Polo by Jilly Cooper Page A

Chessie's desire to take her husband off her. The weather continued windy and very cold, and Chessie spent the next week sourly watching her suntan fade and thinking up alibis for Thursday lunchtime. Fortunately Ricky was being paid Ł 1,000 to play in a charity match at the Guards Club that day, on the understanding that he stayed behind for drinks and allowed himself to be gawped at by all the sponsors' rich clients. This meant he wouldn't be home much before eight.
        Ricky was loath to go. He was desperately worried about Mattie, who'd stopped eating and kept biting listlessly at her plaster. Her eyes were dull - always the first sign of pain in a horse. He was sure the plaster was beginning to smell, a sinister indication that infection or, even worse, gangrene, was setting in.
        `Pooh,' said Will, coming into Chessie's bedroom with his new polo stick, and breathing in the collective reek of Duo Tan, Immac and nail polish.
        `Don't touch,' screamed Chessie as he trotted purposefully towards the make-up bottles on her dressing table. She loathed being distracted when she was getting ready - it was all Ricky's fault for not being able to afford a nanny. Nor could she start washing her hair until he'd gone. Then she found the water hadn't been turned on. She also dried her hair upside down too long so it stood up like a porcupine. She didn't know if she was more nervous of seeing Bart or Ricky finding out. It was so cold, she put on a pale pink cashmere dress, which was near enough flesh tones in colour, to make her look as though she was wearing nothing at all. Sticking her tongue out at Herbert's portrait, she ran down the stairs.
        Out in the yard, she was relieved to find that Louisa, Ricky's youngest and most amenable groom, had been left in charge. Plump, pink-faced, always smiling, Louisa had been described by Chessie in a bitchier moment as looking like a piglet who'd just won the pools. She was a complete contrast to Ricky's head groom, Frances, who, scrawny, angry and equally obsessed with Ricky and the horses, was always finding fault with the other grooms' work. Chessie had nicknamed Frances and Louisa `Picky and Perky'. Perky was now trying to coax Mattie to eat a carrot.
        `Can you look after Will for a couple of hours?' Chessie asked her. `I'm just popping out to lunch with a girlfriend.'
        `Pooh,' said Will. `Mattie's leg smells awful.' Then, realizing Chessie was getting into the car without him, started to cry.
        `Mummy won't be long. I'll bring you a present,' called Chessie as she drove off.
        `Girlfriend indeed,' muttered Louisa, catching a whiff of Diorissimo. `Mummy's gone a-hunting.'
        Ten miles from Robinsgrove the wind dropped, the sun came out and the temperature rocketed, shrivelling the wild roses hanging from the hedgerows. Chessie could see her face reddening in the driving mirror and feel the sweat trickling down her ribs. It was all Ricky's fault for not being able to afford a car with air-conditioning. There were no shops on the way for her to buy something cooler. Her mouth tasted acid with nerves.
        Rubens' Retreat, once a large country house, now an hotel, was set in lush parkland. Reputed to have the best food and the softest double beds in England, it was a favourite haunt of the rich and libidinous. Inside it was wonderfully cool. Chessie nipped into the Ladies to remove her stockings, tone down her flushed face and clean her teeth.
        `I've just had gastric flu and keep getting this terrible taste in my mouth,' she explained to the attendant who'd seen it all before.
        She found Bart in an alcove, screened by huge plants. On the telephone, he only paused to kiss her and wave her to the chair beside him. He was very brown and wearing a cream silk shirt, a pin-striped suit and an emerald-green tie, which matched the greensward on which naked ladies were sporting with cherubs on the mural round the