by Jilly Cooper
God, he looks ridiculous, thought Guy.
Larry was wearing a scowl, a black leather jacket, a white T-shirt hanging outside black jeans. Any inches added by black, high-heeled cowboy boots were negated by the weight of gold jewellery and the black hair which was beginning to cascade in ringlets over his collar and sweating forehead.
‘Of all the fucking things to happen,’ he roared, flattening the waiting Catchitune publicity staff against the walls.
‘We’ve got a lot of heavy-weight Press here already,’ said Guy soothingly, reading upside down as reporters from The Scorpion and The Sunday Times Style pages signed in.
‘Fat lot of good it’ll do us.’ Larry glared round. ‘They’ve all turned up to see Rannaldini.’ Then, as Guy drew him out of earshot of the reporters, ‘The fucker phoned as I entered Old Compton Street, saying he wasn’t coming, so I rammed the Merc in front.’
Rannaldini, he went on, who was on sabbatical from the London Met making a film of Don Giovanni, had been due to fly back for the party that afternoon. Instead he had returned secretly the day before in order to surprise the London Met who were playing Beethoven’s Ninth at the Festival Hall under Oswaldo, their guest conductor.
‘Oswaldo’s too bloody good for Rannaldini’s liking,’ stormed Larry, grabbing one of two more large whiskies conjured up by Guy. ‘Anyway, Rannaldini plonks himself down in the front row, and sits stony-faced with his eyes shut until the last moment when the singing starts. Then he stalks out, distracting everyone from the music, and telling some gleefully hovering reporter from the Evening Standard that he can’t listen to such garbage any longer.
‘So, of course, it is all over the Standard, and, as is his fucking wont to get himself out of trouble, Rannaldini jumps into his jet and shoves off back to LA, missing the fuss and Georgie’s party. The bastard didn’t even have the guts to ring me until he was safely over the Irish Sea. Even Kitty doesn’t know he’s buggered off. She’s on her way up.’
Larry couldn’t have been angrier. He or rather Catchi-tune had poured vast sums into Rannaldini’s pocket. He and Rannaldini were supposed to be buddies, and Nikki, who was a terrific star-fucker, was dying to meet him, and besides he needed moral support in case Marigold punched Nikki on the nose.
He and Guy were interrupted by a photographer from The Scorpion who was loading up his camera.
‘First edition goes to press any minute. What time are you expecting Rannaldini?’
As Larry opened his mouth, Guy interrupted smoothly: ‘He’ll be along in a minute. Traffic’s terrible.’ Then he murmured to Larry, ‘We’ve got the Press here, let’s use them.’
‘Where’s Georgie anyway?’ asked Larry, suddenly remembering he had an album to launch.
‘In the bog, grouting her face,’ said Guy.
Larry went white. ‘Nikki’s in there.’
‘Shit! She won’t say anything to Georgie about you and her, will she?’
‘She promised not to,’ said Larry gloomily, ‘but she’s so off the wall. I run a billion-pound company and I’ve been answering my telephone all day, while Nikki goes to the hairdresser and tarts herself up.’
‘I’ll yank Georgie out of the bog,’ said Guy, shooting off, ‘and you keep Nikki off the drink. It gets to women.’
‘How’s Rock Star doing, Larry?’ asked the Daily Mail.
‘Breaking all records. We’ve already put on a massive re-press,’ muttered Larry, bolting off to the Gents.
No-one could have been a less heavenly host than Larry. He had no chit-chat, only intense concentration on what temporarily interested him, which on this occasion, confusingly, was both Nikki and Marigold. He also had the nightmare of making a speech. Practice making more and more imperfect, he had been rewriting the draft given him by the publicity department all day.
Outside the Ladies, Guy roared: ‘For God’s sake, come out at once, Panda,’ which was a nickname from when they’d first met, when he could hardly see Georgie’s eyes for sooty black make-up.
‘Thank you,’ said Georgie loudly to the cloakroom lady, as she drifted out, to draw attention to the couple of gold pound coins she’d left beside the silver in the saucer.
Funny, observed the cloakroom lady, as she pocketed the coins, that Georgie, despite her slim top-half, had revealed plump legs when she’d raised her skirt to pull up her tights and the blonde in the ultra-respectable dress had been wearing no knickers at all.
