About the Author
Jilly Cooper is a journalist, writer and media superstar. The author of many number one bestselling novels, she lives in Gloucestershire with her family and her rescue greyhound Bluebell.
She was appointed OBE in 2004 for her services to literature, and in 2009 was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Gloucestershire for her contribution to literature and services to the county, and also in 2011 for services to literature by the University of Anglia Ruskin.
Find out more about Jilly Cooper at her website: www.jillycooper.co.uk
About the Book
Into the cut-throat world of Corinium television comes Declan O’Hara, a mega-star of great glamour and integrity with a radiant feckless wife, a handsome son and two ravishing teenage daughters. Living rather too closely across the valley is Rupert Campbell-Black, divorced and as dissolute as ever, and now the Tory Minister for Sport.
Declan needs only a few days at Corinium to realise that the Managing Director, Lord Baddingham, is a crook who has recruited him merely to help retain the franchise for Corinium. Baddingham has also enticed Cameron Cook, a gorgeous but domineering woman executive, to produce Declan’s programme. Declan and Cameron detest each other, provoking a storm of controversy into which Rupert plunges with his usual abandon.
As a rival group emerges to pitch for the franchise, reputations ripen and decline, true love blossoms and burns, marriages are made and shattered, and sex raises its (delicious) head at almost every throw as, in bed and boardroom, the race is on to capture the Cotswold Crown.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A very large number of people helped me with this book. Most of them work in television and are exceptionally busy. They still found the time to talk to me and – particularly in the case of those from HTV – to entertain me with lavishness and generosity. All of them are experts in their own field. But as I was writing fiction, I only took their advice so far as it fitted my plot. The accuracy of the book in no way reflects their expertise. They were also all so nice to me that it was impossible to base any of the unpleasant characters in the story on any of them.
They include Georgina Abrahams, Rita Angel, William Beloe, Michael Blakstad, Roy Bottomley, James Bredin, Adrian Brenard, Doug Carnegie, Stephen Cole, John Corbett, Jenny Crick, Mike Davey, Geoff Druett, Ron Evans, Su Evans, James Gatward, David Glencross, Stuart Hall, Nick Handel, Tom Hartman, Barbara Hazell, Stan Hazell, Paul Heiney, Bruce Hockin, Alison Holloway, Patricia Houlihan, Bryan Izzard, Philip Jones, Barbara Kelly, Susan Kyle, Maurice Leonard, Barrie MacDonald, Billy Macqueen, George McWatters, Steve Matthews, Lesley Morgan, Malcolm Morris, Jack Patterson, Bob Simmons, Tom Walsh, Ann de Winton, Richard Whitely, Ron Wordley and Richard Wyatt.
Tragically, dear Eamonn Andrews, with whom I was privileged to work for four series on ‘What’s My Line?’, died in November, after the book was finished. His utter integrity, professionalism and gentle humour were a constant source of inspiration while I was writing it.
I should also like to thank the crews, the drivers, the make-up girls and the wardrobe staff with whom I worked over the years, who came up with endless suggestions.
I must thank the people who wrote three books which were invaluable to me in understanding the extraordinarily complicated process by which television franchises are awarded. They are Walter Butler, author of How to Win the Franchise and Influence People, Michael Leapman, author of Treachery? The Power Struggle at TV-am, and Asa Briggs and Joanna Spicer, joint authors of The Franchise Affair – Creating fortunes and failures in Independent Television.
I am also eternally grateful to Peter Cadbury, former Chairman of Westward Television, for giving me access to his autobiography which unaccountably has never been published, to Robin Currie, of the Fire and Rescue Service HQ, Cheltenham, to Toni Westall, secretary to Captain Brian Walpole, General Manager, Concorde, and to Tim and Primrose Unwin for inviting me to some excellent hunt balls.
In addition I need to thank my Bank Manager, Keith Henderson, my publishers, Paul Scherer, Mark Barty-King and Alan Earney and all their staff at Bantam Press and Corgi, and my agent Desmond Elliott, for their faith and continued encouragement.
Three brave ladies, Beryl Hill, Sue Moore and Geraldine Kilgannon, deserve thanks and praise for deciphering my ghastly handwriting and typing several chapters of the manuscript; so does my cleaner, Ann Mills, for mucking out my study once a fortnight.
Finally, once again there are no words adequate to thank Leo, my husband, my children, Felix and Emily, and my secretary, Annalise Kay, whom I regard as one of the family, and who typed ninety per cent of the manuscript. Their collective good cheer, unselfishness and comfort over the past eighteen months knew no bounds.
Bisley, Gloucestershire
1987.
‘Last Christmas’ by George Michael reprinted by kind permission of Morrison and Leahy Music.
‘The Lady in Red’ by Chris de Burgh reprinted by kind permission of Rondor Music (London) Limited.
‘I Get a Kick Out of You’. Words and music by Cole Porter © 1934 Harms Incorporated. Reproduced by permission of Chappell Music Limited, © 1934 Warner Bros. Incorporated. (Renewed). All rights reserved. Used by permission.
‘We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off’ by Narada Michael Walden and Preston Glass © 1986. Reprinted by kind permission of Carlin Music Corporation and Island Music, UK; Mighty Three Music Group and Gratitude Sky Music, USA; MCA/Gilbey and Rondor Music, Australia.
