by Jilly Cooper
‘Aren’t I stupid?’ said Georgie blithely.
‘And we’ve got plenty of milk.’ Opening the fridge door, Guy confronted her with a regiment of white bottles.
‘I must be going senile.’
On Sunday night Guy, who was getting edgy, heard Georgie singing ‘Stranger in Paradise’ in her bath. Christ, the whole village must be able to hear that raw, thrilling, yelping voice ringing round the valley. Georgie hadn’t sung in her bath since Julia came down.
One of the great set-backs to Guy’s amorous career had been having to sell the BMW to appease the bank and other creditors. Going to the station in a battered Golf which had no air-conditioning didn’t have the same kudos and the loss of his car telephone had really clipped Cupid’s wings. At least he’d got a phone card with his own personal number so he could put any calls made from telephone boxes or from home on the gallery number. The new monitoring of calls was an awful bore.
He and Julia had made plans to travel up to London together the following morning, but it would mean him getting a later train than usual because Julia’s babysitter couldn’t reach her until half-past eight. Terrified of rousing suspicion he waited until Georgie emerged pink and reeking of Floris from her bath before announcing that he intended catching the nine o’clock train instead of the seven.
After a perceptible pause, Georgie said: ‘I wouldn’t. At least you’ll get a seat on the seven. The nine’s packed out on a Monday.’
‘At least it gives me another hour in bed with you,’ said Guy gallantly.
Thinking how much better Georgie looked as she slithered into her cream satin nightdress and climbed into bed, Guy edged up and slid a hand round her left breast. Feeling his cock stiffening, drowsy from a Mogadon taken half an hour ago, Georgie curled up like an armadillo, elbows on her hip bones, knees up to her wrists, shutting him out.
‘Night, darling,’ she murmured and was asleep.
Going into the bathroom next morning, after a sweatily sleepless night trying to suppress that churning guilty excitement which overwhelmed him whenever he was going to see Julia, Guy was brought up by a rim of fox-brown hairs round the bath. Why the hell was Georgie shaving her legs to write songs up in her turret? After bathing and dressing at lightning speed, a skill learnt through adultery, Guy tracked Georgie down in another bathroom. Thinking how vulnerable she looked with her water-darkened hair streaming away from her thin white neck and far-too-bumpy backbone, he asked her what on earth she was washing her hair for.
‘Radio Paradise are coming to interview me at eleven.’
‘Their two hundred listeners aren’t going to see you.’
‘No, but the interviewer will. I hate having dirty hair.’ Not for me, you don’t, thought Guy. ‘Well, I’d better go.’
‘OK, see you Friday,’ said Georgie, aiming the shower at her right temple to shift all the scurf.
Bewildered not to be clung to and exhorted to ring soon, or even made a cup of coffee, Guy had just gone into the utility room to get some Fairy Liquid soap and toothpaste for the flat over the gallery when the telephone rang in the kitchen. But when he picked it up and said, ‘Hallo’, it was promptly dropped at the other end. Having no idea that it was actually a dripping Georgie ringing him from her private line up in her study, Guy was even more rattled, which was what she had intended. Whoever had rung must have expected him to have left for the seven o’clock by now and meant to catch Georgie.
After an irksome week when he could hardly get Georgie on the telephone, he decided to catch her out by getting back earlier and was rewarded by having to stand all the way down in appalling heat, crushed against a woman who’d bought kippers for tea. Reaching home, sticky and bad-tempered, he found a dark blue soft-top Ferrari with A DOG IS FOR LIFE . . . NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS sticker on the windscreen parked outside the front door, at a contemptuous angle as though the owner had been in a frantic hurry to get inside. Despite its sleek exterior the car inside was a tip of tapes, race cards, chewed trainers, old copies of the Sun, cigarette ash, Coke cans and polo balls.
On the terrace Guy found a very suntanned, incredibly good-looking youth who looked vaguely familiar. Light brown curls clung to his smooth brown forehead and a black shirt to his marvellously elongated body. Georgie, who was totally transformed in a clinging leotard, which had just come into fashion and which flowed emerald-green into white-and-green flared trousers, was gazing into his eyes as though she’d like to be clinging to him as well. Her white ankles had turned a lovely gold and her toenails were painted softest coral. A shaggy, reddy-brown puppy lay between her thighs, and a half-full jug of Pimm’s stood between her and the beautiful youth. Dinsdale thumped his tail but didn’t rise; only a beady-looking Jack Russell went into a possessive frenzy of yapping.
It is my fucking house, thought Guy as Larry had done six months before.
‘Hi, darling,’ said Georgie happily. ‘D’you remember Marigold’s friend Lysander Hawkley? He came to the launching of “Rock Star”.’
Resisting kicking Jack in the ribs, Guy became extremely hearty and, after discovering Lysander had moved into the area, said: ‘You must meet my daughter, our daughter, Flora. You’re about the same age. She’s coming home this evening, isn’t she?’ he added to Georgie. ‘She’s been staying in Cornwall.’
‘I’m expecting her to ring from the station any minute,’ said Georgie.
‘D’you want a drink – er – sir?’ Lysander got to his feet. ‘Shall I get another glass?’
Guy was not amused, by the slightly piss-taking ‘sir’, nor by the strength of the Pimm’s when Lysander filled all their glasses.
‘Been playing at the Rutshire?’ asked Guy, looking at his dirty white breeches and bare feet.
Lysander nodded.
‘Got any ponies?’
‘Six,’ said Lysander. ‘I’m keeping them at Ricky France-Lynch’s at Eldercombe. I’ve just been playing practice chukkas there.’
Guy flickered. Ricky France-Lynch’s wife was a painter and a friend of Julia’s. They pushed prams together. It was the sort of connection that might suddenly push Georgie into orbit.
‘How was dinner with Larry?’ asked Georgie idly, thinking how hot, middle-aged and crumpled Guy looked beside Lysander.
Guy flickered again. ‘He cancelled.’
‘What did you do instead?’ demanded Georgie, suddenly feeling desperately insecure.
Gently Lysander’s foot nudged her ankle. Ferdie’s instructions were to be totally detached and never interrogate. But Guy was distracted by a huge emerald glittering on Georgie’s newly manicured right hand.
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ agreed Georgie dreamily. ‘I liked it so much, I decided to buy it with my royalty cheque.’
Maggie the puppy wriggled to be put down. Already plumper, sleeker and gaining in confidence after a fortnight of human food and sleeping on Lysander’s bed, she pounced on a yellow leaf from the dying wych-elm and, bounding up to Dinsdale, started swinging on his ginger ears. Raising a prehensile paw Dinsdale sent her flying. Covered in dust she righted herself, then seeing Charity emerge from the long bleached grass on the side of the lawn, took off after her.
‘Magg-ee,’ shouted Lysander.
‘Named after Thatcher,’ mocked Guy, who regarded himself as a champagne socialist.
‘No, Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss,’ said Lysander with all the authority of one who has reached page four.
Guy was fazed. An Adonis who read! Georgie had always been an intellectual snob. He was dying for a pee and a change into something cooler, but he was loath to leave these two together.
‘Doing anything exciting this weekend?’ Georgie asked Lysander, removing a rose petal from his hair.
‘Playing cricket for the village on Sunday.’
‘Oh really.’ Guy perked up at a challenge. ‘We’re on opposing sides, I’m playing for Rannaldini.’
Lysander drained his glass. ‘You play a lot?’
‘Whenever wor
k allows,’ said Guy. ‘I played for my old school and for Cambridge and the Free Foresters. What about you?’
‘I haven’t played since school. Georgie, I must go.’
‘I’ll get you a bag so you can take the Pimm’s fruit for Arthur,’ said Georgie. ‘Lysander’s horse,’ she added to Guy. ‘He’s such a duck. Lysander’s determined to get him fit for the Rutminster Gold Cup next spring.’
Standing up to hasten Lysander’s departure, Guy suddenly noticed several holes in his beloved lawn.
‘My God! Who did that?’
‘I think Dinsdale’s been trying to reach Melanie in Australia,’ said Georgie.
Next minute Maggie shot round the corner with a regale lily corm plus plant in her mouth, pursued by a panting Jack and Dinsdale.
Grinning, Lysander bent to kiss Georgie goodbye. ‘Thanks for the drink,’ then lowered his voice, ‘and remember be happy and distant and no sniping.’
‘Oh, there’s Rannaldini’s helicopter returning,’ said Georgie, as the great black crow landed on the other side of the wood.
Guy’s temper was not improved when Flora sauntered into the house twenty minutes later wearing nothing but flip-flops and a ravishing shirt in Prussian-blue silk over bikini bottoms.
‘Darling, you were going to ring from the station,’ said Georgie, hugging her.
‘I got a lift. Grania’s father was driving up to London.’
‘How was Cornwall?’ asked Guy. ‘You didn’t get brown.’
‘Too hot to sunbathe,’ said Flora, who’d spent most of last week in Rannaldini’s bedroom in his villa outside Rome.
‘Lovely shirt,’ said Georgie enviously.
‘Grania’s,’ lied Flora who, as a leaving present, had been taken to Pucci.
‘You’re always nicking people’s things,’ exploded Guy finding a genuine outlet for his irritation over Lysander. ‘Where the hell’s my Free Forester’s sweater?’
‘How should I know?’
‘You had it last at that dinner party—’ Guy stopped as he remembered the occasion.
‘When Julia Armstrong was the guest of dishonour,’ said Georgie. Oh hell, she wasn’t supposed to snipe.
‘I gave it back the next day,’ protested Flora.
‘You did not,’ spluttered Guy. ‘I’m playing cricket on Sunday, and I need it.’
‘No-one needs a sweater in this heat.’
‘After one has been making a lot of runs, or bowling, it’s easy to catch a chill.’
‘Borrow my pink shawl,’ said Flora kindly. ‘I’m not stuffy about lending things.’
Guy found that Lysander’s wide, untroubled smile like the Cheshire Cat seemed to linger unnervingly after he’d gone. He was further rattled by two dropped telephone calls which he’d no idea were Rannaldini, still in Rome, hoping to get Flora. Then he realized it would be too late for him to ring Julia. Ben would be home from London by now.
29
Rannaldini himself did not play cricket. An awkward ball on the hand could put him out of conducting for weeks, but he liked occasionally to distribute largesse to the village and flew in just before the match on Sunday to find that Kitty had been slaving all night preparing a magnificent tea and Bob Harefield had conjured up a formidable side consisting mostly of London Met musicians bussed down from London. These included a cellist who was a demon bowler and the horn player Rannaldini had sacked last March, who’d been hastily reinstated because he was a brilliant bat. Although the side would miss Wolfgang and his centuries, lustre had been added by Bob himself, who was a characteristically reliable wicket-keeper, Larry, who hadn’t been tested but who boasted a trial for Surrey, and Guy, who was by all accounts a class player. Other London Met musicians would spend the afternoon playing in the blue-and-white bandstand right of the pavilion.
Having wandered around finding fault with everything and ensuring none of his orchestra had more than one glass of wine at lunch, Rannaldini stalked upstairs to change.
The villagers were already streaming in by car or on foot. They liked to gawp at Valhalla, jump the Devil’s Lair, which had dropped two feet since Flora’s leap, get lost in the maze and marvel at Rannaldini’s famous all-delphinium bed whose blue spires seemed to touch the sky. Taking up position round the field, perched on car bonnets before they grew too hot, the men opened beer cans and the prettier girls stripped down to their bikinis in the hope that Rannaldini might claim droit de seigneur.
Of all the players Guy was the most anxious to make his mark. Determined to upstage Lysander, he also wanted to get on to the village cricket-club committee which would give him an excuse both to do good and to get out and ring Julia. He’d already joined the local Labour Party, the Parish Council and the Best-Kept Village committee.
His plans to ring Julia on the way to the match, however, were scuppered by Flora, who was desperate to see Rannaldini after a twenty-four hour absence, cadging a lift.
‘I’ll drive,’ she announced with all the assurance of one who had been manoeuvring Rannaldini’s Mercedes round Rome.
‘You will not!’ Guy snatched off the L-plates. ‘I’m not risking our only car. Where’s Mummy?’
‘Working. She’s coming later.’
Suddenly Guy had a feeling Georgie might be lingering to hear from Lysander. His worst fears were confirmed as he parked on the edge of the pitch and Natasha immediately joined them. Very tanned and wearing a sloppy black T-shirt and white shorts, which showed off her long slender legs, she looked unusually pretty and Guy told her so.
‘Why, thank you, Mr Seymour. How was Cornwall?’ she added to Flora.
‘Brilliant. Christ, look at that.’
Following Flora’s gaze, Natasha saw Lysander lounging against his blue Ferrari with a telephone glued to his ear and a Jack Russell and a shaggy reddy-brown puppy to each ankle. He was wearing his: SEX IS EVIL, EVIL IS SIN T-shirt.
‘We’re about to field,’ he was saying, ‘or I’d come over. Miss you too. You coming over? Or shall I nip over when he’s in the field? Right. See you later.’
He’s ringing Georgie, thought Guy furiously.
‘Blimey, who’s that?’ said Natasha in awe, as Lysander stripped off his T-shirt to show a dark bronzed back, still a little ribby from seasickness, before he plunged into his cricket shirt.
Next minute Ferdie had roared up in Lysander’s red Ferrari looking Mafiaesque in a white panama and dark glasses to oversee operations.
‘Afternoon, Lysander,’ called Guy. ‘Remember I told you about Flora? Well, here she is with her friend Natasha.’
‘Hi!’ Lysander turned round from greeting Ferdie and over the din of Jack and Maggie’s excited yapping introduced his mate.
‘Lysander’s taken Magpie Cottage just across the valley for the polo season,’ Guy told the gaping Flora and Natasha, ‘so I hope you young people get together.’
And bloody well stop pestering my wife, was the unmistakable implication as Guy strode off to the pavilion to find out the batting order.
Natasha had had a miserable few weeks. Aware of Rannaldini’s increasing neglect, she had expected to go abroad backpacking with Flora during the holidays when Flora had suddenly dropped out. Natasha’s mother was totally wrapped up in her new lover and her younger children. Bewildered, starved of affection, she gazed into Lysander’s smiling untroubled face and thought he was the best- and kindest-looking boy she had ever seen. For the first time in weeks she removed her sloppy black T-shirt to reveal an orange camisole top which left her splendid suntanned breasts to their own devices.
‘Can I look after this adorable puppy?’ she said, scooping up a startled Maggie.
‘That’s really kind, as long as you keep her in the shade,’ said Lysander. ‘Keep an eye on Jack,’ he added to Ferdie. ‘He’s rabbit-mad and they’re moving so slowly – must be myxomatosis – he keeps catching the poor little things.’
‘Some things like to be caught.’ Natasha threw Lysander a trapping look, then, smiling at Ferdie, who
was getting a picnic basket out of the Ferrari, ‘Do come and watch with us.’
She had already noticed that Ferdie was red faced and sweaty beneath his dark glasses and panama and that, beneath his loose Hawaiian shirt, spare tyres billowed over his straining jeans, but she had enough of her father’s manipulative nature to realize that a way to Lysander would be through his friend.
‘Five minutes, Lysander,’ shouted Paradise’s captain, Michael Prescott. Landlord of The Pearly Gates and predictably nicknamed ‘Archangel Mike’, he had become great buddies with Lysander since he moved into Paradise.
‘How did you and Lysander meet?’ Natasha asked Ferdie.
‘At school.’ Kneeling down to lace up Lysander’s other cricket boot, Ferdie murmured, ‘How’s it going?’
‘OK. Guy’s uptight, but Georgie keeps blowing it by showing how hurt she is.’
‘Here comes another of your enemies,’ said Ferdie as a large purple and yellow striped helicopter caused a ripple of interest as it landed by the pitch and out jumped Larry Lockton, jewellery flashing in the increasingly hot sun.
‘If you come at me hostile I’ll fight you all the way,’ he was yelling into his mobile.
‘Get padded up, Larry,’ called Bob, who was opening the batting with the reinstated horn player. ‘I’ve put you at number four.’
On his way to the pavilion, Larry bumped into Rannaldini who’d just emerged from the house.
‘Who’s that boy by the blue Ferrari?’ asked Rannaldini, who knew perfectly well – his spies were everywhere – but who wanted to goad Larry.
Seeing Lysander for the first time, Larry snarled with rage.
‘Got some poncy name like Alexander Harley. For some reason Marigold’s let Magpie Cottage to him.’
In the old days Larry would never have allowed such a thing, but since his affair with Nikki he had less clout.
‘Extremely glamorous,’ remarked Rannaldini. No wonder Larry had been rattled.
