by Jilly Cooper
‘You OK, Kitty? You’re shaking.’
‘I’m fine.’
How could she tell Georgie that her daughter was having a raging affaire with Rannaldini? A month ago, when poor Wolfie had sobbed all night like the Paradise Lad, Kitty had steeled herself to tell Rannaldini that he shouldn’t pinch his son’s girlfriend, particularly when she was thirty years his junior and still an impressionable child. Whereupon Rannaldini had launched into one of his petrifying tirades, screaming that Wolfie was an insanely jealous, paranoid fantasist who had to make up stories to justify Flora falling out of love with him and how dare Kitty virtually accuse him of child molesting.
He had punished her ever since by withdrawing all affection and Kitty was nearly at breaking-point. Almost worst of all, she had previously hero-worshipped Flora for sticking up for her so often, but in the end Flora had not just taken her part but her husband from her as well.
And now Kitty had spilt tea all over the snow-white tablecloth because Rannaldini and Flora were approaching. Flora, in fact, was starving. Georgie didn’t feed her family much and it was a long time since breakfast.
‘Hi, Kitty,’ she said in delight. ‘How are you?’
‘OK.’ Kitty spilled even more tea.
‘Here, let me take that, Brickie.’ Guy seized the teapot as though it was a large fractious baby Kitty couldn’t quiet. ‘I’ll fill the cups. You chat to Flora.’
‘I’ll just get more ’ot water.’ Frantically, Kitty seized a big silver jug. ‘’Ave a sandwich.’ She shoved a plate at Flora.
‘Oh yum, I’m so hungry,’ cried Flora, then found that suddenly she wasn’t, because fat, hopeless, red-eyed defeated Kitty looked absolutely wretched and couldn’t even meet her eyes.
She knows about us, thought Flora in horror. And Kitty had been so sweet to her. But as she felt Rannaldini just behind her, surreptitiously caressing the bare sweating insides of her thighs, such was her longing, she couldn’t stop herself pressing back against him.
‘Rannaldini’s little wife’s done so well,’ said Joy Hillary, taking a third piece of walnut cake. ‘We must utilize her properly at the fête. Perhaps we should take her off bric-à-brac and put her in charge of teas.’
As Kitty bolted down the dark passages to the kitchen, Lysander, leaning nonchalantly on a suit of armour, blocked her path.
‘D’you remember me? We met at Marigold’s and at the Rock Star party. Here, let me take that jug. Stunning tea. I’ve stuffed myself so much I won’t be able to bat. My mother hated doing cricket teas. She never produced more than a bought cake and curling Marmite sandwiches.’
He found it a relief to mention Pippa, even in a faintly derogatory fashion, and to find that it didn’t hurt so much.
Kitty raised her eyes. The terribly strong spectacles magnified the inflamed lids and the red-threaded eyes grotesquely. God, she looked unhappy.
‘Marigold told me about your muvver,’ she stammered. ‘She was so young. You must miss her somefink awful.’
Lysander, who often picked up vibes others missed, had noticed Rannaldini touching up Georgie’s sexy-looking daughter. What chance did Kitty have? Rannaldini was a shit, after all, he decided, as he carried the jug of boiling water back to the hall.
Natasha, who couldn’t imagine what Lysander could have to say to her boring stepmother, charged up with Ferdie, whom Lysander introduced to Kitty. Ferdie and Kitty might do rather well together, decided Lysander. Before they had time to find out, Guy had butted in with a plate of sliced rainbow cake.
‘You must eat something yourself, Brickie.’
‘Why d’you call her that?’ asked Natasha.
‘Because she’s an absolute brick,’ said Guy warmly.
‘How many bricks are there in a tower of strength?’ asked Georgie, earning herself a dirty look from Guy as she joined the group.
‘We’ll be eating this stuff for weeks,’ Rannaldini told his wife as he glared at the still-loaded tables. People were lighting cigarettes and drifting back to the pitch. ‘You’ve over-catered as usual, Kitty.’
‘It’ll all go,’ snapped Lysander. ‘I’ll come and help you wash up, Kitty. It’s nice and cool in here.’
‘Lysander,’ called out Marigold, ‘you were going to bowl to the boys.’