Exhausted from the American launch, Georgie was now running on pure adrenalin. Like a long-lost lover, her American public had been flowing back in the last week of the tour. The fan letters, dried to a trickle, were beginning to pour in, workmen hailed her from scaffolding. For the first time in years, people nudged as she passed in the street.
The English launch was far more of an ordeal, because London had been the home of her last humiliating flop and because Guy was with her today, which made her far more nervous, because he was the person she most wanted to please in the world.
She was deathly pale as she entered the party room, her earthy sensual face almost puddingy, but when she saw the waiting army of reporters and frenziedly clicking cameramen, colour seeped back into her cheeks, her long, mournful heavy-lidded eyes started to sparkle, and the deep lines, which ran from her wide snub nose past the corners of her coral-pink mouth with its huge pouting snapdragon lower lip, seemed to disappear in a wonderful, wicked, face-splitting smile.
The rigours of the American tour had knocked off seven pounds and given her back her cheek-bones. The long slinky dress, the same blue as sunlit summer seas, emphasized her slim shoulders, pretty breasts and waist and bypassed her hips and legs. As she draped herself over the papier-mâché rock for the photographers, her heavy russet hair broke away from its moorings and writhed over her shoulders – Georgie, the sex symbol, was reborn.
Soon she was wooing the Press.
‘What are you working on?’ asked the Express.
‘A musical about mid-life crisis called Ant and Cleo.’
‘Autobiographical?’ asked the Mirror.
‘Of course not,’ Georgie smiled across at Guy, who said firmly, ‘And Georgie’s about to sign a contract for a new album for Catchitune.’
‘Dar-ling,’ reproached Georgie, ‘I want to get shot of Ant and Cleo first.’
‘You looking forward to living next to Rannaldini in the country?’ asked The Scorpion.
‘God, yes. I’m a colossal fan. I think he’s brilliant and stunning, too.’
‘Perhaps he could produce Ant and Cleo,’ suggested the Telegraph.
‘Paradise Productions. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’ sighed Georgie.
‘Look this way, Georgie,’ shouted the photographers, ‘To me, Georgie.’ ‘Smile, Georgie.’ ‘Climb on the rock; show us your legs,’ which was the one thing Georgie was not prepared to do.
Shoved rudely aside, as so often happened, by people anxious to get to his wife, Guy Seymour moved round the room, slipping cards with the gallery’s address on to anyone rich and famous who might be interested in buying paintings.
‘Is Georgie Maguire here in person?’ asked a pale girl from the Independent.
‘Of course she is,’ answered Guy quite sharply.
‘I went to a launch at lunchtime,’ said the girl huffily, ‘where the pop star didn’t show. The record company didn’t feel it was relevant and they didn’t play any of her records,’ she shouted over the boom of Rock Star. ‘Of course hype and hard sell are very unfashionable at the moment.’
‘That’s why we’re in the middle of a recession,’ snapped Guy.
‘She’s not bad for forty-six,’ admitted the girl, consulting her hand-out. ‘Which is her famous husband?’
‘I am,’ said Guy.
‘Oh, right. D’you manage Georgie?’
‘No-one manages Georgie.’
The room was filling up with record distributors, disc jockeys, Catchitune employees, musicians produced by Catchitune and the general freeloaders
of the music business.
Through a fog of cigarette smoke, people drifted up and down: men in overcoats, T-shirts, designer gymshoes and baseball caps., clutching beer bottles like grenades, or in leather jackets with their shirts hanging out like Larry. Girls with scarlet lips, tangled hair, wandering eyes and pale faces like Brides of Dracula, who never saw the daylight, crunched over the sea shells, restlessly searching for celebrities or at least familiar faces.
Everyone pretended not to stare at Georgie, but they all agreed that the album was great and that, in the down light, she looked terrific. But they ignored her because big stars don’t like to be pestered and it wouldn’t be cool to go up to her.
The Press were getting restless.
‘That’s great, thank you.’ One by one they closed their notebooks, switched off their tape recorders and looked around for Rannaldini.
Georgie, however, having been out of fashion a long time, desperately needed reassurance. Like a bride at her own wedding whom everyone thinks is too important to waylay, she was suddenly deserted and sought Guy out in panic.
