Jilly Cooper - Polo

Inside was chaos. Daisy had made heroic attempts to get straight after moving, but now the children had come home bringing their own brand of mess. Violet and Eddie were in the kitchen, and greeted their elder sister guardedly.

‘What’s for supper?’ asked Eddie, who was circling advertisements in Exchange and Mart .

‘Chicken casserole and chocolate mousse to celebrate Perdita’s first night home,’ said Daisy.

‘There was,’ said Violet. ‘You left the larder door open and Gainsborough got at the chicken. Then he was sick. I cleared it up, and I got some sausages from the village shop.’

Thank God for Violet, thought Daisy. Violet Macleod had inherited Daisy’s sweet nature and round face and Hamish’s solid figure, freckles and curly, dark-red hair, which clashed with her high colour when she blushed. She also had beautifully turned-down amethyst eyes, which, she pointed out ruefully, matched her plump purple legs. Less bright than Perdita, she did much better at school because she was hard-working and methodical and because she knew you needed straight ‘A’s to become a vet. Violet spent much of her time sticking up for her father and grandmother and protecting her mother from Perdita’s tantrums. She was now combing the recently sick, long-haired ginger tomcat, Gainsborough, who was mewing horribly.

‘Stop it,’ said Violet firmly. ‘You know fur balls make you sick.’

Eddie, at eight, looked not unlike a bouncer in a night-club. Slightly dyslexic, hugely entertaining, he was interested in making a fast buck and enjoying himself. He had already found another prep schoolboy across the valley with whom to spend his time. His current ambition was to have a gun for Christmas. Daisy was dragging her feet because she felt Eddie might easily murder his elder sister.

‘Give us a fag, Perdita,’ said Eddie as Perdita got out a packet of Silk Cut.

‘Eddie!’ said Violet, shocked. ‘You are much too young.’

‘Want us to show you round?’ asked Eddie.

Unloading the car, listening to the thundering feet and yells of excitement as the children raced along the passages, Daisy prayed that in this house they would at last be a really happy family.

‘The stables are fantastic,’ said Perdita with rare enthusiasm when she returned twenty minutes later with the others.

When the telephone rang, Daisy answered. From the way their mother stiffened and her voice became nervous and conciliatory, the children knew it was their father. Now she was apologizing for forgetting to get his suit back from the cleaners.

‘I’ll pick it up first thing in the morning. Perdita’s home. Would you like a word?’ For a second Perdita’s normally dead-pan face was vulnerable and hopeful.

‘Well, you’ll see her later. Oh, I see, you must be frantic. See you tomorrow night then. He’s not coming home,’ explained Daisy, putting down the receiver.

‘Because he knows I’m back,’ said Perdita flatly.

‘Nonsense,’ blustered Daisy. ‘He sent tons of love.’

All three children knew she was lying.

‘He’s only got love for Eddie,’ sneered Perdita, ‘and not-so-shrinking Violet. Can I have a vodka and tonic? I am fifteen now.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Daisy. Anything to keep the peace.

‘Dark, dark, dark,’ wailed Daisy a week later. ‘The Hoover’s gone phut, the washing machine’s broken down, Hamish says the place is a tip, and the kitchen brush has alopecia.’

‘I’m off.’ Perdita, dressed for hunting in boots, skin-tight breeches and a dark blue coat, went straight to the housekeeping jar.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Daisy.

‘I need money for the cap.’

‘You took a tenner yesterday.’

‘I’ll pay you back out of my Christmas present money,’ said Perdita, rushing off towards the stables.

‘Where’s my dark green sweater?’ bellowed Hamish from upstairs. ‘There are two buttons missing off my blazer and why the hell isn’t there any loo paper?’

Daisy sighed. Hamish had come back exhausted after a week’s filming last night to watch one of his programmes – a documentary on road haulage. Daisy hadn’t helped matters by falling asleep because it was so boring. The moment the final credits went up, Hamish’s mother was on the telephone telling him how wonderful it had been. When no-one else rang, Hamish, who was pathological about his beauty sleep, retired to bed. The telephone then started up again, but instead of being congratulations from Jeremy Isaacs and Alasdair Milne, it was friends of the children, catching up on gossip and wondering what life in the country was like, until Hamish was screaming with irritation.

Now he was downstairs bellyaching because Perdita had whipped the last of the housekeeping money. ‘I told you to always keep a float. I don’t know them well enough in the village shop to ask them to cash a cheque. What time’s Peter Pan ?’

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Daisy hysterically. ‘I’d forgotten all about Peter Pan . I can’t go. I’ve got to get everything ready for your mother tomorrow, and do all the cooking, and shopping, and buy the stocking presents, and I haven’t wrapped any of the other presents, and I’ve got to stay in for the washing-machine man. We haven’t got any clean sheets.’

Hamish looked at her pityingly. ‘I can’t understand why you can’t treat Christmas like any other weekend. I suppose you’ve got your period coming.’

‘I’ve got your bloody mother coming,’ muttered Daisy into the sink.

‘Wendy can do the shopping,’ said Hamish loftily, ‘ and the stocking presents. Give me the list.’

‘But she must be frantic,’ protested Daisy. Wendy was Hamish’s PA, who seemed to work for him twenty-four hours a day.

‘It’s always the busiest people who find the time,’ said Hamish sanctimoniously. ‘Wendy can take the children to Peter Pan. I’ll bring them and the shopping home afterwards. I hope,’ he added ominously, ‘you’re going to get things shipshape for Mother. She’s had a very stressful year and needs a rest.’

In the past, on hearing Hamish’s car draw up outside, Daisy had been known to take mugs out of the dish washer and frantically start washing them up in the sink, so much did Hamish hate to see her inactive. He was a successful film producer because he was good at keeping costs down, finicky about detail, and had brilliant empathy with his leading ladies who found him attractive because, to use one of his favourite phrases, he ‘targeted’ on them. Hamish, in fact, looked rather like an Old Testament prophet who regretted shaving off his beard for a bet. Copper-beech red hair rippling to his collar, a wide noble forehead, smouldering hazel eyes beneath jutting black brows, and a fine, hooked nose with flaring nostrils lapsed into a petulant mouth and a receding chin. Hamish also loved the sound of his own voice, which reminded him of brown burns tumbling over mossy rocks in the Highlands. Having muscular hips and good legs, he also wore a kilt on every possible occasion.

He was now, however, soberly dressed in grey flannels, and applying a clothes brush to the small of his blazered back, as he grumbled about cat hair. The moment he’d borne Eddie, Violet and the shopping list off to work, Daisy felt guilty about making such a scene. With the pressure off, she started reading the Daily Mail .

‘I believe it is possible,’ a young American girl was quoted as saying, ‘to have a caring, supportive husband, cherishing children, and a high octane career.’

I have none of these things, thought Daisy, I only want to paint.

Later that evening she and Violet decorated the house. Violet organized a bucket of earth and red crêpe paper for the tree, and Daisy was comforted by the rituals of hanging up the same plastic angel with both legs firmly stuck together and the tinsel with split ends and the coloured balls which had lost their hooks, and had to be tucked into the branches until they fell prey to Gainsborough.