‘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.


18



Within a week Little Chef was running the yard, bringing in the ponies from the fields, doing tricks for pony nuts, retrieving lost balls from the undergrowth, then running on to the field and dropping them when there was a pause in play.

He also learnt not to scrabble Dancer’s leather trousers and who was welcome in the yard, biting the ankles of visiting VAT men, growling at Philippa Mannering when, ever hopeful, she dropped in on Ricky, and lifting his leg on the probation officer’s bicycle.

He adored Perdita, but Ricky was his great love, and gradually as the ugly little dog limped after him, barking encouragement during practice chukkas, and even hitching a lift on the back of a pony in order not to be separated, Ricky succumbed totally to his charms.

And when the vet came to take out Little Chef’s stitches, it was Ricky who held the wildly trembling dog in his arms. Any visiting player who was foolish enough to make eyes at Perdita, or disparaging cracks about Little Chef’s appearance, got very short shrift.

By the beginning of August Ricky’s arm was so much better that he was able gently to stick and ball. By the end of August so excessive had been the overtime paid the builders and excavators that Dancer and his gaudy retinue were able to move into Eldercombe Manor.

Miss Lodsworth had a busy summer. When she wasn’t inveighing against cruelty to ponies and disgusting language at Rutshire Polo Club, and furiously ringing up Ricky to complain about Perdita thundering ponies five abreast down Eldercombe High Street, she was writing to Dancer, to grumble about cheeky builders, truculent security guards, and Alsatians chasing her cat, Smudge. Nor was she amused by helicopters with flashing lights landing like fireflies at all hours, nor the deafening boom of all-night recording sessions.

Worst of all, some sadist of a landscape designer had slapped down Dancer’s stick-and-ball field right next to her house, so she not only had fairies at the bottom of her garden, but also a microcosm of Rutshire Polo Club. As Commissioner for Rutshire, how could she hold dignified get-togethers with her guides when expletives and polo balls kept flying over her hawthorn hedge?

Nor did any of the rest of the Parish Council come to her aid. The Vicar, who was a closet gay, and the local solicitor, who reckoned that such development would triple the price of his house, both thought Dancer was splendid.

Dancer, however, was warned well in advance that Miss Lodsworth would be holding an All-Rutshire Jamboree in her garden on the first Saturday in September and had promised there would be no stick and balling that afternoon. A perfect day dawned. Rising early, Miss Lodsworth prayed that it would continue fine and her guides would find enjoyment as well as fulfilment in their Jamboree. Believing in economy, Miss Lodsworth had already baked rock and fairy cakes and spread hundreds of sandwiches with crusts still on with Marmite and plum jam which was cheaper than strawberry. Nor was Coca Cola or Seven-Up allowed. Her guides would have lemon squash because it was better for them and less expensive.

Creaking up from her knees, Miss Lodsworth snorted with indignation. Even on a Saturday Dancer’s bulldozers were still knocking down trees and flattening hillocks to extend one of the loveliest cricket grounds in England into a polo field. Just after lunch, as she was wriggling into her guide uniform, which had grown somewhat tight, Miss Lodsworth looked out of the window and saw a girl not wearing a hard hat clattering five ponies down the High Street.

It was that fiendish Perdita Macleod. Now she had pulled up outside the village shop and was yelling to them to bring her out an ice-cream. The Vicar’s wife, who had parked on a yellow line while her gay husband went into the shop to get a treacle tart, got such a shock when Wayne stuck his big, hairy white face in through the window that she jumped out and ran away. A traffic warden, finding an empty car, gave the Vicar a parking ticket.

Clattering on, trying to hold five ponies and eat an ice-cream, Perdita was not amused to hear whoops and noisy hooting behind her. It was Seb and Dommie Carlisle packed into their Lotus, with two sumptuous brunettes, and a bull terrier spilling out of the luggage compartment.