‘Christ,’ muttered Perdita.

‘Good training for the polo here,’ said Luke. ‘The Carlisle twins and my brother Red were down here last week with Victor Kaputnik. They came out of a restaurant and had a race with Juan O’Brien and two of his cousins. Victor nearly had a triple by-pass. He jumped out of Red’s car yelling, “Taxi, taxi”. He was so frightened he wouldn’t let the driver go across a green light in case he hit Red and the twins coming the other way.’ Luke shook with laughter.

‘Who’s staying with Alejandro?’ asked Ricky.

‘Well, one guy couldn’t stand the pace and Ray Walter broke his wrist and went home, and there’s an Argie, Angel Solis de Gonzales, ex-Mirage pilot, trying to make it as a pro. Not wildly pro-Brit understandably.’

‘Any good?’ asked Ricky.

‘Awesome. He’s only been playing seriously for a couple of years,’ said Luke, hardly flinching as a car cut right in front of him, missing them by millimetres. Leaning out of the window, he let loose a stream of abuse.

‘How come you speak such good Spanish?’ asked Perdita.

‘Last time I was here it rained for forty days. The only answer was to learn Spanish. They say my accent is ’orrible, but at least I can understand what they’re saying on the pitch and suss out their Machiavellian little games.’

They were into flat, open country now. Perdita looked at the huge puddles reflecting a vast expanse of sky.

‘I’m really, really here.’

Luke smiled. ‘You will fall madly in love with Argentina,’ he said in his deep husky voice, which had a slight break in it, ‘with the wild life, the birds, the open spaces. But you will find it unconquerable, the extremes, the ferocity, the apparent heartlessness, the hailstorms that can wipe out a crop in half an hour. People own masses of land, not developing it or working it. It’s just there.’

‘How very un-American,’ said Perdita.

Looking sideways at Luke, she decided that he wasn’t at all good-looking but definitely attractive. A tawny giant with shoulders and arms like a blacksmith’s, he had lean hips, more freckles than a gull’s egg, a snub nose, sleepy honey-coloured eyes, Bart’s pugnacious jaw and red-gold hair sticking up like a Dandy brush. He was also attractive because he was so reassuring.

On top of the dashboard was a poem called Martin Fierro and a Spanish dictionary lying with its spine up, to which he must have been referring as he waited.

‘It’s the great Gaucho poem,’ he told her. ‘Martin Fierro’s aim in life was to sleep on a bed of clover, look up at the stars, and live as free as a bird in the sky. He put his horse and his dog a long way before his wife.’

‘You don’t look as though you read poetry,’ said Perdita in amazement, ‘and Martin’s a very naff name for a Gaucho.’

Ricky, sharing the back with two polo helmets, a new saddle and numerous carrier bags of shopping, was beginning to relax.

‘How’s Alejandro?’

‘Probably had ten more kids since you were last here. Argentines adore their kids,’ Luke told Perdita. ‘Their big interest is the family. They won’t pay taxes, and they never stop at red lights.’ He put out a huge hand to shield Perdita as a car shot out.

‘Who are you playing for next year?’ asked Ricky.

‘Hal Peters – the automobile king – nice guy,’ said Luke. ‘Thought about nothing but cars for the first twenty-five years of his life, now he thinks about nothing but polo. He’s given me a free hand to buy horses. But every time I show any interest Alejandro quadruples the price. I guess I’m lucky to be working. Young American players are really feeling the cold at the moment. They can’t get sponsorship, because all the patrons think it’s chic to have an Argie on their side.’

‘Your father has three,’ said Ricky bleakly. ‘What’s Red’s handicap now?’

‘Six, should be higher. He hates to stick and ball. His mother allowed him to sit out college for a year and he never went back. He won MVP awards – Most Valuable Player,’ he explained to Perdita, ‘all summer, then blows it by testing positive for drugs the day before the US Open. Gets suspended and fined $5,000.’

‘Is he coming down here?’

‘Well, he’s always expected, like the Messiah,’ Luke grinned at Perdita. ‘My kid brother’s kind of wild. Like Richard Cory he glitters and flutters pulses as he walks. Look, heron on the edge of that alfalfa field.’

With the amazing eyesight that had helped him become a great player, Luke pointed out egrets, storks and even a snake that whisked into its hole before Perdita could see it.

Passing through a town, Perdita noticed someone had painted a blue-and-white flag and a ‘Malvinas belong to Argentina’ slogan on the plinth of a statue of a general.

‘For Christ’s sake, keep your trap shut about the Falklands when we get there,’ said Ricky.