‘It’s going to be a mega-flop. Everyone’s leaving.’
‘Don’t be so bloody wet, Panda.’
‘Judging by celebrity head-counts, this party is a complete wash-out,’ said the girl from the Independent.
Then in walked Dancer Maitland, thin as a rake with his long tousled mane and black-lined eyes, one of the biggest rock stars on both sides of the Atlantic.
‘Hi, darling.’ He came straight up to Georgie, hugging her cautiously so as not to disturb either of their hair or make-up.
‘Great album. Wish I’d written it. Bloody nice of me to be here, when you’ve just pushed me off Number One in the States and no doubt you’ll do the same in England. I hear you’re moving to Rutshire. I’ll be there in April when practice chukkas start. You must come and ’ave dinner.’
‘Oh, we’d love to,’ said Georgie ecstatically. ‘Oh, Dancer, thank you for coming, and making the party. Have you met Guy?’
Dancer looked at Guy’s strong stern face, whose classical good looks were only marred by a nose broken when he was boxing for Cambridge. The warmth of the reddy-brown complexion and the friendly smile showing excellent teeth were tempered by eyes which despite laughter lines were the cold pale azure of Basildon Bond writing-paper.
A battered, gold corduroy suit, a blue-and-gold paisley silk-tie and beautifully cut, straight, white-blond hair falling on the collar of his dark blue shirt, gave him an arty look. But the overwhelming impression was of some high churchman: a man of passion but strong-willed enough to resist the overtures of the most wantonly ravishing parishioner.
Sexy but tough as shit, thought Dancer, wincing at Guy’s firm handshake.
‘Georgie gives you a good press,’ he said. ‘But I thought I was the only rock star livin’ in Rutshire.’
And the photographers got their picture, because Dancer came to launching parties even less often than Rannaldini.
Dancer was followed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Rod Stewart, Simon Bates, Steve Wright, Cilia Black, Simon Le Bon and a host of other celebs, so Rannaldini wasn’t missed nearly as much as he would have liked. Hermione, on the other hand, made a deliberately late entrance with her devoted, balding husband Bob who, as the orchestra manager of the London Met, had had a punishing day dealing with Rannaldini and the Press.
Hermione was looking radiant in a rich, red Chanel suit embroidered with roses and with a built-in bra to boost her splendid breasts. To boost her sales, she carried a large crocodile bag, rattling with tapes of Blow the wind southerly to thrust on unsuspecting journalists.
‘I thought you’d like to hear some real music,’ she murmured to the music critic of The Times.
Although she smiled graciously round, she was pained by the fog of cigarette smoke and the photographers still clustering round Georgie and Dancer.
‘Who’s that striking woman in the swansdown bolero and red leather shorts? Didn’t she play Susannah at the ENO?’ she asked Bob. ‘Her face is so familiar.’
‘She’s the Catchitune receptionist,’ said Bob not unkindly. ‘You see her each time you go into the building.’
Hermione, having spent the morning in bed with Rannaldini, was shored up in the knowledge that he had blacked the party not because he wanted to avoid the Press, but because he loathed the idea of Georgie Maguire and was violently opposed to her stealing his thunder in Paradise. He was furious that Georgie, as a pop star, would probably earn twice as much as he and Hermione put together, and he detested Georgie’s mawkish celebration of marriage. Everywhere he went in LA last week, he’d heard ‘Rock Star’ being sung and whistled, as it raced up the charts.
Accepting, however, that this was the quickest way to get her picture in the papers, Hemione glided up to Guy whom she’d already met with Larry.
‘Hallo, Mr Wonderful,’ she said archly, kissing him on his firm, handsome mouth, then carefully choosing a lull in the music turned to Georgie: ‘I’m simply livid with Rannaldini for crying off. I said, “Georgie Maguire’s music gives pleasure to so many people.” I kept telling him, “You’ll love Georgie when you meet her, Maestro,” but he’s such an intellectual snob, and he does feel “Rock Star” is a rip-off of “Lady in Red”.’
‘It’ll be Lady in the red by the time we’ve paid for Angel’s Reach,’ said Georgie lightly, but her happiness evaporated and when Hello magazine asked them both to turn and smile, the photographer caught Georgie looking miserable, and Hermione, who instantly composed her features, eyes open, brows raised, dazzling white teeth flashing, looking gorgeous.
