Polo (28 page)

    Luke made an attempt at levity. `There are good things about it. Polo boots are three times cheaper than they are in the UK.'

    `Oh, shut up.' Out of the window, she could see a huge pink moon, like the inside of a guava, climbing out of the gum trees.

    `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 toc,' 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, therichest 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. `Senor Gracias give heem the eye black.'

    `He what?' gasped Perdita.

    `Raimundo was in the bar with his friends last night. Senor 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. Senor Gracias - how you say? - too beeg to tango with. Angel was in the bar too. Upchatting girl from the gas station. Senor 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 nicked 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 hadbeen 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
^p
oked 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.

    After a week of such treatment, he mounted her, sending her into the same orgy of bucking that had dislodged the grooms and all the Mendoza boys. Finding she couldn't unseat him, she paused for breath, anticipating her next devilry. She was so small, and Luke so long in the leg, he looked like some father riding a seaside donkey to amuse his children.

    `You won't need a mallet on that one,' shouted Alejandro. `You can kick the ball with your feet, or if you miss, that beetch will kick it for you.'

    Unnerved by Alejandro's great roar of laughter, Maldita had taken off into the pampas, somehow miraculously missing rabbit holes and fallen logs as she hurtled along. Luke sat still and gave her her head, amazed that the more she warmed up, the faster she went, staggered by the distance she could carry his 190-pound bulk in the burning sun.

    After nearly four miles she ran into the river that bordered Alejandro's land, which was so deep she was forced to swim. On the opposite bank, Luke rolled off her back and lay on the grass. The heaving mare glared back at him, too exhausted to move. Afterwards he hacked her quietly home and was further amazed that she responded to his legs and hands and had the perfect mouth and balance of a made polo pony. It didn't stop her lashing out at him with her teeth and back legs as he unsaddled her, but he felt he was making progress and, the next day, stick and balling her he found she was a natural. In her dark-eyed pallor and arrogant bloody-mindedness, she reminded him of Perdita. If she could trust one human, he felt, she could achieve anything. Driving home from the theatre he pondered his next move. Seeing General Piran ahead, he decided to try her in practice chukkas tomorrow.

    It was past three o'clock, but the tack room light, besieged with huge crashing moths, was still on. Raimundo's shaggy lurchers swarmed round Perdita as she staggered groggily out of the car.

    `I've never been so exhausted in my life. Christ, what's that?' she shrieked, as fat Umberto, clearly drunk andabsolutely terrified, lurched out of the shadows brandishing a gun.

    `What in hell's the matter?' said Luke, taking the gun from him.

    `Maldita, she is dead,' gabbled Umberto in Spanish. `What!' howled Luke.

    Raising his hands in panic, begging Senor Gracias not to shoot him, Umberto whimpered that Maldita had developed colic that morning.

    `We fight all day to save her.'

    `What did you try?' demanded Luke furiously.

    `Everything, enemas, catheters, fluids to hydrate her. All impossible, she more busy fight us than the colic. She get up, she get down, she roll, she kick the stomach, like crazy woman. We try real hard.' Then, seeing the expression on Luke's face, Umberto indignantly lifted his loose trousers up above his boots to display two huge purple bruises: `What you think these are, love bites?'

    `What did the vet say?'

    `A lump of sand block her gut.'

    `When did he last come?'

    `This afternoon. He no come back. His daughter getting married this evening.'

    `Then where the fuck's Alejandro? Humping in
BA, I suppose.'

`He
didn't even went,' explained Umberto, who couldn't ever have imagined Senor Gracias being so angry about anything. `He go to wedding of vet's daughter.'

    `Along with everyone else, I guess,' said Luke. `Why didn't anyone take her to the veterinary hospital? They could have operated.'

    `Alejandro say she too weak,' said Umberto, leaving unspoken the truth that Alejandro would be too mean to fork out the equivalent of $5,000 for a green and vicious mare.

    `Where is she?' asked Luke.

    `In the first paddock under the gum trees. Alejandro tell me shoot her if pain get too bad. He say best stable for that mare is a coffin.' Umberto crossed himself. `But bad luck to kill white horse. Anyway she already die, she not move for twenty minutes.'

    Followed by Perdita, who only half understood what was going on, Luke sprinted out to the paddock. Although the moon had set, they could see Maldita's ghostly white body slumped in the corner like a cast-off shroud.

