by Jilly Cooper
Julia was telling Hermione how wonderfully she had sung in Der Rosenkavalier.
Having found out from Marigold the details of the Japanese record company Larry had bought into, Rannaldini was now discussing the sacked soloists across her with Bob. Georgie was dying to gossip to Marigold. How lovely if I had Rannaldini on the side, she thought dreamily, like Marigold had had Lysander.
As there was no broccoli, the salad was now being circulated. Alas, Hermione found half a slug in the lettuce; Georgie hadn’t bothered to wash because it was Iceberg.
‘I’m just worried that some poor person might get the other half,’ Hermione was stage-whispering to Guy.
After that no-one wanted any salad, and conversation moved on to universities, which Kitty took no part in having left school at sixteen. Sitting between Ben and Meredith, who had both turned their backs on her, Kitty wished she was sitting next to Bob – goodness, he looked tired – or to Guy who’d read the lesson so beautifully in church on Sunday and who was being so sweet to that lovely painter. Kitty noticed that Rannaldini, as the Guest of Honour, had been put on Georgie’s right, but did not feel slighted that she as his wife hadn’t been put next to Guy. That privilege was naturally accorded to Hermione, the maîtresse en titre. Every night Kitty prayed not to hate Hermione, and to forgive those who trespassed against her. Georgie plainly had a crush on Rannaldini, too, but her demands on him, Kitty hoped, would be more rollicking, like a red setter wanting a long walk down the valley from time to time.
Rannaldini didn’t really like Georgie and Guy, decided Kitty. That’s why he had been subtly punishing her since the Bagley Hall concert, finding fault with everything, making her feel even more unsure of herself.
‘I don’t think one can beat the Backs at Cambridge,’ Hermione was now saying.
Glancing down the table, Guy noticed Kitty’s eyes were as red as her dress. Rannaldini’s work, he thought grimly.
‘Poor Kitty’s having to put up with the backs of Paradise,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Turn round and talk to her, Meredith.’
‘Sorry, love,’ the Ideal Homo swung round. ‘When’s your sexy husband going to let me loose on the Valhalla dungeons?’
Kitty blushed scarlet, but thought once again, how sweet Guy was.
‘I don’t know how you put up with it,’ she could now hear Hermione telling him, in her idea of an undertone, ‘being dragged into the limelight in a pop song, when you’re such a man of substance. I would never expose Bob to such publicity. My family is sacred.’
‘I agree,’ said Julia, leaving all her pastry and lighting a cigarette, at which Hermione looked pained, until the pudding of guava-and-mango ice-cream with kiwi-fruit purée reduced her almost to orgasm. Guy, however, was incensed that a bottle of Barsac had gone missing.
‘Flora whipped it,’ confessed Georgie. ‘It’s a good thing she’s going back to Bagley Hall next month to dry out. Whoops, sorry, Miss Bottomley.’
Ben pursed his red lips and said he thoroughly disapproved of teenage drinking. Miss Bottomley’s mouth was too full of guava and mango for her to do anything but nod in frenzied agreement.
‘Oh, Flora’s sixteen, going on a hundred,’ sighed Georgie to Rannaldini. ‘I get so worried about AIDS. I sat her down last week and said: “We must have a good talk about sex”.’
The room fell silent.
‘A good talk about sex, because I was worried,’ went on Georgie, ‘and Flora put her pretty head on one side, and said: “Oh, poor Mum, are you having trouble with Dad?”’
Georgie laughed so loudly at the sheer impossibility of such a thing that everyone joined in. But it was one of the few light moments of the evening. Georgie was dying to get into another heart-to-thumping-heart with Rannaldini, but, without a waitress, she seemed to spend her whole time leaping up to remove plates and filling glasses.
It was a relief finally to whisk the ladies off upstairs. On the way Miss Bottomley shot into the downstairs 100.
‘I’ll use this one.’ Julie disappeared into another loo on the landing, whereupon Hermione vanished into Georgie’s bathroom.
‘Three old ladies got stuck in the lavatory. I wish Hermione would stay there.’ Georgie collapsed on to her bed between Marigold and Kitty. ‘Now we’re alone, how are you?’ she asked.
