But, as she stretched out a hand to stroke the mare, Maldita moved even closer to Luke, flattening her ears and lashing out at Perdita protectively with a hind leg.

Umberto, snoring in the tack room, barricaded against ghoul and hobgoblin by one of the feedbins, was woken to a punishing hangover by the increasingly irritated din of muzzled horses kicking their water buckets. Peering through the cobwebs at the stable clock, Umberto realized he should have been up an hour ago. Any minute Alejandro would be back from the wedding breathing fire and brandy fumes. Alejandro didn’t like dead mares around; it looked bad if potential buyers dropped in. He’d better get that she-devil shifted.

Clutching his head, Umberto set out to rouse the other grooms. The sun had now lost its rosy tinge and shone extremely painfully into his eyes. Next moment, he nearly died of fright. For, ghostly in the pale light, glaring through the fence at him, was a dazzling white Maldita.

‘Fantasma! Aparecido!’ he shrieked. Frantically crossing himself over and over again, he fled screaming towards the grooms’ quarters as fast as his fat legs would carry him.

‘What’s up with him?’ asked Perdita in amazement.

Luke shook with laughter. ‘He left her for dead. He figures she’s a ghost.’

‘Figured she didn’t have a ghost of a chance,’ giggled Perdita. ‘Why don’t you call her Fantasma? It’s a much prettier name than Maldita.’

And so Maldita the malevolent became Fantasma the fantastic. Within a few days she had recovered enough to play practice chukkas, going straight into fast polo as though she’d played it all her life. She adored the game so much, Luke only had to shift his weight or touch her mouth to get her to do what he wanted, and she was so competitive she would bump anyone, at first even riding off ponies on her own side. She was still bitchy. If Luke were grooming her, she lashed out if he brushed her belly or round her ears, and went for anyone else who came near her. But she could sense when he was getting her ready for a match and stood like a statue, even dropping her head for him to clip her mane.

The only other being Fantasma adored was Tero. The two mares had become inseparable and cried bitterly if they were parted, Fantasma even bashing down fences to get at her friend. Alejandro was so staggered by Fantasma’s progress that he decided to waive his prejudice against greys; not so much that he was prepared to get on her back, but he spent a considerable time wondering how he could flog Fantasma to a rich patron without them finding out how vicious and unmanageable the mare could be when she was away from Luke.


27



One of the great debates raging through the Argentine polo world was whether Alejandro Mendoza was a greater player than the mighty O’Brien brothers, Miguel and Juan. Certainly the Mendoza family’s ambition in life was to beat the O’Briens. Over twenty years the two great polo dynasties had battled it out in the Argentine Open at Palermo. In the eighties the O’Briens, with Juan and Miguel on ten and their two cousins on nine, had predominated. The Mendozas, however, were biding their time. Alejandro had married at twenty. In two or three years Luis, Patricio and Lorenzo would be catching up with Miguel’s cousins, and by this time Miguel, who drank and ate too much, might well be over the top. And Juan – as Alejandro (who as one who lived in a glass house and was in no position to hurl polo balls) pointed out – might well have died of sexual excess.

Hardly an evening passed without one of the Mendozas gnashing their teeth over old videos of the Open and swearing: Death to the O’Briens. Alejandro was also very jealous that Miguel and Juan, aided by Bart Alderton’s fat salary, had started their own polo club, buying much of the adjoining land and selling plots to polo enthusiasts at vastly inflated prices.

Another hotly contested tournament was the Copa de Republic, a vast knock-out competition which went on all over the country from November to April. Played entirely on handicap, it meant that a team like the O’Briens, the aggregate of whose handicaps added up to thirty-eight goals, could be pitted against a team whose goals only totalled eight. This year, by some freak of fate, the Mendozas had drawn the O’Briens in the first round, and were due to play them at the latter’s new polo club forty miles away on the first Saturday in December.

On the Thursday Luis Mendoza pulled a groin muscle, so Luke had to take his place. On the Friday Lorenzo Mendoza lost his temper with a pony that kept going up with him. Pulling it over to frighten it, he failed to jump clear and the pony fell on him, smashing his thigh. Sobbing with pain and rage, he was carted off to hospital by an ashen Claudia and the family doctor, who’d been presented with a horse every time he delivered a Mendoza baby. Now Angel would have to substitute for Lorenzo. As a result, Alejandro, reluctant to face a rout, ducked out on Saturday morning complaining of an ancient back injury.