By Jilly Cooper
FICTION
RIDERS
RIVALS
POLO
THE MAN WHO MADE HUSBANDS JEALOUS
APPASSIONATA
SCORE!
PANDORA
WICKED!
JUMP!
NON-FICTION
ANIMALS IN WAR
CLASS
HOW TO SURVIVE CHRISTMAS
HOTFOOT TO ZABRISKIE POINT (with Patrick Lichfield)
INTELLIGENT AND LOYAL
JOLLY MARSUPIAL
JOLLY SUPER
JOLLY SUPERLATIVE
JOLLY SUPER TOO
SUPER COOPER
SUPER JILLY
MEN AND SUPERMEN
WOMEN AND SUPERWOMEN
THE COMMON YEARS
TURN RIGHT AT THE SPOTTED DOG
HOW TO STAY MARRIED
HOW TO SURVIVE FROM NINE TO FIVE
ANGELS RUSH IN
ARAMINTA’S WEDDING
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
LITTLE MABEL
LITTLE MABEL’S GREAT ESCAPE
LITTLE MABEL SAVES THE DAY
LITTLE MABEL WINS
ROMANCE
BELLA
EMILY
HARRIET
IMOGEN
LISA & CO
OCTAVIA
PRUDENCE
ANTHOLOGIES
THE BRITISH IN LOVE
VIOLETS AND VINEGAR
1
Queen Augusta’s Boarding School for Girls has a splendid academic reputation, but on a sweltering afternoon in June one of its pupils was not paying attention to her English exam. While her classmates scribbled away, Perdita Macleod was drawing a polo pony. Outside, the scent of honeysuckle drifted in through the french windows, the cuckoo called from an acid-green poplar copse at the end of the lawn. Perdita, gazing out, thought longingly of the big tournament at Rutshire Polo Club where the semi-finals of the Rutshire Cup were being played. All her heroes were taking part: Ricky France-Lynch, Drew Benedict, Seb and Dommie Carlisle, the mighty Argentines, Miguel and Juan O’Brien, and, to crown it, the Prince of Wales.
Fretfully, Perdita glanced at her exam paper which began with a poem by Newbolt:
‘And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,’ she read,
‘Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,
But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote –
Play up! Play up! and play the game!’
‘Are Newbolt’s views of team spirit outdated?’ asked the first question. Perdita took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote ‘Yes’ in her disdainful blue scrawl, ‘the schoolboy in the poem must be an utter jerk and a poofter to boot to prefer his captain’s hand on his shoulder to a season’s fame and a ribboned coat.’
She put down her pen and thought how much she’d like a ribboned coat, one of those powder-blue blazers, braided with jade-green silk. Hamish, her ghastly stepfather, never gave her nearly a large enough allowance. Then she thought of fame. Perdita wanted to be a famous polo player more than anything else in the world. Being at a boarding school, she could not play in the term-time and had so far only achieved the first team of a suburban pony club of hopelessly low standard. When her family moved to their splendid new house in Rutshire in the autumn, however, she’d be able to have a pony and join a good club like Rutshire or Cirencester just over the border.
God, she was bored with this exam. She lit a cigarette, hoping it would encourage her form-mistress, who was adjudicating, to expel her. But, despite the furious wavings of paper by the swot on her right, her form-mistress didn’t react. She was far too engrossed in Perdita’s Jackie Collins, which she’d confiscated the day before and round which she’d now wrapped the dust jacket of Hilary Spurling’s biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett.
Perdita took another drag and glanced at the next question: ‘Do you find the poems of Thomas Hardy unduly preoccupied with death?’
It wasn’t an afternoon for death. Perdita slid through the french windows across the sunlit lawn. Once out into Rutminster High Street, she tugged out the tails and undid the top buttons of her shirt, hitched up her navy-blue skirt a few inches and wrinkled her navy-blue socks. Conscious that men fancied schoolgirls, she left on her black and pink striped tie, but loosened her hair from its tortoiseshell clasp so it cascaded white-blond down her back, eliciting wolf-whistles from two workmen mending the road.
Perdita stuck her nose in the air; her sights were set higher than roadmenders. She was a big girl for fourteen, tall and broad in the shoulder, with pale, luminous skin and a full, sulky mouth. A long Greek nose and large, very wide-apart eyes, as dark as elderberries, gave her the look of a creature of fable, a unicorn that might vanish at any moment.
The main gates of Rutshire Polo Club were swarming with police because of the Prince’s visit. Taking a short cut, Perdita clambered over a wall to the right, fighting her way through the undergrowth, scratching her legs on brambles and stinging nettles, until she reached the outskirts of the club. A vast emerald-green ground stretched ahead of her. On the right were the pony lines, where incredibly polished ponies, tied to iron rails in the shade of a row of horse chestnuts, were stamping, nudging, flattening ears at each other and aiming kicks at any fly eating their bellies.
God, they were beautiful, thought Perdita longingly, and curiously naked and vulnerable with their hogged manes and bound-up tails.
Beyond the pony lines stood the little clubhouse with its British, American and Argentine flags. Beyond that reared the stands and the pink-and-white tent for the sponsors’ lunch before Sunday’s final. Cars for today’s semi-final already lined both sides of the field. Polo fever had reached an all-time high this season due to the Prince’s impending wedding to Lady Diana Spencer.
