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“You ready for our outing, my dear?” Dottie tinkles the car keys at me.
“We have an outing?” If we do, I forgot.
“If memory serves, you start work today.”
“That’s not an outing!” I bolt out of my seat. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Darling, it’s not like it’s a real job…”
OMG, Dottie. Yes, it is. It’s a real job with real money and real consequences. What were you thinking? But, in fairness, she’s not to blame. I didn’t set a timer or an alarm or anything.
I take the stairs three at a time, brush my teeth, yank on my uniform, and check my hair for… Dammit, there isn’t time. And, in any case, I’ll have my helmet on.
We’re out the door and in the car just as soon as I pull my boots on, Mr. Wiggins staring at us from the parlor window with a look so forlorn he could be on aDeepest Regretsgreeting card.
“I know how to drive. On both sides of the road, in fact.” I am fighting a losing battle and I know it, but Aunt Dottie’s insistence upon chauffeuring me to my first day of my new job has me feeling like I’m thirteen again.
“Nonsense!” Aunt Dottie adjusts her driving goggles and smooths her hair under her scarf. “I refuse to allow you to have all the fun! Besides, I want to meet your young people.”
She maneuvers her vintage British racing-green Mini Cooper exactly how one expects a woman of a certain age with bright blue hair to drive, which is to say with a wanton recklessness that has me clutching the Dear Jesus handle. She weaves through curves and rockets over the stone bridge across the river, letting out a loud “Wheeeeeee!” when the little car gets air. I hardly have time to take in how the village I visited every bank holiday has—or more likely, hasn’t—changed.
Aunt Dot’s driving is even more atrocious when we get into the village proper. The streets are cobbled and narrow, but this is precisely why Dottie has chosen a go-cart for a car: she doesn’t slow down. We whizz past the post office and Dottie sticks a hand out to give a jaunty wave at Mrs. Jenkins, the postmistress, a smile plastered to her face while she mutters, “That woman’ll die stuffing mail into bins before she’ll retire, mark my words. Can think of better things to stuff, personally.” She snorts, which sets me off, which sets her off, which eases my tension and lets me relax into the madness of the journey for just a few seconds. There’s never a dull moment with Aunt Dottie, and I love her for it.
She whips around a corner, tires squealing just enough to make my toes grip the soles of my boots, accelerates past the Muffin Shoppe and all the tourist traps with names likeTeas Me!andTake a Leaf!and a whole flank of thatch-roofed cottages with riotous and messy English gardens that have obviously been turned into professionally managed Airbnbs. Then there’s the black-and-red-and-gold-painted sign of the pub that’s been there since before the Roman invasion, and next door is the chippy, with its blue cartoon fish leaping over the FISH AND CHIPS sign, the sight of which actually makes my heart melt a little with what I think might be a homecoming kind of feeling. At the roundabout that circles the Martyr’s Memorial, Aunt Dottie accelerates and does what amounts to a donut around the thing.
She turns hard into the second circle, and when I scream, “Please don’t make me car sick on my first day!” she cackles, screeching her head off with laughter. But my panic only serves to renew her plans to make me vomit because she fishtails back onto the road that takes us back over the river (more air-time off the far side of the bridge), then yanks into a hard right onto the single-lane track lined with beeches, until there, at last—oh, sweet relief—is the Polo Club, its pastures and pitches laid out in a hedgerowed patchwork below us, bright with the green that can only be found in the English countryside.
I moan with something that’s half ecstasy, half nausea, then tumble out of the car to a round of applause.
RED ALERT
Lolly Benoit. Greenshoot Polo Ranch. Upper Wilmington, Gloucestershire, England.
There are seven or eight people standing by the barn—ranging in age from twenty to fifty—all of them watching my inelegant disembarkation. Not a single one of them comes to my assistance, which tells me that they’re students, foreigners, or both.
“Nothing to see here!” I wave and heft myself into an upright position right as Dottie finds her way to my side of the car.
“I want to see this new polo pro your mother says is quite the sensation.”
Mum telling Aunt Dottie about whatever polo professional she’s dug up from the dregs of polo instructors not actuallyplayingpolo does not bode well for the quality of said instructor and thesensationhe creates. With any luck he’ll be quintessentiallyBritish, pale and toothy with sticky-outy ears and close-set eyes and a beaky nose in the way of the current royal family—and exactly the opposite of he-who-must-not-be-thought-of.
I’m really not as petulant as I sound. It feelsgoodto have something to do, finally, and even better to be dressed in my polo whites and tall boots. I’ve chucked my helmet, knee guards, and gloves into a satchel, unsure of exactly what’s expected of me today. According to Mummy I’m supposed to be the assistant to this bozo from nowhere, but what exactly thatmeanswill probably depend on who exactly the trainer is and who our students turn out to be.Royaltyis what Mum said the last time we spoke, but exaggeration is a skill she’s perfected into an art form. It could mean anything from an actual princess to the fifth cousin of a second cousin who descended from an extinct branch of the Hapsburgs.
I’m still unsteady as I make my way toward the barn. If I were anywhere else, I’d find a bench to sit on with my head between my knees, but there are several horses tacked up and tied near the fenced polo arena—the safest place to teach beginners—and there’s already a horse in the ring, its rider guiding it through its paces, an easy warm up.
“Crap! I’m so late!” I outstrip Aunt Dottie, hurrying down the hill, the wet grass darkening the toes of my boots.
The thing about the women of my family is our voices carry. So, when Aunt Dottie goes into her woe-is-me, poor Eeyore act, I catch every word—as intended because the performance is entirely for my benefit. “It’s always the same. Put a horse in front of that girl and off she goes, leaving her elders and betters behind to stumble over the uneven ground…” I’m probably supposed to go back and help her, making myself even more late, but I don’t.
I can’t take my eyes off the horse and rider in the arena. First the pair trots in looping arcs, making a serpentine through the entire space. The two might as well be a centaur, that’s how easy their communication is. The horse breaks into a canter—as beautiful as a well-choreographed dance between two partners who know each other intimately, both in absolute control as the helmeted rider swings his mallet and the horse accelerates to chase down the ball. There’s the loud crack as the rider’s mallet connects, his body still and perfectly centered as the horse dodges and turns, tracking the ball and chasing it down the arena, changing directions each time the rider swings and hits the ball. Before, when I’ve seen riders practice their stick-and-ball skills, it has looked exactly like what it is: a drill. But this—this feels like watching a ribbon unfurl or a river flow. It looksnatural.I can only think of one other player I’ve seen ride with such grace, such empathy for his mount, suchfeel. But I push that unwelcome thought out of its groove and let something else overtake me.
For the first time since I left Florida—no, for the first time since I opened my apartment door to find Donnie standing there, unable to meet my eyes as he fired me—something radiant and warm blooms inside my chest.
Hope.
Because it seems Mummy Dearest truly has found a real polo professional, and if I can work for a rider of such caliber, then when I return to Velveteen and the States, I’ll be closer to making my miracle come true than I could have even dared dream.
As I clamber onto the goalside bleachers, the rider gallops from the far end of the arena, his lanky frame large atop the petite horse. The pair is focused on the goal, a green-painted rectangular section of the arena wall. The rider swings the mallet, the ball sails out in front and then there’s the punch of ball against wood as it strikes home as the horse gallops on past, their well-muscled haunches to me.
