Unfortunately, as Luke led her out the heavens opened, as though the River Plate had been diverted on to the yard, and all the dapples ran.

Alejandro was philosophical. ‘I cannot ’elp it eef my grooms want me to ‘ang on to a good horse,’ he said as he waved them off.

Angel shook his head. ‘The Argentines are a people very simpaticos, but utterly irresponsible.’


30



The flight was a nightmare of delays, misroutings and arguments with officials over the authenticity of papers and Fantasma’s irritable inability to keep her hooves to herself. Then, on the way to Miami, Tero went berserk and nearly kicked the plane out. She would have had to be put down if Luke hadn’t calmed her with a shot and, almost more, with his solid, inevitably reassuring presence.

Having groggily settled the horses when they arrived, Perdita fell into bed and slept for twenty-four hours. Waking alone in a very comfortable double bed, she had no idea where she was. Groping for a light switch, she realized she was in Luke’s bedroom. The only furniture apart from the bed was a chest of drawers and a record player. The colour in the room was provided by the books, which covered the walls and much of the carpetless floor, but in orderly piles. Four whole shelves were devoted to tapes and records, mostly classical, and Luke must have bought every book on polo, albeit second-hand. The rest of the books seemed to be poetry and novels, American, English and translations from every European language, including Latin and Greek.

Opening the curtains, Perdita was almost blinded by sunshine. Blinking, she realized she’d been sleeping in the attic of an L-shaped barn. To the right she could see a row of loose boxes and behind them a stick-and-ball field with floodlighting so horses could be worked after dark. Beyond were paddocks dotted with pines, gums and palm trees. She could see Tero and Fantasma grazing contentedly. They’d become even more inseparable after the ordeal of their first flight.

Below her in the yard, Luke, stripped to the waist in a pair of faded Bermudas, was talking nonsense to a pony as he hosed the soap suds off her dark brown coat. A Siamese cat with blue eyes and a blue collar weaved voluptuously between his legs, watched jealously by a ferocious-looking black mongrel who had gone berserk when Luke got home yesterday.

‘Who’s that pony?’ Perdita shouted down.

Luke glanced up and smiled. ‘Ophelia – came from Miguel O’Brien just a year ago. When I first walked into her stable she used to turn her back on me, put her head down in the corner and shake. You couldn’t put a halter on her.’

‘How d’you sort her out?’

‘Handled her very gently. Let her get away with a few things. All she needed was a little TLC.’

Perdita remembered how all the ponies had come racing in from the paddocks and nearly sent Luke flying yesterday. She’d never seen horses so affectionate and so relaxed. The mare was flattening her ears now as Luke hosed under her headcollar. Then, unbuckling it, he gave her a gentle pat on the rump and sent her trotting off into the paddock to join the others.

‘What time is it?’ she asked.

‘About half-eleven.’ Luke squinted up at her. ‘If you can get your ass into gear, we’ve been invited to lunch by my father.’

‘I’ve gotta wash my hair,’ squeaked Perdita, feeling quite unable to face Chessie. ‘And all my clothes are dirty. I suppose I could wear my new leather trousers.’

‘I wouldn’t, you’ll be far too hot,’ said Luke. ‘Borrow one of my shirts, second drawer down. You’ll find coffee next door, orange juice in the ice box, and, after Argentina, the shower’s like Niagara.’

‘My father wants to discuss the Fathers and Sons final tomorrow,’ said Luke as he drove into Palm Beach. ‘The beauty of this tournament is that families are forced to bury the hatchet once a year in order to play in it.’

After the poverty and primitive barbarity of the pampas, Perdita couldn’t believe Palm Beach. On either side of the road reared up vast ficus hedges like ramparts of green fudge. Occasionally, through towering electric gates, she caught a glimpse of pastel palaces so like blocks of ice-cream that she expected them to melt in the burning sun. Occasionally down a side road she caught a glimpse of the ocean. Apart from the odd security guard, no-one was around in the streets. Limousines, stealthily overtaking, made Luke’s dusty pick-up truck look very shabby. In the back, a security guard in himself, sat Luke’s ferocious mongrel, who growled every time an increasingly nervous Perdita leant towards Luke to check her reflection in the driving mirror.

‘He’s worse than Fantasma,’ she grumbled.

‘Let him get used to you,’ said Luke. ‘He’s kinda over protective where I’m concerned. He came from Juan’s yard. When the Argies go home, they often abandon a dog.’