‘Wonderful,’ said Marigold, fluffing on face-powder with a red brush. ‘Larry’s faynally given Nikki the push and Pelham Crescent, it cost over a million, can you imagine? But he’s bein’ magic to me. He bought me these.’ She turned her head to show off ruby earrings big as strawberries. ‘And he’s going to buy me a flat in London, and take me on a second honeymoon in Jamaica.’
‘Lucky you,’ said Georgie petulantly, thinking of herself nailed to the desk for months to come.
‘I’m so pleased for you, Marigold,’ said Kitty, who didn’t feel there was much point in repairing her face.
‘How’s Lysander?’ asked Georgie.
‘Never off the telephone, the sweetie-pay. He’s raydin’ in a point-to-point in Cheshire this weekend, and wants me to go. Ay must say, I’m sorely tempted.’
When they went downstairs, Larry, who normally liked nothing better than to cap other men’s achievements over a large glass of brandy, had already joined the ladies.
‘What recession?’ he was saying to Sabine Bottomley. ‘If you’re liquid, it’s bonanza time. You can pick up companies, like shopping in Oxford Street.’
‘Fed up with talking about wife avoidance?’ Marigold asked him teasingly.
‘Not at all. Rannaldini, Bob and Meredith all wanted to know what Guy had done to those quails. Not my board-game.’ He sat down on the arm of Marigold’s chair. ‘This is, though.’ He took her hand, then added to Georgie, ‘Don’t she look great? See the earrings I bought her?’
‘They’re lovely.’
‘How’s the album going?’
‘Good,’ said Georgie truthfully. ‘I wrote a song today.’
Looking at the big red scented candle flickering on a side table, she suddenly found the answer for her lyric: ‘Swept by tempests, drenched by rain, I’ll come burning back again.’
‘Could we play one of your old albums, Georgie?’ asked Kitty, as Der Rosenkavalier finally ended.
‘Wait till Rannaldini goes,’ said Hermione.
Georgie gritted her teeth.
To gain the ascendancy before he left, Larry bought three of Julia’s paintings, and actually wrote Guy a large cheque. Bob, egged on by the Most Beautiful Voice in the World, put down a deposit on one of the smaller ones. Rannaldini bought the most erotic and said he’d talk to Guy about money later. Proudly Guy went round putting red stickers on them. Julia was in heaven. She didn’t say much, but her skin flushed faintly like the crimsoning on the underside of a wood anemone.
Larry and Marigold left immediately afterwards. They were followed by Rannaldini, who was flying to Milan first thing to do The Barber of Seville at La Scala.
Just for a second, as he and Georgie were alone in the hall together, he took her hands.
‘I’d love to talk to you sometime about Flora’s career,’ she heard herself stammering.
‘Of course,’ said Rannaldini. ‘Let us have lunch, and then we will have a chance to talk about ourselves.’
She felt he was just about to kiss her when Kitty came out, saying what a lovely evening it had been, and that Georgie and Guy must come over to Valhalla next time Rannaldini was home.
Georgie had the feeling that, with the departure of his boss, Bob would have liked to stay on and unwind, but that, for the same reason, Hermione felt the evening had lost all point, and dragged him away.
‘Look after Julia,’ Guy called out briskly to Georgie. ‘I’m taking Ben and Meredith round the house.’
Georgie was a little alarmed about what grand redecorating schemes Meredith might lure him into, but it was bliss to kick off her shoes, throw another of their own logs on the fire, and relax with a bottle of Kümmel and Julia.
; ‘How beautiful both Marigold and Hermione are,’ said Julia. ‘I’d so love to paint either of them.’
Feeling slightly deflated Julia didn’t want to paint her, Georgie suggested Julia approached them through Larry and Bob.
‘They both obviously love your work, and Larry’s on such a high with Marigold at the moment, he’d commission anything. I do hope it lasts.’ Georgie collapsed on the floor so she was level with Dinsdale on the sofa. ‘Larry’s been such a shit to her. I’m sorry I was so uptight this evening, but two couples cancelled at the last moment because their marriages had gone up the spout.’
Julia had chewed off her lipstick and her eyeliner had smudged beneath the fox-brown eyes, but her skin was unlined in the candle-light, and the scorpion glinted evilly between her breasts as though it might plunge its sting into the soft white flesh at any moment. She must be Scorpio, that most passionate and complicated of signs, thought Georgie.
