EDWARD BARTHOLOMEW ALDERTON

A significant grandchild.


ARCHANGEL MIKE

Landlord of The Pearly Gates Public House and captain of Paradise Cricket XI.


JULIA ARMSTRONG

A passionate painter.


BEN ARMSTRONG

Her husband — a caring beard in computers.


ASTRID

A comely Palm Beach groom.


MISS BATES

A temp with tempting ankles.


BEATRICE

A fair flautist misused by Rannaldini.


JAMES BENSON

A very smooth private doctor.


BONNY

A Palm Beach polo groupie.


SABINE BOTTOMLEY

Headmistress of Bagley Hall — a less caring beard.


TEDDY BRIMSCOMBE

Larry Lockton’s gardener.


MRS BRIMSCOMBE

His wife.


BUNNY

An ace Gloucestershire vet.


RUPERT CAMPBELL-BLACK

Multi-millionaire owner/ trainer, ex-world show-jumping champion, Mecca for most women.


TAGGIE CAMPBELL-BLACK

His second wife — an angel.


MARCUS CAMPBELL-BLACK

His son — an embryo concert pianist.


TABITHA CAMPBELL-BLACK

His daughter — a teenage tearaway.


SEB AND DOMMIE CARLISLE

The heavenly twins. Vastly brave professional polo players, whose serious wildness has been tempered by the recession.


CHLOE CATFORD

Talented mezzo-soprano and Boris Levitsky’s mistress.


BLUEY CHARTERIS

Rupert Campbell-Black’s first jockey.


LADY CHISLEDEN

An old boot and a pillar of Paradise.


CLIVE

Rannaldini’s sinister black-leather-clad henchman.


MRS COLMAN

David Hawkley’s secretary — nicknamed ‘Mustard’ by the boys because she’s so keen on him.


CAMERON COOK

A talented television termagent.


MISS CRICKLADE

Winner of the home-made wine class at Paradise Church fete for ten years running.


DANNY

One of Rupert Campbell- Black’s stable lads.


DIZZY

Rupert Campbell-Black’s head groom. A glamorous divorcee.


FERDINAND FITZGERALD

Fat Ferdie. Lysander Hawkley’s best friend and minder. Estate agent and fixer who is riding the recession with a cowboy’s skill.


RICKY FRANCE-LYNCH

Polo captain of England.


DAISY FRANCE-LYNCH

His painter wife, a friend of Julia Armstrong.


GERALDINE

Guy Seymour’s London secretary.


GRAYDON GLUCKSTEIN

Chairman of the New World Philharmonic Orchestra.


HELEN GORDON

Rupert Cambell-Black’s first wife.


BOB HAREFIELD

Orchestra manager of the London Met. A saint.


HERMIONE HAREFIELD

His seriously tiresome wife. Rannaldini’s mistress. One of the world’s leading sopranos and an applause junkie.


LITTLE COSMO HAREFIELD

A four-year-old fiend.


LYSANDER HAWKLEY

A hero of our time.


DAVID ‘HATCHET’ HAWKLEY

Lysander’s father and an unmerry widower. Headmaster of Fleetley — a top English public school.


DINAH HAWKLEY

An old soak, and the widow of David Hawkley’s much older brother, Alastair.


HEINZ

A colourless assistant conductor at the London Met.


THE REVEREND PERCIVAL HILLARY

A portly parson who confines his pastoral visits to drinks time.


JOY HILLARY

His wife. A bossy boots.


BEATTIE JOHNSON

A seductive, totally unprincipled journalist.


FREDDIE JONES

Electronics supremo and director of Venturer Television.


BORIS LEVITSKY

A glamorous, temperamental composer who defected from Russia in the eighties. Assistant conductor at the London Met and lover of red wine, red meat and red-blooded women.


RACHEL LEVITSKY

His English wife. A concert pianist who has sacrificed her career to bring up two children: Vanya and Masha. Performs under her maiden name, Rachel Grant.


LARRY LOCKTON

Chief Executive of Catchitune Records and a rough diamond.


MARIGOLD LOCKTON

His once-ravishing wife, who is finding to her cost that rough diamonds are not for ever.


ISAAC LOVELL

A brilliant jump jockey.


SHERRY MACARTHY

A ravishing neglected American wife.


GEORGIE MAGUIRE

A sixties singer/songwriter and sex symbol. Slightly long-in-the-capped tooth, but poised for a massive come-back.


