Polo by Jilly Cooper Page A

washing machine's broken down, Hamish says the place is a tip, and the kitchen brush has alopecia.'
        `I'm off.' Perdita, dressed for hunting in boots, skin-tight breeches and a dark blue coat, went straight to the housekeeping jar.
        `What are you doing?' asked Daisy.
        `I need money for the cap.'
        `You took a tenner yesterday.'
        `I'll pay you back out of my Christmas present money,' said Perdita, rushing off towards the stables.
        `Where's my dark green sweater?' bellowed Hamish from upstairs. `There are two buttons missing off my blazer and why the hell isn't there any loo paper?'
        Daisy sighed. Hamish had come back exhausted after a week's filming last night to watch one of his programmes - a documentary on road haulage. Daisy hadn't helped matters by falling asleep because it was so boring. The moment the final credits went up, Hamish's mother was on the telephone telling him how wonderful it had been. When no-one else rang, Hamish, who was pathological about his beauty sleep, retired to bed. The telephone then started up again, but instead of being congratulations from Jeremy Isaacs and Alasdair Milne, it was friends of the children, catching up on gossip and wondering what life in the country was like, until Hamish was screaming with irritation.
        Now he was downstairs bellyaching because Perdita had whipped the last of the housekeeping money. `I told you to always keep a float. I don't know them well enough in the village shop to ask them to cash a cheque. What time's Peter Pan?'
        `Oh, Christ,' said Daisy hysterically. `I'd forgotten all about Peter Pan. I can't go. I've got to get everything ready for your mother tomorrow, and do all the cooking, and shopping, and buy the stocking presents, and I haven't wrapped any of the other presents, and I've got to stay in for the washing-machine man. We haven't got any clean sheets.'
        Hamish looked at her pityingly. `I can't understand why you can't treat Christmas like any other weekend. I suppose you've got your period coming.'
        `I've got your bloody mother coming,' muttered Daisy into the sink.
        `Wendy can do the shopping,' said Hamish loftily, `and the stocking presents. Give me the list.'
        `But she must be frantic,' protested Daisy. Wendy was Hamish's PA, who seemed to work for him twenty-four hours a day.
        `It's always the busiest people who find the time,' said Hamish sanctimoniously. `Wendy can take the children to Peter Pan. I'll bring them and the shopping home afterwards. I hope,' he added ominously, `you're going to get things shipshape for Mother. She's had a very stressful year and needs a rest.'
        In the past, on hearing Hamish's car draw up outside, Daisy had been known to take mugs out of the dish washer and frantically start washing them up in the sink, so much did Hamish hate to see her inactive. He was a successful film producer because he was good at keeping costs down, finicky about detail, and had brilliant empathy with his leading ladies who found him attractive because, to use one of his favourite phrases, he `targeted' on them. Hamish, in fact, looked rather like an Old Testament prophet who regretted shaving off his beard for a bet. Copper-beech red hair rippling to his collar, a wide noble forehead, smouldering hazel 'eyes beneath jutting black brows, and a fine, hooked nose with flaring nostrils lapsed into a petulant mouth and a receding chin. Hamish also loved the sound of his own voice, which reminded him of brown burns tumbling over mossy rocks in the Highlands. Having muscular hips and good legs, he also wore a kilt on every possible occasion.
        He was now, however, soberly dressed in grey flannels, and applying a clothes brush to the small of his blazered back, as he grumbled about cat hair. The moment he'd borne Eddie, Violet and the shopping list off to work, Daisy felt guilty about making such a scene. With the pressure