Jilly Cooper - Polo

‘Oh look, there’s Blue Teddy,’ cried Daisy, in her slightly breathless voice which squeaked when she got excited. She propped Perdita’s ancient teddy bear up between Kevin the yucca and the record player. ‘Now he can see out of the window, it’s such a ravishing drive home. Oh, there’s Miss Osbourne,’ went on Daisy, scrabbling in the back as she saw Perdita’s house mistress bearing down on them. ‘I bought her a bottle of Bristol Cream.’

‘No, Mum, she’s an old bitch,’ hissed Perdita. ‘For Christ’s sake, get in, we’re holding up the traffic.’

‘Hi, Perdita! Have a good Christmas.’ A group of classmates, to whom Perdita, with her beauty, outward insouciance and murderous wit, was a source of constant fascination, peered in through the window.

‘Are you Perdita’s friends?’ asked Daisy, who’d never been allowed to meet any of them. ‘How lovely! We’ve just moved to Rutshire. Perhaps you’d like to come and stay in the holidays.’

The tooting was getting deafening.

‘Mum, for God’s sake,’ shrieked Perdita.

‘By-ee,’ shouted Daisy, windmilling to Miss Osbourne and the group of girls as she set off in a succession of jerks down the drive, narrowly avoiding ramming the car in front as she stopped to admire the trailing yellow twigs of a willow tree against an angry navy-blue sky.

‘Can’t think what’s wrong with the car,’ said Daisy as it ground to a halt and died just inside the school gates. The tooting became even more acrimonious as she frantically tried the ignition.

‘Need any help?’ The father of Lucinda Montague, Perdita’s sworn enemy, reeking of brandy from his office party, popped his head inside the car.

‘It won’t budge,’ said Daisy helplessly.

‘’Fraid you’ve run out of petrol.’

Daisy, who always found the wrong things funny, went off into peals of laughter. Perdita put her head in her hands. It was not until four fathers, all roaring with laughter, who’d also obviously been to office parties, lifted the Mini out of the way and Miss Osbourne had provided a can of petrol, and they’d reached the slow lane of the motorway, and Daisy’d apologized a hundred times, that Perdita thawed enough to light a cigarette and ask what the house was like.

‘Oh, gorgeous,’ said Daisy, thrilled to be forgiven. ‘You cannot believe the views. This morning the whole valley was palest cobalt green with frost, and the shadows of the bare trees were . . .’

‘Do Eddie and Violet like it?’ interrupted Perdita who was bored rigid by ‘Nature’.

‘Adore it! There’s so much space after London.’

‘I bet they’ve bagged the best rooms.’

‘Every room is best. We’re going to be so happy. You’ve already been asked to a Pony Club Barn Dance.’

‘I wouldn’t be seen dead,’ said Perdita scornfully. No-one who’d bopped the night away with Jesus and the Carlisle twins would lower herself to a Pony Club hop. ‘When can we get my pony?’

‘Well, I rang the twins as you suggested. They’re in Argentina, but their groom put me on to a man outside Rutminster, who’s got a bay mare. If you like her, subject to a vet’s certificate, you should be able to have her right away, although Daddy may think you should wait till Christmas Day.’

‘That’s stupid. Christmas isn’t for ten days. I could be schooling or even hunting her by then. How much are you prepared to pay?’

‘I can’t see Daddy going much above £500.’

‘You won’t get a three-legged donkey for that,’ snapped Perdita, stubbing out her cigarette and lighting another one.

‘The move’s been dreadfully expensive,’ began Daisy hopefully. ‘Perhaps if your report’s good . . .’

‘Don’t be fatuous. Daddy doesn’t give a shit about my reports! Now if it were Violet or Eddie . . .’

‘That’s not true,’ protested Daisy, knowing it was.

‘When’s Granny Macleod arriving?’

‘Twenty-third,’ said Daisy gloomily.

‘That’s all we need. Now she’s a widow, she’ll be more ghastly and self-obsessed than ever.’

