Ashford’s Version
The polo season begins this afternoon, and I have the first match with my team. It will also be the first social event with Jemma.
As winners of last year’s championship, our team will be the centre of attention, with me at the top of the list, because everyone knows about Jemma and me. Many will take part in the event just to see her.
A part of me would prefer that she remained at home but I can’t hide her forever.
The guests who came to our ‘intimate dinner’ have said enough to arouse general curiosity.
I’m at the country club, in the stables, and I’m preparing my horse. Falkland is a beautiful Argentine Criollo horse, he’s dark chocolate coloured, muscular and speedy, and more than one person would be interested in buying him. Especially after how he performed last season.
I take care of him myself, whereas the other players prefer to let the stable lads do it.
While I’m grooming him, I hear someone knocking on the wall of the horse’s stable.
“O Captain! My Captain!” It’s Harring.
“Haz! You’re back!” I walk towards him raising my fist in sign of victory. “Congratulations on your pole position in the Russian Grand Prix.”
He shrugs. “No biggie.”
Harring is a Formula One driver. As heir to the title of viscount, he gets fed up very easily. His uncle, who was just as eccentric as he is, created his own racing team, so Harring grew up developing a passion for cars, until he was old enough to drive them himself.
When in a race, he’s always very theatrical. For example, it once happened that, while he was in the lead in a race at the Silverstone circuit, outdistancing the McLaren cars by forty seconds and with one lap to go, he suddenly decided to go back to the pits. When the journalists interviewed him, he said simply: ‘I was getting bored’.
Another time, in Bahrain, they gave him a penalty for skipping the tests – because he was busy with a lingerie model – so the day after, during the race, he made a memorable catch-up and went from next to last to second place.
He may not be very professional, but when he’s in a race, he wins. He’s an extraordinary combination of pure talent, blind luck and no sense of danger whatsoever.
A couple of times he’s even risked his neck.
He’s not reliable, he gives no guarantees, but his performances are so spectacular that the major companies fight each other to sponsor him; in fact, he’s got no space left on his car body. Or on his spoiler, which features his family’s coat of arms.
“Shouldn’t you be on the track today? Are you skipping free practice?” I ask.
Harring shrugs again. “I’ve won all the races since the beginning of the season. I’ll skip this one. You know, it’s no fun if there’s nobody else on the podium, is it?”
“Modesty is always your forte…”
“Besides, I had an appointment at the tailor’s.”
“You have one every Wednesday!” I point out.
“You know what my motto is: ‘Woe betide anyone whose jacket fits badly!” He exclaims proudly.
When we were at college, Harring and I had a period of dandyism which culminated in a manic obsession for tailor-made suits; however, while I was able to get over such temporary passions, Harring has hoarded them, and keeps them to this day.
Haz walks back and forth outside the stable. “Anyway, I was at the club on Tuesday evening, and I waited for you. Why didn’t you come? You always stop by, after a Parliamentary session.”
“I went home straight after. Now that the high society events season has started, my mother is like a caged tiger. And there’s Jemma now—”
“You’re right, now that you’re a hubby, you can’t have any more wild nights out with us rascals, eh? And, about your wife—”
“What’s wrong?” I ask, worried. I hope she hasn’t made a fool of herself already.
“You’ll introduce her to me today, won’t you?”
“Well… I guess so,” I hesitate.
“My parents came back from Cancún, and my mother met Lady Laetitia, who told her about your extravagant dinner at Denby Hall – that’s what she called it.”
“I would say it was more surreal than extravagant.”
“She said that your wife left everyone astounded. Lord Neville was also totally captivated. After nearly choking to death, at least.”
“Do you know about that, too?” I ask.
“Especially about that. Look, Parker, I’m not the judging type, and, as long as you’re happy, who you married makes no difference to me, but I’m going to tell you something you perhaps know better than I do.”
“Then why do you care so much to tell me?”
“Because sometimes you need to state the obvious.” Harring looks straight into my eyes and nods towards the spectators that are starting to fill the stands. “Those people will crucify your wife.”
“You don’t know Jemma!” I burst out laughing.
“But I know them. They despise anyone who’s got no noble blood, and they judge people by their bank accounts. You may love this adorable Cinderella from Lewisham, but they will rip her apart. If you ask me, she’s my best friend already, but according to them she’s a parasite, which is quite paradoxical when you think that the nobility lived off this country for centuries.”
“What are you trying to say, exactly?”
“That you’ll have to ward them off. A lot.”
“Thank you, Haz.”
“You’re welcome,” my friend is about to light himself a cigarette.
“Don’t even try lighting that damn thing! Can’t you see it’s full of straw around here, you dickhead?”
“It’s a habit,” Harring pulls it off his lips and stretches out of the covered area to look at the guests.
“There’s everyone out there.”
“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” After years of friendship, I understand when Harring isn’t getting straight to the point.
“Everyone but Portia,” he adds.
I raise an eyebrow and I’m frankly surprised. “Seriously?”
“I’ll tell you this: it seems that, as soon as the news of your wedding started spreading, she packed her stuff and went to South Africa to visit some relatives of hers.”
“To South Africa?”
“It’s obvious that it was the farthest place where she knew someone,” Haz replies.
“I find it hard to believe—”
“What? That she’s got relatives in South Africa?”
“No, that she left because of me!”
“Wait. The official story is that she’s going to take part in a census of the lions living in the Shamwari Reserve.”
“What’s the unofficial story, then?” I ask, sceptically. Portia an animal lover? Since when?
“There are several, but none are favourable to you.”
“Okay, let’s get this straight: Portia and I were not together and I never made her believe I would marry her.”
Harring raises his hands. “Hey, I believe you, it’s not to me you have to set the record straight.”
“And to nobody else. I’m in control of my life and my decisions, and I’ll go to hell the way I choose.”
“You know you’ll be in good company, Parker.”
I reach out my gloved hand towards him. “Off to hell?”
“Off to hell,” he replies. It has become our motto.