‘Darling – the most heavenly news,’ said Daisy.

‘How dare you go out to dinner with Ricky?’ screamed Perdita. ‘I bet his telephone wasn’t off the hook at all. You just wanted an excuse to vamp him. You can’t do without it, you bloody old tart, can you? I bet you asked him out.’

Next minute Ricky had walked into the room and slapped her across the face. ‘Don’t you ever talk to your mother like that again, you revolting little bitch,’ he howled. ‘Now go to bed!’

Perdita gazed at him, her white left cheek slowly turning bright scarlet, her eyes widening in horror.

‘Nothing wrong with your elbow if you can hit like that,’ she spat. ‘She’s poisoned you against me, I knew she would.’

‘I said go to bed,’ said Ricky harshly. ‘Go on, bugger off.’

With a stifled sob Perdita stumbled upstairs, slamming the door so hard that every ornament in the house shook.

There was a pause, then both Ricky and Daisy jumped at the sound of clapping. Slowly Violet walked into the room.

‘I always heard how marvellous you were,’ she said to Ricky, ‘but I’d no idea how marvellous. I’ve been waiting for years for someone to do that.’

‘Good,’ said Ricky, unmoved.

Then, slowly, he looked round the kitchen and the sitting room at the flowers painted all over the pale green walls, like a meadow in summer, at the dark green ivy crawling up the stairs and the bears and tigers and dragons decorating every piece of furniture.

‘Christ,’ he said in amazement.

‘I can always paint over it,’ said Daisy hastily.

‘It’s stunning. You said you hadn’t been painting. Stop shaking. It’ll be all right.’

‘Should I go to her?’

‘Leave her to stew,’ said Violet and Ricky in unison.

‘Oh, and by the way, Mum,’ went on Violet, ‘Philippa rang and said could you man the bric-à-brac stall on Saturday.’

‘No, she can’t,’ snapped Ricky.

‘I said you couldn’t,’ said Violet gleefully. ‘I told her you’d gone out to dinner with Ricky. She sounded put out.’

‘Oh goodness,’ said Daisy.

‘I’ve been hearing how marvellous you are,’ said Ricky drily to Violet, ‘but I’d no idea how marvellous. Might put the bloody nympho off.’

After he’d had another cup of coffee, he went up to see Perdita. She was crying great wracking despairing sobs into her pillow. Ricky sat down on her bed.

‘Fuck off.’

‘It’s me, Ricky.’

‘Fuck off even more. I hate you.’

‘You better stop sulking and apologize to your mother or I won’t take you to Argentina.’

‘I’ll never apologize to her,’ said Perdita tonelessly. ‘What did you say? How? When?’

‘Week after next, to stay with Alejandro. He’ll teach you a few manners and how to play polo properly.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ Perdita flung her arms round his neck.

He could feel her hot soaked cheeks, her wet hair, her lips against his cheek, the bars of her ribs, the softness of her breasts, the contrasting bullet hardness of her nipples.

‘And then can I come back to Robinsgrove?’

‘If you behave yourself.’

Still she clung. He could feel her heart pounding. She was so like Chessie. He’d never wanted to screw anyone more in his life, but gently he disengaged himself.

‘Go and apologize to your mother.’

Next day the weather turned cold, bitter winds systematically stripping the trees. Walking through Ricky’s woods, Daisy noticed ruby-red sticky buds thrusting out on the chestnuts, although many of the trees still clung on to their shrivelled brown leaves. Like Ricky and me clinging on to the past, thought Daisy.

Ten days later Ricky and Perdita left for Argentina.

‘I want to ask two f-f-favours,’ said Ricky as he put Perdita’s suitcases in a boot crammed with polo sticks. ‘Could you possibly put flowers on Will’s grave sometimes for me? And if Little Chef goes into a real decline will you promise to ring me?’

Perdita hardly bothered to kiss her mother goodbye. She hadn’t forgiven her her night out with Ricky. The wireless blared ‘I just called to say I love you’ as Daisy went back into the house. She couldn’t help envying Perdita.

It was a terribly long journey, even though they broke it in Florida. Ricky hardly took his nose out of a Frederick Forsyth novel. Perdita, bra-less, in a T-shirt and a skirt that buttoned up the front for easy access, writhed and burned beside him. She cleaned her teeth every three hours and had Juicyfruit continually at the ready in case he wanted to kiss her. She deliberately got a bit drunk at dinner and when the lights were switched out let her head fall on to his shoulder.

‘I’m cold,’ she murmured.

‘I’ll get you another blanket.’

As he would for any of his ponies, thought Perdita bitterly.

