Jilly Cooper - Polo

Perdita, however, was deeply embarrassed to see her mother arriving in unsuitably colourful clothes and dripping wet hair, like a superannuated hippie. Why the hell couldn’t she turn up in a Barbour, a headscarf and a Volvo like everyone else’s mother? Nervous because she was due to play in two chukkas’ time, Perdita refused even to acknowledge Daisy’s presence.

Momentarily the rain had stopped. It was a hot, very muggy evening. The sun, making a guest appearance between frowning petrol-blue clouds, floodlit the dog daisies and hogweed in the long grass and turned the pitch a stinging viridian. A sweet waft of lime blossom mingled with the rank, sexy smell of drying nettles and elder flowers.

Daisy had brought her sketch pad, but found it difficult to capture the action and hold on to a straining Ethel. Perhaps she could let Ethel off. There seemed to be an awful lot of dogs around for her to play with. Liberated, Ethel frisked with a Jack Russell in a red, spotted scarf and wolfed up a half-eaten beefburger bun. Then, as the players came thundering down the boards, she joined the stampede, trying to steal the ball and nearly bringing down the pony of a fat child with pigtails, whose mother promptly started yelling at Daisy.

Fortunately her torrent of abuse was diluted by a downpour of even more torrential rain. All the mothers raced for their Volvos as the players struggled over to another part of the field. Sheltering her sketch pad under her shirt, Daisy looked helplessly around. She had no mackintosh. She’d just managed to catch a joyously soaked Ethel when a blond man with a flat cap pulled over his straight nose asked her if she’d like to sit in his Land-Rover.

‘It’s all right. I don’t mind the dog.’

Ethel clambered into the back and slobbered down his neck.

‘You are kind,’ said Daisy gratefully. ‘Being a Pisces, I normally love rain, but this shirt’s a bit see-through when it’s wet.’

She was wearing a fringed dark purple midi-skirt and a pink muslin shirt from the early seventies, which had tiny mirrors sewn into it, and which was clinging unashamedly to her breasts. Her dark hair fell damp and straight, just grazing her nipples.

‘You look like Midi Ha Ha,’ said the blond man, smiling slightly, but when Daisy unearthed a bottle of made-up vodka and orange from the chaos of her bag he shook his head.

Helping herself, Daisy noticed he never took his eyes off the play and was now turning on the windscreen wipers to watch a dark-haired boy coax a fat roan pony down the field. ‘That child’s definitely team potential, but the pony’s an absolute bitch, I must have a word with his parents. And Christ, that pony’s improved since last year.’ Then, consulting a list on the dashboard, ‘No, it hasn’t, it’s another pony. Do you want my coat?’

‘I’m fine.’ Daisy took another swig out of her bottle. ‘Midi Ha Ha. Laughing Vodka. At least I can’t be done for being drunk in charge of a setter.’

‘Nice dog,’ said the blond man, putting back a hand and rubbing Ethel behind the ears.

‘Isn’t she?’ agreed Daisy, who was beginning to perk up.

She noticed that the man was very handsome in a stolid, heavy-lidded, way. She would have to mix Manganese blue with a little Payne’s grey to get the colour of his eyes. He had a lovely mouth and lovely muscular thighs. Daisy suddenly wanted to check her face, and when he went off at the end of the chukka to talk to the next group playing, which included Perdita, she toned down her rosy cheeks and drenched her neck with Je Reviens, but failed to put the top back on properly, so it stank out the Land-Rover.

‘Je Reviens,’ said the blond man, sniffing as he got back inside. ‘And I did.’

‘You’re too young to have a child playing?’ asked Daisy, fishing.

‘Yes.’ Checking the list of players again, he opened the car door, yelling, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mark, you’re not on your man.’

‘Ought to be called Un-Mark,’ said Daisy, taking another swig. ‘I’m dying to find out which is Drew Benedict.’

‘Really?’

‘Ghastly old fossil,’ went on Daisy happily. ‘He’s giving Perdita such a hard time. I would have thought having worked for Ricky for nearly two years, she might be allowed to evolve her own style.’

She offered the diminishing bottle to him again.

Again he shook his head.

‘How’d you get on with Ricky?’ he asked.

‘Never see him. I just pay his farm manager our rent. He rides past occasionally. He still looks pretty miserable, but Dancer seems to have cheered him up, and the specialist says he’ll definitely be playing again next year.’

‘Then we’ll all have to look to our laurels,’ said the blond man, ‘but he’s not a good teacher. Too impatient and introverted, too obsessed with his own game.’

He’s got a sexy voice, thought Daisy, soft and very quiet. She wished she knew if he were married.

‘There are lots of boys playing,’ she said in surprise. ‘Perdita seems to be the only girl.’

‘Boys tend to avoid the Pony Club, because they’re always being told to keep their toes up and clean tack. Give them a stick and ball and it’s a different story. Some of them are pretty bloody impossible when they arrive. No idea how to play as a team or to think of other people. Most of them get far too much pocket money.’

‘Not Perdita’s problem,’ said Daisy.

‘Nor enough discipline. Parents’ marriages are so often breaking up.’

‘Hum – Perdita’s problem,’ sighed Daisy whose tongue had been totally loosened by drink on no lunch. ‘Everyone keeps telling me she needs a father. But it’s tricky if you’re a single parent – isn’t that a ghastly expression? If you go out at night looking for a father for your children, everyone brands you a whore. People like Philippa Mannering and Miss Lodsworth. D’you know them?’

‘Only too well.’

‘And if you’re too miserable because you’ve been deserted, people think you’re a drag and don’t ask you to parties. And if you’re too jolly, wives think you’re after their husbands. I feel like taking a pinger to parties to stop myself talking to anyone’s husband longer than two minutes. Even girlfriends I know really well get insanely jealous. Mind you, the husbands think you’re after them as well. If you don’t have a man, even the plainest ones think you’re dying for it.’

‘And are you?’ asked the blond man, who was watching Perdita jump the boards and execute a particularly dazzling back shot. ‘Good girl, she kept her head down.’

‘Not really, but on lovely days you’re suddenly overwhelmed with longing to be in love again.’

He turned and looked at her. Did she detect compassion or was it slight wistfulness in those incredibly direct blue eyes? She was just thinking how easy he’d be to fall in love with, and that she really mustn’t start cradle-snatching when he said, ‘Perdita’s seriously good. She’s already been picked for the Jack Gannon, that’s the eighteen to twenty-one group. But she ought to apply for a Pony Club polo scholarship.’

‘What’d that entail?’

‘Six months in New Zealand or Australia. The BPA pay for her ticket out there and put her in a yard. She’d get pocket money. In return she’d look after the ponies, school them and play polo.’

‘Oh, how wonderful,’ sighed Daisy, thinking longingly of the peace at home; then added hastily, ‘For Perdita, of course.’

‘They have to be heavily vetted beforehand, so they don’t let the side down. Some winners in the past have been temperamental and failed to get up in the morning, but on the whole they go out as boys and come back as men.’

‘I hope Perdita doesn’t grow hairs on her chest,’ giggled Daisy. ‘Sorry, I’m being silly. It’s a wonderful idea, but I’m sure Drew Benedict won’t allow it.’