‘Even the moon’s blushing at the horrible way they treat ponies,’ she snarled. ‘Why’s it that stupid colour anyway?’

‘Catching the last of the sun’s rays,’ said Luke. ‘Sun’s rising in the East now; gone to shine on your Mom.’

Suddenly Perdita had a vision of Daisy, kind, scatty, busty, in her awful clothes, constantly making concessions, whom she hadn’t written to since she’d arrived. Glaring at Luke, she burst into tears.

‘Hush, honey, hush, I hate it too,’ he murmured, enfolding her in his arms and stroking her sopping hair. ‘I know it’s awful. I guess I wanta play polo better so I can beat the shit out of them on the field.’

One moment she was sobbing her heart out, then, lulled by the bearlike warmth of his chest and the comforting shelter of his great arms and shoulders, she had fallen asleep like a child. Gazing down, Luke thought how beautiful she was despite the tear-stains and the swollen eyelids. She hardly stirred as he pulled off her lilac dress and carried her in her bra and pants into her bedroom. Laying her gently on the bed, he removed the dark red blanket from his bed and put it over her.

Perdita woke at two in the morning. Slowly the events of the previous evening re-assembled themselves. Had it been a nightmare? No, her bra and pants were still wet. Luke must have put her to bed.

Oblivious of any guards, she stole downstairs. Outside, huge stars blazed like shaggy white chrysanthemums; the moon had stopped blushing and was now flooding the pampas with ghostly silver light. A warm breeze ruffled the leaves of the gum trees, which cast a thousand ebony shadows on the burnt dusty yard, which was now palest grey instead of brown. She could hear the occasional snort and stamp of a pony, then jumped out of her skin, as something cold and snakelike was thrust into her hand. It was the wet nose of one of Raimundo’s shaggy lurchers, who was frantically waving her long crooked tail.

‘Sweet thing,’ Perdita crouched beside her, stroking her rough fur, as the bitch writhed against her in delight. Both jumped as a great snore rent the air. Umberto, tonight’s guard, was slumped against the bottom of a tree, an empty bottle at his feet.

Now was her chance. Out in the corral, tied so tight to the big stake in the centre that the Argentines call a palemque that she couldn’t even move her head, was the little grey pony.

‘You poor little duck,’ said Perdita gently.

Nearly breaking her neck, the pony pulled away in panic, the whites of her eyes glinting in the moonlight, coat curled with dried sweat like an Irish Water Spaniel.

At first, when Perdita held out the bucket, she was too frozen with fear to drink. But when her muzzle was dunked in the water almost over her nostrils, the temptation became too much. Sucking in great drafts, she drained one bucket and then half another.

Watching her fondly, Perdita was reminded of Fresco. If only she could jump on her back and not stop galloping until she got to Ricky and Palm Springs. As she laid her hand on the little mare’s neck, she quivered violently, but didn’t move away.

‘I’m going to call you Tero,’ she whispered, ‘because you and I are going to fly away from this hellhole.’

Loosening the rope so the mare’s nose could reach the ground, she left her with a pile of hay.

Next morning the post strike ended, bringing five letters from Daisy, none of which Perdita opened. She was in a black gloom because not even a postcard had arrived from Ricky.

Alejandro, having been out on the bat the night before, returned at breakfast time with the pallor and red eyes of a white rat. He was then thrown into a frenzy by a letter announcing the impending arrival of Lando Medici, the richest of American patrons who always paid for ponies in readies out of a Gladstone bag.

Soon Alejandro was venting his hangover on all the staff, yelling at them to tidy up the place and all the ponies.

‘Where’s Raimundo?’ he shouted at a wincing Umberto.

‘He sick,’ said Umberto.

‘Well, get him up.’

‘What’s the matter with him?’ demanded Perdita, who was busy trimming the hairy fetlocks of a gelding that resembled a Clydesdale more than a polo pony.

Just for a second Umberto forgot his own hangover. ‘Señor Gracias give heem the eye black.’

‘He what?’ gasped Perdita.

‘Raimundo was in the bar with his friends last night. Señor Gracias come in and talk to eem very quietly, then he heet him across the room. Everyone cheer. They no like Raimundo – very hard man.’

‘What did Raimundo do?’ asked Perdita in awe.

‘He run away,’ said Umberto with a grin. ‘He leave very quick. Señor Gracias – how you say? – too beeg to tango with. Angel was in the bar too. Upchatting girl from the gas station. Señor Gracias turned towards him and Angel ran away too – all down the road like Carl Lewis. He was very frightened. He not drive car tied to pony again in an ’urry.’