    `Poor little bitch.' Luke was shaking with rage. But as he put his hand beneath her nearside elbow, he felt the faintest heartbeat and, to his joy, the mare struck feebly out at him with her off-fore and gave a half-whicker of recognition which turned into a groan. Her white coat was drenched with sweat, her belly horribly distended.

    `Put some rugs on her,' he ordered Perdita, as he raced back into the house. Under his bed he had a complete medicine chest, full of stuff given him by a veterinary friend in Palm Beach. There was one thing that might save the mare, and that was only a 10,000 to 1 chance.

    Back in the paddock he was greeted by a stream of expletives. Even in her hopelessly weakened condition, Maldita had lashed out when Perdita tried to put a rug on her.

    `What are you giving her?' asked Perdita as Luke plunged the needle into the mare's neck.

    Neostymine. Push her into internal contractions. It'll either kill her or make her pass the sand.' The mare writhed and groaned as another spasm of pain shook her body.

    `She's in such agony,' stormed Perdita, `why don't we just put her out of her misery?'

    `We're giving her a chance,' said Luke curtly. Now help me get her to her feet.'

    They both jumped as a black shadow fell across the mare's contorted body. It was little Tero, turned out in the same paddock, offering silent sympathy.

    Round and round they staggered like the end of some ghastly marathon, Luke dragging Maldita upright and along by her headcollar, supporting her with his body, Perdita propping up her other side. Tero followed them at a distance, watching her new friend with sorrowful anxious eyes. Luke could have done with more help, but Umberto had barricaded himself into the tack room with another bottle.

    After twenty minutes Luke felt his titanic strength was supporting both Maldita and a buckling Perdita, and ordered the latter to bed. When she refused, flopping with

    exhaustion by the gate, he threw a spare rug over her.

    The huge expanse of sky was lightening now, the stars growing pale, a far cry from Lorenzo's 'patines of bright gold'. Occasionally a farm dog barked, a frog croaked by the water trough gleaming in the half-light, a rabbit caught by some predator shrieked in terror, a distant pounding of pop music indicated that the wedding of the vet's daughter was still being celebrated.

    Twice Maldita collapsed. It was hard to tell now if it was Luke's sweat or hers that drenched her rug. Occasionally she groaned and made half-hearted kicks at her agonizingly swollen belly.

    Walking her round, Luke was reminded of his school-friend Spike, who'd been caught in the locker room with another boy. Terrified that the publicity could ruin his father, who was a senator running for president, Spike had OD'd on barbiturates. By talking to him all night and keeping him on his feet, Luke had saved Spike's life, only to have him try again successfully a week later when the story finally hit the press. Somehow Luke felt he owed it to Spike's memory to save the mare.

    `Come on, baby,' he urged her. `You gotta pull through. Just try and crap, then you'll feel better.'

    To keep them both awake, he reeled off endless poetry; Shakespeare, Hiawatha, then because Maldita might prefer her own language, he started on
Martin Fierro.

    Afterwards he couldn't tell if he had dreamed it, but he was sure little Tero drew close to Maldita several times, trying to prop her up, and twice he felt Tero's timid nudge of encouragement in his back when he was buckling with exhaustion.

    By the time the stars had faded, Maldita's heart had rallied, beating almost as fast as her pounding little hooves had on the pampas. Her belly gave a massive rumble.

    `Come on, honey,' mumbled Luke. `If you pull through, I swear I'll take you to Palm Beach, Windsor, Cowdray and Deauville. You'll have a life without winters, playing the best polo in the world.'

    But the mare was arching her back and groaning in such agony now that Luke only just managed to

    keep her on her feet. It was as though Vesuvius had erupted inside her. He could see a faint pink glow in the East. From the tack room Umberto's snores rent the air. In a distant field a mare whinnied, and a stallion whinnied back. Luke staggered. His strength was giving out.

    `Come on, Spike baby,' he muttered. `Don't die, you've gotta see another sunrise.'

    Waking very cold and aching, Perdita saw little red flames flickering across the great blue arch of sky and thought for a terrified second that she was in the middle of a forest fire. Then she became conscious of a vast blood-red sun warming the pampas. The trunks of the gum trees soared bright pink, the tack room windows flared crimson and all the birds in the world seemed to be singing for joy. Sitting up stiffly, Perdita gave a gasp, for in the corner beside Tero, a beautiful rose-red mare, her coat mackerelled with dried sweat, was quietly grazing. Fast asleep against the fence slumped Luke, his face as rumpled as an unmade bed, his shirt, as Perdita shook it, drenched with dew.