‘You’re bloody not,’ hissed Ferdie. ‘You’re being paid to rattle Guy. Stick to Georgie.’
But as soon as Lysander had sat down beside Georgie on a bench under a chestnut tree, the Archangel Mike ordered him to pad up and open the batting. Instantly his seat was taken by Larry whom Georgie had been avoiding all afternoon.
‘How’s the album coming on?’
‘OK.’
‘Guy said it was going really well and you might deliver early.’
‘Pigs might fly,’ snapped Georgie.
‘My guess is that things are rough at the gallery,’ said Larry, ‘and you should help out by finishing as soon as possible. Guy’s always looked after you in the past, Georgie.’
‘It’s a conspiracy. I’m being forced to rush things,’ cried Georgie hysterically. ‘Guy put you up to this over dinner.’
‘Guy cancelled,’ announced Larry. ‘He had too much on.’
Georgie started to shake. In a sentence Larry had chucked her into the pits.
‘You’re psyching yourself into this block,’ he went on bullyingly. ‘All we want is something warm, sincere and happy, that kids and older folk can relate to. Just like “Rock Star”.’
‘I wrote “Rock Star” when I was happy,’ hissed Georgie. ‘How can I be warm, loving and sincere when my heart’s breaking and my world’s fallen apart?’
Taking the field, Guy noticed Georgie leaping up and sending a deck-chair flying as she stumbled away from Larry. Christ, he hoped Larry hadn’t mentioned his cancelling dinner. He should have warned him, but, as a bishop’s son, he found it tacky saying: ‘Could you possibly tell Georgie it was you who ducked out?’
‘Could you possibly donate half a dozen signed copies of Rock Star to the fête as prizes?’ Joy Hillary met Georgie head on.
‘No, I fucking can’t,’ screamed Georgie. ‘Contrary to what you might think, I don’t get my own albums free and I don’t get the full whack every time a record is sold. Remind me to ask your husband to hand over the entire church collection to the Musicians’ Benevolent Society next Christmas. Oh look, Lysander’s batting. Excuse me.’ And she walked off, leaving Joy unjoyfully mouthing.
Guy’s lied to me yet again, thought Georgie. What’s the point of finishing an album to appease their joint bank manager when he won’t give Julia up. Sod Angel’s Reach, she’d rather live in a council flat with Lysander.
It was a second before she registered that the field had changed over and Guy was bowling, holding the ball in that strong right hand that had given her so much pleasure, pounding up to the crease on those strong muscular legs that had once been nightly wrapped round her. Georgie gave a wail of misery.
A moment later, as if to avenge her, Lysander had hit the ball in the air, soaring like a lark into the rippling gold wheat fields, sending the London Met Players searching among the wild oats.
Paradise were in heaven. They’d never made a decent showing against the London Met before. Soon the London Met musicians, who relied on their hands, too, for their livelihood, had moved to the outfield and Guy, Larry, Bob and the big-hitting tenor were nervously surrounding the wicket. But to no avail. Whack, whack, whack went the ball over the boundary, and each time Lysander scored runs the cheers increased until even the London Met Players abandoned themselves to the voluptuous pleasure of watching a mortal become a God.
Having played ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’, the band swung into ‘The British Grenadiers’.
‘Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules.
Of Hector and Lysander
And such brave men as these,’ sang the hard-hitting tenor, and all the crowd, particularly the vicar, joined in the chorus.
After fift
y-five minutes Paradise were 130 for no wicket. Lysander had made a century, shaken hands with the opposition players and the two umpires and waved his bat at the ecstatic crowd. Then, almost contemptuously, as though he was saying: ‘Now I’m off to romp with your wife,’ he hit the easiest catch in the world to a crimson-faced, dripping Guy and sauntered, grinning, back to the pavilion before Mr Brimscombe had even given him out.
The local reporter was so busy racing back to the office to re-set the huge headline: PARADISE LOST, that he forgot to ring Dempster. Guy then had to field impotently in the deep for the next forty minutes, while Paradise somewhat laboriously made the remaining runs and Lysander wandered off into the woods with Georgie, trailing dogs. Both Georgie and Guy were far too preoccupied to notice that Flora had disappeared with Rannaldini.