‘Bastards,’ said Perdita. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Leroy, because he’s big and black and from the South.’

‘Is Red coming to lunch?’ asked Perdita.

‘I guess not. He got his picture on the cover of People magazine this week as polo’s bad guy and Auriel Kingham’s toyboy. The piece inside was less pretty. A charitable interpretation would be that the reporter stitched him up, but I recognize Red’s style in most of the snide quotes.’

‘Like what?’

Luke shook his head ruefully. ‘Describing Chessie as an ageing bimbo and as shallow as a paddling pool, saying she was such a gold digger she must have majored in opencast mining, and that Dad has to employ all his security guards ready gelded.’

‘Golly,’ said Perdita in awe, ‘I adore him already.’

‘Chessie is OK,’ said Luke firmly.

Oh, please make her have gone off, prayed Perdita.

As Luke swung round the corner, on the right, towering above the ficus battlement was the biggest palest pink house in the road.

‘There you are, Alderton Towers,’ said Luke. ‘It used to be eight houses. Dad knocked down three to extend the garden. This one belongs to him and Chessie, the one beyond’s kept for servants and guards, another’s for guests, and the other two for Red and Bibi.’

‘What about you?’ asked Perdita, thinking indignantly about the tiny kitchen and the bedroom overcrowded with books.

‘I make my own way,’ said Luke.

Bart’s gates were swarming with press who were being almost kept at bay by two large guards.

‘Go round to the back,’ snapped the larger one when he saw the pick-up truck. Then, recognizing Luke, ‘Oh sorry, Mr Alderton. Welcome home.’

The reporters surged forward in excitement. ‘It’s Luke, the brother. You got anything to say about Red and Auriel Kingham, Mr Alderton?’

‘Don’t know anything,’ said Luke grinning.

‘Knock it off, you guys,’ said the guard, punching them back as his mate pressed the remote control to open the gates.

Oh, my God, thought Perdita, I’m not ready for this.

Instead of a lawn, the front garden was covered in periwinkle-blue slats like the deck of a ship which only stopped to take in the occasional massive mast-like tree. The lack of foliage outside, however, was more than compensated by the tropical plants inside. A drawing room, almost as big as a hockey pitch, was overflowing with scented orchids of all colours. Jungle flora rioted also over the wallpaper and the chintz on two vast sofas, thirty feet apart on either side of the green marble fireplace. Did Bart and Chessie occupy one each on cosy winter evenings, wondered Perdita. Like at Robinsgrove, the grand piano was covered with silver-framed photographs of members of the Alderton family, mostly on polo ponies. But Perdita only took in the one at the front, of an adorable blond, brown-eyed small boy, who was so like Ricky he could only be Will. She had never seen a picture of him before. No wonder losing him had broken Ricky’s heart.

Tearing her eyes away she was staggered by the paintings, including a Gauguin, two Dalis, a Jackson Pollock and three Andy Warhols, which covered two walls. Spotlit polo trophies like a great leaping silver shoal of fish covered a third. The fourth, all window and now open, looked on to a beautiful swimming-pool, flanked by high walls, entirely smothered in bougainvillaea, honeysuckle, stephanotis, jasmine and pale pink roses. Through a wrought-iron gate on the other side the ocean flashed as peacock-blue as Angel’s eyes.

‘That’s the best painting in the room,’ said Luke, pointing to some massed pink water-lilies above the fireplace.

‘Everyone says I married Bart for his Monet,’ drawled a voice.

Perdita swung round. Hell, she thought, she’s more stunning than ever. Even ferocious Leroy thumped his stubby black tail.

‘Luke, darling,’ murmured Chessie, wafting the scent of lily of the valley into the room. Giving him the benefit of her body in a sopping-wet lime-green bikini, she weaved into Luke’s embrace as voluptuously as the Siamese stable cat had earlier:

‘Thank God you’ve come home to bring some sanity to this dump.’

‘You look incredible, as usual,’ said Luke, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘This is Perdita.’

‘Hi,’ said Chessie. ‘I hear you’ve been in Argentina. Isn’t it bliss, but aren’t they lecherous? Juan and Miguel would have gang-banged me years ago if they weren’t so terrified of losing Bart’s custom.’

Chessie must have lost a stone since Perdita last saw her, and was on the borderline that appears exquisite in clothes, but rather too thin uncovered. With her very short streaked hair, flawless golden skin, and shadowed eyes she now looked more like the new boy every prefect wants to take behind the squash court than a rather too-knowing Botticelli angel.