Next to Grace sat Sukey Elliott, who’d got engaged to Drew Benedict the day before – hence Drew’s hangover. She seemed to remember every match played and goal scored by Drew in the last two seasons. A keen horsewoman herself, Sukey was the sort of girl who could get up and do the ponies if Drew had a hangover. Sukey had a neat, rather than an exciting, figure, and a horsey, not unattractive, face. Her light brown hair was taken off her forehead by a velvet bow. She was wearing a blue-spotted shirt-waister dress for the party Lady Waterlane always gave in her beautiful house across the park on the Thursday evening of Rutshire Cup Week.

Sukey would make the perfect army wife, always showing a charming deference to the wives of superiors, in this case Grace Alderton. But even more valuable in Drew’s eyes, Sukey possessed a hefty private income which, after marriage, would enable him to resign his commission and play polo full time.

‘We’re thinking of having our wedding list at either the General Trading Company or Peter Jones or Harrods. Which would you suggest?’ Sukey asked Grace.

On Sukey’s left in the row below sat Victor’s bimbo, a red-headed night-club hostess called Sharon, whose heavy eye make-up was running and whose uplifted breasts were already burning.

‘Blimey it’s ’ot,’ she said to Sukey. ‘Why do the ’orses keep bumpin’ into each uvver?’

Grace would have ignored Sharon, regarding her as both common and part of the opposition. Sukey was kinder and enjoyed imparting information.

‘It’s called a ride-off,’ she explained. ‘When a ball is hit, it creates its own right of way, and the player who hit it is entitled to hit it again. But if another player puts his horse’s shoulder in front of that first player’s horse’s shoulder, and a good horse will feel the pressure and push the other horse off the line, then the second player takes up the right of way. If you cross too closely in front of another rider – like someone shooting out in front of you on the motorway – it’s a foul.’

‘Ow, I see,’ said Sharon, who plainly didn’t. ‘And why does the scoreboard say Victor’s team’s winning when there seem to have been more goals down the uvver end?’

‘That’s because they change ends after each goal,’ said Sukey kindly, ‘so no-one gets the benefit of the wind.’

‘I could do with the benefit of some wind,’ said Sharon, fanning herself with her programme. ‘It’s bleedin’ ’ot.’

‘It is,’ agreed Sukey. ‘Would you like to borrow my hat?’

Grace Alderton thought Sukey was a lovely young woman who would make a splendid wife for Drew. She did not feel at all the same about Chessie France-Lynch who rolled up halfway through the fourth chukka in a coloured vest, no bra, frayed denim bermudas and torn pink espadrilles, clutching a large glass of Pimm’s and a copy of Barchester Towers. Chessie, who had bruised, scabious-blue eyes, and looked like a Botticelli angel who’d had too much nectar at lunchtime, made no secret of the fact that she found polo irredeemably boring. Being stuck at home with a three-year-old son, William, polishing silver cups and taking burnt meat out of the oven, because Ricky hadn’t got back from a match or was coping with some crisis in the yard, was not Chessie’s idea of marriage.

‘You’ve missed an exciting match, Francesca,’ said Grace pointedly.

‘I’d have been on time,’ grumbled Chessie, ‘if that goon in the bar didn’t take half an hour to make a Pimm’s.’

‘Better go and help out,’ said Commander Harris, the club’s secretary, known as ‘Fatty’, waddling off to the bar.

‘To help himself to another drink, the disgusting old soak,’ said Chessie. ‘Congratulations,’ she went on, sitting down next to Sukey. ‘When are you getting married?’

‘In September, so that Drew can finish the polo season.’

‘When did he propose?’

‘On Sunday. It was so sweet. He asked me to look after his signet ring before the match, then put it on my wedding-ring finger, and said would I, and now he’s bought me this heavenly ring.’

‘Nice,’ said Chessie, admiring the large but conventional diamond and sapphires. ‘Drew must have had to flog at least one of Bart’s ponies to pay for that.’

Grace’s red lips tightened, and even more so when the players, who always seemed to be playing on some distant part of the field, for once surged over to the four-inch-high wooden boards (as the sidelines are known in polo) near the stands. Ignoring Ricky’s yells to leave the ball, Bart barged in, missed an easy shot and enabled Seb Carlisle to whip the ball away to Dommie, his twin, who took it down the field and scored.

‘When I say fucking leave it, Bart, for fuck’s sake leave it,’ Ricky’s bellow of exasperation rang round the field, eliciting a furious entry in Grace’s red book and an extremely beady glance from Miss Lodsworth, a local bossy boots and one of the whiskery old trouts always present at polo matches.