‘I wish Georgie Maguire hadn’t left so early. I was hoping to brief her about opening the fête,’ complained Percival Hillary, who was actually much more interested in getting a closer look at Lysander.
‘The sun must have unhinged her,’ said Joy. ‘First she rudely refused to give me any Rock Star albums; then I approached her again and asked her most politely for some very personal item that she doesn’t want any more that we could raffle and she said: “How about my husband?” and flounced off.’
‘I’m sure she was joking.’
‘I’m not – and when you think what a tower of strength Guy has been. I didn’t take to her – and as for that dreadful thieving dog—’
31
One of the hottest Augusts of this century resulted in Paradise drying up and the fields cracking open like vast jigsaw puzzles. Even the evenings were stifling as the music of the promenade concerts drifted down the valley. On the rare occasions Rannaldini was home to listen to a prom, he criticized non-stop, measuring the applause which would certainly never be as deafening nor as long as the ecstatic tearful ovation he would receive when he conducted the London Met in Verdi’s Requiem at the beginning of September.
As Rannaldini was now perfectly confident of Flora’s affection he decided to irritate Guy and Larry and distract Natasha from his own affaire, by inviting Lysander and Ferdie to lunch on the Sunday after the cricket match. Lysander, who wanted to go to the Gatcombe horse trials, only accepted for Ferdie’s sake. Not that Ferdie was making any progress with Natasha. It was plain from the way she was gazing at Lysander, as he lounged on the terrace before lunch, drinking Bloodies and laboriously reading Mystic Meg in the News of the World, that it was him she was after.
By comparison Ferdie looked awful. There were black rings under his normally merry, calculating brown eyes. He had several spots, his gruelling schedule allowed him no time to sunbathe or take exercise. His ankles had swelled up in the heat and his chin spilled over the collar of his Hawaiian shirt worn outside his trousers to cover his gut. His chief asset – his fast line of patter – had dried up like the Paradise streams. He could only gaze and blush.
Piggy in Lord of the Flies, thought Rannaldini, then letting his hand stray briefly across Lysander’s flawless, brown cheek-bones, he murmured: ‘I’m amazed you’ve got so far in life without duelling scars.’
Lunch, laid out under a spreading chestnut tree, almost made up for missing Gatcombe: spinach roulade, lobster, vast langoustine and a huge plate of oysters ferried in from Bristol that morning by Rannaldini’s helicopter.
‘I’ve never had oysters before. They look like poached dishcloth,’ said Flora, as Rannaldini tipped half a dozen on to her plate, and sprinkled them with lemon juice. ‘Ugh! It’s like swallowing one’s own phlegm.’
‘An acquired taste.’ Rannaldini’s leg moved against hers.
On his right sat Hermione, who, with Bob, were the only wrinklies invited and who spent most of the lunch happily reading out faxes from New York of her Salome reviews, which, despite Meredith’s sniping, had been excellent. Bob, who never ate much, spent his time cracking lobster claws and peeling langoustine for Hermione and trying to bring Ferdie, and even more Kitty, into the conversation. This left Lysander at the mercy of Natasha who went on and on about her famous mother and the famous people she knew and how embarrassing it was having the name Rannaldini on her suitcases because everyone knew whose daughter she was and how Lysander must come and stay in the villa in Como.
Only when they’d eaten most of an incredibly light glazed-apricot tart made by Rannaldini and were drinking coffee and brandy did Lysander feel able to escape to watch the last horses at Gatcombe on television. But he found when he switched on that the competition was over and the leading riders were waiting for the presentation.
After the appalling heat and the terrible spills and thrills, they seemed blissfully happy to be alive. Lysander wistfully thought how young they looked in their dusty boots and breeches, many of them now wearing nothing above the waist but their coats and their white stocks. There was Lysander’s hero, David Green, so much the most handsome, his red coat not clashing remotely with his suntan, and there was Mark Todd, towering above the others with his charming lugubrious lived-in face. And there was the winner, Mary Thomson, crying with joy and hugging her brave horse in gratitude. Lysander wiped his eyes. What the fuck was he doing wasting his life hanging round rich bitches, who were far too self-obsessed to care about anything else? He started as he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Rannaldini. For once his cruel sensual face was surprisingly gentle.
‘Poor boy, you mees zee real work with horses. Come and see mine.’
