‘She promised Red she wouldn’t.’

‘Is she absolutely devastated?’

‘No, at least not about him. Daisy darling, can we talk about us?’

‘Poor you,’ said Daisy in horror. ‘You must have been . . .’

‘Ecstatic, giddy with relief. I’d psyched myself out for so long, obsessed with proving we could win the Westchester, obsessed with getting Chessie back because I felt so guilty about Will. I knew she was miserable with Bart and I’d driven her into his arms in the first place. Suddenly I was free. I felt a great burden falling off my back. Like one of Victor’s ponies at the end of a chukka.’

Daisy giggled.

‘I got the first plane back,’ Ricky went on, ‘getting more and more panicky because I couldn’t get you on the telephone. Did you know there’s been a hurricane? London’s out of action. The Stock Exchange has stopped trading. Fifteen million trees have been blown down.’

‘That’s nothing to losing you,’ said Daisy simply. ‘When I saw Chessie leaping on you and looking so beautiful, I was so unhappy I just got drunk.’

‘I was worried you’d see that,’ admitted Ricky, ‘and I was worried Drew was in Rutshire, festering because we hadn’t asked him to play.’

‘Drew?’ stammered Daisy, going even pinker.

‘Drew,’ said Ricky acidly and told her about finding the puppies eating Drew’s shoe the day before he left. ‘Jesus, I was jealous!’

‘Oh, how awful! I’m so sorry.’

‘I’ll forgive you if you never, never, sleep with him again.’ Ricky cut short her frantic apologies with another kiss, then he drew her head against his chest, stroking her hair.

‘It’s strange,’ he said slowly. ‘I feel so safe when you’re in my arms, but all I want to do is to make you feel safe. You’ve always reminded me of a stray bitch chucked out for getting in pup, who, although she looked after all her puppies in the wild really well, needed a loving master and a home.’

‘Oh, I did,’ sighed Daisy.

‘It’s also a dreadful confession,’ said Ricky, ‘but it’s the first time in my life I’ve loved something more than polo. My nerve failed me at the beginning of that third match, I didn’t want to win because subconsciously I didn’t want Chessie back.’

Snuggling her face happily into his chest, Daisy suddenly saw pink spots before her eyes. Could it be her hangover? Then she blinked again and, putting her hand up, realized they were real pink silk spots on a blue background.

‘You’ve left off your black tie,’ she said in amazement.

Ricky glanced down. For a second he, too, had difficulty speaking.

‘I don’t have to wear it any more. The mourning’s over.’

Wonderingly, Daisy put her hand up and touched the scar on his face. For a second he flinched, then his hand closed over hers. ‘Darling, darling Daisy, are you quite sure you don’t mind being a double parent again?’

Suddenly he looked so vulnerable that Daisy put her arms round his neck and kissed him. They were so engrossed they didn’t hear the dogs barking or pause for breath until Violet appeared in the doorway.

‘Hi, Mum. I’m back. Christ!’

‘Bugger off,’ ordered Ricky. ‘We’re busy.’

‘Okey’doke,’ said Violet.

But two minutes later she put her head round the door with a faint smirk. ‘Sorry to interrupt you two love birds, but it’s Drew on the telephone for you, Mum.’

Ricky’s eyes narrowed. ‘It is bloody not,’ he howled, loping back into the house. Temporarily blinded after the sunlight, he snatched the receiver from Violet.

‘Drew? You can fuck off, and if you ever come within a million miles of Daisy, I’ll smash your head in – and break your bloody jaw. Pity Angel didn’t do it properly the first time,’ and he crashed the receiver back on the hook.

Violet whistled. ‘Wowee! Macho man.’

‘Don’t you get lippy with me, miss,’ snapped Ricky. ‘I’m going to be your new stepfather.’

For a second they glared at each other, then Violet giggled.

‘I had guessed. Look, I’m really, really, pleased. Mum adores you so much. She’s been madly in love with you for yonks.’

Ricky blushed and was about to return to Daisy in the garden when he knocked over the nude of Drew which had been leaning inward against the kitchen table.

‘My God,’ he exploded.

‘I quite agree,’ said Violet. ‘That is definitely one for the log basket.’