Ringing Ground One and Ground Two behind the clubhouse were massive ancient trees, their wonderful variety of green occasionally interrupted by the rhubarb-pink of a copper beech. With their lower branches nibbled level by itinerant cows, they looked like an army of dowagers in midi-dresses. To the north, through this splendidly impressive backdrop, could be glimpsed the rose-pink roof of Rutminster Hall, a charming Queen Anne manor house, home of Sir David Waterlane, a polo fanatic who owned the surrounding nine hundred acres.
Perdita scratched her nettle stings. The moment she was famous, she decided darkly, as an orange and black striped helicopter landed on the greensward behind the clubhouse, she would go everywhere by air. Envy turned to excitement as the helicopter doors burst open and two young players, both in evening shirts and dinner jacket trousers, jumped out. Instantly Perdita recognized Seb and Dommie Carlisle, otherwise known as the Heavenly Twins. Vastly brave, blond and stocky like two golden bear cubs, it was said that any girl in the twins’ lives, and there were legions, had to play second fiddle to polo and the other twin.
Next moment a small, fat, bald man with the tiny mean eyes and wide jaw of a bilious hippo, who was wearing an orange-and-black polo shirt and straining white breeches, charged up bellowing, ‘For Christ’s sake, hurry up. The umpires are waiting to go on. We should have started five minutes ago. Why are you so late?’
‘We started late,’ said Seb Carlisle, putting his arm round the fat man’s shoulders. ‘Dommie had this terrific redhead.’
‘No, Seb had this terrific brunette,’ came the muffled tones of Dommie Carlisle. Having whipped his shirt over his head to reveal a bronzed and incredibly muscular back, he nearly collided with the little fence round the clubhouse as he desperately tried to undo his cufflinks from the outside.
‘Well, if I can be on time, I can’t see why you bloody can’t,’ shouted the fat man, whom Perdita now identified as Victor Kaputnik. Originally Hungarian, Victor was a pharmaceutical billionaire and famous polo patron who employed the twins as professionals and whose helicopter and fuel had just transported them from London.
Polo players are rated by handicap, which ranges from minus two goals, which means an absolute beginner, to ten goals for the very top-class player. This has nothing to do with the number of goals they may score, but is an indication of their ability. Although only twenty, the twins already had four-goal handicaps. Much of their energy was spent ripping off Victor Kaputnik. Longingly, Perdita watched them sprint into the clubhouse.
Outside, people carrying glasses of Pimm’s or beer were drifting towards the stands. Perdita was dying for a Coke and a sandwich, but she hadn’t brought any money. She lit another fag to take the edge off her appetite. Looking at the scoreboard, she saw that today’s first semi-final was a needle match between Victor’s team, the Kaputnik Tigers, who were wearing orange-and-black shirts, and the Alderton Flyers, in duck-egg blue, who were all four sitting near a Lamborghini parked under a chestnut tree, zipping up their boots. There was The Hon. Basil Baddingham, a notorious roué with patent-leather hair and a laughing, swarthy face, who gave Perdita a terrific eyemeet, and Drew Benedict, a clashing blond captain in the Welsh Guards, with very regular features and eyes to match his blue shirt. And there, Perdita caught her breath, was her utter, utter God: Ricky France-Lynch, grimly fastening on his kneepads and refusing to exchange banter with the others. Ricky, who had the beautiful, lean, powerful body, the coarse, black curls and the sensitive, yet virile, features of a Russian ballet dancer, was the best-looking player in England, and had a nine-goal handicap. The most talented and dedicated player, he was also the most tricky. Not for nothing had the Argentine players nicknamed him El Orgulloso, the proud one.
Standing slightly apart from the other three, swinging a polo stick furiously round and round, and champing to get into the fray, was their patron, Bart Alderton. An American airplane billionaire and the owner of television stations and newspapers, Bart was a still strikingly handsome man in his late forties, with thick grey hair, tinged with red like a wolf’s pelt and a belligerent suntanned face. One of the most renowned and feared predators in the world markets, where he snapped up companies before they could even blink, Bart had houses and strings of polo ponies in five countries. Known as the artful tax dodger, he seldom paid tax in any of them.
Today Bart was determined to wipe the floor with his old rival Victor Kaputnik, whom Bart had taken a girl off many years ago, and who in revenge last year had appealed to the Monopolies Commission and blocked Bart’s taking over a leading British airplane manufacturer.
Victor had brought down a new bimbo who he was keen to impress and was equally anxious to win.
Bart had Drew Benedict, Basil Baddingham and Ricky France-Lynch on his team for the English season. Bart liked Drew and Bas, who were amateurs, suitably deferential and prepared to socialize with him for the sake of having all their bills picked up. Ricky, who earned a long salary playing for Bart as a professional, was an entirely different proposition. Bart resented Ricky’s arrogance and detachment. He was incommunicative before matches and disappeared home like smoke afterwards. Today he’d even refused to have a team meeting, arguing that there was no point when Bart never did anything he was told.
It further irritated Bart, as the teams walked down to the stretch of green behind the back line where the grooms were warming up their ponies for the first chukka, that all the girls gazed at Ricky, not at him.
The Alderton Flyers were shortly joined on the field by the Kaputnik Tigers, who consisted of Victor Kaputnik, who’d just taken out his teeth and had a slug of brandy to steady his nerves, the Carlisle twins, who erupted on to the field as joyous as otters, and a nine-goal Chilean player called Jesus, who lived in Victor’s house and coached him every day and with whom Victor had just had a blazing row, because the Chilean had run up a £5,000 telephone bill, ringing his girlfriend in Chile.
