Polo

66

Back at Robinsgrove next morning Ricky, still high on euphoria, was the only member of Apocalypse not laid waste by a hangover. Clutching their heads, groaning, some of them still drunk, the grooms leant against the tired ponies as they walked them out for Ricky to inspect. Wayne had an inflamed tendon and had been ordered a few days’ box rest. The others – except for a few cuts and bruises – were miraculously free from injury, so Ricky ordered them to be turned out for forty-eight hours. Leaning on the gate, he fondly watched them, revelling in the sunshine, walking poker-legged at first, then, realizing they were free, breaking into a canter, crinkly tails flying and charging down the valley to roll and cool their bruised legs in the stream which raced and hurled itself against the rocks after yesterday’s deluge.

Although his ash trees were still a feathery blue-green without a trace of yellow, Ricky could see the slow beginnings of autumn, the toasting of the beeches, the gilding of the poplars, the occasional tree garlanded by acid-green traveller’s joy, the barley beyond the stables slowly losing its green flecks. But for once the prospect of winter didn’t depress him.

The telephone had rung all morning, patrons suddenly wondering if there was any chance he could play for them next year, friends to congratulate, newspapers wanting quotes – one would have thought the powers of darkness had fallen. The morning papers were equally ecstatic. ‘Flyers France-Lynched,’ said The Times, which was a slight exaggeration when they had only been beaten by an own goal. ‘Flyers Bomb,’ said the Telegraph. The tabloids concentrated on Dancer’s delight and Perdita’s anguish, with variations on Rupert’s rejected daughter, Auriel’s toyboy, Bart’s fury, all reporting the grisly details of the shouting match afterwards.

Looking at the bowed-down heads of the barley still dripping with raindrops, Ricky was reminded of Perdita yesterday, sobbing, bitterly ashamed and desolate. He had talked to Daisy earlier that morning and persuaded her not to weaken. ‘Looks as though Red’s on the way out, thank God. Let her come back in her own time.’

Returning to the yard, Ricky went into Wayne’s box to find him lying down asleep. But as he sat down in the straw, Wayne opened a baleful black-ringed eye, whickered and, accepting several barley sugars, listened attentively as his master took him through every stroke of the chukka in which he had seen off the great Glitz.

‘We won, my brave Wayne, we won,’ Ricky told him exultantly.

The telephone was ringing again. Remembering the grooms had the day off, Ricky sprinted into the kitchen.

‘Hello, Rick,’ said The Scorpion. ‘Congrats on beating your ex-wife’s hubby. Your ex seemed over the moon. Any chance of a reconciliation?’

‘F-f-fuck off,’ said Ricky.

The telephone rang again immediately. Ricky snatched it up. ‘F-f-fuck off.’

‘Hello, hello.’ It was Brigadier Hughie. ‘Thought you might like to know that it’s rumoured that you’re going up to ten.’

Replacing the receiver, Ricky took it off the hook and, picking up the cup, already covered in a thousand ecstatic fingerprints, held it up to the light.

‘We won, Cheffie, we won.’

Little Chef thumped his curly tail and sniffed appreciatively at the chicken his master was cooking for him as a celebratory treat. Neither had eaten much yesterday. Then he gave a strangled croak, all he could manage after barking himself hoarse yesterday, and shot off into the yard. Still hugging the cup, Ricky wandered into the hall, holding it up for the photographs of his grandfather, uncles and father to see. ‘I did it, you old b-b-buggers.’

‘You look like one of the wise men bearing gold. Melchior, was it?’

Ricky almost dropped the cup, for there in the kitchen doorway stood Chessie.

‘As I was ripped untimely from yesterday’s celebration,’ she drawled, ‘I thought I’d come and congratulate you personally. I see you haven’t painted anything except the stables since I left.’

Wandering back into the kitchen, she noticed that the shelves, from which she’d swiped all her recipe books, were piled high with old copies of Horse and Hound and Polo magazine. The spice shelves were down to salt, pepper and mixed herbs. She could smell that there was no tarragon in the chicken Ricky was cooking. A calendar for 1981, the year she’d walked out, still hung on the wall, probably because it bore a photograph of a whippet who looked like Millicent. The washing machine, black inside with Apocalypse shirts, quivered on ‘pause’.

She turned to Ricky, who was still holding the cup and staring at her. ‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

‘I don’t know.’

All he knew was that the sun had gone in and the cup had lost its glitter. Chessie was wearing a clinging black jump suit, sawn off at the knees, with a T-shirt top clinched in with yesterday’s leather belt. She appeared to be wearing no make-up at all, but in fact had spent twenty minutes smudging blue-black shadow and a subtle blending of green and beige base to make herself look tired, frail and wildly desirable. Ricky felt himself churning.

‘Got a hangover?’ she asked.

‘I don’t drink.’

‘I thought you might have made an exception. It is the first rung.’

‘I know,’ said Ricky flatly.

The Slav face was impassive. Above the high cheekbones, his eyes were as dark as the rain-soaked cedars in the churchyard.

‘Everyone’s saying you’ll go to ten at the end of the season. All you have to do is win the Westchester.’ Her voice was mocking. ‘Can I have a look round?’