76



A very subdued Perdita returned from Palm Springs. She was delighted – despite Daisy’s apprehension – that her mother and Ricky were getting married, but their almost incandescent happiness only emphasized her utter desolation. The telephone rang constantly with patrons suddenly finding a hole in next year’s team for a five-goal player. But she accepted nothing. She just thought about Luke and cursed herself for not having had the courage to tell him how much she loved him. But surely if he’d felt anything he would have come forward. Perhaps he did love that cool, stylish lawyer with the warm eyes. Daisy was spending most of her time up at Robinsgrove which gave Perdita the chance endlessly to watch videos of the Westchester and marvel at Luke’s unselfishness and his sheer bloody-minded tenacity.

Ricky and Daisy had wanted a quiet wedding at Rutminster Register Office, but as usual the carnival took over and every polo player in the land – except Drew who’d been banned by Ricky – seemed to have rolled up with polo sticks to form a guard of honour outside Eldercombe Church. Daisy wore a dark green velvet suit with a pillbox hat which kept sliding off her newly washed piled-up hair. She looked so radiant no one noticed the ladder in her tights nor the inch of red silk petticoat hanging beneath her hem, nor the mud on her heels from taking the puppies out in the garden before she left.

Rupert, who, on the Chairman of Revlon’s advice, had gone liquid before the stock exchange crash which occurred a few days after the final of the Westchester, insisted on throwing a party for them afterwards. Eddie, euphoric to be out of school and at the prospect of endless fishing and shooting ahead, confided to Perdita in a lull in the service that Taggie and Rupert were planning a surprise party for her twenty-first birthday next week and he hoped to wrangle another day off school. But this did little to raise Perdita’s spirits. Then, to crown it, they sang ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ during the signing of the register. When they came to the bit about the ‘Still Small Voice of Calm’ speaking through the ‘Earthquake, Wind and Fire’, Perdita was so sharply reminded of Luke that she fled out of a side door.

Rupert found her, oblivious of the icy wind and a lurking circle of press, sobbing pitifully against a yew tree and hustled her into his car.

‘I didn’t mean to screw up Mum’s wedding,’ she choked, ‘but I can’t bear it.’

Rupert got a hip flask out of the dashboard.

‘I brought this to steady Ricky’s nerves. Forgot he didn’t drink. Have a great slug. Warm you up. Look, I know how ghastly these things are.’ He put a hand on her heaving shoulders, appalled by the jagged edges of collarbone and shoulder-blade. ‘I never really understood unhappiness until I thought I wouldn’t end up with Tag.’

‘Luke’s like Taggie,’ sobbed Perdita. ‘They’re both seriously good people.’

‘And prodigals like you and me are far too insecure to find happiness with any other kind of person. You turned Luke down once – told him never to come near you again. You’ll have to make the first move.’

Putting a hand in his inside pocket he drew out a Coutts cheque book and a fountain pen.

‘It’s your birthday next week. We’re both Scorpios.’

‘I know. Eddie said you might be giving me a party. It’s really kind but I couldn’t.’

‘Sure,’ said Rupert. ‘But you can’t stop being twenty-one. I’ve been meaning to settle some money on you. Ricky’s always said the thing that you craved most was financial security. This should be a start.’

In his big blue scrawl he wrote her a cheque for £100,000.

Over in Florida, Luke was slowly going out of his mind with misery. Seeing Perdita at Palm Springs had made everything a million times worse. He had finally levelled with Margie, telling her it could never work out. Now he wanted to slink into his lair and die. But, with Red disappearing with Chessie and Angel shoved off with Bibi to play in the Argentine Open, there was no-one to cope with the Herculean task of comforting a maddened, desperately humiliated Bart.

For not only had Bart lost his wife, but his fortune as well. In his obsession with polo he had neglected his business and totally failed to anticipate the stock market collapse. Black Monday had cost him over a billion and chopped the value of Alderton Airlines by ninety-five per cent. Bart had also borrowed heavily to take over oil and property companies, gold mines, theatres and big department stores. Now these had to be sold off for virtually nothing, most of them to a gloating Victor, when the Wall Street merchant banker withdrew a $330,000,000 loan which Bart desperately needed to help lower his enormous interest charges at other banks. He had also had to sell his five houses and put El Paradiso on the market.

Bart was very unpopular, so no friends came forward to bail him out, particularly in the polo world. Ponies he had spent $100,000 on were now being sold off for a fifth of the price. He had enough to live on and would no doubt claw his way back one day, but he couldn’t support a polo team.

The only good thing that had come out of the whole sorry business, reflected Luke, was that his father and he had at last become friends.