‘Talk about Chile con carphone,’ said Seb Carlisle, collapsing with laughter, as the two sides formed up on the halfway line.
A second later the umpire, in his striped shirt, had thrown the white ball in, sticks slashed and cracked, stirrups chinked and expletives flew as the players struggled to get it out, followed by a hailstorm of hooves on the dry ground as everyone hurtled towards goal.
Blocking a cut-shot from Jesus, Ricky took the ball back upfield, changing direction three times to fox the opposition. As he hurtled towards goal in a cloud of dust, the obvious pass was to Drew on his right. Looking towards Drew, Ricky flicked a lovely under-the-neck shot round to Bas, who slammed the ball between the posts.
‘Bloody marvellous,’ screamed Perdita, jumping up and down. The rest of the crowd clapped languidly.
As the Tigers edged ahead, however, it was plain to Perdita, who was watching every stroke, that Bart was a much better player than Victor, who despite the Chilean’s coaching, just cantered about getting in everyone’s way. Ricky, she realized, was much the best player, but his team-mate, the blue-eyed Drew Benedict, normally the most dependable of players, must have been celebrating too heavily last night. Missing pass after pass, he was having the greatest difficulty in controlling the Chilean’s dazzling aggression.
2
Sitting in the stands with the sun behind them, sat the wives and girlfriends of the players, but all wearing dark glasses, so no one could see if they were bored. Bart Alderton’s wife, Grace, a puritan mother in her forties, had breeding and old money and did a huge amount for charity. Marrying her after ditching his loyal and loving first wife had given Bart the connections and the extra cash to turn him into a billionaire. Described by Basil Baddingham as the only social grace Bart had acquired on the way up, Grace was wearing a Cartier watch, a string of pearls and a purple silk dress printed with pansies. Her dark hair was drawn back in a bun, and a straw hat with a purple silk band shaded her austere but beautiful face. Grace considered suntans both vulgar and ageing. In her soft white hands lay a red notebook in which she kept the score and recorded every botched shot and missed penalty during the game and the name of the Alderton Flyer responsible.
Next to Grace sat Sukey Elliott, who’d got engaged to Drew Benedict the day before – hence Drew’s hangover. She seemed to remember every match played and goal scored by Drew in the last two seasons. A keen horsewoman herself, Sukey was the sort of girl who could get up and do the ponies if Drew had a hangover. Sukey had a neat, rather than an exciting, figure, and a horsey, not unattractive, face. Her light brown hair was taken off her forehead by a velvet bow. She was wearing a blue-spotted shirt-waister dress for the party Lady Waterlane always gave in her beautiful house across the park on the Thursday evening of Rutshire Cup Week.
Sukey would make the perfect army wife, always showing a charming deference to the wives of superiors, in this case Grace Alderton. But even more valuable in Drew’s eyes, Sukey possessed a hefty private income which, after marriage, would enable him to resign his commission and play polo full time.
‘We’re thinking of having our wedding list at either the General Trading Company or Peter Jones or Harrods. Which would you suggest?’ Sukey asked Grace.
On Sukey’s left in the row below sat Victor’s bimbo, a red-headed night-club hostess called Sharon, whose heavy eye make-up was running and whose uplifted breasts were already burning.
‘Blimey it’s ’ot,’ she said to Sukey. ‘Why do the ’orses keep bumpin’ into each uvver?’
Grace would have ignored Sharon, regarding her as both common and part of the opposition. Sukey was kinder and enjoyed imparting information.
‘It’s called a ride-off,’ she explained. ‘When a ball is hit, it creates its own right of way, and the player who hit it is entitled to hit it again. But if another player puts his horse’s shoulder in front of that first player’s horse’s shoulder, and a good horse will feel the pressure and push the other horse off the line, then the second player takes up the right of way. If you cross too closely in front of another rider – like someone shooting out in front of you on the motorway – it’s a foul.’
‘Ow, I see,’ said Sharon, who plainly didn’t. ‘And why does the scoreboard say Victor’s team’s winning when there seem to have been more goals down the uvver end?’
‘That’s because they change ends after each goal,’ said Sukey kindly, ‘so no-one gets the benefit of the wind.’
‘I could do with the benefit of some wind,’ said Sharon, fanning herself with her programme. ‘It’s bleedin’ ’ot.’
‘It is,’ agreed Sukey. ‘Would you like to borrow my hat?’
Grace Alderton thought Sukey was a lovely young woman who would make a splendid wife for Drew. She did not feel at all the same about Chessie France-Lynch who rolled up halfway through the fourth chukka in a coloured vest, no bra, frayed denim bermudas and torn pink espadrilles, clutching a large glass of Pimm’s and a copy of Barchester Towers. Chessie, who had bruised, scabious-blue eyes, and looked like a Botticelli angel who’d had too much nectar at lunchtime, made no secret of the fact that she found polo irredeemably boring. Being stuck at home with a three-year-old son, William, polishing silver cups and taking burnt meat out of the oven, because Ricky hadn’t got back from a match or was coping with some crisis in the yard, was not Chessie’s idea of marriage.
‘You’ve missed an exciting match, Francesca,’ said Grace pointedly.
‘I’d have been on time,’ grumbled Chessie, ‘if that goon in the bar didn’t take half an hour to make a Pimm’s.’