‘I’ve bought you a present,’ Hermione handed Georgie Blow the wind southerly, ‘because I wanted to cheer you up about that beastly piece in the Guardian.’
‘I hid it from Georgie, so shut up,’ hissed Guy, adding, ‘You look fabulous, love your hair,’ because women were always distracted by flattery, and briskly led Georgie off to meet the new music editor of Billboard.
‘What Rannaldini actually said,’ stage-whispered Hermione to Dancer Maitland, ‘was that he didn’t want to meet an ageing sex symbol.’
‘Because he does that in the mirror every morning,’ snapped Dancer.
People were dancing in corners, falling on food. Tables were filling up with glasses. Catchitune, cashing in on having the Press present, were playing records by other artistes on their books. Nikki, in her pie-frilled collared blue velvet dress and determined to prove she was a better Chief Executive’s wife than Marigold, was working the room, pressing her new London address on disc jockeys and important retailers, hinting that she and Larry were together now, and would soon be throwing a lovenest warming party in Paradise.
Emerging from the Gents after yet another rewrite, desperate for a cigarette, Larry scooped up a handful of prawn vol-au-vents.
‘We have given up canapés for Lent, or we won’t be able to get into our new jeans,’ said Nikki reprovingly as she glided up and removed the plate.
What in hell’s got into her? thought Larry. She looks like a complete frump. In fact the only person in the room looking more matronly than Nikki was Kitty Rannaldini, who, like many women much younger than their husbands, tried to dress older than she was. Exhausted from spring cleaning for Rannaldini’s return, she had belted up the motorway because she’d promised to support Marigold and because she longed to see her errant husband even for a couple of hours.
Kitty dreaded parties. In friends’ houses, she could escape to the kitchen to help, or take round bottles and gather up dirty glasses – but these matelots in their striped jerseys looked as though they’d down tools if she picked up a plate. Being a wonderful listener, she survived socially on a one-to-one basis, or in the office where people got to know and love her. The only way to communicate over one of Catchitune’s heavy rock bands, however, was with your eyes or your swaying body, which in Kitty’s case were concealed by hopelessly strong spectacles and a beetroot-pink crimplene tent-dress, whic
h she’d bought by mail order because she was too ashamed of her bulges to go into clothes shops.
Now she was being chewed out by Larry, who needed some ass to kick and who broke the news to her that Rannaldini had done a runner, as though it were her fault.
‘Did he say when he was coming back to England?’ stammered Kitty, trying to hide her desperate disappointment.
‘No,’ snapped Larry, ‘and where the fuck’s Marigold?’
‘She’s definitely coming.’
‘Sorry, love.’ Larry patted her arm. ‘I’ve given up smoking. Nikki sent me to a hypnotist last week and I haven’t had a fag since.’
‘But that’s brilliant,’ said Kitty, who knew Larry had been on sixty a day. ‘How d’you feel?’
‘Fine, except every ten minutes I climb up the curtains and throttle the cat.’ Larry was about to quiz Kitty about Marigold’s bit of rough trade, but seeing Nikki bearing down, he bolted back into the Gents.
Who the hell can I talk to? thought Kitty in panic. Seeing Georgie still talking to the languid new music editor of Billboard, she took a deep breath and went over.
‘I just come to say ’ow much we’re all lookin’ forward to you moving into Angel’s Reach.’
Georgie looked blank. This frump, with her fuzzy hair drawn into a pony-tail and a big spot on her forehead, must have emerged from the Catchitune accounts department.
‘I’m Kitty Rannaldini,’ said Kitty, amused to see Georgie’s wary half-smile widen into one of incredulous excitement.
‘Has Rannaldini come after all?’
‘He can’t make it, some drama wiv Don Giovanni. He was ever so upset.’
The cross round Kitty’s neck glittered in the moving spotlight, then, as it moved on, darkness hid her blushes at such a thumping lie.
‘Oh, I’m so pleased.’ Georgie sighed with relief. ‘Hermione said Rannaldini blacked it deliberately.’
‘Really,’ said the man from Billboard suddenly interested.
