Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,77

magnifying glass with her, I couldn’t see where she’d hidden them. Meanwhile, I had decided on a blue blazer above grey flannel trousers, with white shirt and striped tie. Uniform, I reckoned, for any self-respecting off-duty Guards officer.

We both opted not to wear green wellies, not least because we would have had to buy them first. The weather forecast for the day had improved as the weekend had progressed, and the promised rain was not now due to arrive from the west until the following day, so I wore my usual slip-on black brogues while Caroline picked a pair of sensible knee-length black leather boots with low heels.

Having been brought up in the world of horseracing, where any physical contact between the competitors was frowned upon and where even the slightest bump between participants could result in the loss of a race in the stewards’ room, I was unprepared for the roughness, almost violence, perpetrated on the polo field.

Players were permitted to ‘ride off’ an opponent even when he was not in possession of the ball. Riding off involved crashing one’s pony into the flank of an opponent’s mount and pushing with the knee and the elbow to change the direction of travel. The players all wore big thick knee pads for that very purpose, along with spurs which, I was reliably informed, were not actually permitted to be dug into an opponent’s leg, although it appeared to me that they were.

I knew that the aim of the game was to hit the little white ball with the mallet between the goalposts to score. But that is to simplify what seemed to me to be a hybrid cross between hockey, croquet and American football, all played at high speed on horseback.

It was clearly hugely exhilarating both for the players and for the spectators. There was lots of shouting between the team members and appeals to the umpire for some penalty or other to be awarded. I knew from my brush with the fifty-page rule book that the game would be more complicated than just riding down the field and slotting the ball between the goalposts. However, in play, it had a simplicity I had not expected and both Caroline and I were soon caught up in the excitement on the members’ grandstand.

We had arrived at the grounds, as they were referred to, to find that there was a members’ area for those who are, and the remaining space for those who aren’t. The ‘members’ was where I wanted to be. There was no point in being there at all unless I was able to ask my questions of those in the know.

We had hung around a bit in the members’ car park until a group of five others had arrived in a Range Rover. Caroline and I had simply attached ourselves to the rear of the party as they were waved through past the gateman. I decided not to push my luck by trying to bluff my way into the holy-of-holies, the two-storey Royal Box with its colonial-style verandas and red-tiled roof, together with neatly tended window boxes and a white-picket-fenced lawn in front.

As I had no idea of what to expect, I didn’t know whether the ‘crowd’ of just two or three hundred was considered a good turnout or not. Many of the spectators had parked their vehicles on the far side of the field and simply sat on the roofs to watch the action. A chorus of car horns rather than applause tended to greet each goal.

Fortunately the day was fine, with even some watery sunshine helping to warm us as Caroline and I sat in the open on green plastic seats along with about a hundred or so others, most of whom appeared to either know or be related to the players, exchanging waves and shouts, as the teams milled around in front of us before the start.

Polo matches are divided into periods known as chukkas, each chukka lasting about seven minutes. Matches can be four, five or six chukkas long with gaps in between. In this particular event each match was four chukkas with approximately a five-minute gap between each, and a little longer at half-time.

Caroline asked a middle-aged man sitting close to her what the score was. Now this was not as stupid as it may have sounded as the game can be very confusing. For a start it was not always clear if a goal had been scored as, unlike in soccer, there was