Sauntering to the window, showing off the slightness of her figure, she caught sight of Wayne, who, having decided to get up, was now leaning nosily out of his box to see what his master was up to. ‘Is that Mattie?’ How clever of me to remember names, thought Chessie.

‘Mattie was put down, if you remember, the day you first slept with Bart.’

Chessie didn’t hesitate. ‘Oh yes, how stupid of me.’

Putting the cup down, he followed her into the hall.

‘You’ve let the moth get at that tapestry, and look at the damp,’ she said reprovingly. ‘This place needs a woman’s touch. Pity I can’t touch Bart for a million to do it up.’

Ricky’s cards were still up from his birthday in February, along with an Easter egg Violet had given him for letting her drive in his fields. Absent-mindedly, he started breaking it up and giving pieces to Little Chef.

‘What d’you want?’ he said bleakly.

‘To talk.’ She looked him straight in the eyes. ‘To find out if you still want me.’

‘Don’t be bloody silly.’

Her eyes moved to his mouth and back to his eyes again, glancing at him under her lashes, then smiling slowly in a way that had always destroyed him.

‘Shall we go to bed?’ she whispered. ‘Who’s up there?’

‘The twins and Dancer, all with assorted partners.’

‘Christ, the twins are such gossips they’d fax Bart in Dusseldorf with the news in two minutes.’

Fretfully Chessie crossed the room, noticing a Lalique bowl and a Rockingham Dalmatian from her side of the family. If she were coming back to stay, there was no need to take them. The dust was awful. Didn’t Ricky have a char any more? Then a shaft of sunlight suddenly illuminated Will’s portrait.

‘Oh my God, that’s beautiful!’ Taking it off the wall, she examined it more closely. ‘It’s stunning. So like him. Oh Christ, he was sweet!’

For the first time there was genuine emotion in her voice as she longingly caressed the blond hair, and the round, roguish face. ‘It was his birthday last week.’

‘I know.’ Yet again Ricky felt the whole buckling weight of responsibility for Will’s death. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I was a good mother, wasn’t I?’

‘Of course,’ lied Ricky.

‘God, it’s a brilliant likeness.’ She looked down at the portrait again. ‘Let me have it.’

‘I can’t.’

Chessie’s face hardened. ‘You owe it to me.’

‘I know.’ Ricky had gone yellow, almost parsnip-coloured. ‘But it was a present.’

‘Who painted it? Perhaps he could do a copy for me?’

‘It’s a her – Daisy Macleod, Perdita’s mother.’

‘Ah.’ Chessie put the painting down on the piano as though it had suddenly dropped ten thousand pounds in value. ‘I’ve met her, very blowzy . . . the habituée of orgies, a bicycle made for six in fact.’

‘She’s sweet,’ said Ricky coldly.

Chessie’s eyebrows vanished beneath her fringe.

‘How did she get such a good likeness?’

‘She found a photograph tucked in an old polo book.’

Chessie went to the drinks’ tray, wiped the dust out of the inside of a glass with her sleeve and sloshed in a lot of vodka and very little tonic.

‘Did Daisy, Daisy, do all those drawings of the horses in the kitchen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Making herself very much at home,’ said Chessie, downing half her drink.

‘Shut up,’ said Ricky, losing his temper. ‘You know it’s only you I love.’

‘Well, hold me then.’

Reeling with desire, his heart pounding like a cannon Ricky breathed in the Diorissimo she’d sprayed in her hair, noticed the sweat beading the faint down of blonde hairs on her upper lip. Like a man returning to a once familiar house who half-remembers where the light switches are, he fumbled for one of her hardened nipples, then stretched his hand over the wonderful springiness surrounding it.

‘Oh, my d-d-darling.’

Next moment they both jumped out of their quivering skins as the door burst open and in barged Eddie Macleod.

‘Oh, there you are, Ricky. Sorry to bother you, but we couldn’t get through on the telephone. Ethel had five puppies at five o’clock this morning, three black and two brindle, all with curly tails, so Mum thinks Little Chef must be the father, not Decorum. Would you like to come and see them, and can I get Mum’s sketch book from her studio? Ethel’s such a good mother, she’s licked them all clean, and she’s awfully proud. We buried the afterbirth and . . .’

‘Who’s that?’ said Chessie when Ricky finally managed to evict Eddie.

‘Perdita’s brother.’

‘And Mum – Daisy, Daisy has a studio here?’

‘The attic room,’ said Ricky evenly. ‘No-one was using it.’

‘And she uses your library too? Making herself very much at home.’

Ricky glared at Chessie: ‘It’s my house. Stop being a bitch.’

‘I thought Ethel was the bitch. Are you going to be godfather to those puppies?’

Chessie looked through the window at the house-martins catching insects and at the stable cat pretending to sleep on the warm gravel, waiting for birds to swoop down and attack the peas and raspberries no-one had had time to pick.

‘I just wondered,’ she said softly, ‘if you were sucking up to Daisy as a prospective mother-in-law.’