Daisy knew she ought to reprove Perdita, but she had never got on with her mother-in-law herself and was dreading having her for Christmas. Bridget Macleod, in her turn, had never forgiven her daughter-in-law for having what she referred to as ‘a past’.

Nearly sixteen years ago, when she was only seventeen, Daisy had become pregnant while she was at art college. Her parents were so appalled when they learned the circumstances in which the baby was conceived that they threw Daisy out. Eventually Daisy gave birth to a daughter, and called her Perdita – ‘the lost one’ – because she knew she couldn’t afford to keep her. In utter despair, while going through the legal process of adoption, Daisy had met a trainee barrister, Hamish Macleod. Hamish was one of those stolid young men who grew a beard and had a flickering of social conscience during the sixties, which was firmly doused by the economic gloom of the seventies.

Moved by Daisy’s plight, rendered sleepless by her beauty, Hamish asked her to marry him so that she could keep the baby. Daisy had accepted with passionate gratitude. Hamish was good-looking and seemed kind; she was sure she could grow to love him – anything to keep Perdita. Hamish’s family – particularly his mother, Bridget – were appalled. Scottish, lower-middle class, rigidly respectable, they branded Daisy a whore who had blighted their only son’s dazzling career at the Bar. They had threatened to black the wedding unless Daisy put on a wedding ring and pretended that she was a young widow whose husband had been killed in a car crash.

Daisy, after fifteen years of marriage, still looked absurdly young. Kind, sympathetic, dreamy, hopelessly disorganized, she had become increasingly insecure, because Hamish, who had now left the Bar and become a successful television producer, never stopped putting her down and complaining about her ineptitude as a mother, her lack of domesticity and her lousy dress sense. Subconsciously, he’d never forgiven her for having Perdita illegitimately and hit the roof if she looked at other men at parties. He also ruthlessly discouraged her considerable gifts as a painter, because they reminded him of her rackety art-student past and because he considered there was no money in it.

Nor could he ever forgive Perdita for her strange beauty, her bolshiness and her dazzling athletic ability. Throughout the marriage he had pointedly lavished affection on the two children, Violet and Eddie, now aged thirteen and eight, whom he and Daisy had had subsequently. Less glamorous than Perdita, they were sweeter-tempered and better-adjusted.

Daisy’s fatal weakness was a reluctance to hurt anyone. She had tried and tried to screw up the courage to tell Perdita the truth about her birth, but, terrified of the tantrums this would trigger off, she had funked it, feeding her the official line that her father had been killed in a car crash. ‘We were so in love, darling, but he never knew I was pregnant.’

Daisy dreaded the day when Perdita might want to know the name of her real father. At least her blinkered obsession with polo and ponies had some advantages. Aware, however, that Hamish didn’t love her, Perdita tried to trigger off a response by behaving atrociously. Matters weren’t helped by Bridget Macleod’s ability to beam simultaneously at Hamish, Violet and Eddie, and freeze out Daisy and Perdita. This reduced Daisy to gibbering sycophancy and Perdita to utter outrageousness.

Dark thoughts about her mother-in-law’s impending visit occupied Daisy until darkness fell, by which time they had reached the village of Appleford where several cottages in the High Street already sported holly rings and the village shop window was bright with crackers and Christmas puddings. Brock House lay a quarter of a mile on, its gates flanked by pillars topped by stone badgers. Bumping down the pitted drive Daisy reached a fork. To the left, past vast unkept rose bushes and a dovecote, lay farm buildings which had been converted into garages, stables and a tackroom with paddocks behind. To the right, flowerbeds edged with box and a paved terrace led down stone steps to the back of Brock House. Shaggy with creepers, long and low, with its little lit-up windows, the house had a secretive air. On the far side, beyond a large lawn edged with herbaceous borders, the land dropped sharply into the Appleford Valley, thickly wooded with oaks and larches, and famous for its badger sets.