‘It was my ball,’ shouted Bart. ‘I paid for this fucking team, and I’m going to hit the goddam ball . . .’

To lighten the atmosphere, as the players cantered back to change ponies after the fourth chukka, Sukey warmly informed Chessie that Ricky had already scored two splendid goals.

‘Good,’ said Chessie lightly. ‘We might not have black gloom all the way home for a change. He still won’t talk, mind you. Even if he wins, he’s too hyped up to say anything.’

Sukey’s total recap of the match was mercifully cut short by the arrival of one of Bas Baddingham’s gorgeous mistresses, a long-haired blonde called Ritz Maclaren. She and Chessie proceeded to gossip noisily about their friends until Grace hushed them reprovingly and asked Chessie what she intended to wear for Lady Waterlane’s party that evening.

‘What I’ve got on,’ said Chessie. ‘Until Ricky’s father relents and gives us some cash, or Ricky gets his polo act together, I can’t see myself ever affording a new dress. It’s the ponies that get new shoes in our house’ – she waved a torn espadrille hanging on the end of a dusty foot at Grace – ‘not me.’

‘It’s not very respectful to Lady Waterlane not to change,’ reproved Grace. To which Chessie replied that Clemency Waterlane would be so busy wrapped round Juan O’Brien, her husband’s Argentine pro, that she would hardly notice.

‘I can’t think why David Waterlane doesn’t boot Clemency out,’ said Ritz Maclaren, who was calmly removing her tights.

‘Terrified Juan would go as well,’ said Chessie. ‘David told Ricky there was no problem getting another wife, but he’d never find another hired assassin as good as Juan.’

‘Oh, good shot, Ricky,’ cried Sukey. ‘Do watch, Chessie; your husband’s playing so well.’

As the bell went to end the fifth chukka, Perdita raced down to the pony lines to catch a glimpse of Matilda, Ricky France-Lynch’s legendary blue roan, whom he always saved for the last chukka.

Ponies that had played in the fifth chukka, which, except for Victor’s, had had every ounce of strength pushed out of them, were coming off the field, drenched in sweat, nostrils blood-red as poppies, veins standing up like a network of snakes. Bart’s horse, having been yanked around, was pouring blood from a cut mouth, sending scarlet froth flying everywhere.

Grooms instantly went into a frenzy of activity, untacking each pony, sponging it down, throwing water over its head, taking down its tail. Other grooms were loading already dried-off ponies from earlier chukkas into lorries for the journey home, while still others were leading them round, or just holding them as they waited to go on, quivering with pitch-fright, while their riders towelled off the sweat and discussed tactics for the last chukka.

‘That Ricky France-Lynch’s got a wonderful eye,’ said the security man who was looking after the Prince’s Jack Russell.

He’s got wonderful eyes, thought Perdita wistfully. Deep-set, watchful, dark green as bay leaves and now, as they lighted on Matilda, his favourite pony, amazingly softened.

Before a game Matilda got so excited that her groom could hardly hold her. Snorting, neighing shrilly, kicking up the dust with stamping feet, watching the action with pricked ears, her dark eyes searched everywhere for Ricky. As he walked over, she gave a great deep whicker of joy. They had hardly been separated a day since she was a foal. She was the fastest pony he’d ever ridden, turned at the gallop, and once, when she’d bucked him off in a fit of high spirits, had raced after the rider who had the ball and blocked the shot. There wasn’t a player in the world who didn’t covet Matilda. And now Ricky was going to need all her skills: the Alderton Flyers were three down.

The last chukka was decidedly stormy. Ricky scored two goals, then Drew and Bas one each, putting the Flyers ahead. Then Bart, frantic he was the only member of the team without a goal, missed an easy shot and took his whip to his little brown pony.

‘It was your bloody fault, not the pony’s,’ howled Ricky, to the edification of the entire stand, ‘and for Christ’s sake get back.’

Evading Drew’s clutches yet again, Jesus, the Chilean, thundered towards goal. In a mood of altruism and probably seeing a chance to be forgiven for the £5,000 telephone bill, he put the ball just in front of Victor, his patron, who, connecting for the first time in the match, tipped it between the posts and levelled the score to cheers and whoops from all round the ground. Victor immediately waved his stick exuberantly at his red-headed night-club hostess, who was just thinking how much better looking every man in the field was than Victor.

‘Why’s Victor’s ’orse wearing so many straps? It looks like a bondage victim,’ she asked Sukey.