The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I’m only allowed half a grapefruit and a boiled egg,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Georgie was thinking of doing a barbecue,’ said Lysander.

  Knowing Georgie would get no further than thinking about it, Kitty put her blue shirtwaister back on, and returning to the kitchen, was loading cold chicken, tomatoes, baking potatoes and a big bag of peaches into a cardboard box, when an explosion shook the corridor outside.

  ‘Ferdie’s shot himself for losing the bet,’ cackled Kitty.

  But he was only opening another bottle of Rannaldini’s champagne.

  ‘That’s more than I’ve eaten in a month,’ he said, peering into the cardboard box, then burst into song.’ ‘Join me dancing naked in the rain . . . cover me in ecstasy,’ and started bopping round the kitchen table.

  ‘I love that song,’ said Kitty. ‘D’you think it will ever rain again?’

  Outside it was even hotter, with finches fluttering over the burnt stubble, like fleas crawling on a lion’s pelt. For the first time in her life, Kitty felt thin enough to sit on someone’s knee.

  I’m under ten stone, she told herself hazily.

  ‘Rest your whole weight,’ encouraged Ferdie, taking a slug out of his bottle. ‘You’re as light as a fairy. Although, talking of fairies, the vicar must be over seventeen stone.’

  Why the hell was Kitty suddenly finding Ferdie so funny? thought Lysander furiously. They were both being too silly and plastered for words. It must be tiredness and hangover that made him so down, and guilt about not putting flowers on his mother’s grave today.

  Alone at Magpie Cottage, Georgie stepped out of the bath and, leaving cannibal footsteps, went in search of a towel. She found one curled up like a hedgehog under Lysander’s bed. Overwhelmed by another fiendish compulsion to snoop, she found herself going through the pockets of the trousers, shirts and blazer he was wearing last night. As a reward, she found dozens of cards girls must have slipped him with their telephone numbers with Home and Office written in brackets. One of them, Georgie noticed indignantly, belonged to the Catchitune publicity girl, another to the girlfriend of one of Georgie’s musicians.

  She started to shake, frantically frisking his drawers and cupboards, but found nothing. I’m sick, she thought. I know Lysander isn’t the answer, but I can’t bear to think of him with someone else. But looking like he does and being so sweet, how could he not be propositioned wherever he goes? Would she always die of jealousy whoever she was with? Was that the heritage Guy had left her?

  Detesting herself, she started on Lysander’s wallet and was gratified to find a nice picture of herself, and ones of Jack, Maggie and Arthur. Then she was brought up short by a photograph of a heartbreakingly pretty woman, laughing and sitting bareback on a big grey horse. She breathed again when she found Lysander had written: MUM AND ARTHUR, 1989 on the back. The leaves were turning in the photograph – it must have been taken just before she died. Oh, poor Lysander. Shoving the photograph back, Georgie, who was dry now, draped herself in a sarong covered in huge gold sunflowers, which Lysander had bought her on his way to London, and started to redo her face. How restful to return to pre-Julia days when, convinced Guy loved her for herself, she didn’t have to spend her time getting tarted up.

  Thunder was rumbling round the hills, but despite the punishing heat, the smell of moulding leaves and bonfires drifted in through the dusty window. Season of mistresses, thought Georgie sadly. She could see Tiny and Arthur waiting by the gate for their master’s return. Standing head to tail, they were whisking the flies off each other’s faces and nibbling the itches out of each other’s necks. Symbol of a happy marriage, thought Georgie even more sadly.

  Kitty had drunk enough champagne not to faint over Lysander’s cottage. You had to beat back the nettles to get to the front door. Inside the place was a shambles with a Snowdon of washing-up in the sink, and Maggie’s ripped-up victims – shoes, cushions and the fox fur Lysander had bought at the bric-à-brac stall – carpeting the floor. Kitty clutched on to her boomerang and her duck-billed platypus.

  ‘You must have the spider franchise for the West of England,’ said Ferdie, his arms full of Rannaldini’s Dom Perignon. ‘Hi, Georgie.’

  ‘Whatever are Marigold and the Best-Kept Village committee going to say?’ wondered Kitty as she tried to find a space to unload the goodies from her cardboard box. Stretched out on the sofa, Dinsdale opened a bloodshot eye as he smelt chicken. In the almost entirely frosted – up fridge, she found the three tins of pâté Rachel had inveighed against when she came to supper.

  ‘Listeria leads to hysteria.’ Ferdie peered over her shoulder, thrusting bottles through the ice like an Antarctic dredger. ‘Come away from this squalor and join me dancing naked in the rain.’

  ‘And cover me in ecstasy,’ sang back Kitty. At least she could replace Rannaldini’s champagne with Ferdie’s cheque. ‘You haven’t got any buttons on that shirt.’

  ‘They popped off when I was fat,’ confessed Ferdi, ‘but I like the shirt.’

  ‘I’ll sew some on for you.’

  Lysander was too irritated to praise them for losing all that weight, but Georgie was delighted.

  ‘I cannot get over how marvellous you both look.’

