Coughing and spluttering, she swung round, reluctant to take her eyes off the jubilantly waving red flag, then realized in amazement that it had been Angel.

For a second they glared at each other, then yelling, ‘We’ve beaten the O’Briens,’ they fell into each other’s arms.


29



Having drunk a great deal of champagne, they drove home in a manic mood, yelling, ‘Juan O’Brien’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his cock goes pumping on,’ and howling with laughter. It was a beautiful evening, a great stretch of brown-flecked cloud lay like a turned-down sheet over an endless blue blanket. They had each been given a little silver cup. Perdita’s lay between her thighs, clinking against Luke’s. Angel clutched his and in its reflection he occasionally examined an eye that was turning purple where Miguel’s elbow had caught him. Luke drove, his heart simultaneously bursting with pride and heavy with foreboding. Hanging from the windscreen was the red, white and blue rosette Fantasma had won as Best Playing Pony. Even though she’d nearly savaged the VIP presenting the awards when he tried to pin it on her headcollar, everyone wanted to buy her now. Alejandro might even overcome his greed and hang on to her himself. Worse still, Angel’s arm lay along the back of the seat, grazing Perdita’s hair. Was he going to lose her and Fantasma, wondered Luke. Then he told himself not to be absurd. Neither was his to lose. As he listened to Angel and Perdita re-living every stroke of the game, it never occurred to him to mind that it had not occurred to either of them that he had set up every goal they scored.

‘Juan asked me for my card,’ said Angel.

‘He asked me for other things,’ said Perdita. ‘Stupid prat. I don’t like used men. I wouldn’t touch him with a pitchfork.’

‘Don’t talk to me of peetchforks,’ shuddered Angel. Then, waving airily at the pampas, ‘My great-grandfather used to own all this land. We was in charge of the frontier. To the North to Buenos Aires it was civilized, to the South it was Indian. My great-grandfather and the Army destroyed the Indians. They were ’orrible – very non-U.’

Perdita giggled. ‘You make Margaret Thatcher sound like Karl Marx. How long did it take to tattoo that heart on your arm?’

‘About a bottle of wheesky,’ said Angel.

Perdita screamed with laughter.

Oh Christ, thought Luke, I meant to bring them together, but not that much.

‘Give us a poem, Luke,’ said Perdita. ‘Something to cool us down.’

Luke thought for a minute.

‘Whose woods these are I think I know,’ he began. His voice was hoarse from the dust and shouting.

‘His house is in the village though:

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.’

Listening, Perdita thought about snow in Rutshire and battling through the drifts to take hay to Ricky’s ponies.

‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep,’ went on Luke with a slight break in his voice,

‘But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.’

I’ve got miles to go before I sleep, thought Angel, until I get to England and avenge Pedro’s death.

‘Eagle,’ said Luke, pointing to a quivering dot in the sky.

‘There are three good things about the Argentines,’ said Angel, ‘their nature: birds, flowers and theengs; their women, and their individuality. But they are very ghastly in a crisis.’

‘You were pretty good today,’ said Perdita. ‘I think the Argentines are the loveliest, funniest people in the world.’

Later they went to a local night-club to celebrate. Sharon Kaputnik, regal in midnight blue with her red hair piled up on top, was practically held together by sapphires.

‘If you threw her into the river,’ murmured Luke, ‘she’d sink like Virginia Woolf.’

‘Alejandro’s the wolf,’ said Perdita. ‘He’s had his hand up her skirt all dinner. I don’t know if it’s a compliment to Alejandro’s right-arm muscles or the beef that he can cut it up with a fork.’

Victor, as usual adoring the sound of his own voice, was slagging off the O’Briens.

‘All Argentines are crooks.’

‘Alejandro’s not laike that,’ said Sharon, whose eyes were getting rather glazed.

‘Nevair,’ said Alejandro, whose hand was still burrowing.

‘Miguel boasted they’d win easy today,’ went on Victor.

‘Easily, Victor, easily,’ corrected Sharon. ‘You ought to learn to talk proper, laike what I do.’

‘She very beautiful,’ whispered Angel.

‘She’s hell,’ hissed Perdita. ‘All you Argentines are too stupid to see how naff she is – and someone should get Alejandro a finger bowl.’

‘All ay’m interested in is buyin’ that lovely waite pony, Fandango,’ said Sharon.

