‘They’re not top players – yet.’

Armed with a glass of Perrier and a ham sandwich, Perdita wandered round the kitchen, stopping before a photograph of Herbert on a pony.

‘Who’s that?’

‘My father.’

‘Any good?’

‘He was a nine,’ said Ricky. ‘Won the Inter-Regimental Cup seven times in a row and played in the Westchester.’

‘Oh,’ sighed Perdita.

‘Why d’you want to learn polo?’

‘I want to go to ten,’ said Perdita simply.

Looking down at the remains of his ham sandwich, Ricky found he was suddenly not hungry and threw it in the bin.

‘I don’t think it’s possible,’ he said. ‘With timing and skill a girl could hit the ball as far as a man. You could train your ponies even better, but it’s the riding-off and the violence that’s the problem.’

‘I’m nearly five foot seven,’ protested Perdita. ‘That’s bigger than lots of the Mexicans or Argentines.’

The telephone rang. One of the grooms must have picked it up because next moment a boot-faced Frances had put her head through the window.

‘It’s Philippa Mannering,’ she snapped at Ricky. ‘Would you like to go to kitchen supper tonight?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Tomorrow? The next day?’

‘Sorry, I can’t.’

Frances shrugged her shoulders and disappeared.

‘Ghastly old bag, that Philippa,’ said Perdita. Then, when Ricky didn’t react, ‘Her house overlooks ours. She’s always peering through the trees with her binoculars. She wouldn’t suit you. She’s a nympho, wear you out in a week.’

‘Thank you for the advice,’ said Ricky tartly.

I fancy him so much, thought Perdita, I’ll never be able to eat again.

As if reading her mind, Ricky said, ‘Get one thing straight, I’m not interested in you sexually. If you work here, it’s as a groom.’

‘Are you after my mother?’ hissed Perdita.

‘Hardly. She’s not in a fit state to have anyone after her at the moment.’

‘You need a dog round here,’ said Perdita fretfully, as she also threw her uneaten ham sandwich in the bin. ‘It’s a crime to waste scraps like that.’

She gazed at Herbert’s unsmiling face again. ‘You’ve got to beat your father and go to ten too.’

Ricky thought of his damaged elbow which was now hurting like hell, and didn’t seem to be getting any better.

‘Yes,’ he said bleakly.

Because he wants Chessie back, thought Perdita, but I’ll get him long before that.


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.’