‘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.