  As the back garden was even more crowded with nettles, they dragged the garden table and chairs out into Arthur’s and Tiny’s field. The sun had set, leaving a primrose-yellow horizon, but to the east huge black clouds were gathering.

  Putting an arm round Georgie’s shoulders, Lysander gazed down into Paradise.

  ‘If I had a line of coke, I’d fly across the valley.’

  Instead Ferdie produced some really strong dope. He had also rigged up an angle-poise lamp with an equally strong bulb, which threw their shadows, like late arrivals at the cinema, on to the trees that reared up at the end of the field. Above the wood, the stars rose like a fountain. The radio was blaring out pop music. Sewing on Ferdie’s buttons between alternate swigs of Dom Perignon and puffs of Ferdie’s cigarette, Kitty found, for the first time in her life, that she wasn’t terrified when Arthur leant his great whiskery face over her shoulder.

  ‘It’s getting very dark,’ complained Lysander, drawing on a joint like a maiden aunt throwing up a window and breathing in the morning air.

  ‘It’s night-time, you berk.’

  It seemed to be getting hotter and closer. Midges were assaulting their scalps and their ankles. The grass was covered in little cobwebs and swarmed with spiders.

  ‘Why are they called daddy-long-legs?’ asked Kitty, biting off a thread.

  ‘Because daddies need long legs to run away from all the trouble they cause,’ said Georgie bitterly, ‘and talking of trouble, Miss Bottomley is threatening to suspend Flora again. The moment Flora passed her test, she was caught driving four friends off to the pub in Rutminster. Miss Bottomley has invited me to lunch to discuss it. Oh well, Gomorrah is another day. I’ve never had a woman make a pass at me.’

  ‘Nor have I,’ said Ferdie wistfully.

  Everyone giggled.

  ‘You will now,’ said Kitty warmly.

  ‘I never recognize lesbians,’ said Ferdie. ‘Do they have moustaches?’

  ‘No, it’s gays who have moustaches,’ said Georgie.

  ‘The technique with the opposite sex,’ announced Lysander, refilling everyone’s glasses, ‘is to tell beautiful really stupid people—’

  ‘Like you,’ said Ferdie.

  ‘Like me,’ agreed Lysander, ‘to tell beautiful, thick people how clever they are and tell clever plain ones how beautiful they are, then they always roll over.’

  ‘What ’appens if they’re both plain and fick like me?’ asked Kitty.

  ‘You’re not,’ said Georgie, Ferdie and Lysander in unison.

  ‘Lysander means you’ve got to find a person’s Achilles’ heel and then praise it,’ explained Ferdie. ‘You’ve got a wonderful heel, Mrs Rannaldini.’

  ‘And he’s called Rannaldini. Whoops, sorry Kitty,
’ said Lysander.

  They all grew hysterical with laughter at the stupidness of their own jokes. When the Dom Perignon ran out they moved on to peach schnapps. Having sewn on Ferdie’s buttons, Kitty was fooling around with him, trying to make Wolfie’s boomerang come back. Every time she threw it, it went up in the air. Once she nearly hit Arthur.

  ‘That’s a valuable horse. I don’t mind if you hit Tiny,’ shouted Lysander, who was now beached like a whale across two chairs with his head in Georgie’s lap.

  Ferdie was laughing all the time now, looking like a Chinaman with slit eyes and a huge inane grin. Against the towering trees, their shadows danced like the naughty boys dipped in great Agrippa’s ink-well.

  ‘Look how we get smaller as we approach,’ cried Kitty, waving her arms.

  ‘Wish dieting was as easy,’ yelled Ferdie.

  ‘Aren’t they sweet together?’ said Georgie, stroking Lysander’s forehead. ‘Ferdie’s very taken. He’s as lonely as she is. Wouldn’t it be perfect if he took her off Rannaldini?’

  Even in his present stupor, Lysander was conscious of a distinct disquiet. If Ferdie started looking after Kitty, and Kitty after Ferdie, who would look after him?

  ‘Even the boomerang looks stoned,’ he said sulkily.

  ‘Will it ever rain again?’ sighed Georgie.

  They were all too preoccupied to realize it had clouded over and the stars had rushed in. The tape had worked its way round.

  ‘Take me dancing naked in the rain and cover me in ecstasy,’ sang Blue Pearl.

  I’m under ten stone, thought Kitty, capering round to the music. I’m having fun for the first time in years.

  ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since I went Sharon-shagging in Benidorm with the cricket XI after A levels,’ said Ferdie, lighting another joint.

  ‘You probably met me there,’ screamed Kitty. Suddenly she stopped laughing. ‘Listen everyone.’

  At first it sounded like a faint rustle of silk, or a distant scream, then a rattle of machine-gun fire. Gradually they felt the first drops on their hair, soothing the midge bites. Suddenly as they turned their faces upwards, it was like stepping into the shower.

  ‘Rain,’ yelled Georgie, joyfully leaping to her feet. ‘It’s raining. Our little trees will be saved after all.’