The sun had lost its fiercest heat, so they’d decided to go for a ride, except Kitty who was petrified of horses and who would anyway be better employed clearing up.
‘Leave her,’ whispered Hermione, when Lysander tried to persuade her to come too. ‘She’s only sulking because I’m here.’
Lysander hoped the bloody bitch would fall off, but, irritatingly, Hermione, who had been brought up on a farm in South Africa, rode beautifully and as she rode she sang: ‘Boot, saddle, to horse and away,’ with her lovely voice echoing round the woods.
Rannaldini obviously enjoyed dominating the vicious big black Prince of Darkness. A brilliant steeplechaser who had won many races, he had come second to his greatest rival Penscombe Pride, Rupert Campbell-Black’s top National Hunt horse in last year’s Rutminster Gold Cup. Having spent a summer resting and terrorizing any rambler, and particularly Kitty, who strayed into his field, he was being slowly got fit for the next season. He was now having a battle of wills with Rannaldini, who wanted to rub his leg against Flora’s without The Prince of Darkness savaging the old gymkhana pony of Natasha’s she was riding bareback. Lysander noticed Rannaldini put his hand right up Flora’s skirt when he gave her a leg up.
Bob, who was competent, and Ferdie, who was petrified but determined not to show it, had been given two of Rannaldini’s hunters, who were also getting fit, and who were less blown out with grass than in more fertile years. Sadly Ferdie’s courage did nothing to further his cause with Natasha. A wobbling, mane-clinging lump of dough, he was a sad contrast to Lysander who rode with the dash of a Cossack and with hands even lighter than Rannaldini’s pastry. Allotted Fräulein Mahler, a young bay mare who had already been very successful over hurdles, Lysander put her effortlessly over logs and little hedges.
‘This is a seriously good horse,’ he told Rannaldini. ‘You ought to run her in the Whitbread or the Rutminster next year.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to ride her,’ said Rannaldini.
‘Christ, I would, but basically I’ve got other plans,’ and he told Rannaldini about Arthur.
‘This is like something out of Tolstoy,’ sighed Flora as they cantered across the platinum stubble. Rannaldini’s farm workers were still harvesting. Tiny conkers were swelling on the chestnuts. Down drifted from thistle and willow-herb mingled with the blue hazy evening. Cows lumbered clumsily to their feet, like schoolboys when the headmaster comes into the room.
Finally they reached Rannaldini’s lake at the bottom of the valley, its flawless
azure surface being ruffled by splashing Rottweilers. The level had dropped dramatically, only at the water’s edge were wild flowers: forget-me-nots, frogbit and soft mauve spearmint, still growing.
‘My livestock is dependent on thees water.’ Rannaldini told Bob. ‘D’you think it will dry up?’
‘Never has. I’ve no idea how deep it is in the centre.’
In answer, Lysander dug his heels into Fräulein Mahler’s sweating sides and galloped her into the lake, with a huge splash, down, down, hardly rippling the water until Lysander had completely disappeared and all that could be seen were the Fräulein’s brown nostrils just above the water.
‘He’ll drown,’ screamed Natasha.
‘That’s a valuable horse,’ said Hermione, outraged.
‘Help him, someone,’ pleaded Natasha.
Then both horse and rider emerged on the other side with Lysander roaring with laughter. Even when the mare shook herself like a dog, he didn’t shift in the saddle.
His eyelashes were separated like starfish, his hair slicked back from his face, his bare brown back glistened, weed dripped from his jeans belt and from the Fräulein’s bridle as he waited for them to catch up.
‘Like Venus from the foam,’ sighed Bob.
‘But much more beautiful,’ purred Rannaldini.
‘We know who to use if we ever want to make a film of the Paradise Lad.’
It was so hot that both horse and rider were dry by the time they got home. Natasha was adrift with love. Flora and Hermione were equally diverted but both mildly irked that Lysander had shown nothing beyond politeness towards either of them. Rannaldini rode The Prince of Darkness home in silence, pondering how he could manipulate this charming but clearly naïve boy to his own ends.
Over at Angel’s Reach, Georgie looked out of the drawing-room window in that particular despair that overwhelms unhappily married women in the country on Sunday nights, knowing there won’t be anyone, even to row with, until Friday.
