'Gaol bait as far as we're concerned,' sighed Dommie.

'Come back in two years' time. What are you going to do when you grow up?'

'Play polo.'

'You'd do better as a stockbroker or a soccer player,' said Seb. 'There's no money in polo.'

'I know,' said Perdita, 'but at least I'd rub up against all the richest, most powerful men in the world.'

'Like Mrs France-Lynch,' said Dommie, watching Chessie rotating her flat, denimed belly against Bart's crotch. 'That looks like trouble to me.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y 'ell,' said Jesus ruefully. If he hadn't spent so long on the telephone, he might have scored there. He toyed with the idea of cutting in, then decided he might want to play for Bart one day.

Aware that they were being watched, Bart and Chessie retreated to David Waterlane's study. Tearing himself away from the photographs of ponies and matches on the wall, Bart discovered Chessie looking down her vest examining her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Whaddyer doing?'

'They say everything you touch turns to gold. I wondered if I had.'

'Let me try again.' Bart slid his hands inside her vest. 'Christ, you're s.e.xy.'

They were interrupted by Mrs Hughie, who, like the Brigadier, rather ineffectually tried to act as a custodian of morals at polo parties, and was now trying to foist strong black coffee on unwilling guests.

'h.e.l.lo, Chessie,' she said, averting her eyes as Chessie re-inserted her left breast. 'Jolly bad luck about Matilda. Ricky's been playing so superbly too. I was trying to remember, what's his handicap?'

'His personality,' said Bart bleakly.

'Oh, I wouldn't say that.' Mrs Hughie gave a nervous laugh as she handed Chessie a cup.

'D'you take sugar?'

Chessie looked straight at Bart.

'Only in Daddies,' she said softly.

'I actually came to find you,' said Mrs Hughie hastily, as the whoops increased next door. 'I'm awfully fond of Seb and Dommie, but they have had a bit too much to drink, and they're with a dear little soul called Perdita Macleod, who's boarding at Queen Augusta's. Could you possibly drop her off on your way home, Chessie?'

'Thereby killing two birds who might otherwise get stoned,' said Chessie.

Bart was absolutely furious, but as she and Perdita left the floodlit house for the moonlit night, Chessie reflected that Bart would be more likely to renew Ricky's contract if she held out.

Storming up Ricky's drive, twenty minutes later, twitching with desire and frustration, she was alarmed to find the house in darkness. Even worse, the front door was open and no-one was at home. up Ricky's drive, twenty minutes later, twitching with desire and frustration, she was alarmed to find the house in darkness. Even worse, the front door was open and no-one was at home.

Panic turned to rage, however, when she discovered Ricky still in his breeches and blue polo shirt, fast asleep in the stable next to Matilda's. Will, also asleep, lay in his arms. They were surrounded by two Labradors, a whippet, the stable cat, a.s.sorted plastic guns and d.i.n.ky toys and a copy of Thomas the Tank Engine. Thomas the Tank Engine. The Labradors blinked sleepily and thumped their tails. Matilda, hanging from her sling, looked up watchfully. In Chessie she recognized a rival. But Ricky and Will didn't stir. The Labradors blinked sleepily and thumped their tails. Matilda, hanging from her sling, looked up watchfully. In Chessie she recognized a rival. But Ricky and Will didn't stir.

4.

Chessie woke at noon feeling hungover and guilty. She shouldn't have got tight or off so publicly with Bart. Gossip spread round the polo community like napalm. If Ricky didn't know by now, his grooms certainly would. Her fears were confirmed when Will wandered in later from playgroup, bearing paintings to be admired, stories to be read, and his hands crammed full of yellow roses pulled off by the head for her.

Stocky as a Welsh cob, Will had a round pink face and dark brown slanting eyes with long curly lashes tipping the blond fringe of his pudding-basin hair. No child could be more edible, even allowing for a mother's bias. How could she have dallied with Bart and jeopardized this, thought Chessie, hugging him fiercely.

'Did you bring me a present?' demanded Will.