DANCER MAITLAND

A rock star.


MARCIA MELLING

A susceptible divorcee, one of Rupert Campbell-Black’s owners.


OSWALDO

A colourful guest conductor of the London Met.


MR PANDOPOULOS

Another of Rupert Campbell-Black’s owners.


MRS PIGGOTT

Georgie Maguire’s daily. Nicknamed Mother Courage because of her fondness for a pint of beer.


ROBERTO RANNALDINI

One of the world’s greatest conductors. Musical director of the London Met and a very evil genius.


KITTY RANNALDINI

His much younger third wife who runs his life like clockwork.


WOLFGANG RANNALDINI

Rannaldini’s son from his first marriage, a good sort.


NATASHA RANNALDINI

Rannaldini’s daughter from his second marriage: a handful in all senses of the word.


CECILIA RANNALDINI

Rannaldini’s second wife and a world famous diva. Given to throwing plates and tantrums.


GUY SEYMOUR

A bishop’s son and Georgie Maguire’s very decent and rather unlikely husband. Owner of London art gallery and nurser of talent.


FLORA SEYMOUR

Guy’s and Georgie’s wild child.


MEREDITH WHALEN

A highly expensive gay interior designer, known as the Ideal Homo because he’s always being asked as a spare man for deserted wives at Paradise dinner parties.


ELMER WINTERTON

American Security billionaire. Chief executive of Safus Houses Inc. and a philandering Palm Beach polo patron.


MARTHA WINTERTON

His ravishing neglected second wife.


1



Lysander Hawkley appeared to have everything. At twenty-two, he was tall, broad-shouldered, heart-stoppingly handsome, wildly affectionate, with a wall-to-wall smile that withered women. In January 1990 at the finals of a Palm Beach polo tournament, this hero of our time was lying slumped on a Prussian-blue rug in the pony lines sleeping off the excesses of the night before.

The higher the standard of polo the better looking tend to be both grooms and ponies. On this punishingly hot, muggy day, all around Lysander beautiful girls in Prussian-blue shirts and baseball caps were engaged in the frantic activity of getting twenty-four ponies ready for the match. But, trying not to wake him, they swore under their breaths as they bandaged and tacked-up charges driven demented by an invasion of mosquitoes. And, if they could, these beautiful girls would have hushed the thunder that grumbled irritably along the flat, palm-tree fringed horizon.

But Lysander didn’t stir — not even when an Argentine groom working for the opposition jumped a pony clean over him on the way to the warm-up area, nor when two of his team mates, the Carlisle twins, Sebastian and Dominic, roared up in a dark green Aston Martin yelling in rage and relief that they’d finally tracked him down.

People loved doing things for Lysander. The grooms had kept their voices down. In the same way Seb and Dommie, both England polo internationals, had persuaded Elmer Winterton, the security billionaire who employed them for the Palm Beach season, to fly Lysander out as a substitute when the fourth member of the team had broken his shoulder in the semi-finals.

‘The little fucker,’ howled Seb, leaping out of the car, ‘after all the trouble we took getting him the job.’

‘He rewards us by getting rat-assed,’ said Dommie.

Together they gazed indignantly down at Lysander, sprawled lean-hipped and loose-limbed as a lurcher puppy. Lazily he stretched out and raked a mosquito bite in his sleep.

‘No-one looking at that angelic inertia,’ went on Dommie grimly, ‘could imagine his ability for wanton destruction when he’s awake.’

‘Well, if he channels some of that ability against the opposition we’ll be OK,’ said Seb, and, picking up a Prussian-blue bucket, he dashed the contents into Lysander’s face. ‘Come on, Mr Hawkley. This is your wake-up call.’

‘What the fuck?’ Leaping as though he’d been electrocuted, frantically wiping dirty water out of his eyes, Lysander slowly and painfully focused on two, round, ruffian faces and four dissipated blue eyes glaring down at him from under thick blond fringes.

‘Oh, it’s you two,’ he groaned. ‘For a terrible moment I thought I was seeing double. What the hell are you trying to do to me?’

‘Nothing to what you’re doing to yourself,’ said Seb briskly. ‘Game starts in half an hour. Get your ass into gear.’

‘Did you pull that blonde?’ asked Dommie, unbuttoning his grey-striped shirt and selecting a Prussian-blue polo shirt from the back of the Aston Martin.