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ exploded Ricky. He had forgotten Chessie’s relentless nit-picking jealousy. ‘Daisy needed somewhere to paint. Snow Cottage is minute. It must have been like playing polo on a tennis court.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Examining her reflection in the Queen’s Cup, which, having been won only six weeks ago, was still quite shiny, Chessie licked her finger, wiped away a smudge of mascara and smiled – the adorable child again.

‘Why don’t we go out for a discreet lunch? We could go to L’Aperitif. I haven’t been there since we split up.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Can’t? Monday’s your day off.’

Ricky gritted his teeth. ‘I’ve got to take Violet out to lunch.’

‘And who’s Violet?’ Chessie’s fingers were drumming on the top of the piano.

‘Daisy’s daughter. She passed her driving test first go last week and I said I’d take her out to lunch.’

‘Cancel it,’ ordered Chessie.

‘I promised. Her boyfriend chucked her after all that stuff in The Scorpion. She’s been terribly low.’

‘Jesus,’ screamed Chessie. ‘Surely us getting it together is more important.’

‘Daisy was very good to me,’ said Ricky carefully. ‘When I was stupid with misery over losing you she listened. She’s a friend. We can have dinner this evening. I’ll have got rid of Dancer and the twins by then.’

His face was as dead-pan as ever, but there was no denying the longing and conciliation in his voice. Chessie, however, was miffed.

‘I can’t. Bart’s only gone to Dusseldorf for the day. He’s coming back tonight.’

‘And we can’t rock the Bart.’

‘Shut up. I’m the one who makes jokes round here.’

Ricky felt an appalling weariness.

‘Let’s get one thing clear. I love you, only you. But I’ve survived without you for six years, Christ knows how, and I’m not prepared for half-measures. You’ve got to leave B-b-bart and come back for good.’

‘How do I know it’s for my own good? It wasn’t before. We need to get to know each other again.’

Seeing that Ricky’d left the telephone off, she slammed it back on its hook as she charged out of the house, then drove off in such a cloud of dust that the stable cat jumped up from the gravel and Wayne ducked back inside his box.

Slumped in despair against the wall, Ricky reached out to answer the telephone.

It was Violet, whispering ecstatically.

‘Oh, Ricky, Julian’s just turned up. He says he’s so sorry about everything. D’you mind terribly if we have lunch another day?’

Washing up last night’s supper and today’s breakfast in cold water, because Violet had pinched all the hot, Daisy thought gloomily of the mountain of clothes to be ironed and the children’s trunks which she still hadn’t tackled and which festered in their rooms full of dirty clothes and, probably in Eddie’s case, ancient tuck. She felt absolutely wiped out because she’d been up all night acting as Ethel’s midwife. But she knew she’d perk up in an instant, just as Violet had, if Drew rang. He hadn’t been in touch for weeks.

She was jolted with hope as the doorbell went. Shaking her hair loose from its elastic band, she opened the door and was astounded to see Chessie.

‘Hi!’ That wicked sleepy smile was as menacing as it was irresistible. ‘I loathe droppers-in myself, but I didn’t have your telephone number.’

Conscious of her blood-stained shirt, her straining jeans and her shiny face, Daisy said: ‘Come in.’

After Chessie’d showed absolutely no interest in the puppies and Daisy’d opened her last bottle of wine which she was saving for Drew, they went into the garden taking up opposite ends of a peeling bench which Daisy was always meaning to paint.

‘I’ve come for two reasons, three really,’ said Chessie. ‘I want to thank you for looking after Ricky. He says you’ve been wonderful.’

‘Really?’ Daisy perked up.

‘Wonderful. I don’t think he’s ever had a platonic woman friend before.’

Daisy unperked.

‘You must have got so bored with him banging on and on about me,’ went on Chessie.

Daisy got up and broke off a columbine that was bending double a pale blue delphinium.

‘Ricky’s not boring. He loves you, but he never bangs on.’

‘Does about polo.’ Chessie pulled off a piece of paint. ‘Anyway I feel I owe you. I’ve got very fond of Perdita over the years,’ she said untruthfully.

‘Oh God,’ said Daisy miserably, ‘I feel so awful.’

‘You shouldn’t. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘How is she?’

‘Pretty low – particularly after losing us the match yesterday. Needs her Mum actually, but too proud to admit it. I’m going to talk to her tonight and see if I can bring you two together.’

‘That’s terribly kind,’ said Daisy. Perhaps she’d misjudged Chessie. ‘It’d be wonderful.’

‘And you can do one thing for me in return,’ drawled Chessie.

She’ll have stripped that bench in a minute, thought Daisy.

‘I’ve just seen your painting of Will,’ continued Chessie. ‘It’s stunning. One day I want you to do me a copy. But what I really want is – it’s Bart’s fiftieth birthday next week and he’s pretty disgruntled about it, particularly after yesterday. Could you possibly paint me in the nude as a surprise for him?’

No, thought Daisy, in horror.

‘It’s terribly sweet of you,’ she said out loud. ‘I’m really honoured, but I’ve got about four commissions I’ve simply got to finish.’

‘Oh, please. It’d be such fun. I’m in such a muddle. I feel I need someone like you to talk to.’

In the end Chessie offered her so much money that Daisy couldn’t refuse.