‘I’m so lucky to be married to Guy,’ she went on hazily. ‘I used to be very wild when we were first married,’ and a bit now, she thought, luxuriating at the prospect of lunch with Rannaldini. ‘I think Guy feels so much safer now I’m tucked away in the country. Even when I used to go into the West End from Hampstead, he used to police my every move.’
Dinsdale, half-asleep, grunted with pleasure as Georgie scratched his back.
‘Guy’s been so wonderful about my career,’ she went on. ‘So happy to bask in any reflected glory, but he’s going to get glory himself soon – not just your exhibition which I’m sure will be terrific – but because of Rock Star. I know The Scorpion’s a rag, but they’ve nominated Guy Hubby of the Year, and if he wins, he gets ten thousand pounds. I expect Guy will insist on it going to charity, but it means he’ll be a star in his own right. It’s lovely that people have started recognizing him in the street and asking him for his autograph.’
Julia’s eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger.
‘It’s so sad when marriages break up. You hang on to your Ben,’ urged Georgie, then thought, I don’t think she should at all, he’s ghastly, I must be pissed. As she refilled their glasses, she noticed an adorable china puppy tangled in blue ribbon clambering out of a flowered bowl among the ornaments on a side table.
‘How lovely! Victorian,’ she examined it, ‘I wonder where that came from.’
‘Geraldine and the girls from the gallery gave it to me as a moving-in present,’ said a returning Guy smoothly. ‘I kept forgetting to bring it home.’
‘The puppy’s exactly like Dinsdale,’ said Georgie enchanted. ‘How clever of Geraldine.’
Saying they must go, Ben bore off Julia and Meredith whom they were going to drop off on the way.
‘Nice, aren’t they?’ said Guy, gathering up glasses.
‘Juliet’s lovely,’ said Georgie. ‘Not sure about him though.’
‘She’s called Julia,’ said Guy, ‘and Ben’s a genius.’
20
The next morning Guy and Georgie were woken ridiculously early by the telephone.
‘Leave it,’ mumbled Guy.
‘Someone might have died.’
‘Well, I wish they’d die later in the day.’
The sleepy smile was wiped off Georgie’s face when she found it was Hermione, too lazy to write, but priding herself on her good manners.
‘Thank you for a pleasant evening. We so enjoyed meeting Julia Armstrong.’
Hermione wanted recipes of everything Guy had cooked – anyone would think he’d had a baby or landed on Mars, thought Georgie irritably. Then, before ringing off, she announced, ‘Sabine Bottomley has asked me out to lunch.’
She doesn’t seem like a Sabine, thought Georgie as she put back the receiver. She’s the one who’d do the raping.
For a few moments she tried to burrow like a mole back into the dark furry tunnel of sleep, but Guy was stroking her breasts and putting increasing pressure on her clitoris, like a stiff button on the cordless telephone, until grumbling Georgie lumbered out of bed, muttering that she must clean her teeth and wash, but Guy pulled her back. ‘I want you now.’
Head turned and mouth clamped shut to divert garlic-and-wine fumes, she admired her bobbing body in a long dusty mirror, wondering if she should move more, and tried to remember to grip Guy with her inside muscles. She found it hard to come unless she was still and concentrating on her orgasm. Beneath her Guy looked tired, his face rumpled, and his white-blond fringe fallen back off his forehead.
‘Tell me about the last time you went to bed with Tancredi,’ he whispered.
So Georgie told him about the last time Guy thought she had been to bed with Tancredi.
Afterwards, he said, ‘I’m sorry. That was selfish of me,’ and he brought her breakfast in bed with grape hyacinths in a little vase. Only able to keep down the coffee, Georgie buttered the croissant for Dinsdale. When she staggered down, hungover to the hairline, everything had been cleared up, and once again she realized how lucky she was to be married to Guy, her rock star.
She felt less chipper when she opened their joint bank statement. The outgoings had been horrific and had almost mopped up the massive advance from Catchitune. The advance on Ant and Cleo had been spent months ago. Conciliatory before a screw, brisk afterwards, Guy was waving the bank manager’s letter and just getting into his must-tighten-our-belts routine when all worry temporarily evaporated because The Scorpion rang to say Guy had been voted Hubby of the Year.