Luke, aching all over from bangs and bumps, was overwhelmed with tiredness. The strain of captaining the team was now telling on him. A bang on the ankle, which was now so swollen he couldn’t get a shoe on, ruled out any dancing, so he was forced to watch Perdita and Angel joyfully celebrating their armistice on the dance floor. Perdita’s arctic blond hair flew loose and newly washed (as usual Luke had boiled up the water for the shower). Her body was starkly but seductively clad in an elongated black T-shirt. Angel’s khaki face was dead-pan. His eyes never moved from Perdita’s, as his body writhed like a snake.

Sharon gazed at Angel greedily.

‘Who does that young man play for in Palm Beach?’ she asked Luke.

‘No one at the moment.’

‘Ay’ll have a word with Victor.’

An hour later, Perdita having bopped also with Alejandro and Victor, came back and threw herself on Luke’s knee like a child.

‘Oh, Luke, darling, I’m having so much fun, it’s all due to you. Without you Alejandro would never have let me play and he’s just been really complimentary, and you’ll never guess . . .’ She put her mouth to Luke’s ear. As her hair tickled his cheek and he smelt her scent and felt the excited heat of her body, his senses reeled.

‘Sharon,’ whispered Perdita, ‘is going to put a Mogadon in Victor’s brandy so she can spend the whole night with Angel. That’ll be three men in one day. She is a whore. D’you think Angel will shout Port Stanley at the moment of orgasm and stick a blue-and-white flag on her bum?’

So Perdita wasn’t falling for Angel. Luke felt almost giddy with relief. Then reality reasserted itself.

‘And Alejandro says I can ring Ricky when I get home,’ went on Perdita joyfully. ‘Aren’t the Argentines the most adorable people in the world?’

Perdita’s euphoria was tempered the next morning. While Sharon enjoyed her beauty sleep and possibly Alejandro as well, Victor played in a practice game with Alejandro’s young sons, and Angel, Perdita and Patricio, who all had fearful hangovers. Determined to try out Fantasma, Victor had only been deterred because Alejandro lied that she’d come up slightly lame from her bang on the knee yesterday.

‘You see how good she was. No need to try ’er.’

Victor’s game had not improved since 1981. He slumped around on other horses like a sack of pony nuts, crossing everyone. As the sun grew hotter, and her headache worse, his uselessness began to irritate Perdita. The others were letting him get away with murder. They couldn’t be that hungover. As he teetered towards her, she rode him off so viciously he nearly fell off.

‘Come ’ere,’ yelled Alejandro who’d just arrived. Then, dropping his voice as she drew near, ‘Lay off, you stupid beetch.’

His conniving little eyes were vicious with fury at the prospect of losing a good deal. ‘Your job ees to make Veector look breeliant, and for ’im to score as many goals as possible.’

So, for the next half-hour, they all cantered round, tipping the ball on to the end of Victor’s stick, greeting every goal with roars of applause.

‘Your horses are much better schooled than the O’Briens’,’ said Victor as he rode off the field, flushed with triumph.

He proceeded to buy twenty horses and said that after lunch he would haggle with Alejandro over a price for Fantasma.

Luke, whose ankle was murder, had spent a frustrating morning in the village telephone-exchange tracking down his patron Hal Peters, the automobile billionaire. He finally located him in the Four Seasons in New York, closing a mega-deal with some Italians.

‘Fantasma’s a dream,’ shouted Luke. ‘Lines me up for every shot, changes legs at a gallop, got acceleration that brings tears to your eyes. She outran all the O’Briens’ ponies yesterday and she’s only four.’

‘You talking about a woman?’ said Hal Peters, who wanted to show off to the Italians and their bimbos. ‘Is she pretty?’

‘Prettiest horse you ever saw, silver as a unicorn and all the grace. If we have her on the team, everyone’ll talk about her. Best publicity you could have, but we’ve gotta move fast. People are after her.’

‘Pay what you like,’ said Hal.

Luke belted back to the house to tell Alejandro he could top any bid of Victor’s and the haggling started in earnest.

‘I buy her for $7,000 as a two year old,’ said Alejandro.

‘Bullshit!’ said Luke. ‘She only came into the yard two months ago and you told me Patricio only paid $700 for her.’

Alejandro gave a great roar of laughter. ‘That was when he bought her. Now I am selling her.’

They settled for $12,000.

In the afternoon Luke had a telephone call at Alejandro’s from his father, also in New York. Off the drink and living on shrimp and diet Coke in order to shed ten pounds before the Palm Beach season, Bart was not in a good mood. He did, however, congratulate Luke on going up to seven in the latest handicap listings and asked him to join him, Bibi and Red in the Fathers and Sons Tournament which began in the middle of December.