the Policia. When she accompanies him to Palm Beach, he drops all his girlfriends, goes to church and prays, and becomes the model husband. The moment she leaves, he’s back with a blonde on each arm.’

Perdita started to laugh.

‘The good news,’ went on Luke, ‘is that, because she’s around, Juan hasn’t been able to have his extra-marital pre-match hump, which miraculously lifts his game. Instead he and Juan lunched with Victor and Sharon Kaputnik. Victor’s thinking of buying a dozen horses off them, unless he sees something he fancies better at Alejandro’s tomorrow. They’re not playing their best horses today. They’re saving them for the Open.’

‘So they have no doubt about wiping the floor?’

‘None,’ said Luke. ‘Let’s hope pride comes before several falls.’

‘Will you do up my kneepads?’ asked Perdita. ‘I don’t want anyone, particularly Angel, to see how much I’m shaking.’

‘The bad news,’ went on Luke, tucking a strap into a buckle, ‘is that one of today’s umpires, Jaime Calavessi, bumped one of the O’Brien boys wrong last week. After the match, “Tiny”, as Mrs Juan is euphemistically known, and her three sons chased Jaime round the field and nearly broke his jaw. So any decisions he makes today will be nervously pro-O’Brien. The other umpire is Juan’s brother-in-law, so he won’t be un-biased either.’

A large crowd had gathered, giving a great air of carnival. Little boys raced about hitting balls with short mallets. Young players sat inside the boards, anxious to get as near their gods as possible. Voluptuous girlfriends, sisters and mothers constantly turned against the hot dusty wind to secure their cascading glossy hair with plastic bull-dog clips. Perched on bonnets of cars, smoking and chattering non-stop, they were getting high on tins of diet Coke.

Spectators, wandering along the pony lines, were amused to watch Fantasma, who’d been muzzled to stop her savaging anyone, standing on her two front legs and lashing out with both back ones.

A ripple of excitement went through the crowd as Miguel’s wife, who was small, dark, and as pretty as Mrs Juan was ugly, rolled up with Victor and Sharon Kaputnik. Victor, fatter and balder and more like a bilious little hippo than ever, was obviously enjoying playing the O’Briens off against the Mendozas.

‘In Chile they like you anyway,’ he was saying loudly. ‘In Argentina they cheat you and laugh all the way to the bank. They only entertain you if they know you’re going to buy their ponies.’

‘Bloody rude,’ said Perdita, furiously. ‘How dare he bitch about Argentina? And, my God, Sharon’s been gentrified!’

When Perdita last saw her as Victor’s bimbo in 1981, Sharon’s hair had been dyed the colour of strawberry jam, her splendid breasts had floated like beachballs out of her skin-tight polyester dress and her six-inch spike heels must have terrorized any lurking moles as she tripped on to the Rutshire pitch at treading-in time.

Today her hair, the discreetest palest auburn, curled softly on her collar and she was wearing a white muslin midi-dress, white stockings and flat white pumps. Vast pearls, which some poor oyster must have needed an epidural to produce, circled her neck and wrists. The bracelet had gone from her ankle, the heavy make-up from her eyes. The graciousness of her entrance, however, was somewhat marred. Clinging on to her big picture hat with one hand and holding up her white parasol with the other, there was nothing left to prevent the hot wind from the Andes blowing her dress over her head, to reveal a white suspender belt and French knickers.

‘My people used to have an estancia in Chorley Wood,’ she was telling an uncomprehending Mrs Miguel. ‘Oh, best of luck, Hoo-arn,’ she cried, priding herself on her pronunciation, as Juan cantered on to the field, followed by a cloud of dust and the eyes of every woman round the pitch.

Impossibly arrogant and handsome, teeth flashing beneath his ebony moustache, so much copied by the young Argentine bloods, black curls flowing from under a very unlrish tartan hat, Juan’s long thighs gripped a bay mare who was so glossy he could have checked his reflection in her quarters. A great cheer went up as he started hitting the ball around, the merest tap sending it miles across a field as brown as Raimundo’s goatskin apron.

‘Idolo, my hero, I am ’ere!’ yelled a busty blonde through cupped hands, earning herself a wave from Juan and dirty looks from both Sharon and Mrs Juan, who had stationed themselves grimly on the halfway line, surrounded by supporters.

‘That bay Juan’s riding is very powerful,’ Luke told Angel. ‘Three days without oats and she can still play, but Juan has trouble stopping her, don’t forget. He’ll also try and hit you too late.’

Knowing the others were depending on him, Luke kept his nerves to himself as he went round checking girths and bandages. To give Perdita confidence in her first chukka, he’d put her on a dark brown pony called Chimango (which meant bird of prey), who was as steady as a rock, but who swept down on the ball like a hawk.

‘Luke,’ shouted Juan. Cantering up, he bent down and gave Luke a great hug. ‘My dear friend, ’ow are you? How is Alejandro? Still bent as a paper cleep?’

‘No more than you,’ said Luke. ‘We hear you’ve been selling Victor carthorses. Did you wax their fetlocks beforehand?’

‘No, we use ladies’ razor,’ giggled Juan. ‘Your father is very well. He ring me tomorrow wiz zee ’andicap listings. If he go up, we ’ave to look for another ringer.’

Under Juan’s pony’s elegant hooves, the ground was cracking and blowing away in clouds of dust. ‘I ’ear you reduce to playing wiz girls. Alejandro must be sleeping,’ he said.

‘He is not,’ said Perdita, outraged.

‘He means slipping,’ Luke reassured her.

‘That’s even worse.’

‘This is Perdita,’ said Luke.

‘Ay, ay, ay,’ sighed Juan, peering under her hat. ‘You are twelve goal in looks, señorita; what does it matter about zee polo?’

‘Bloody sexist,’ muttered Perdita, as Juan rode off.

‘He’s pissed,’ said Luke.

‘We’ll show him,’ said Perdita as she mounted Chimango.

Angel and Patricio were about to ride on to the field.

‘Wait!’ Perdita leant forward and removed a piece of straw from Angel’s pony’s eyelashes.

‘Put on the Rimmel mascara next,’ said Angel sarcastically.

‘Oh, fuck off.’

‘Knock it off,’ said Luke, picking up his stick. ‘Now come on, you guys. We may be the underdogs, but we’re gonna fight like pit bulls.’