‘Better go and help out,’ said Commander Harris, the club’s secretary, known as ‘Fatty’, waddling off to the bar.
‘To help himself to another drink, the disgusting old soak,’ said Chessie. ‘Congratulations,’ she went on, sitting down next to Sukey. ‘When are you getting married?’
‘In September, so that Drew can finish the polo season.’
‘When did he propose?’
‘On Sunday. It was so sweet. He asked me to look after his signet ring before the match, then put it on my wedding-ring finger, and said would I, and now he’s bought me this heavenly ring.’
‘Nice,’ said Chessie, admiring the large but conventional diamond and sapphires. ‘Drew must have had to flog at least one of Bart’s ponies to pay for that.’
Grace’s red lips tightened, and even more so when the players, who always seemed to be playing on some distant part of the field, for once surged over to the four-inch-high wooden boards (as the sidelines are known in polo) near the stands. Ignoring Ricky’s yells to leave the ball, Bart barged in, missed an easy shot and enabled Seb Carlisle to whip the ball away to Dommie, his twin, who took it down the field and scored.
‘When I say fucking leave it, Bart, for fuck’s sake leave it,’ Ricky’s bellow of exasperation rang round the field, eliciting a furious entry in Grace’s red book and an extremely beady glance from Miss Lodsworth, a local bossy boots and one of the whiskery old trouts always present at polo matches.
‘It was my ball,’ shouted Bart. ‘I paid for this fucking team, and I’m going to hit the goddam ball . . .’
To lighten the atmosphere, as the players cantered back to change ponies after the fourth chukka, Sukey warmly informed Chessie that Ricky had already scored two splendid goals.
‘Good,’ said Chessie lightly. ‘We might not have black gloom all the way home for a change. He still won’t talk, mind you. Even if he wins, he’s too hyped up to say anything.’
Sukey’s total recap of the match was mercifully cut short by the arrival of one of Bas Baddingham’s gorgeous mistresses, a long-haired blonde called Ritz Maclaren. She and Chessie proceeded to gossip noisily about their friends until Grace hushed them reprovingly and asked Chessie what she intended to wear for Lady Waterlane’s party that evening.
‘What I’ve got on,’ said Chessie. ‘Until Ricky’s father relents and gives us some cash, or Ricky gets his polo act together, I can’t see myself ever affording a new dress. It’s the ponies that get new shoes in our house’ – she waved a torn espadrille hanging on the end of a dusty foot at Grace – ‘not me.’
‘It’s not very respectful to Lady Waterlane not to change,’ reproved Grace. To which Chessie replied that Clemency Waterlane would be so busy wrapped round Juan O’Brien, her husband’s Argentine pro, that she would hardly notice.
‘I can’t think why David Waterlane doesn’t boot Clemency out,’ said Ritz Maclaren, who was calmly removing her tights.
‘Terrified Juan would go as well,’ said Chessie. ‘David told Ricky there was no problem getting another wife, but he’d never find another hired assassin as good as Juan.’
‘Oh, good shot, Ricky,’ cried Sukey. ‘Do watch, Chessie; your husband’s playing so well.’
As the bell went to end the fifth chukka, Perdita raced down to the pony lines to catch a glimpse of Matilda, Ricky France-Lynch’s legendary blue roan, whom he always saved for the last chukka.
Ponies that had played in the fifth chukka, which, except for Victor’s, had had every ounce of strength pushed out of them, were coming off the field, drenched in sweat, nostrils blood-red as poppies, veins standing up like a network of snakes. Bart’s horse, having been yanked around, was pouring blood from a cut mouth, sending scarlet froth flying everywhere.
Grooms instantly went into a frenzy of activity, untacking each pony, sponging it down, throwing water over its head, taking down its tail. Other grooms were loading already dried-off ponies from earlier chukkas into lorries for the journey home, while still others were leading them round, or just holding them as they waited to go on, quivering with pitch-fright, while their riders towelled off the sweat and discussed tactics for the last chukka.
‘That Ricky France-Lynch’s got a wonderful eye,’ said the security man who was looking after the Prince’s Jack Russell.
He’s got wonderful eyes, thought Perdita wistfully. Deep-set, watchful, dark green as bay leaves and now, as they lighted on Matilda, his favourite pony, amazingly softened.
Before a game Matilda got so excited that her groom could hardly hold her. Snorting, neighing shrilly, kicking up the dust with stamping feet, watching the action with pricked ears, her dark eyes searched everywhere for Ricky. As he walked over, she gave a great deep whicker of joy. They had hardly been separated a day since she was a foal. She was the fastest pony he’d ever ridden, turned at the gallop, and once, when she’d bucked him off in a fit of high spirits, had raced after the rider who had the ball and blocked the shot. There wasn’t a player in the world who didn’t covet Matilda. And now Ricky was going to need all her skills: the Alderton Flyers were three down.
The last chukka was decidedly stormy. Ricky scored two goals, then Drew and Bas one each, putting the Flyers ahead. Then Bart, frantic he was the only member of the team without a goal, missed an easy shot and took his whip to his little brown pony.
‘It was your bloody fault, not the pony’s,’ howled Ricky, to the edification of the entire stand, ‘and for Christ’s sake get back.’