Perdita, covering the bottom of the lorries with straw to protect the ponies’ feet, suddenly heard Alejandro shouting that she better dig out a pair of clean breeches and polish her boots, as she’d be playing in the match that afternoon. Perdita went into shock horror. In five hours she’d be marking Miguel O’Brien – a gnat trying to curb an elephant. Her confidence was further eroded by both Patricio and Angel launching into a flurry of Latin hysterics that all the press would be there and why should the humiliation of a certain Mendoza defeat be quadrupled by having a stupid girl on the team. Whereupon Luke lost his temper and told them not to be such fucking chauvinists.

As a final straw, on going to change Perdita discovered she’d got the curse, which was invariably as bloody as Culloden on the first day. How ghastly if she bled through her breeches. The O’Briens’ club was far too new to have a Ladies’ Loo, and she was nearly out of Tampax. Storming out of her room, she went slap into Luke.

‘I’ll polish your boots,’ he offered.

‘I can’t play.’

‘Sure you can. Unknowns are always discovered in the Copa de Republic. It’s your big break.’

‘How can I play against Angel and Patricio as well as the O’Briens?’

‘Hush, hush.’ Luke drew her to him. As always his vast warmth steadied her. ‘Think how proud Ricky would be.’

Burying her face in Luke’s chest to hide her blushes, Perdita asked him if he knew the Spanish for Super Tampax, and if they could stop for some on the way.

‘I guess so,’ said Luke, putting a hand down to stroke her aching, knotted belly, ‘and some Buscopan too if you need it. Stop worrying – we’re on twelve, they’re on thirty-eight. All we’ve gotta do is stop them scoring twenty-six goals.’

They took two lorry-loads of ponies including Fantasma. Little Tero whinnied hysterically when she discovered she was being left behind. Angel drove the first lorry. Perdita sat between him and Luke, who was busy working out who should ride which pony in each chukka. A compulsive polo watcher, he was familiar with many of the O’Briens’ horses and would probably have to rearrange the list when he saw which ones they were playing.

‘You’ve gotta mark Juan,’ he told Angel. ‘He ought to be a twelve or a thirteen, he’s so good. He’s on to the ball before anyone else, but he conserves the energy of his horses.’

‘Unlike Reeky,’ taunted Angel, ‘who do too much and exhaust his horses.’

‘Don’t talk crap,’ said Perdita furiously.

‘Pack it in,’ snapped Luke, ‘and drive a bit slower. We don’t want to go up the ass of that flour lorry in front.’

Angel’s fingers drummed angrily on the steering wheel as he gazed moodily at the long, straight road ahead of them. Suntanned now, he no longer looked as though he was dying of jaundice. Bronze tendrils stuck to his forehead. Lean jaws, continually chewing gum, were covered in stubble. He might have shaved for a match, thought Perdita; the girl in the petrol station must have a skin like garlic sausage.

‘Look at those sheep grazing under that pylon,’ said Luke quickly, trying, too late, to distract Perdita’s attention from another dumped dog, cringing and terrified, at the side of the road.

‘Stop!’ she screamed in anguish. ‘We can’t leave him.’

Hunched over the wheel, Angel accelerated.

‘Aren’t there any Dogs’ Homes in this shitty country?’ demanded Perdita.

‘We don’t need them,’ snarled Angel. ‘As a nation, we drive very fast which solve the problem. Perdida means stray in Spanish,’ he added contemptuously.

Rigid with hatred, they sat a foot apart, with Perdita rammed against Luke. But, as her shirt grew soaked in sweat, she was obliged to edge nearer Angel, who looked at her as if she were a tarantula.

Realizing they were both going through the roof with nerves, Luke put down his notes and tipped his battered panama over his snub nose.

‘Listen, my children, and you will hear,’ he began in his deep husky drawl, ‘of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,

On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-five.

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that day and that year.’

‘Put a sock in it,’ grumbled Perdita.

‘Spik Spanish,’ said Angel fretfully.

A grin spread across Luke’s freckled face. ‘You’ll love this poem, Angel. It’s all about a crushing Brit defeat.

‘A hurry of hooves on the village street,’ he went on,

‘And beneath from the pebbles in passing a spark

Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet.