The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

by Jilly Cooper

  It was her first experience of Rannaldini’s intransigence. She knew she mustn’t give in. She was horrified how difficult she found it.

  Having persuaded Georgie to buy a slinky black dress covered in sequins for The Clive Anderson Show so she could borrow it for the ball, Flora discovered it was too tight on the hips. Resorting to half a packet of Ex-Lax she spent the day of the ball on the 100 groaning that she was dying.

  That makes two of us, thought Georgie.

  Deathly pale, buckling at the knees, Flora managed to gird her ransacked loins to get ready. At least the dress fitted perfectly. Georgie was just fastening her own jade pendant round Flora’s neck when Flora asked her point blank if she’d ever been unfaithful to Guy.

  ‘No, of course not.’

  As Georgie crossed her fingers the jade pendant slithered between Flora’s breasts.

  ‘And has Daddy ever been unfaithful to you?’

  This time, as she crossed her fingers, Georgie held on to the pendant with her thumb.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘How very boring,’ said Flora. ‘Marriage must be like a prison.’

  Next moment her mother had burst into tears, but denied there was anything the matter, just saying work was going badly.

  As Wolfie was playing cricket against the fathers and going to be pushed for time, Guy – the ever-willing chauffeur – dropped Flora off at Valhalla where the roses were scattering pale petals all over the lawns.

  Rannaldini, who’d just flown in from a wonderfully successful performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth, was delighted to see Flora looking so wan. But she had the wonderful skin of youth where sleepless nights only put darker blue shadows under the eyes and made her look more appealing. He had never wanted anyone more, but icily he ignored her.

  Before she left with Wolfie and Natasha, they paraded before the grown-ups in their finery.

  Oh, I’d love to be beautiful and thin and go to a ball, thought Kitty longingly.

  Wolfie asked his father to tie his tie. He had made another century this afternoon and looked bullish, very brown and handsome.

  ‘None of our generation can tie bow-ties,’ said Natasha.

  ‘Family ties are more important,’ said Flora pointedly.

  For a second, as his father had to stand on tiptoe to see over his shoulder into the mirror and flick and slot the yellow Paisley tie in and out, Wolfie had a spookie feeling Rannaldini wanted to throttle him.

  ‘You all look be-yootiful,’ called out Kitty as they drove off.

  As Kitty sorted through the mountains of washing from her stepchildren’s trunks the following afternoon she felt really depressed – not only had she got the curse, which meant yet again she wasn’t pregnant, but also because she’d just switched on Wimbledon and seen Hermione and Rannaldini sitting together on Centre Court.

  She’d just removed the clothes which Natasha, who was flying to New York the next day, might need, when Wolfie tottered in still wearing his dinner-jacket. At first she thought he was drunk, then, as he collapsed at the kitchen table, she realized he was crying.

  ‘Christ, I hate my father.’

  Kitty went cold. Mindlessly she filled the kettle.

  ‘Flora was impossible all evening,’ said Wolfie, furiously wiping his desperately bloodshot eyes. ‘Then she vanished and came back all lit up. I thought she was on something. She refused to dance, the sides of the marquee were up because it was so hot, she kept looking up at the stars. Then she gives this shriek of excitement and runs across the pitch leaving her bag, her shoes and her green jacket behind as my father’s helicopter lands on the pitch.’

  Wolfie couldn’t go on. The wind from Rannaldini’s blades had blown Flora’s skirt over her head, and his last memory had been of her black legs and suspenders and her red bikini pants.

  ‘She was so crazy about Boris,’ he said despairingly, ‘and Marcus Campbell-Black, but I thought I’d seen off the competition. But how can I compete when my father comes out of the sky like Close Encounters?’

  Wolfie was a kind boy but so deranged with grief he’d forgotten who he was talking to.

  ‘My mother’s still in love with him and they’ve been divorced for years,’ he went on bitterly. ‘When we were in Salzburg Papa swanned up and put his hand on her shoulders: “You’re looking lovely, Gisela,” and Mum started shaking and shaking. He can have anyone. Why does he have to take Flora as well?’

  Suddenly Wolfie realized the cup Kitty was putting down in front of him was spilling tea all over the table.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Kitty, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying. You must have known what a bastard he was when you married him.’