Evading Drew’s clutches yet again, Jesus, the Chilean, thundered towards goal. In a mood of altruism and probably seeing a chance to be forgiven for the £5,000 telephone bill, he put the ball just in front of Victor, his patron, who, connecting for the first time in the match, tipped it between the posts and levelled the score to cheers and whoops from all round the ground. Victor immediately waved his stick exuberantly at his red-headed night-club hostess, who was just thinking how much better looking every man in the field was than Victor.
‘Why’s Victor’s ’orse wearing so many straps? It looks like a bondage victim,’ she asked Sukey.
‘The saddle has to hold if you’re going to lean out of it,’ explained Sukey patiently.
‘Ride hard, hit hard, and keep your temper,’ said Brigadier Hughie, the club chairman and bore who’d just arrived.
Contrary to this advice, Bart, incensed that Victor had scored, proceeded to ride the fat little Hungarian off the ball at such a dangerous angle that Bart was promptly fouled and the Tigers awarded a forty-yard penalty. Bart then swore so hard at the umpire that the penalty was upped to thirty yards, which Jesus had no difficulty driving between the posts, putting the Tigers ahead again.
In the closing, desperately fought seconds of the game Jesus got the ball and set off for goal, his bay mare’s hooves rattling like a firing squad on the dry ground. Ricky, on Matilda, belted after him and had caught up when the bay mare stumbled. As the bell went Matilda cannoned into her and ponies and riders crashed to the ground in front of the stands to the horrified gasps of the crowd. As the dust cleared, Ricky and Jesus could be seen to have got to their feet. The Chilean’s bay mare got up more slowly and, after an irritated shake, set off at a gallop for the pony lines. Matilda, however, made several abortive attempts and, when she finally lurched up, her off fore was hanging horribly.
Oblivious of the whiskery old trout Miss Lodsworth complaining noisily about the disgusting cruelty of the game, Perdita watched helplessly, tears streaming down her face. On came the vet’s van; the crowd fell silent. As screens were put round the pony, Fatty Harris, the club secretary, somewhat unsteadily joined the little group. Victorious but grim-faced, with Dommie Carlisle unashamedly wiping his eyes, the Kaputnik Tigers rode back to the pony lines where the grooms of the great Argentines, Juan and Miguel O’Brien, and their patron, Sir David Waterlane, were warming up ponies for the next match in which they were playing with the Prince of Wales.
Behind the screen, however, an argument was raging.
‘You’re not putting Mattie down,’ hissed Ricky. ‘If it’s a cannon bone, we can slap her into plaster. I want her X-rayed.’
‘She’ll be no use for polo,’ protested the vet.
‘Maybe not, but I’m bloody well going to breed from her. It’s all right, lovie,’ Ricky’s voice softened as he stroked the trembling mare.
‘Give her a shot of Buscopan,’ advised Fatty Harris.
‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ snapped Ricky. ‘If you kill the pain, she’ll tread on it and make it worse.’
‘Got to get her off the field, Ricky,’ said Fatty fussily, his breath stale from too many lunchtime whiskies. ‘Prince’s match is due to start in ten minutes. Can’t hold it up.’
Utterly indifferent to the fact that in the end he held up the Prince’s match for half an hour, and that most of the spectators and some of the players regarded him as appallingly callous for not putting Matilda out of her agony, Ricky, helped by Drew and Bas, gently coaxed the desperately hobbling mare into a driven-up horse box. Ricky would stay inside with her, while one of his grooms drove them the eight miles home, to where the vet would bring his X-ray equipment.
Green beneath his suntan, shaking violently and pouring with sweat, Ricky spoke briefly to his wife Chessie when she came over and hugged him. Chessie had often been jealous of Matilda in the past; now she could only pity Ricky’s anguish.
‘I’m desperately sorry, darling. When’ll you be back?’
‘Probably not at all. I’ll ring you.’
‘But what about Lady Waterlane’s reception?’ asked an outraged Bart, who had just joined them. ‘You can’t miss that.’
Ricky looked at Bart uncomprehendingly.
‘B-b-bugger Lady Waterlane,’ he said coldly.
Ricky had just climbed in beside the mare when a ripple of excitement ran through the crowd as a dark man in a cherry-red polo shirt pulled up his pony beside the lorry. His hazel eyes were on a level with Ricky’s as he called out: ‘Desperately sorry, Ricky. Ghastly thing to happen. Always liked Matilda – great character. Hope you manage to save her.’
Touched by the expression of genuine sympathy on the Prince’s face, Ricky forgot to bow.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Bart and Grace, who’d also joined him on the field, shot forward expectantly, avid to be presented, but it was too late.
Shouting back to Ricky to let him know the result of the X-ray, the Prince had moved off, hitting a ball ahead of him, cantering across the pitch and out of Bart’s life.
‘Why the hell didn’t you introduce us?’
‘It seemed irrelevant.’
As they raised the ramp of the horse box and shot the bolts, Bas and Drew shook their heads. They knew how devastated Ricky was, but he was pushing his luck.
Aubergine with rage, Bart turned to Chessie.
‘What the fuck does your husband think he’s playing at?’
‘Polo,’ said Chessie bitterly. ‘Absolutely nothing else.’
3
Bart’s resentment against Ricky was in no way abated when the Prince regretfully decided he wouldn’t have time to look in at Lady Waterlane’s party because his match had been delayed. Lady Waterlane, who didn’t find Latins at all lousy lovers, was so preoccupied with Juan O’Brien, her husband’s Argentine professional, that she hardly noticed the Prince’s absence.
A rather too relaxed hostess, besides feeding and watering her guests and giving them free access to the bedrooms where the four-posters hadn’t been made for weeks, Lady Waterlane expected people to get on with it.
Totally confident in the business world, Bart felt an outsider among the raffish and sometimes aristocratic members of the polo community who knew each other so well. He had expected Ricky to introduce him to everyone. Chessie, furious at having forked out for a baby-sitter and determined to stay for the party, could easily have fulfilled this function, but Bart had been so rude to her about Ricky’s arrogance, and the fact that she was dressed like a tramp, that she had stalked off to comfort Jesus the Chilean who was mortified his pony had caused Matilda’s fall.
Bart, however, was not left alone for long. June and July (when the mid-season’s handicaps were announced) were the months when dissatisfied patrons started looking round and wondering which players they would hire to make up their teams for next year.
Apart from the occasional amateur, like Bas and Drew, there are two kinds of players in polo – the patrons who have the money and the professionals who earn money playing for them. Professional players are only as good as their last three games; contracts rarely extend beyond a season. There is therefore collossal pressure to perform well. But, with one’s future at stake, diplomacy is almost more important than performance. Patrons not only like to win, but also to be taken to parties and treated as one of the boys.
During the season everyone had noticed the froideur between Ricky and Bart. Miguel O’Brien, known as the Godfather because he controlled the other Argentine players like the Mafia, was also grimly aware that with his handsome brother Juan constantly wrapped round Clemency Waterlane, David Waterlane might not be overkeen to employ them to play for Rutminster Hall next year. David was tricky and also very mean. Looking round the beautiful drawing room, Miguel’s conniving, dark little eyes noticed the damp patches on the faded yellow wallpaper and the tattered silk chaircovers, and saw that David’s ancestors on the walls could hardly see out through the layers of grime. He knew, too, that David owed thousands to Ladbroke’s and the taxman. Thinking how agreeable it would be next year to be sponsored by Bart’s millions, Miguel started chatting him up.
‘You ride very well for the leetle time you ’ave learn,’ purred Miguel. ‘Wiz zee right coaching you could be miles bettair, but success in polo is eighty per cent zee good ’orses.’
He hoped Bart and his beautiful wife would come and stay at his estancia in Argentina and try out some of the family’s superb ponies. Bart was flattered. Imagine the kudos of having the great O’Brien brothers playing on his team both in England and Palm Beach.
The Napier brothers, Ben and Charles, known as the Unheavenly Twins because of their cadaverous appearance, who’d been beaten by the O’Briens, David Waterlane and the Prince in the second match, were also at the party. Cruel to their horses and even crueller to their patron, a petfood billionaire who they’d ripped off so unmercifully that he was threatening to quit polo, the Napiers also tried to make their number with Bart during the evening. But they were pre-empted by Seb and Dommie Carlisle, who, having got drunk and appropriated Perdita after the match, came rushing up to Bart: ‘Oh, Mr Alderton, could you please take us into a corner and chat us up like mad, so Victor will get appallingly jealous and offer us three times as much next year?’
Bart was amused. The twins, he decided, would be far more fun to play with than Ricky or the Napiers.
Drew Benedict couldn’t stay long at the party, as he had to dine with Sukey’s parents, his future in-laws, but, ever diplomatic, he found time to talk to Bart, his patron, telling him how well he had played and how the team would never have reached the semi-finals without him.
‘It’s disappointing we didn’t make the finals, but a good thing from my point of view,’ added Drew philosophically. ‘I’m supposed to be guarding some nuclear weapons this weekend, and I’d have had difficulty getting leave on Sunday.’
Having mugged up on the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times every day, Drew was also able to comment on the progress of Bart’s latest take-over. Admiring Drew’s well-worn but beautifully cut suit, his striped shirt and blue silk tie, and his dependable handsome face with the turned-down blue eyes and juttingly determined jaw, Bart thought that he was quite the best kind of Englishman – a sort of butch Leslie Howard. Briefly he touched Drew’s pin-striped arm with the back of his hand, the nearest he ever got to intimacy with men.
‘The Army’s loss’ll be Sukey’s gain,’ he said roughly. ‘She’s a very lucky young woman.’
Drew grinned. ‘London’s fortune-hunters are out to lynch me.’
Having taught himself Spanish because he realized what an advantage it would be understanding what the Argentines were gabbling to each other on and off the field, Drew had also overheard Miguel talking to Juan. Before he left, he took Chessie on to the terrace. The setting sun was turning the house a warm peach and gilded the lake around which cows were lying down. Catmint brushed against Chessie’s legs as Drew adjusted the shoulder-strap of her coloured vest which had flopped down her arm.
‘As your husband’s best friend . . .’
‘ . . . You want me to stop flirting with Jesus!’
‘That too,’ said Drew. ‘Look I’ve just overheard that oily sod Miguel telling Juan that Bart’s fed up with Ricky and things look rosy for next year. Ricky should be here guarding his patch.’
‘Well, he’s not,’ snapped Chessie. ‘When did a party ever come before a pony? He’s just rung up to say they’ve X-rayed Matilda’s leg and it’s a cannon bone, so they’re going to slap it in plaster and then sling her up.’
‘Thank Christ, so he’ll be here soon.’
‘Some hope,’ said Chessie bitterly. ‘He prefers to stay with Mattie. He’s already collected Will from the baby-sitter. He’s so bloody arrogant, he’ll never dance to Bart’s tune.’
