POLLY AND THE POLO PEOPLE

SHE TOOK IT in like someone gulping, starved of more than just air. Decided, or it might have decided for her, way back when her consciousness was forming, that she wanted this (I want this, I want this), and, being Polly, was quite certain she’d get it. Eventually. (Inevitably, inexorably.) A little smile to herself. The determined one. The one made of steel.

For she had a few disadvantages — no, too strong a word for her. A few small problems to overcome, but brains, an exceptionally positive outlook, some said a special charm, and she knew a determined nature would do it. The disadvantages were race and class. Those around here were uniformly white and uniformly higher than ordinary middle-class. Not rich, but hardly broke either.

Looking around, listening to the conversations in this quaint little miniature grandstand, she decided, no, it wasn’t brains going to get her in with this lot; sure, brains would help. Intuition was telling her something more fundamental was needed, which she did possess: personality. Which came from within, when you were secure with who you were, and what you’d consciously grown yourself into. She’d done that, developed a sense of presence, but not put on airs or installed that certain enunciation into her voice. Just been herself, the single-minded young woman who intended making the most of the one life she had. Not defined as a Maori woman either. (Just me.)

They’d come to know, should they make the mistake of slotting her into the Maori stereotype, that she was her own person with ambition, especially financial ambition. (I want it all! And since I can’t, then I want lots!) And even with her younger age and fairly limited social experiences, Polly Bennett already knew that no man was going to relegate her to the conventional female role of looking good but the less you had to say the better. She knew when to shut up, and the choice was always hers. No one was going to invalidate or part-reduce her existence to that of mere woman. (I want to be strong like my mother, even if she did have her potential brought out by a good man, my dearest stepfather, whom I can’t think of as a step-father. Charlie. But unlike Mum, I want to keep going, I want to reach the stars.)

She came in her own car, on Simon’s instructions, to this improbable venue of a polo match, as Si had to organise his horses and stuff. She strolled over to where the players were getting ready to engage selves and mounts, kissed Simon on the lips, and shook hands with his fellow team members, three others and a spare. She was aware of their bemusement at their teammate’s choice of a female companion. (My God, she’s Maori!) Polly was laughing inside.

At the other end of the field was the opposition team with its numerous horses. Then there were helpers and horse attendants and helpful children all pitching in, and Simon had made a few introductions to Polly, so she already had a range of responses; from hostile to friendly to patronising. Whatever.

She was used to it, standing out as the singular brown in a white setting. Only last week Simon and his parents had taken her to a symphony orchestra, where Polly saw not another Maori face anywhere in the audience. (Don’t know what you’re missing, cousins. It was fantastic.) The parties she went to, they were with the same dominance of whites. And she wasn’t afraid to say it to herself, that she hated the raw and, for her, coarse energy of not just Maori socialising but anything without a bit of grace, style, and a confident sense of itself. So make that the lower classes, of whatever skin colour, whose social company she did not prefer.

She knew she owed a lot to Charlie’s influence. He was a proud man of principles and love. And surely her mother’s ultimate refusal to bow down to Jake had passed a strength on to her. Nor had she ever wanted to be like her Pine Block friends, an entire neighbourhood going nowhere fast. She excelled at school and only decided against university because she had another desire: to make lots of money. (I love money.) But she would only marry it if all efforts to make her own failed.

She felt eyes on her and looked up to a man staring close to hatred at her. She asked Simon if he knew him and was informed he was just a horse groomer and not worth bothering about. Though clearly Simon was bothered.

Polly said, I’m not, but stared the man down. Just a worker who wants someone he perceives as even lesser to look down on. (Mistake, Mister. No one looks down on me. Not when I was a Heke growing up in that hellhole. And most certainly not when I learned Charlie Bennett’s superior form of assertiveness. That’s why I proudly bear his surname. Charlie taught his step-children about never allowing anyone to look down on us. Got us off this poor-us minority Maoris nonsense. He’d say, so it’s harder for you — so what? Someone’s got to have the harder route. Someone has to be a minority.

A woman came up and introduced herself as a good friend of Simon’s. Do you mind if I join you? Sure, Polly would be delighted. The woman winked and said, Rather than sit listening to my husband hold court, talking about who else but himself. It was an interesting introduction and soon they were chatting easily.

The polo game began. Polly heard three, four conversations at once around her, in between taking in the rather unexciting polo match.

But the horses transfixed her.

Polly had never seen them this close. Their impossible extension of nostrils, big enough to give birth from, snorting out violent expulsions of air. Their rolling eyes, the stark whiteness of eyeball. Veins were stucco-ed along each huge handsome head, flesh and skin a thin layer over sculpted skull. Smooth coats were sheened with vitality and sweat. The thundering weight was carried by big slabs of hind-quarter muscle, yet lower legs were so light. Chests were fully swollen, muscle strips pulsed and flexed, shadow lines of slender leg-bone that surely must break under this suffering, of being turned — yanked more like it — this way that way, stopped on a dime, galloped furiously.