Page 24 of Polo Fever
She doesn’t look convinced.
‘Oh come on,’ I say, lifting my eyes to the ceiling. ‘You can’t think I’mthatuseless. You haven’t let me try yet. As I told Mateo yesterday, I didn’t come looking for this job. Lady Maycourt came to me. She thinks I might be good at it and I don’t know,’ I shrug, throwing my hands up in exasperation, ‘I want to see if she’s right.’
Jules is watching me quizzically. ‘You spoke to Mateo yesterday?’
‘Yeah. He was as doubtful about me as you are.’
‘And you persuaded him you were right for this.’
‘Not exactly. He just didn’t persuademeI waswrongfor it.’
She nods, looking a little more swayed. I seize on the opportunity.
‘Let’s at least give it a try and if it’s a complete disaster, I promise I’ll bow out,’ I assure her. ‘I have the job back at the pub ready and waiting for me.’
She lifts her chin in the air. ‘All right, Ash. We’ll give it a try.’
‘Great.’ I shrug off my blazer and go to toss it on the floor of the tack room. ‘Where do we start?’
‘We need to do some cleaning and then we’ll prep the ponies that the players want to use for stick and ball this morning,’ she says.
‘Okay, I know I’m a beginner, but you don’t need to dumb the sport down quite so much to “stick and ball”. You can call it polo.’
She purses her lips. ‘Stick and ball is what you call the practice of hitting the ball with the mallet. It’s training exercises for the players.’
Whoops.‘Oh. Got it. Makes sense. Stick and ball.’
I force a laugh. She doesn’t laugh with me. But at least she doesn’t tell me to go home. Instead, she rolls her eyes and jerks her head to the other end of the stables before heading that way. I follow, my cheeks blushing at my ignorance.
‘In polo, there’s a lot of tack,’ she tells me briskly. ‘You’ve got bridles, saddles, standing martingales, running reins, bandages, breastplates, bits. After tack is used, the grooms give it a wipe down, but once a week, we give everything a thorough clean.’ She stops in front of a large box that contains a variety of buckets, sponges, cloths, disinfectants, oils and, somewhat strangely, toothbrushes. ‘It’s difficult for me to do that with one hand but, lucky for me, you’re here to help now.’
I start unbuttoning the cuffs on my shirt so I can roll up my sleeves.
‘Tell me where to start,’ I say.
It was a blink and you’ll miss it kind of moment, but I swear Jules looked almost impressed.
*
By the time I’m done washing and scrubbing the tack, I feel like I’ve done a solid workout at the gym. My clothes are damp and dirty from the splatter of the wash buckets, a thin layer of sweat has formed on my forehead and back of my neck, and my hands are covered in gunk, grime and grease. I’ve learnt that there’s such a thing as leather conditioner, which smells like lavender and eucalyptus, and that a toothbrush is a really good way to get to the nooks and crannies that can be hard to clean: for example, buckles. It’s not just about brushing and scrubbing when cleaning tack either; you have to take it all apart and put it back together again. It turns out there are a lot of pieces when it comes to bridles and I was not quick to get which bit goes where.
‘That’s the throat latch,’ Jules told me wearily when she asked me to grab the cheek pieces. I put that down and tried again. ‘That’s the noseband. Nope, that’s the browband.’
‘Okay, why are there so manybands?’ I muttered under my breath.
I picked up another one and held it up for her.
‘That’s the throat latch again,’ she said.
Honestly, I felt just about ready to strangle myself with whichever band of the bridle was closest, but I didn’t crack under the pressure of Jules watching me like a hawk. Instead, I practised lots of deep breathing, listened carefully, and finally, by the time I’m done, I feel like I have a much better handle of all the tack and what goes where.
Relieved to have finished, I’m wiping my brow with the back of my hand when another of the grooms comes in carrying more tack after exercising one of the ponies. An Argentine man in roughly his forties with kind dark eyes and a bashful smile, he speaks to Jules in Spanish. She responds to him in Spanish before gesturing to me. He nods and then walks towards me, holding out the tack expectantly. I assume he wants me to take it from him, so I do, my tired arms almost buckling from the weight of the saddle.
‘Gracias,’ he says, before leaving.
I look to Jules. She shrugs and says, ‘You’d better go refill the bucket.’
Fighting the urge to collapse, I casually put the tack and saddles down and pick up the bucket as though it’s not a bother, even though my limbs feel like they’re about to fall off.