‘To be quite honest there wasn’t a lot of choice,’ the reporter confided to Georgie. ‘Faithful husbands are an endangered species. Can we come and interview you and him tomorrow for Monday’s paper?’
At least the house had been bulled up for the dinner party, so Guy didn’t have to spend the rest of the day tidying. Sunday was a lovely day. After the reporter left, they sat watching an orange sun setting like a tiger down the black bars of the wood listening to the Top Twenty on Radio I, apprehensive almost to the end, until they heard the opening bars of Dancer Maitland’s ‘Recession Blues’ at Number Two, and knew it hadn’t knocked Georgie off the Number One spot. When ‘Rock Star’ came on, Guy turned up the wireless, so it blared round Paradise.
‘I’m so proud of you, Panda,’ he said opening the only bottle of Dom Perignon left from the dinner party.
‘I wish I could really tell you how much I love you,’ said Georgie.
Then, in a brief twilight wander round the garden, Guy outlined his long-term plans for the house and garden.
‘A new heaven and a new earth,’ murmured Georgie.
She must get on with Ant and Cleo tomorrow to pay for it.
Guy was in amorous mood again at bedtime.
‘Don’t be too long,’ he urged Georgie.
But Georgie got stuck into the Penguin Book of Narrative Poetry in the bath, and by the time she’d finished The Pied Piper, marvelling at Browning’s gift for rhyme, particularly as there were no rhyming dictionaries in those days, Guy was snoring with the light on.
Next morning he set off for London in his new BMW looking splendid. His blue-striped shirt and indigo tie brought out the light Messianic-blue of his eyes, as if he was some explorer setting out to discover new continents. Noticing his beautifully brushed pin-stripe jacket and his cases in the back and breathing in his English Fern aftershave as she hugged him goodbye, Georgie felt utterly desolate at being left on her own for five days. Flora was away staying with friends. But it would be nice to watch what she wanted on television, not tidy up and work all night if she felt like it.
It had rained heavily in the night, and where the valley was drying off, mist the same blue as Guy’s eyes drifted upwards. Georgie wondered how far away Julia Armstrong lived and if she sent up smoke signals to some lover. She couldn’t be in love with that fearful Ben.
Georgie was just looking at The Scorpion headline: ‘CARING GUY, THE HUNKY HUBBY’, when she realized he’d forgotten to take the little Hockney drawing to be framed for Flora’s birthday which was on Sunday. Ringi
ng him, she found his car telephone engaged. He must hardly have reached the outskirts of Paradise, but it remained engaged for the next thirty minutes.
Georgie was distracted by her agent ringing, saying the Gas Board were definitely firming up the offer for her and Guy to do a commercial, and that a champagne firm had rung to check out Georgie’s availability.
‘Better pay us in kind after Friday night,’ said Georgie.
Remembering it was dustbin day, and Mother Courage wasn’t due for half an hour, Georgie started to empty the waste-paper baskets. In the basket in Guy’s study she found a pink envelope, torn up into pieces smaller than confetti. Was it practising for this that one did so many jigsaws as a child? thought Georgie. Having laboriously pieced the envelope together, she saw it was addressed to: GUY SEYMOUR, private, at the gallery.
‘I must not let it put me off my work,’ she told herself sternly. ‘Women have always had crushes on Guy. Look at the way Kitty Rannaldini goes scarlet every time he speaks to her.’
All the same, she jumped as though she’d been caught snooping when the telephone rang. It was London Weekend asking how she was getting on with Ant and Cleo and whether there was anything they could see.
‘It’s going really well, but it’s still in draft form,’ Georgie told them airily, but starting to shake.
After they’d rung off, she decided to look for Act One. Perhaps Guy had picked it up. His study was so tidy, she was frightened of disrupting anything. Opening a desk drawer, searching for a sheaf of manuscript paper, she stumbled on the most charming nude drawing of a girl in a primrose-yellow bath cap with, except for the full breasts, a long slim, almost childish, body. It was a second before Georgie realized it was Julia. The drawing was unsigned, but it didn’t have the narrow-eyed, scowling intense look of a self-portrait.
It was perfectly normal for Guy to buy drawings of artists he exhibited; but Georgie nevertheless felt her happiness seep away like water out of a crooked plughole.