‘Alejandro’s not anti-Brit,’ said Luke. ‘He likes anyone he can sell horses to. He still talks mistily about Cowdray, and Guards and the parties, and the hospitality, and the women you didn’t have to date twenty-two times before laying them.’

They were deep in the country now, driving through absolutely flat land like a table top. Slowly Perdita was trying to absorb the immensity of the pampas. The vast unclouded duck-egg-blue semi-circle of sky, like a protractor on the horizon, was only broken by the occasional windmill or fringe of acid-yellow poplars or milk-green gum trees. The grass seemed to flow on for ever like a millpond sea. Occasionally, like a liner, they passed an estancia with stables and a drive flanked by poplars and sailed on. At last Luke swung on to a dirt road potted with huge holes. His left elbow, sticking out of the window, was soon spattered with mud as they shattered vast puddles reflecting the blue of the sky.

‘Sorry,’ he said as Perdita nearly hit the ceiling. ‘You should have taken a sleeping pill.’

On the right was a sunlit village with square white houses like a Western shanty town.

‘This place is called General Piran after some top brass who defended his country against the marauding British. It’s the nearest civilization to Alejandro’s place,’ explained Luke. ‘That’s the phone exchange which never works. That’s the fire station. They’ve got two fire stations, but all the houses are so far away they never get there in time. The teachers are all on strike, hardly surprising when they’re only paid a hundred dollars a month, so all Alejandro’s kids are at home getting under their mother’s feet.’

He is nice, thought Perdita. How did anyone as vile as Bart produce a son like that?

‘Alejandro’s land begins here at the water.’ He pronounced it ‘wott-urr’. ‘He owns everything in front of us as far as the eye can see.’

They had swung into an avenue lined with gums, their stark, white trunks rising like pillars. At the end on the left was a stick-and-ball field, a polo field covered with gulls, paddocks full of polished horses, then a group of red modern buildings. ‘Barns to the right, grooms’ quarters to the left, Alejandro’s straight ahead,’ said Luke as he drove up to a large ugly mulberry-red house with flowerbeds full of clashing red tulips, primulas and wallflowers, and a water tower completely submerged in variegated ivy.

Instantly out of the front door charged a man a foot smaller than Luke, but with a barrel-chest as big. He had a huge Beethoven head of black curls, a brown face scorched with wrinkles by an unrelenting sun, small dark eyes and a smile like a slice of water melon, which showed a lot of gold fillings. He wore old jeans, espadrilles and a torn blue T-shirt through which spilled a lot of black chest-hair. Throwing open his arms, he gave a great roar of laughter.

‘El Orgulloso,’ he shouted, ‘El Orgulloso. Mountain Everest, he come to Mahomet at last,’ and he folded Ricky in a vast hot embrace. ‘Welcome, we are so please to see you.’

Then, peering round the side of Ricky’s arm, he caught sight of Perdita and his little black eyes brightened even more.

‘And this is Perdita. She is certainly very OK.’ Seizing her hand, he looked her up and down. ‘Why you waste your life on polo? Find a nice billionaire instead.’

‘I want both,’ said Perdita.

Alejandro gave another bellow of laughter.

‘Good girl, good girl. I speak very well English, don’t you theenk? Come and see my ponies.’ About to lead them back towards the stables, he lowered his voice and said to Luke, ‘Did you get it?’

Luke nodded and, getting a red jewel box out of his jeans’ pocket, handed it to Alejandro just before a beautiful woman came out of the house. She had heavy lids above huge, dark, mournful eyes, a wonderful sculptured, aquiline nose, a big, sad, red mouth and long, shiny, blond hair with dark roots showing down the middle parting. She also had a wonderful bosom, a thickening waist and very slim brown legs in leather sandals.

‘Reeky,’ she hugged him. ‘It has been so long, and this must be Perdita.’ A shadow of apprehension crossed her face, immediately replaced by a warm and welcoming smile. ‘What a beauty,’ she said, kissing Perdita on both cheeks. ‘I am Claudia, Alejandro’s wife. Let me show you your room. You must be tired.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Alejandro.

‘She ’as come ’alfway across the world,’ protested Claudia.

‘To see my horses,’ said Alejandro.

They went across a lawn down an avenue of mulberry trees, past a thickly planted orange grove.

‘To ’ide the chickens,’ explained Alejandro.

To the right, a lot of youths building a swimming-pool eyed Perdita with interest. Alejandro snapped at them to get on with their work. The stables were far more primitive than Perdita expected. A few words in Spanish had been painted on the tack-room roof.