Later Perdita cornered Luke. He looked tired and his eyes were bloodshot from the dust.

‘I thought we were here to learn not to criticize,’ she said sternly. Then that wonderful once-a-year smile split her face in two. ‘You have definitely won the Man of the Macho Award.’

Standing on tiptoe, she kissed him on the cheek. Luke blushed beneath his freckles and his heart jumped several beats. It’s only because there’s a dearth of available women out here, he told himself sternly.

Alejandro, fed up with Raimundo’s laziness and his exorbitant whining demands, was put in such a good mood when he saw the black eye that he agreed that Perdita could take over the breaking of little Tero.

‘She no good for polo, too cheeken, but eef you want to waste your time.’


26



Luke had temporarily routed Raimundo and Angel, but their animosity towards Perdita, if less overt, was in no way abated. To give Perdita a break, Luke took her away the following Saturday to see a high goal match at the famous Hurlingham Club which left her speechless with wonder, then on to Buenos Aires to an English production of The Merchant of Venice throughout most of which she slept.

Her only comments at dinner afterwards as she gorged herself on tournedos, raspberries and cream and St Emilion were that Shylock was almost as beady about money as Alejandro and that Bassanio was a wimp.

‘Portia’d have done much better with that suitor who talked about his horse all the time. At least he’d have given her some decent ponies.’

Luke, who knew the play backwards, had been moved to tears by the moonlit love scene between Lorenzo and Jessica. A lemon-yellow half-moon was hanging overhead as he and Perdita left the restaurant. But any hope he might have had of sliding his arm round her and trying a tentative first kiss on the drive home was scotched when she fell asleep the moment she got into the car.

Her white dress had fallen off the shoulder nearest him, her skirt was rucked up to mid-thigh, her hair rippled silver. With her scornful mouth softened by sleep and pale eyelids hiding her furious eyes, she looked as vulnerable as she did desirable. Wracked with longing, Luke drove through the grey lunar landscape, only broken by occasional white towns or ebony clumps of trees.

Up at five and sleeping badly of late, Luke kept his mind off Perdita and himself awake on the long straight roads, as he had done so often in the past, by concentrating on a particular horse. This time it was Maldita, a grey mare who had slipped into the yard already broken as part of a job lot a few weeks ago.

Alejandro was allergic to greys, particularly the whiter ones. His father had been paralysed by a fall from a white stallion. On the one recent occasion when the Mendoza family had got near winning the Argentine Open, it had been on a grey mare that Alejandro had missed the clinching penalty. His phobia had spread to his grooms when Raimundo’s even crueller predecessor had broken the leg of a grey filly, hurling it to the ground for branding, and the following day he had died of snake bite. Whenever they passed a grey on the road, the grooms crossed themselves.

The iron grey, Tero, got by because her coat was almost black, but Maldita was so dazzlingly white, except for a sprinkling of rust-brown freckles on her belly, that she looked as though she’d been through the car wash. At fourteen hands she was on the small side for polo, with a lovely intelligent head, wide-apart dark eyes, clean legs and a smooth, effortless stride. Unfortunately she was as bitchy as she was beautiful, lashing out with teeth and hooves at any human who came near her, and bucking them off if they tried to get on her back. Even when Raimundo strapped one of her back legs to her belly to stop her kicking, she struck out with the other leg and, crashing to the ground, laid about her with her front legs and teeth.

Alejandro was all for putting a bullet through this she-devil’s head and dispatching her to the nearest abattoir. Luke, however, who was a genius with difficult horses, begged to be allowed to have a crack at her.

He had begun by putting Maldita in a stable with no straw and taking water and feed to her every eight hours, then, when she went for him, immediately removing them. After twenty-four hours she was so hungry that she dived her pale pink nose into the bucket instead of at him. Two days later she allowed him to stand in her stable while she ate. Starving her until the next evening, he coaxed her with pony nuts into a stall which Raimundo used for branding and saddling bigger horses, which was so narrow she couldn’t turn round. Tying her lead rope so tightly she couldn’t move her head, Luke had climbed up and approached her from above. Talking softly the whole time, he slowly ran his hands over her, caressing, gentling and scratching up and down her mane where once her mother would have lovingly nibbled her, then progressing to her back and flanks. After the first minutes of trembling outrage, Maldita had stopped behaving as though his fingers were red-hot pokers and reacted almost voluptuously to his touch. Luke wished Perdita were as responsive. At the end of half an hour, back in her box, he rewarded her with hay and water.