‘I’m still cold,’ she whispered half an hour later.

Ricky put an arm round her shoulders, but made no pass and eventually she fell asleep. Ricky gazed out of the window at stars as sleepless as himself. If he slept he might have nightmares about Will and Chessie. He couldn’t bear to wake up screaming on the plane as he so often did alone at night at Robinsgrove.


23



Ricky got very uptight at Miami Airport when his polo sticks were nearly put on a plane to Hawaii by mistake.

‘Expect the poor things needed a holiday. You work them hard enough,’ said Perdita. But even Ricky telling her not to be bloody silly couldn’t douse her sudden euphoria at the sight of the BA stickers being stamped on their luggage. She was going to Argentina, home of the greatest polo players and ponies in the world.

The Buenos Aires flight was delayed and the plane horribly hot, but this didn’t upset the passengers who seemed delighted to be going home. The men, very handsome and as many of them blond as dark, gathered at the back of the plane, embracing each other and eyeing Perdita with approval and chattering like a great drinks party. After a shamingly large second supper of chicken, sweetcorn and cake, a vast vodka and tonic and half a bottle of red wine, at one o’clock in the morning the chatter suddenly turned into the Frogsmore Stream running under Snow Cottage and she fell asleep until six to find the chatter going on as loud as ever.

Women passengers who’d nodded off in full make-up emerged with faces crumpled and ankles swollen. For breakfast they were offered cake again, this time with salt and pepper.

‘Bearing in mind the vast divide between rich and poor in Argentina, they presumably let them eat cake all the time,’ said Perdita.

Ricky didn’t smile. He’d had another sleepless night and ahead lay customs, who couldn’t be expected to be exactly pro-British, and because of post and telephone strikes in Argentina, he hadn’t been able to confirm the flight with Alejandro, so they’d have to go through the hassle of hiring a car to drive the 330 kilometres out to his estancia.

Perdita, however, was excitedly looking down on vast faded pink rivers curling through spinach-green forest, and the blue shadow of their plane lying across Buenos Aires. Now she could see red houses, swimming-pools, race tracks, skyscrapers sticking up like teeth, and roads and railways so uniformly crisscross they seemed like tiles on a vast kitchen floor.

Rupert had also pulled some powerful strings. After a lightning whip through immigration, an official located all their luggage and polo sticks and whizzed them through customs. As they came through the exit doors, Ricky looked wearily round for an Avis sign. Perdita, in a faded purple T-shirt and sawn-off pale pink jeans, was pleasantly aware of all the men staring unashamedly at her. Then a young man in a blue shirt rushed up to his arriving girlfriend with a huge bunch of hyacinths and daffodils. Abandoning the English winter, Perdita realized she and Ricky had gone slap into the Argentine spring.

Next minute a tall, blond boy with a bull-dog jaw and massive shoulders walked up to them, looking slightly apprehensive.

‘Hi, Ricky,’ he said in a deep Florida drawl. ‘Don’t know if you remember me, Luke Alderton. If you want to hit me across the airport, I’ll understand, OK, but I’m staying with Alejandro. Thought you might like a ride out to the estancia.’

For a second, Ricky glared at him, then he smiled. ‘I never had any fight with you, Luke. It’s incredibly kind of you to meet us on the offchance. This is Perdita.’

Perdita found her hand being engulfed in an incredibly strong grip, and Luke looked down at her, grinning lazily and appreciatively.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Ricky.

‘Being used as cheap labour to break Alejandro’s ponies,’ said Luke, taking Perdita’s suitcases from her, ‘in return for picking up a few tips from the master.’ (He pronounced it masster.)

‘Thank Christ for that,’ said Ricky. ‘You can look after Perdita.’

‘Shouldn’t be too much of a hardship,’ said Luke, then eyeing Perdita’s slender arms, ‘but she better start pumping iron if she’s going to play high goal.’

As he sorted out the porter with amazingly fluent Spanish, Perdita noticed he was wearing a bomber jacket with US Open printed on the back.

‘Who’s he?’ she whispered to Ricky.

‘Bart’s son by a previous marriage,’ said Ricky. ‘Potentially the best back in the world.’

Within seconds they’d piled into a battered Mercedes and were fighting their way out on to the airport road. Luke pointed to a red spotted scarf gathering dust up on the dashboard.

‘You may want to put that over your eyes, the driving’s kinda crazy here,’ he said as ten cars hurtled forward with absolutely no lane discipline, and all went straight through a red light with furious honking. Next moment a huge bus with Jumbo El Rapido on the side tore past overtaking and cutting in front.