‘Plastered,’ said one of the traffic cops, shaking his head, ‘and neither of them wearing seat belts.’

Then, as the moon came out, he noticed the polo stickers on the windscreen and the little silver pony clutched in Will’s hand.

‘Christ, it’s Ricky France-Lynch,’ he said.

As his companion rang for an ambulance, he tried to coax Millicent out of the back. Seeing Ricky’s licence on the floor, he flipped through it.

‘Thought as much,’ he muttered. ‘Two drunk-driving charges already. They’ll clobber him for manslaughter, poor sod. He thought the world of that kid, poor little bugger.’


8



Nearly four months after William France-Lynch was killed in a car crash and his father arrested on charges of manslaughter and drunken driving, Perdita Macleod broke up for the Christmas holidays. Having been expelled from Queen Augusta’s for carousing with the Carlisle twins and walking out of her English exam, she had been dispatched to an even stricter and more expensive boarding school. Only the threat that she wouldn’t be given a polo pony for Christmas had prevented her running away.

To the bliss of breaking up was the added thrill that her mother and stepfather had at last moved into Brock House, a rambling medieval rectory on the Rutshire-Gloucestershire border. Six miles from Rutshire Polo Club, it was, even more excitingly, only two miles from Eldercombe, the village in which Ricky France-Lynch lived. Although the poor darling, Perdita reflected bitterly, was still cooling his heels in Rutminster gaol awaiting trial.

Terrified lest her mother would be eccentrically dressed or, even worse, blub in ‘Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem’, Perdita had failed to send home the invitation to the end-of-term carol service, merely telling her to pick her up afterwards. Perdita was normally too idle to lift anything heavier than a cigarette, but today, in the hope of a lightning getaway, she had lugged her trunk, her record player, carrier bags full of posters, dirty washing, polo magazines, holiday work (some hope), Vivaldi the hampster and a yucca called Kevin down three flights of stairs and piled them up outside her school house.

Alas, just as everyone was spilling out of chapel – identikit mothers in on-the-knee suits, identikit fathers in fawn coats with brown velvet collars – Perdita’s mother, Daisy, rolled up in an absolutely filthy, falling-apart Mini and immediately started tooting and waving like a rainbow windmill. Abandoning the car and blocking everyone’s way, she ran across the tarmac to fling her arms round her daughter.

Finally Perdita, crimson in the face, was able to wriggle free and start hurling carrier bags into the car, as the held-up traffic tooted and everyone, particularly the fawn-coated fathers, stared in amazement.

Why, thought Perdita savagely, does my mother have to be so wacky, and so demonstrative, and, even worse, look half the age of any of the other mothers? Daisy in fact looked adorable. In her early thirties, she had the round, grave, dark brown eyes, the rosy cheeks, the long, straight, shiny brown hair parted in the middle, and gaudy taste in clothes of a Matrioska doll.

But when she stopped worrying and smiled, her eyes had the joyous sparkle and her mouth the dark pink bewitching softness of Hogarth’s Shrimp Girl. Today she was less gaudy than usual. Trying to catch a landscape in a certain light before she left, she had forgotten to take off her painting smock or wash the Alizarin crimson off her hands and looked as if she’d been killing a pig. On her left cheek was a large splodge of burnt sienna, which she’d used to capture the faded ginger of the oak woods beneath the new house.

‘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.