'I didn't go anywhere I could get you one,' said Chessie. ' 'Who brought you home from playgroup?'

'f.u.c.kies,' said Will, who couldn't p.r.o.nounce Frances, the head groom's name. 'f.u.c.kies say Mummy got p.i.s.sed up last night.'

'Mummy did not.'

'Mattie got sore leggie,' went on Will.

'As if I didn't know,' snapped Chessie.

'Want some crisps.'

'Ask Daddy.' Chessie snuggled down in bed.

'Daddy gone to London.'

'Don't be ridiculous. Daddy loathes London.'

Ricky avoided London at all costs. Only his pa.s.sion for Chessie after they'd first met had dragged him up to her flat in the Cadogans, and then he'd always got lost. As Will pottered off crispwards, Chessie thought about Bart. He reminded her of all those rich, ruthless, cynical, invariably married men whom she'd met and had affairs with when she used to cook directors' lunches in the City. One of them had been about to set her up in her own restaurant in the Fulham Road, called Francesca's, when she had met Ricky.

It had been at her rich grandparents' golden wedding. With an eye to inheriting loot rather than a sense of duty, Chessie had reluctantly driven down from London expecting to be bored rigid. Instead she found that her plain, horsey cousin Harriet, who at twenty-five had never had a boyfriend, had turned up looking almost pretty and bursting out of her brown velvet dress with pride because she had Ricky in tow. Despite having absolutely no small talk and the trapped ferocity of a tiger whipped into doing tricks at the circus, he was the most attractive man Chessie had ever seen. It took her exactly fifteen minutes to take him off her poor cousin Harriet, gazing sleepily at him across the gold candles throughout dinner, then dancing all night with him. The chuntering of outraged relations was so loud, no-one could hear the cracking of poor Harriet's heart.

Offhand with people to cover up his feelings, unused to giving or receiving affection, Ricky had not had an easy life. The France-Lynches had farmed land in Rutshire for generations. Horse-mad, their pa.s.sion for hunting had been exceeded at the turn of the century by a pa.s.sion for polo. Herbert, Ricky's father, the greatest polo player of his day and a confirmed bachelor, had suddenly at fifty-five fallen madly in love with a twenty-year-old beauty. Sadly she died giving birth to Ricky, leaving her arrogant,crotchety, heartbroken husband to bring up the boy in the huge, draughty Georgian house, which was called Robinsgrove, because the robins in the woods around were supposed to sing more sweetly there than anywhere else on earth. Ricky needed that comfort. Determined that his son should follow in his footsteps, Herbert was appalled to discover that the boy was left-handed. This is not allowed in polo. Consequently Herbert spent the next years forcing Ricky to do everything right-handed to the extent of tying his left arm to his side for hours on end. As a result Ricky developed a bad stammer, for which he was terribly teased at school.

Although Herbert adored the boy, he couldn't show it. Only by playing better polo could Ricky win his father's approval. Herbert went to every match, yelling at Ricky in the pony lines. The cheers were louder off the field than on when Ricky started yelling back. Herbert's vigilance was rewarded. At just twenty-three, when he met Chessie, Ricky's handicap was six and he had already played for England.

To Chessie he was unlike anyone she had ever met. In the middle seventies, when men were getting in touch with their feelings and letting everything hang out, Ricky gave nothing away. A tense uncompromising loner, lack of love in his childhood had made him so unaware of his charms that he couldn't imagine anyone minding being deprived of them.

Chessie had had to make all the running. Smitten by her, Ricky was terrified to feel so out of control and went into retreat. He was always away playing in matches or searching for new horses. He never rang because he was shy about his stammer, and he knew it would wreck his polo career to marry when he needed all his concentration to make the break. Gradually, persistently, Chessie broke down his resistance.

Herbert had been violently opposed to the marriage, but when the tetchy old eccentric met Chessie he was as bowled over as his son, even to the extent of moving out of R Robinsgrove, which had grooms' flats, stabling for twenty horses and four hundred acres of field and woodland, and moving into the Dower House two miles away, to make way for her and Ricky. At first the marriage was happy.

Herbert went to matches with Chessie and enjoyed her cooking at least once a week, and when Chessie produced an heir two years later the old man was happier than he'd ever been.

But although Herbert had initially settled 200,000 on Ricky, Chessie, used to having her bills picked up and being showered with presents by besotted businessmen, soon went through it. The land, which included a large garden, a tennis court and a swimming-pool, needed maintaining and the house, with its vast rooms, needed a gas pipe direct from the North Sea to keep it warm.

Also Ricky's dedication, aloofness and incredible courage on the field, which had attracted Chessie madly in the beginning, were not qualities she needed in a husband. Ricky adored Chessie, but he was far too locked into polo, and after the first two years too broke, to provide her with the constant approval, attention and material possessions she craved.

Resentful that Ricky wouldn't pay for a nanny, Chessie was always palming Will off on his grooms. Most top-cla.s.s players employ one groom to three ponies; Ricky's grooms had to look after five, even six, but they never minded. They all adored Ricky who, beneath his brusqueness, was fair, kind and worked harder than anyone else, and they were proud to work for such a spellbinding player.

Chessie, a constant stranger to the truth, had also failed to tell Bart at the Waterlanes' party that she had caused Ricky's rift with his father. Gradually Herbert had recognized Chessie for what she was: selfish, manipulative, lotus-eating, narcissistic, unreliable and hopelessly spoilt. One rule in the France-Lynch family was that animals were fed before humans. Horrified one day when Ricky was away that the dogs had had no dinner by ten at night and the rabbit's hutch hadn't been cleaned out for days, Herbert had bawled Chessie out. Totally unable to take criticism, Chessie complained to Ricky when he came home, wildly exaggerating Herbert's accusations, triggering off such a row between father and son that Herbert not only stopped the half-million he was about to settle on Ricky to avoid death duties, but cut Ricky out of his will.

Although both men longed to make it up, they were too proud. Ricky, whose family had always been the patrons pr was forced to turn professional. Incapable of the tac needed to ma.s.sage the egos of businessmen, desperately missing Herbert's counsel, appallingly strapped for cash - Bart's 25,000 for a season went nowhere when you were dealing with horses - Ricky threw himself more into polo and devoted less time to Chessie.

In Chessie's defence, with a less complex man she might have been happy. She loved Ricky, but she burned with resentment, hating having to leave parties early because Ricky was playing the next day. Why, too, when then were ten other bedrooms in Robinsgrove with ravishing views over wooded valleys and the green ride down to the bustling Frogsmore stream, did Ricky insist on sleeping in the one room overlooking the stables? Here the window was always left open, so if Ricky heard any commotion he could be outside in a flash.

As she staggered downstairs to make some coffee, on ever) wall Chessie was a.s.saulted by paintings of polo matches and photographs of Ricky, Herbert and his brothers, leaning out of their saddles like Cossacks, or lined up, their arrogant patrician faces unsmiling, as their polo sticks rested on their collar bones. Going through the dark, panelled hall, she glanced into the library and was reproached by a whole wall of polo cups grown yellow from lack of polish.

Oh G.o.d, thought Chessie hysterically, polo, polo, polo. Already on the wall was the draw of the British Open, known as the Gold Cup, the biggest tournament of the year. Starting next Thursday and running over three weeks, it would make Ricky more uptight than ever.

At least marriage had taught him domesticity. In the kitchen his white breeches were soaking in Banish to remove brown bootpolish and the gra.s.s stains from yesterday's fall. From the egg yolk on the plates in the sink, he had obviously cooked breakfast for Will and himself, but Chessie only brooded that she was the only wife in polo without a washing-up machine. On the table was a note.

'Darling,' Ricky had written with one of Will's crayons. 'Gone to London, back late afternoon, didn't want to wake you, Mattie's bearing up. Love, Ricky.'

Other wives, thought Chessie, scrumpling up the note furiously, went to Paris for the collections. Ricky was so terrified of letting her loose in the shops, he wouldn't even take her to London. At least it was a hot day. She might as well get a suntan. Going upstairs to fetch her bikini, she heard the telephone and took it in the drawing room. It was Grace, probably just back from a shopping binge at Ralph Lauren, sounding distinctly chilly. Learning Ricky was in London, she asked to 'speak with Frances '.

'Speak to, to, not not with, with, you silly cow,' muttered Chessie. 'Doesn't trust me to pa.s.s on messages.' you silly cow,' muttered Chessie. 'Doesn't trust me to pa.s.s on messages.'

She was about to go in search of Frances when she noticed a lighter square in the rose silk wallpaper above the fireplace. It was a few seconds before she realized that the Munnings had gone. Valued at 30,000, it had been given to them as a wedding present and was a painting of Ricky's Aunt Vera on a horse. Ricky must be flogging it in London in order to buy another pony.

'I don't believe it,' screamed Chessie, storming into the hall, where she found Will applying strong-arm tactics to the frantically struggling stable cat as he tried to spray its armpits with Right Guard.

'Stop it,' howled Chessie, completely forgetting about Grace at the other end.

Ricky returned around six. He had managed to get 10,000 for the Munnings. He knew it was pathetically little, but at least it had enabled him to buy from Juan a dark brown mare called Kinta who'd previously been a race horse, whom he'd always fancied and with whom Juan had never clicked.

He felt absolutely shattered. Now yesterday's adrenalin had receded, he could feel all the aches and pains. He was in agony where Jesus had swung his pony's head into his kidneys and where a ball had hit his ribs. His stick hand was swollen where Victor had swiped at him, and there was a bruise black as midnight in the small of his back where Jesus's bay mare had lashed out at him scrabbling to regain her feet after that last fall.

Chessie waited for him in the drawing room, fury fuelled by his checking Mattie and the other ponies before coming into the house.

'Hi, darling,' he said, ignoring the gap above the fireplace, 'I've got another pony.'

'How dare you flog Aunt Vera?' thundered Chessie. 'Half of that money belongs to me, how much did you get?'

'Ten grand.'

'You were robbed.'

At that moment Will erupted into the room.

'Daddy bring me a present?'

'Yes, I did,' said Ricky, handing him a half-size polo stick for children.

Will gave a shout of delight, and, brandishing it, narrowly missed a Lalique bowl on the piano.

'Just like Daddy now.'

Chessie clutched her head. 'Oh, please, no,' she screamed.

5.

Chessie's froideur froideur with Ricky didn't melt. But he was kept so busy getting acquainted with Kinta, now known as the 'widow-maker', tuning her and the other ponies up for the first Gold Cup match next Thursday, playing in medium-goal matches and worrying about Mattie, who didn't seem to be responding to treatment, that he hardly noticed until he fell into bed. Then, when he was confronted by the Berlin Wall of Chessie's back, he tended, after his hand had been shuddered off, to drop into an uneasy sleep, leaving Chessie twitching with resentful frustration all night. with Ricky didn't melt. But he was kept so busy getting acquainted with Kinta, now known as the 'widow-maker', tuning her and the other ponies up for the first Gold Cup match next Thursday, playing in medium-goal matches and worrying about Mattie, who didn't seem to be responding to treatment, that he hardly noticed until he fell into bed. Then, when he was confronted by the Berlin Wall of Chessie's back, he tended, after his hand had been shuddered off, to drop into an uneasy sleep, leaving Chessie twitching with resentful frustration all night.

Grace made it plain that she was livid with Chessie for leaving her hanging on the telephone. Bart had made absolutely no attempt to get in touch with Chessie - perhaps he was still sulking because she had thwarted his plans by giving Perdita a lift home. Surprised how anxious she was to see him again, Chessie went along to the Thursday match and deliberately dressed down in a collarless shirt and frayed Bermudas, held up with Ricky's red braces, to irritate Grace. Alas, the grooms were all tied up with the ponies and her baby-sitter had gone to Margate, so she was forced to take Will and his new, short polo stick with her.

Will was a menace at matches. Having grabbed a ball, he proceeded to drive it into Fatty Harris's ankles, Brigadier Hughie's ancient springer, David Waterlane's Bentley, and finally a lot of little girls playing with a doll's pram, who all burst into noisy sobs. This was drowned by Will's even noisier sobs when he saw his father umpiring the first match between the Kaputnik Tigers and Rutminster Hall. Wriggling out of Chessie's grasp, he rushed on to the field and was nearly run down by Jesus the Chilean. Juan and Miguel were on epic form, and after a frenzied last chukka of b.u.mps and nearly fatal falls, Rutminster Hall ran out the winners by 10-6.

Victor Kaputnik, whose gloating when he won was only equalled by his rage when he lost, could be heard yelling furiously at the twins and Jesus as they came off the field. Chessie was about to wander down to the pony lines in search of Bart when he emerged out of a duck-egg blue helicopter, followed by Grace, extremely chic in brown boots, a brown trilby and a fur-lined trench coat, her glossy, dark hair drawn back in a French pleat.

After last week's heatwave, a bitter north wind was flattening the yellowing corn fields, turning the huge trees inside out, driving icy rain into the eyes of the players and horses, and putting the easiest penalty in jeopardy. Despite this, there was a good crowd to watch the second match between the Alderton Flyers and the Doggie Dins Devils, who included the notorious Napier brothers, an underhandicapped Australian and Kevin Coley, their appalling petfood billionaire patron.

Not being able to face an hour with Grace, Chessie was thankful when the Carlisle twins bounded up, teeth brilliantly white in their mud-spattered faces, and insisted she watch from their car. Will, who adored the twins, immediately stopped crying.

'Aren't you flying home with Victor?' asked Chessie. 'No, he's p.i.s.sed off with us because we were late. I'll go and get us a drink,' said Seb.

As the Alderton Flyers rode on to the field, all wearing polo-necked jerseys under their shirts, Chessie was glad of the warmth of the twins' Lotus. Listening to the whistling kettle sound of Victor's black-and-orange helicopter soaring out of the trees, she turned to Dommie: 'I don'tknow why you're looking so smug about losing.'

'Oh, we'll catch up,' said Dommie. 'There are four more matches in the draw. Don't tell Victor. He thinks we were late because of the traffic. Actually we were selling a pony for about three thousand pounds more than it's worth. Seb had just lied that its grandsire was Nijinsky when I walked in and said it was Mill Reef, but we got over that hurdle.'

'Who bought it?' asked Chessie idly.

'Phil Wedgwood.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' said Chessie. 'He rang Ricky yesterday. Said he'd just sent the mare Ricky sold him in May to the knackers because she had back trouble and could he buy another. Ricky loved that mare so much he hung up on him. Now Phil's bought one from you - Jesus!'

'I don't think your husband's got his act together commercially,' said Dommie. 'He's got to learn to care less about ponies and more about patrons. Victor is so thick we sold one of his own ponies to him the other day. Quick! Duck! Here comes the Head Girl!'

Through the driving rain, both suitably clad for the weather, came Sukey and Grace going towards Bart's limo, which had been driven independently to the match for them to sit in. Grace nodded coolly. Sukey, who was carrying a camera, tapped on the window: 'I was hoping to video the match, so Drew. could isolate his mistakes afterwards, but the visibility's so awful. Bad luck on losing, Seb.'

'I'm Dommie.'

'Oh, sorry. I can never tell you two apart.'

'I've got the bigger c.o.c.k,' said Dommie.

Chessie giggled. Sukey firmly changed the subject. 'We've had the Daily Express at Daily Express at home all morning, doing a feature on Drew. You'd never dream how many rolls of film they used.' home all morning, doing a feature on Drew. You'd never dream how many rolls of film they used.'

'They wanted to do Ricky and me,' said Chessie furiously, 'but Ricky was far too uptight to let them in on the morning of a match.'