Desperate to show what she could do, Perdita completely mis-hit three b.a.l.l.s in a row.

'You're not watching the ball.'

Wayne, getting crafty, skedaddled so near the ball that she couldn't hit it without bashing his legs. She missed again.

'f.u.c.king h.e.l.l,' she screamed.

'Now she'll go to pieces,' said Frances happily. 'Come here,' said Ricky.

Dripping with sweat and blood, make-up streaking her face like a clown caught in a deluge, Perdita rode sulkily up to him.

'Calm down,' he said gently. 'You're going too fast and getting uptight, and he knows it. And keep at him with your left leg or he'll move in.'

Back she went, chattering with rage and panic. 'Please G.o.d, or he'll never take me on.'

Slowly Ricky took her through it. 'Don't cut the corner; up out of the saddle; bend over; look at the ball; begin your swing; keep watching the ball; head over the ball.'

Crack! Stick and ball connected in an exquisitely timed shot.

'Bingo!' Perdita threw her stick into the air, ten feet high, and caught it. 'That was perfect.'

'You hit it too late, and don't throw your stick in the air. It's dangerous.'

'Better a stick in the air than a stick-in-the-mud!'

The galloping fox weather-vane was motionless in the swooning heat. Beneath it the stable clock said two fifteen. She had been riding for two hours, nearly twice the length of a normal match.

'We'll try one more thing,' said Ricky.

Louisa led out two ponies - Willis, a huge bay, invaluable because he had the best brakes in Rutshire, and Hermia, a little chestnut mare Ricky had bought in Argentina in 1981, who was very green and terrified of everything.

Ricky mounted Willis. Perdita clambered wearily on to Hermia. Her ribs and shoulders were agony, her back ached, her thighs were raw where the sweating jodhpurs had rubbed them. Her hands could hardly hold Hermia's reins as she followed Ricky a hundred yards down a wooded lane, past an empty, leaf-strewn swimming-pool. Here, in two and a half acres of lush, green gra.s.s, framed bymidge-filled trees, lay Ricky's stick-and-ball field.

Next year's tiny catkins were already forming on the hazels. Ricky noticed the reddening haws and remembered how little Millicent used to shut her eyes to avoid the p.r.i.c.kles as she delicately picked the berries off the thorn trees. Overwhelmed with bitterness at the hand fate had dealt him, he saw no reason why he should show others any mercy.

'Now, do everything I tell you,' he yelled to Perdita as he kicked Willis into a gallop. The big bay's stride was longer than Hermia's and Perdita had to really motor to keep up. Halfway up the field, Ricky shouted, 'Turn!'

'He's crazy,' raged Frances in anguish. 'If he has a fall, his arm's b.u.g.g.e.red for good.'

Four times Ricky raced up and down the field, executing sharper and sharper turns. Now he was hurtling towards two orange-and-white traffic bollards which served as goal posts up the other end.

'Ride me off,' he bellowed.

Perdita spurred Hermia on, but she was just too far behind. Ricky's knee and the shoulder of his horse hit Hermia so hard that she seemed to fly four feet through the air. Perdita was still reeling when Ricky turned and was riding back. 'Ride me off again.'

The fourth time Perdita was knocked clean out of the saddle and only stayed mounted by clinging to the mare's neck.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' she screamed as she righted herself.

But by now Ricky had reached the opposite end of the field. 'Now ride towards me. Towards me! Towards me! Don't duck out! Keep going!'

The mighty Willis was thundering at them like a Volvo on the motorway. Perdita could feel Hermia quailing and about to bolt. It was all she could do to keep her on course.

She could see Willis's red nostrils as big as traffic lights, his white-edged eyes, the flashing silver of his bit. They must crash, they must.

'Stop,' yelled Ricky, swinging Willis to the left. Obedient to their masters, Willis and Hermia skidded to a halt, so close that Hermia's head brushed Willis's quarters, and Perdita was deposited on the gra.s.s, all the breath knocked out of her aching body.

'You b.l.o.o.d.y fool,' she croaked.

'I told you not to sit so far forward. Get up, you're not hurt.'

'I know I'm b.l.o.o.d.y not, but you you might have been. You risked a head-on collision and wrecking your arm for ever, just for the sake of putting me down. You're crazy.' might have been. You risked a head-on collision and wrecking your arm for ever, just for the sake of putting me down. You're crazy.'

Just for a second Ricky smiled.

'At least you've given me back my nerve. Go and have a shower and we'll have lunch.'

'Doesn't look so s.e.xy now, does she?' said Frances spitefully, as a dusty, blood-stained Perdita hobbled into the yard, wincing as she led Hermia.

'Oh, I don't know,' said Joel.

'She's jolly brave,' said Louisa. Kind-hearted and admiring, she followed Perdita into Hermia's box.

'You OK?'

'Fine.' Perdita leant against the wall, fighting back the tears.

'I'll see to Hermia,' said Louisa, 'and show you where the shower is.'

After she'd found Perdita a towel and some soap, she handed her a pair of pants and a long, white T-shirt with bananas and oranges embroidered on the front.

'I thought you might want to change.'

'Thanks,' said Perdita slowly. 'Sorry I was b.l.o.o.d.y beforehand. I was absolutely s.h.i.t-scared.'

'Needn't have been,' said Louisa. 'Joel and I thought you did brilliant. The hot water's erratic, but there's plenty of cold.'

Twenty minutes later Perdita joined Ricky in the kitchen. He was drinking c.o.ke, eating a slice of ham between two pieces of white sliced bread and reading The Times The Times sports page. He rose six inches from his chair as she came in. At least he recognizes I'm female, thought Perdita, encouraged. sports page. He rose six inches from his chair as she came in. At least he recognizes I'm female, thought Perdita, encouraged.

Louisa's T-shirt, several sizes too big for her, fell to a couple of inches above her knees. Her hair wet from the shower, was slicked back, the alabaster skin was without a sc.r.a.p of make-up. Her nose was swollen, her big curved mouth looked as though bees had stung it, and her wary, dark eyes were still bloodshot from the dust.

'That's better. You look like a human,' said Ricky. 'If you ever turn up tarted up like that again, you go straight back to your play-pen. What d'you want to drink?'

'Vodka and tonic,' said Perdita, chancing her arm.

'Not if you're going to play polo. Most top players hardly drink or smoke,' he added, removing her packet of cigarettes and throwing it in the bin.

'There were four in there,' said Perdita, outraged. 'Anyway, the twins smoke.'

'They're not top players - yet.'

Armed with a gla.s.s of Perrier and a ham sandwich, Perdita wandered round the kitchen, stopping before a photograph of Herbert on a pony.

'Who's that?'

'My father.'

'Any good?'

'He was a nine,' said Ricky. 'Won the Inter-Regimental Cup seven times in a row and played in the Westchester.' 'Oh,' sighed Perdita.

'Why d'you want to learn polo?'

'I want to go to ten,' said Perdita simply.

Looking down at the remains of his ham sandwich, Ricky found he was suddenly not hungry and threw it in the bin.

'I don't think it's possible,' he said. 'With timing and skill a girl could hit the ball as far as a man. You could train your ponies even better, but it's the riding-off and the violence that's the problem.'

'I'm nearly five foot seven,' protested Perdita. 'That's bigger than lots of the Mexicans or Argentines.'

The telephone rang. One of the grooms must have picked it up because next moment a boot-faced Frances had put her head through the window.

'It's Philippa Mannering,' she snapped at Ricky. 'Would you like to go to kitchen supper tonight?'

'No, thanks.'

'Tomorrow? The next day?'

'Sorry, I can't.'

Frances shrugged her shoulders and disappeared.

'Ghastly old bag, that Philippa,' said Perdita. Then, when Ricky didn't react, 'Her house overlooks ours. She's always peering through the trees with her binoculars. She wouldn't suit you. She's a nympho, wear you out in a week.'

'Thank you for the advice,' said Ricky tartly.

I fancy him so much, thought Perdita, I'll never be able to eat again.

As if reading her mind, Ricky said, 'Get one thing straight, I'm not interested in you s.e.xually. If you work here, it's as a groom.'

'Are you after my mother?' hissed Perdita.

'Hardly. She's not in a fit state to have anyone after her at the moment.'

'You need a dog round here,' said Perdita fretfully, as she also threw her uneaten ham sandwich in the bin. 'It's a crime to waste sc.r.a.ps like that.'

She gazed at Herbert's unsmiling face again. 'You've got to beat your father and go to ten too.'

Ricky thought of his damaged elbow which was now hurting like h.e.l.l, and didn't seem to be getting any better. 'Yes,' he said bleakly.

Because he wants Chessie back, thought Perdita, but I'll get him long before that.

17.

Alone in his large draughty house, mourning Will, desperate for Chessie, panicking about his arm, Ricky's hatred for Bart, obsessive, primeval, poisoning, living deep within him, grew like a beast. And so he took it out on Perdita. She didn't mind him making her clean all the tack, or skip out the horses, or scour the fields for lost b.a.l.l.s, or even put all the bandages and saddle blankets through the ancient washing machine that kept breaking down. But sometimes he seemed to invent tasks deliberately, scrubbing the inside and outside of buckets, and even cleaning the bowl of the outside lavatory. Worst of all, he wouldn't let her near a polo stick.

Perdita raged inside and took it out on Daisy at home. But at the yard she behaved herself, knowing it was her only chance. Once a week, too, the sullen, protective, scrawny Frances drove Ricky to Rutminster to see his probation officer, which gave Perdita the chance to stick and ball onthe sly, while Louisa kept cave. cave. Louisa and Perdita had become inseparable. Louisa and Perdita had become inseparable.

In the spring Perdita retook and pa.s.sed seven O levels. As a reward, Ricky allowed her to help Louisa get the ponies fit for the coming season, riding them up and down the steep Rutshire hills, trotting them along the winding country lanes.

One April afternoon they were exercising ponies along the chocolate-brown earth track which ran round the huge field of young barley which Perdita had escaped into after jumping the sheep grid the year before. It was a still, muggy day. Wild garlic swept through the woods like an emerald-green tidal wave. The sweet scent of primroses and violets hung on the air.

'No one's ever loved anyone as much as I love Ricky,' said Perdita restlessly.

'He's thirty and you're sixteen,' protested Louisa.

'I don't care. I'm still going to marry him when he grows up. Christ, look at that.'

Perdita took hold of little Hermia who was still very nervous and even Wayne rolled his black-ringed eyes and raised his donkey ears a centimetre as a vast black helicopter chugged up the valley. Almost grazing the tips of the ash woods, it flew round the paddocks, over the stick and ball field and circled the battlements of Robinsgrove like a malevolent crow.

Coming out of the forage room holding a bucket of stud nuts, Ricky, in a blinding flash of hope, thought it might be a returning Chessie. Then he saw the four hors.e.m.e.n of the Apocalypse on the side of the helicopter as it dropped into a paddock beyond the corral, scattering ponies.

As the rotors stilled, the door flew open and out stepped a lean, menacing figure, entirely clad in zips and black leather. Heavily suntanned, his eyes were hidden behind dark gla.s.ses and his blond-streaked mane far more teased and dishevelled than Perdita's.

'Blimey,' squeaked Louisa. 'It's Dancer Maitland. Why didn't I stick to that diet?'

Dancer was followed by two heavies in tweed suits, with bulging muscles and pockets, who had great difficulty squeezing out of the door. As he reached Ricky, Dancer removed his dark gla.s.ses. His heavily kohled, brilliant grey eyes glittered with excitement.

'From you 'ave I been absent in the spring,' he drawled, ' "Gaol Bird" was number one on the US charts this morning, so I fort it was 'igh time I took up polo.'

Ricky just gazed at him.

'Knew you'd get a shock when you saw me done up,' said Dancer, raking a heavily metalled hand through his blond curls. Then he put his arms round Ricky and hugged him.

'Grite to see you, beauty.'

'It's w-w-wonderful to see you,' stammered Ricky. "Ave you missed me?'

Ricky nodded. 'To tell the truth I b.l.o.o.d.y have.'