WINSTON CHALMERS: A shit-hot American lawyer.

LUCY CHALMERS: His ravishing much younger wife.

DORIS CHOW: A Chinese hooker.

KEVIN COLEY: A petfood billionaire and polo patron of Doggie Dins.

ENID COLEY: His awful wife.

TRACE COLEY: His daughter.

CONCHITA: Bart Alderton's maid.

CAMERON COOK: Director of Programmes at Corinium Television.

JACKIE COSGRAVE: Hippy painter and art lecturer. Also proficient in the art of lechery.

BRAD DILLON: Team manager of the American polo team.

RICKY FRANCE-LYNCH: A nine-goal English polo player, nicknamed El Orgulloso – the proud one – by the other players.

CHESSIE FRANCE-LYNCH: His bored, but exquisitely beautiful, wife.

WILLIAM FRANCE-LYNCH: Their three-year-old son.

HERBERT FRANCE-LYNCH: Ricky's father. A tartar and former nine-goal polo player.

FRANCES: Ricky France-Lynch's head groom.

DINO FERRANTI: American show-jumper. Sales Director of Ferranti's Inc.

BOBBY FERRARO: An American polo player.

COMMANDER 'FATTY': Club Secretary of Rutshire HARRIS: Polo Club.

SIMPSON HASTINGS: A lethal American journalist.

PAUL HEDLEY: A member of the crack South Sussex Pony Club team.

BRIGADIER HUGHIE: Chairman of Rutshire Polo Club and the club bore.

MRS HUGHIE: His wife.

INOCENTA: A misnamed Argentine beauty.

JESUS: A nine-goal Chilean polo player given to telephonitis and treble-dating patrons.

JOEL: Ricky France-Lynch's farm manager.

BEATTIE JOHNSON: A seductive, unprincipled, Fleet Street columnist.

JOSÉ: A glamorous Mexican ringer.

VICTOR KAPUTNIK: A Hungarian pharmaceutical billionaire, patron of the Kaputnik Tigers.

SHARON KAPUTNIK: A nymphomaniac night-club hostess later married to Victor.

MARMADUKE KEMPTON: A tobacco baron.

AURIEL KINGHAM: A very famous American film star.

MISS LEDITSKY: Bart Alderton's secretary.

BILLY LLOYD-FOXE: Ex-England show-jumper and BBC Sports Presenter.

JANEY LLOYD-FOXE: A national newspaper columnist.

MISS LODSWORTH: Commissioner for Rutshire Girl Guides, hoary polo groupie and a rip-roaring busybody.

JUSTIN AND PATRICK

LOMBARD: Brothers and members of Rutshire Pony Club polo team.

LOUISA: One of Ricky France-Lynch's grooms.

HAMISH MACLEOD: A television producer.

DAISY MACLEOD: His wife, a painter.

PERDITA MACLEOD: Daisy's daughter.

VIOLET MACLEOD: Hamish's and Daisy's daughter.

EDDIE MACLEOD: Hamish's and Daisy's son.

BRIDGET MACLEOD: Hamish's mother, an absolute bitch.

'DANCER' MAITLAND: A cockney rock star. Lead singer of Apocalypse.

LIONEL MANNERING: A goaty psychiatrist.

PHILIPPA MANNERING: His man-eating wife.

MANUEL: Bart Alderton's groom.

LANDO MEDICI: A bent polo patron.

ALEJANDRO MENDOZA: A ten-goal Argentine polo player, the greatest back in the world.

CLAUDIA MENDOZA: His wife.

LORENZO, LUIS AND PATRICIO MENDOZA: Alejandro's elder sons. All polo players.

CASSANDRA MURDOCH: Luke Alderton's girlfriend.

BEN AND CHARLES NAPIER: Eight-goal English polo players and brothers known as the Unheavenly Twins.

SHARK NELLIGAN: A nine-goal American polo player.

SETH NEWCOMBE: An ace American bone surgeon.

JUAN O'BRIEN: A ten-goal Argentine polo player. David Waterlane's hired assassin.

MIGUEL O'BRIEN: Juan's elder brother. Another ten-goal polo player and David Waterlane's second hired assassin.

TINY O'BRIEN: Juan's wife known variously as Sitting Bully and the Policia.

ROSIE O'GRADY: A comely nurse.

DECLAN O'HARA: An Irish television megastar.

MAUD O'HARA: His actress wife.

