Jilly Cooper - Polo

As he went into his box Wayne was still pawing his belly. Then, slumping against the wall, he crashed to the ground.

‘I’ll give him a massive jab of vitamin B,’ said Phil when he’d examined him, ‘and some Buscopan. It’s obviously hurting him. Then we’d better get some fluids inside him. I guess it’s twisted gut. Where’s he been?’

‘Escaped to Eldercombe, got into Miss L-L-Lodsworth’s garden.’

‘Jesus, you’d think he’d been programmed.’

As Phil loaded his syringe and Ricky tried to calm the terrified pony, whose eyes were quite glazed now, they heard frantic barking outside.

Next minute Miss Lodsworth’s head appeared over the half-door, looking even more like a horse than Wayne.

‘I’ve come to make a complaint.’

‘Not now,’ said Phil, who was holding the needle up to remove the air bubbles.

‘Piss off,’ muttered Ricky under his breath.

‘I must speak to someone.’

‘Can you wait somewhere else?’ snapped Phil. ‘I’m sorry, but we’ve got a critically sick horse here.’

‘Sick, my eye,’ thundered Miss Lodsworth, ‘That horse isn’t sick, it’s dead drunk. It’s just eaten all my cider apples.’ There was a long pause. Crouching down, Phil sniffed Wayne’s breath.

‘I do believe you’re right. How many apples d’you reckon he ate?’

‘Close on a hundred.’

Ricky never thought he’d want to hug Miss Lodsworth.

‘Are you sure?’ he said, getting to his feet.

As he plunged the needle into Wayne’s shoulder, Phil started to laugh. A second later, Dommie Carlisle, shivering slightly in just boxer shorts, appeared beside Miss Lodsworth.

‘You’ve found him. Thank Christ. I’ve been looking everywhere. What’s the matter with him?’

‘Pissed as a newt,’ said Ricky.

‘I’m surprised you treat the matter so lightly,’ bristled Miss Lodsworth. ‘What about my apples?’

‘He ought to have some painkillers,’ said Phil, ‘and we ought to get some fluids into him. Don’t want him to wreck his liver.’ But Wayne was sleeping peacefully.

‘Better lay on some Fernet Branca for the morning,’ said Dommie. ‘I think I deserve a drink, Ricky.’

‘You all deserve a drink,’ said Ricky turning to Miss Lodsworth. ‘I’m frightfully s-s-sorry. I’ll refund you for the apples, and any other damage. I haven’t got any cider, but I can offer you plenty of whisky.’

Miss Lodsworth had had a long day. ‘Oh all right, I haven’t been inside this house since I used to come here to dances when your father was a boy. Not that he ever danced with me.’

After Ricky’d settled them in the drawing room with drinks, he went in search of Perdita. She wasn’t on the wooden horse or in the yard or in the tack room. Little Chef tracked her down in the pink dusk at the bottom of the garden, with her arms round an apple tree, sobbing her heart out.

‘Please God, make Wayne better,’ she was saying over and over again, then started as Little Chef stood up on his stumpy back legs to lick her hand.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she wailed. ‘Please give me another chance. I love it here so much. I promise not to cheek Frances and cut corners. I just love the ponies and Cheffie – and you – so much,’ she couldn’t stop herself adding.

In a year of working for him she had never cried or apologized. She looked so forlorn, so utterly defeated, her head drooping like a snowdrop, her wonderfully lithe body clinging almost orgiastically to the tree trunk. Ricky had to steel himself not to take her in his arms, but he would have been putting a match to a petrol-soaked bonfire, and he didn’t want to hate himself any more than he did already.

‘It’s OK,’ he said gently. ‘He’s not ill, just drunk. He’d helped himself to Miss Lodsworth’s cider apples.’

‘Oh, my God! Will he be OK?’

‘Fine, except for a thumping hangover. But you can’t afford to make mistakes like that. He might have got on to the motorway.’

‘Like Little Chef,’ shuddered Perdita, starting to cry again. ‘That’s what makes it so awful.’

‘I over-reacted,’ said Ricky dropping a hand on her hair. ‘You can start full time next week if you like.’

‘Oh, you are lovely.’ Seizing his hand, Perdita covered it with kisses. ‘I could make you better. I really do love you.’

Ricky felt dizzy. It was so long since he’d wanted someone like this.

‘No, you don’t,’ he said firmly. ‘You ought to be meeting more boys your own age, not lechers like Bas and the twins. If you’re coming to work here full time, you’re bloody well going to join the Pony Club.’

Polo is largely a matter of pony power. Having left the Army, Drew Benedict had spent a great deal of Sukey’s money buying really good ponies. With these he turned his game around and was gratified when his handicap was raised to eight in the autumn listings a year later. The following year, after an excellent May and June playing for David Waterlane, Drew felt he ought to put something back into the game. He therefore agreed to coach the Rutshire Pony Club for the polo championships, the finals of which were held at Cowdray at the end of July. Drew also quite liked an excuse to get away from Sukey on summer evenings. Used to commanding platoons, he was determined to knock the Rutshire teams into shape. One of his crosses was Perdita Macleod, who had now been working full time for Ricky for nine months and felt she knew everything.

Perdita, on the other hand, even though she was playing with seventeen to twenty-one year olds, regarded playing for the Pony Club as deeply infra dig. She loathed being parted from Ricky for a second, and Felicia, the ponies Ricky and Drew had lent her were still very green.

Consequently she never stopped bellyaching to Daisy about how all the other Pony Club members had at least three ponies, and how humiliating it was having to hack to meetings when everyone else rolled up either in the latest horse boxes with grooms, or driving Porsches with telephones. Nor, she told Daisy, did that ‘bloody old geriatric’ Drew Benedict ever stop picking on her, and all the other boys in the team were such wimps. ‘One of them started crying yesterday, when I hit him with my stick. It was only because he was using his elbows all the time. I tried to explain to Drew, but he just sent me off.’

‘Aren’t any of the boys attractive?’ enquired Daisy hopefully.

‘Not compared with Ricky,’ snapped Perdita, ‘and they all think Drew’s absolutely marvellous, because he’s an eight and a Falklands hero and all. He’s such a bastard.’

‘You’re always saying that about Ricky,’ said Daisy reasonably.

‘But I’m madly in love with Ricky, so I put up with it.’

It was nearly two and a half years since Hamish had walked out on Daisy and she could no longer claim to be madly in love with him, but she missed the presence of a man in her life, and her self-confidence was in tatters. By some miracle she had hung on to her job with the Caring Chauvinist, but she found it exhausting coping with that, and running the house, and looking after Perdita, and more and more after Violet and Eddie. Now Wendy had a daughter, called Bridget, after Biddy Macleod, Hamish seemed less interested in his older children. Snow Cottage simply wasn’t big enough for all of them, particularly when Perdita, who still hadn’t forgiven her mother, was always banging doors and making scenes.

Daisy, ever hopeful and optimistic, however, still made heroic efforts to win Perdita round. She couldn’t afford a car yet, but on the day of the final trials for the Pony Club Championships, which were held at Rutshire Polo Ground, she and Ethel took two buses and walked a mile in pouring rain to lend Perdita support.