  When his father returned, even browner, from Wimbledon, having been denied the satisfaction of seeing Boris Becker winning, Wolfie asked for five minutes alone. Expecting trouble Rannaldini was surprised when Wolfie bleakly announced that instead of an eighteenth birthday party he’d like the money to go round the world. Relieved to see the broad back of his son, Rannaldini wrote him a surprisingly generous cheque.

  ‘I feel terrible,’ said Flora, when Rannaldini telephoned to tell her, ‘and I doubt if he’ll ever forgive you.’

  ‘Course he will. Sooner or later he’ll need money or a leg-up in his career so bad he have to forgive a leg-over.’

  ‘You’ve no fucking heart and I’m worried about Mum. If she’s writing a musical called Ant and Cleo, why is she reading Othello?’

  Returning to Paradise from her second honeymoon in Jamaica in late July, Marigold rang Georgie and suggested they went for a cheering-up lunch at The Heavenly Host.

  ‘I can’t face the outside world at the moment,’ mumbled Georgie.

  ‘Ay’ll bring some smoked salmon and several bottles straight round. We’ve got to talk.’

  Half an hour later Marigold rolled up at Angel’s Reach looking gloriously suntanned but a bit plump with an apricot-pink shirt worn outside her shorts to cover the bulges.

  ‘Ay’m so sorry,’ she hugged Georgie. ‘Kitty filled me in. Ay didn’t realize how awful it’d been.’

  She was horrified by Georgie’s appearance. The magnolia complexion which men used to write songs about was all blotchy. She was desperately thin, her skin hanging like loose clothes on a skeleton. She couldn’t stop shaking.

  ‘Poor Dinsdale’s aged more than I have. He’s been walked so much as an excuse to get out of the house that he hides behind the sofa whenever his lead’s rattled. Oh God, another single magpie.’ Frantically Georgie crossed herself. ‘I keep seeing them.’

  ‘They’re always single in July because the females are feeding their babies and protecting their nests,’ said Marigold. ‘Now where’s the corkscrew? We both need a noggin.’

  ‘He’s still seeing Julia.’ Georgie couldn’t keep off the subject. ‘I ought to get out, but I’m like a hotel coat-hanger, useless when detached from my moorings.’

  ‘I was like that,’ said Marigold. ‘How are you and Guy when you’re together?’

  ‘Terrified. We never stop apologizing like British Rail. I bitched about him so much to Annabel Hardman the other day with the answering machine on that I had to record Dire Straits over the whole tape.’

  ‘There.’ Marigold put a huge blue-green glass of Chardonnay in front of Georgie.

  ‘Thanks. Larry was so hellish to you I’d never have signed that Catchitune contract if I’d known about Nikki, but you look so stunning now. How did you ever get him back?’

  ‘Promise, promise not to tell?’ whispered Marigold. ‘Ay paid Laysander.’

  ‘You what!’

  ‘Ferdie, Laysander’s flatmate, orchestrated everythin’. They put me on an awful diet, took me joggin’ and made me act totally unconcerned whenever Larry rolled up. Ay gave Laysander some lovely clothes and a Ferrari and we hired jewels for him to give me. Larry was so mad with jealousy he came roaring back.’

  ‘It really worked!’ Georgie showed the faint flicker of animation of the dying cast
away hearing the chug of a helicopter.

  ‘Far better than before,’ said Marigold, taking the smoked salmon out of its transparent paper and laying it on a blue plate from the Reject Shop, which had presumably replaced her plates Georgie had smashed.

  ‘You know how hopelessly undomesticated Larry was,’ she went on, searching among the spice shelf for red pepper. ‘Now he brings down his washing and even loads and unloads the dishwasher. Ay’m thinkin’ of writing Nikki a thank-you letter. And he’s become so marvellous in other ways.’ Marigold unearthed a tired-looking lemon from the bottom of the fridge. ‘Not just terribly loving and not being able to keep his hands off me, but he doesn’t rev up any more or shout at me if Ay map-read wrong and he gives me the remote control when we watch TV and smothers me in YSL. That’s why I’m looking so good and best of all I don’t have to go to Masonic dinners any more.’

  ‘Golly.’ Georgie found herself peeling off a bit of smoked salmon. ‘I wonder if it would work with Guy? How much did you pay Lysander?’ she asked. Then, bleating in horror when Marigold told her, ‘I can’t afford that!’

  ‘It’s worth it,’ urged Marigold. ‘You’ll never be able to pay back the Ant and Cleo money and Larry’s hell-bent on having your album by Christmas. He’s mean about deadlines. It’ll be such fun having Laysander back in Paradise and he’ll keep Larry on his toes,’ she added dreamily.

  ‘Did you sleep with him?’

  ‘May word, no,’ Marigold crossed her fingers. ‘He’s just there to rattle one’s hubby. Do give it a go. He was in Cheshire bringing some drain billionaire to heel and now he’s in Mayorca on some rescue mission. Ay promise he and Ferdie are brilliant.’

  27

  Feeling anything but brilliant, Lysander huddled in the only bit of shade on the burning deck of the motor yacht, Feisty Lady, as she chugged round the rocky Majorcan coast. He was seven days into the worst job Ferdie had ever found him: to rattle a fabulously rich arms dealer appropriately called Mr Gunn, who had brought his appalling bimbo on the cruise as well as his equally appalling wife.

  Bloody Ferdie had also pooh-poohed Lysander’s gloomy prognostications that he was bound to be seasick.

  ‘That was rowing boats at school. Large boats are quite different.’

  Large boats turned out to be infinitely worse. The minute Feisty Lady left the Hamble, Lysander started heaving his guts out. It was absolutely no consolation, particularly during a storm in the Bay of Biscay, that the busty, braceleted Mrs Gunn spent her time vying with the ship’s crew who were all as gay as crickets (Mr Gunn was taking no chances) over who should minister to Lysander on his death bunk. Nor that Mr Gunn became so jealous of Mrs Gunn playing Florence Nightingale twenty-four hours a day that he dumped the bimbo in Gibraltar and was now bonking Florence Nightingale so vigorously in the master cabin below deck that Feisty Lady was pitching worse than in the Bay of Biscay.

  It was Lysander’s first day up. A molten midday sun blazed down out of a royal-blue sky and he felt too dreadful even to watch Goodwood on satellite or crawl to the telephone to ring his bookmaker. His wracked stomach was even more concave than that of the bronzed deckhand in frayed hotpants who seemed to be spending an unnecessarily long time polishing the nearest life buoy.

  ‘It’s really kind, Gregor, but I honestly don’t want anything,’ mumbled Lysander.

  He tried to concentrate on yesterday’s Sun. But the cheery forecast for Pisces bore no resemblance to the horrors of the day before and he was depressed by a survey in which the majority of female readers said they preferred men to be well read rather than well hung. Lysander hadn’t finished a book in years. Sick for a home that no longer existed, he longed for Jack or Arthur to cuddle. He was terrified once Mr Gunn stopped emptying himself into Mrs Gunn he would empty one of his Kalashnikovs into the catalyst. And wretched Ferdie, who had a maddening habit of going off air when he wanted Lysander to stay put, was always out of the office and refusing to return his calls.

  Listlessly he gazed across a tie-dyed turquoise and navy-blue sea at the pine-spiked cliffs falling into the sea. They were so like hedgehogs he half-expected them to curl up, taking their tower blocks and hotels with them as the yacht approached. The buildings themselves were like the egg-box castles he used proudly to take home from playgroup for his mother who, to his father’s irritation, always put them in the drawing room. He always missed her more when he was feeling ill.

  They were approaching Palma. Feisty Lady was bucking ominously and Lysander was wondering if he had the strength to stagger to the side or anything left to throw up when a huge yacht overtook them.

  ‘That’s Britannia, Sandy, isn’t she lovely?’ sighed Gregor the deck-hand.

  Raising his binoculars with effort, Lysander scoured the deck for Princess Diana or the Queen. He seriously admired the Queen, no-one knew more about racing. If she fell overboard he could dive in and rescue her, although in his weakened state he probably couldn’t swim that far. Perhaps Princess Diana could rescue him. She was supposed to swim every day. He imagined her firm hands on either side of his head, her soothing voice saying: ‘Not long now,’ as she towed him towards Britannia. At the thought of her beautiful long legs doing a vigorous backstroke Lysander’s mind misted over. He was roused by the ship’s cook waving a cordless telephone smelling of garlic at him.

  ‘Nice sounding man for you, Sandy.’

  As Ferdie was the only person who knew he was on board, Lysander grabbed the telephone in a fury.

  ‘Gemmyoutofhere, you bastard. Where the hell have you been? I’ve been propositioned by every bum bandit in the British navy.’

  ‘Chill out,’ said Ferdie, who had an irritating addiction to modern slang. ‘What’s the state of play?’

  Lysander told him, then after a long pause in which Ferdie outlined his next assignment, Lysander gave a whoop of delight.

  ‘Georgie Maguire, fucking hell, the Georgie Maguire. She’s gorgeous. All right, I am keeping my voice down. I thought she was happily married . . . the bastard. I’ll get the next flight out of Palma.’

  ‘Wait till tomorrow,’ said Ferdie, ‘then I can meet you.’

  The following afternoon as the temperature soared into the nineties Ferdie was amazed to see Lysander sidling through the Nothing-to-Declare doors at Gatwick, smothered in an enormous camel-hair overcoat, swathed in long scarves, sending fellow passengers flying as his trolley, hopelessly over-loaded with duty-free, polo sticks and expensive suitcases out of which protruded shirt-tails and legs of boxer shorts, veered out of control.

  ‘Where’s the fucking car?’ he hissed to Ferdie.

  ‘In the car park.’

  ‘Well, take this trolley and move it.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Move it, for Christ’s sake.’

  Even when he was shaking like a leaf with sweat pouring down a yellowing face, people stopped and gazed at Lysander.

  Hell, thought Ferdie, he’s picked up a fever, or worse.

  It turned out to be worse. The moment they were alone and going up in the grey car-park lift Lysander parted his stifling coat to reveal a pink nose and a pair of totally crossed eyes. Tucked under his arm was a painfully thin, bedraggled, reddy-brown mongrel puppy who nevertheless managed to twitch its curly tail and stretch up to lick Lysander’s chin.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’

  ‘What does it look like? Sweet little thing. I had to trank her so she’s very dopey.’ Lysander dropped a kiss on the puppy’s head. ‘All the way from Palma, Jesus, if another hostess asks if she can take my coat! I’ve never had so many women trying to get my clothes off. Isn’t she adorable?’

  ‘And probably rabid,’ hissed Ferdie, then as the lift stopped, ‘cover it up for Christ’s sake.’

  The row continued in the car.

  ‘Have you ever seen anyone with rabies?’ Ferdie was practically diving out of the window to avoid contact.

  ‘No, nor anything like this puppy. She’s got cigarette burns all over her
back. Christ, people are bastards.’

  ‘You could go to prison for ten years, so could I for abetting you.’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me. I must have a bet.’ Lysander reached for Ferdie’s car telephone.

  ‘Put it down. Don’t change the subject. That dog could have rabies.’

  ‘Course she hasn’t. Her owners kept her locked in a cupboard. The boys from the boat took me clubbing and we heard her howling. We had to break in after-hours to rescue her. I really like gays. Basically they’re so brave and so kind to animals. It took Gregor and me an hour to wash the shit off.’

  ‘So it’s stolen as well,’ said Ferdie sternly. ‘That’s fifteen years.’

  ‘Anything’d be better than that bloody boat. I am not into bateau-ed wives.’

  Ferdie didn’t smile. ‘You’re so fucking impulsive, like that time you hi-jacked the school cat. Jack will be wildly jealous.’

  ‘Jack will be delighted – once he knows she’s female.’

  ‘Then they can have lots of rabid puppies.’

  Lysander giggled. ‘I’ve got you a huge bottle of Jack Daniels and some Toblerone for fat Jack and scent for Marigold. I can’t wait to see her. God, it’s bliss to be back. I hate abroad. People can’t understand me and I can’t understand the television. When are we going to see Georgie?’

  ‘About half-past six.’

  ‘How exciting. She looked so stunning at her launching party. Perhaps she’ll write a song about me called “Cock Star”!’

  ‘You are not allowed to bonk her.’

  ‘No, well. I better have a shower before we see her. I’ve got pee all over my shirt.’

  ‘What have you called that puppy, Death Threat?’ asked Ferdie.

  ‘Maggie.’

  ‘After Thatcher?’

  ‘No, after this girl in The Mill on the Floss.’

  ‘What are you reading that for?’

  Lysander, who was now marking runners in Ferdie’s Evening Standard, his hand edging towards Ferdie’s mobile, explained about the survey in the Sun.

  ‘How far have you got?’