PATRICK O'HARA: His son.

TAGGIE O'HARA: His elder daughter. An angel.

CAITLIN O'HARA: His younger daughter.

MRS PAGET: A committee member of a London Adoption Society.

HAL PETERS: An American automobile billionaire and born-again Christian. Polo patron of Peters' Cheetahs.

MYRTLE PETERS: His wife.

RAIMUNDO: Alejandro's peticero and Master of the Horse.

SAMANTHA: Shark Nelligan's glamorous groom.

RANDY SHERWOOD: A Pony Club Adonis, member of the crack South Sussex polo team.

MERLIN SHERWOOD: Randy's younger brother, another Adonis, playing for South Sussex.

MRS SHERWOOD: Their glamorous mother.

ANGEL SOLIS DE GONZALES: An Argentine polo player and Falklands war pilot, whose brother Pedro was shot down and killed.

BETTY SOLIS DE GONZALES: Angel's aunt.

UMBERTO: Alejandro's groom.

HELMET WALLSTEIN: Chief Executive, Euro-Electronics.

GISELA WALLSTEIN: His wife.

SIR DAVID WATERLANE, BART: Owner of Rutminster Hall, patron of Rutshire Hall polo team.

CLEMENCY WATERLANE: His wandering wife.

MIKE WATERLANE: His son, also a polo player.

WENDY: Hamish Macleod's PA.


1


Queen Augusta’s Boarding School for Girls has a splendid academic reputation, but on a sweltering afternoon in June one of its pupils was not paying attention to her English exam. While her classmates scribbled away, Perdita Macleod was drawing a polo pony. Outside, the scent of honeysuckle drifted in through the french windows, the cuckoo called from an acid-green poplar copse at the end of the lawn. Perdita, gazing out, thought longingly of the big tournament at Rutshire Polo Club where the semi-finals of the Rutshire Cup were being played. All her heroes were taking part: Ricky France-Lynch, Drew Benedict, Seb and Dommie Carlisle, the mighty Argentines, Miguel and Juan O’Brien, and, to crown it, the Prince of Wales.

Fretfully, Perdita glanced at her exam paper which began with a poem by Newbolt:


‘And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat,’ she read,

‘Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame,

But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote –

Play up! Play up! and play the game!’

‘Are Newbolt’s views of team spirit outdated?’ asked the first question. Perdita took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote ‘Yes’ in her disdainful blue scrawl, ‘the schoolboy in the poem must be an utter jerk and a poofter to boot to prefer his captain’s hand on his shoulder to a season’s fame and a ribboned coat.’

She put down her pen and thought how much she’d like a ribboned coat, one of those powder-blue blazers, braided with jade-green silk. Hamish, her ghastly stepfather, never gave her nearly a large enough allowance. Then she thought of fame. Perdita wanted to be a famous polo player more than anything else in the world. Being at a boarding school, she could not play in the term-time and had so far only achieved the first team of a suburban pony club of hopelessly low standard. When her family moved to their splendid new house in Rutshire in the autumn, however, she’d be able to have a pony and join a good club like Rutshire or Cirencester just over the border.

God, she was bored with this exam. She lit a cigarette, hoping it would encourage her form-mistress, who was adjudicating, to expel her. But, despite the furious wavings of paper by the swot on her right, her form-mistress didn’t react. She was far too engrossed in Perdita’s Jackie Collins, which she’d confiscated the day before and round which she’d now wrapped the dust jacket of Hilary Spurling’s biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett.

Perdita took another drag and glanced at the next question: ‘Do you find the poems of Thomas Hardy unduly preoccupied with death?’

It wasn’t an afternoon for death. Perdita slid through the french windows across the sunlit lawn. Once out into Rutminster High Street, she tugged out the tails and undid the top buttons of her shirt, hitched up her navy-blue skirt a few inches and wrinkled her navy-blue socks. Conscious that men fancied schoolgirls, she left on her black and pink striped tie, but loosened her hair from its tortoiseshell clasp so it cascaded white-blond down her back, eliciting wolf-whistles from two workmen mending the road.

Perdita stuck her nose in the air; her sights were set higher than roadmenders. She was a big girl for fourteen, tall and broad in the shoulder, with pale, luminous skin and a full, sulky mouth. A long Greek nose and large, very wide-apart eyes, as dark as elderberries, gave her the look of a creature of fable, a unicorn that might vanish at any moment.