‘He who pays for the Piper Heidsieck calls the tune,’ said Drew, deheading a rose.
‘Drew-hoo, Drew-hoo,’ Sukey was calling from the french windows.
‘Shades of the prison-house begin to close,’ mocked Chessie.
‘Don’t be subversive,’ said Drew, kissing her on the cheek. ‘You’d better chat up Bart instead of Jesus, or your husband’s on a collision course.’
The party roared on. Coronation chicken was served, although Seb Carlisle was heard to remark that it was debatable whose coronation it was celebrating. A few bread rolls were thrown. Dommie Carlisle added to the rising damp by filling a condom with water and spraying it round the drawing room. All the players’ dogs, which followed them everywhere, lay around panting, finishing up the food and being tripped over.
In a dark corner Juan O’Brien, a beautiful animal with big, brown eyes, long, black curls and a vast, slightly bruised, lower lip, was gazing limpidly at Clemency Waterlane: ‘You haf the most wonderful eyes in the world. My best mare in Argentina ees due to foal soon. Eef it’s a filly, I shall call her Clarissa after you.’
‘Actually my name’s Clemency,’ said Lady Waterlane, ‘but it’s awfully sweet of you, Juan.’
Victor Kaputnik, the pharmaceutical billionaire, bald pate gleaming in the candlelight, black chest-hair spilling out of his unbuttoned shirt, was boasting in his thick Hungarian accent about his prowess as a businessman.
‘I have discovered a cure for the common cold,’ he was telling Fatty Harris, the club secretary.
‘I wish he’d find a cure for the common little man,’ muttered Seb Carlisle. ‘He’s an absolute pill.’
‘No, he makes pills,’ giggled Dommie, shooting a jet of water into the round red face of Fatty Harris who was too drunk to realize where it had come from.
Bart’s mood was not improving. Once a heavy drinker, he had cut out booze almost entirely, to improve his polo, but now really longed for a huge Scotch. Desperately dehydrated after the game, he had already drunk two bottles of Perrier. He was livid they’d lost the match, livid that Victor had scored that goal, which he was boasting to everyone about, livid that Victor had got into the final with the Prince, and might well appear photographed with the Prince and Lady Diana on the front of Monday’s Times, and livid that Victor was now dancing with his red-headed night-club hostess, his six o’clock shadow grating the sunburnt cleavage of her splendid breasts.
And there was Clemency Waterlane wrapped round Juan, and that ravishing schoolgirl bopping away with Dommie and Seb. Bart knew that Grace was a wonderful wife, but he had never forgiven her for being from a better class than him, and was fed up with her criticizing his polo, pointing out that if he hadn’t bumped Victor so hard today Jesus would never have been awarded that penalty. Now she was being charming to that old bore Brigadier Hughie, and his wife.
‘I’ve broken m’right leg twice, m’left leg once, my right shoulder three times, cracked three ribs and dislocated m’thumb and m’elbow,’ droned on Hughie.
‘Polo players are very brave people,’ said Mrs Hughie, who looked like an eager warthog.
‘Brave enough to face the Inland Revenue every year,’ drawled Chessie on her way to the bar.
Ignoring Chessie, Grace listened politely, thinking how dirty Clemency Waterlane’s house was and how much better she, Grace, could have arranged the flowers. Then, noticing Bart pouring himself a huge Scotch, she left Mrs Hughie in midflow, as she strode across the room.
‘Baby, we weren’t going to drink. Look, I’m exhausted. Shall we go?’
Bart said he wasn’t tired, and still had some business to discuss with Miguel. Why didn’t the pilot fly Grace home and come back for him in an hour.
Chessie France-Lynch, rather drunk, sat in the depths of a sofa, letting conversations drift over her. From a bench on the terrace, she heard an outraged squawk as Victor’s pudgy hand found the soft flesh between Sharon’s stockings and her suspender belt.
‘Hey, d’you fink I’m common or somefink, Victor? Tits first, please!’
In front of the fireplace still full of ash from a fire last March, four young bloods were discussing next week’s tournament in Cheshire.
‘Seb and Dommie are definitely coming and they’re mounted.’
‘Who’s going to mount Drew?’
‘Simon can’t, because he’s mounting Henry. Bas is mounting himself.’
‘Well, Bas will have to mount Drew too then.’
Nor did the young men deflect in the slightest from their conversation when David Waterlane, having found Juan mounting his beautiful wife in an upstairs four-poster, was forced to expel the frantically protesting Argentine from the house.
Clemency was sniffing in an armchair and receiving a pep talk from Brigadier Hughie, who felt that, as chairman of the club, he should provide moral guidance. ‘D’you really feel, Clemency, m’dear, that it’s worth leaving a tolerant husband, three lovely children and nine hundred acres for the sake of six inches of angry gristle?’
Clemency sniffed and said yes she did, that David could be very intolerant, and Juan’s gristle wasn’t angry and was considerably more than six inches.
Chessie found herself giggling so much that she had to leave the room and went slap into Bart Alderton, who was clutching another large Scotch. Chessie updated him on the Juan-Clemency saga.
‘She’s crazy,’ went on Chessie. ‘David puts up with murder, even if he is stingy, and he is loaded.’
‘Unlike your spouse,’ said Bart pointedly.
‘Ghastly word,’ said Chessie. ‘And I hear you’re not espousing his cause next year.’