Polo (29 page)

    `Maldita,' whispered Perdita incredulously, `she's OK?' Luke opened a bloodshot eye and grinned triumphantly. `She passed the sand. What a mare! If she can fight off

    that medication, she'll take on the whole world.'

    Hearing Luke's voice, Maldita glanced up, gave a

    whicker of joy and, a little unsteadily walked towards

    him, pressed her nose against his shoulder and breathed

    lovingly down his neck.

    `She knows you saved her life,' said Perdita in awe.

    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 lookedbad 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 pre

    pared 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 hospitalby 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.

That was all! and yet through the gloom and the light The fate of a nation was riding that night.'

    As he related the heroic tale of Paul Revere's gallop through the night to alert the Americans to the arrival of the British Redcoats, the forty miles flew by and Perdita and Angel strained to catch every word.

    `That was great,' said Perdita in amazement when he'd finished. `Where d'you learn that stuff?'

    `In school when I had time to kill.'

    `Give us something else.'

    Luke laughed and put on an English accent:

`We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he today that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother, be he ne'er so vile

This day shall gentle his condition.'

    `Nice,' said Perdita. Then under her breath, `But nothing's going to gentle Angel!'

    The ponies, who always had an uncanny knowledge that they'd reached their destination, were stamping and scraping the floor in the back.

    `And here's Le Cloob O'Brien,' announced Angel.

    They turned into a dirt track flanked by very young gum trees. On either side in various stages of development were yellow houses with crinkly red roofs like Swiss chalets. The club house, which looked like a turreted Ruritanian castle, had white walls, grey roofs, flawless pitches front and back, but as yet no windows, nor, as Perdita suspected, a Ladies' loo, or changing room. She changed in the lorry with Martina, a sorrel mare with four white socks, who was never let out until the last moment, as she was driven so crazy by the flies. Perdita was trembling so badly that she could hardly zip up her boots. She felt a stone overweight with the Super Tampax and all the Kleenex stuffed inside

    herself. The once-crocus-yellow polo shirt, now faded to primrose with a huge maroon satin Number One on the back, was almost falling to pieces. It had been worn the last time the Mendozas beat the O'Briens in the Open and on every occasion they had met since. Trying to put her head through a sleeve, Perdita nearly ripped it further.

    Luke let her out. The primrose yellow suited him, she thought. It emphasized the sleepy honey-coloured eyes in his brown face and the yellow streaks in his reddy-gold hair. He looked in terrific shape too. The massive shoulders and chest tapered down to the lean cowboy hips and long legs.

    The O'Briens looked in even greater shape. Everywhere, Perdita seemed to see the emerald-green colours they had chosen to emphasize their Irish origins, which were worn by players, grooms and supporters alike. Both their lorries were green, and so were their lead reins, anti-sweat sheets, buckets and bandages, and there were green braids on their splendid horses' tails, which were left down until the last moment to protect them from the flies.

    Perdita felt her stomach disappear. There was Miguel, huge and thick-set with a permanently hard ugly smirk on his face, and lithe, handsome Juan, whom she'd last seen being forcibly ejected for bonking his host's wife at the Waterlanes' party, both swinging their sticks round and round to loosen up their shoulders.

    Then she noticed a vast woman with a swarthy dead-pan face and black hair drawn back into a bun, who was standing near the O'Briens with grimly folded arms.

    `Who's Sitting Bully?' she asked Luke.

    `Juan's wife.' Then, at Perdita's look of incredulity, `Known as the Policia. When she accompanies him to Palm Beach, he drops all his girlfriends, goes to church and prays, and becomes the model husband. The moment she leaves, he's back with a blonde on each arm.'

    Perdita started to laugh.

    `The good news,' went on Luke, `is that, because she's around, Juan hasn't been able to have his extra-marital pre-match hump, which miraculously lifts his game. Instead he and Juan lunched with Victor and Sharon Kaputnik. Victor's thinking of buying a dozen horses off them, unless he sees something he fancies better at Alejandro's tomorrow. They're not playing their besthorses today. They're saving them for the Open.'

    `So they have no doubt about wiping the floor?'

    `None,' said Luke. `Let's hope pride comes before several falls.'

    Will you do up my kneepads?' asked Perdita. `I don't want anyone, particularly Angel, to see how much I'm shaking.'

    `The bad news,' went on Luke, tucking a strap into a buckle, `is that one of today's umpires, Jaime Calavessi, bumped one of the O'Brien boys wrong last week. After the match, "Tiny", as Mrs Juan is euphemistically known, and her three sons chased Jaime round the field and nearly broke his jaw. So any decisions he makes today will be nervously pro-O'Brien. The other umpire is Juan's brother-in-law, so he won't be un-biased either.'

    A large crowd had gathered, giving a great air of carnival. Little boys raced about hitting balls with short mallets. Young players sat inside the boards, anxious to get as near their gods as possible. Voluptuous girlfriends, sisters and mothers constantly turned against the hot dusty wind to secure their cascading glossy hair with plastic bull-dog clips. Perched on bonnets of cars, smoking and chattering non-stop, they were getting high on tins of diet Coke.

    Spectators, wandering along the pony lines, were amused to watch Fantasma, who'd been muzzled to stop her savaging anyone, standing on her two front legs and lashing out with both back ones.

    A ripple of excitement went through the crowd as Miguel's wife, who was small, dark, and as pretty as Mrs Juan was ugly, rolled up with Victor and Sharon Kaputnik. Victor, fatter and balder and more like a bilious little hippo than ever, was obviously enjoying playing the O'Briens off against the Mendozas.

`In
Chile they like you anyway,' he was saying loudly. `In Argentina they cheat you and laugh all the way to the bank. They only entertain you if they know you're going to buy their ponies.'

    `Bloody rude,' said Perdita, furiously. `How dare he bitch about Argentina? And, my God, Sharon's been gentrified!'

    When Perdita last saw her as Victor's bimbo in 1981, Sharon's hair had been dyed the colour of strawberry jam, her splendid breasts had floated like beachballs out of her skin-tight polyester dress and her six-inch spike heels must have terrorized any lurking moles as she tripped on to the Rutshire pitch at treading-in time.