  Trying to hold her back, Lysander grabbed her sarong. Next moment she was naked, dancing wildly round the field, her writhing body glistening like a seal, her wild red mane flattened and dripping down her back.

  ‘See me naked dancing in the rain,’ the glorious husky voice echoed across the valley, ‘and cover me with ecstasy.’

  Letting out Tarzan howls, Lysander and Ferdie whipped off their clothes and raced after her. They were followed by Kitty, who removed her shirtwaister, but kept on her bra and knickers, which bobbed in the half-darkness like white rabbits.

  Off they all charged into the deluge and an ecstatic conga round the field, leaping to avoid the thistles. Jack and Maggie frisked round their heels yapping hysterically, with Dinsdale working off Kitty’s cold chicken, which he’d just eaten whole, waddling behind them. Arthur and Tiny cantered alongside, snorting, with their tails in the air.

  ‘I’m not frightened of Arthur,’ sang Kitty, swaying in front of him, stroking his whiskery nose. ‘See me naked dancing in the rain, boo-be-doo.’

  Lysander was just noticing what a surprisingly good dancer she was, and how sweetly her plump body bounced along – like Pigwig in Pigling Bland – and how he could see her nipples now her bra had become see-through, when a car screeched up to the cottage.

  ‘It’s the fuzz,’ giggled Georgie.

  ‘No, you’re the fuzz,’ said Lysander, tugging at her sodden bush, and they all collapsed again.

  Finding the house unlocked, David Hawkley walked straight in. The sight that greeted him compounded his worst fears, a drunken orgy, possibly bestiality and witchcraft, led by that decadent hippy, Georgie Maguire, who was now bopping with a basset, and with that degenerate, overweight ruffian Ferdie Fitzgerald bringing up the rear.

  Nor were matters improved by a second car roaring up decanting a deputation from the Best-Kept Village committee, including Marigold, Lady Chisleden and the vicar, to do a spot check on Magpie Cottage.

  Glimpsing naked dancers, Lady Chisleden clapped her hands over the vicar’s eyes, crying: ‘Don’t look, Percy,’ in a ringing voice.

  Whereupon the vicar, having seen Lysander and a much-improved Ferdie in the buff, and being convinced he’d finally arrived in heaven, tore down Lady Chisleden’s fingers, crying in an equally ringing voice that the Church must face up to its obligations.

  ‘See me naked dancing in the rain,’ sang Ferdie waving a nearly empty bottle of peach schnapps. ‘Come and party, you guys.’

  ‘And cover me with ecstasee-ee-ee,’ joined in Kitty.

  ‘Put on your clothes at once,’ ordered Lady Chisleden. ‘Your vicar is present.’

  ‘Oh, piss off,’ said Lysander in a bored voice.

  Painfully reminded of little Cosmo earlier, David Hawkley lost his temper.

  ‘Lysander,’ he thundered, ‘stop this disgraceful pantomime at once.’

  It was a voice that chilled Lysander’s blood. For a second he froze, then gathering up his junior dog and holding her in front of himself like a fig-leaf, he turned to Georgie.

  ‘Darling, I don’t think you’ve met my father.’

  43

  The party broke up very quickly after that. A frantically giggling Kitty, Ferdie, Georgie and Dinsdale spitting out splinters of boomerang were driven away by a very irate Marigold.

  ‘You’ve really let the sayde down, Georgie, conductin’ black-magic orgies. You must have realized what a pigstay Lysander had reduced Magpie Cottage to, probably contributed to it yourself. And you and Lysander are plastered all over The Scorpion. Gay’s been on the phone all day, trying to faind you. He’s standin’ bay you, bay the way. Ay can’t think way, and all the Press are doorsteppin’ Paradise Grange to get the Catchitune angle from Larry.’

  ‘It’s all Larry’s fault,’ screamed Georgie, ‘for putting out mugs and T-shirts with Guy and me looking lovey-dovey. I’ll get him under the Trade Descriptions Act. And what’s all this about The Scorpion?’

  She couldn’t take in what Marigold was saying. She could only think how embarrassing it was that such a handsome man as David Hawkley should have caught her running around all wobbling and naked.

  Having discovered that his youngest son was far too drunk to make any sense and refused to explain how he’d come by any of these amazing perks, David Hawkley drove off into the deluge. After a few minutes he calmed down and decided to put up at a nearby hotel and try a different tack in the morning. As every room within ten miles of Paradise was double-booked by reporters, he ended up at The Bell in Rutminster, an old coaching inn overlooking the River Fleet. The kitchen was closed, but noting his pallor and good looks, the landlord’s wife insisted on sending up to his room a bottle of whisky and a plate of Welsh rarebit, which gave him outlandish dreams of naked ladies frolicking in meadows.

  One of them was Georgie Maguire, white feet dancing on the greensward, red hair flying like a maenad, but close up she turned into Mustard wearing nothing but a pie-frill collar, and he woke up drenched in sweat, shaking in horror.

  Next morning the papers were full of the chinks in Georgie’s marriage with lots of jokes about Paradise Lust and On-the-Rocks-Star. ‘Caring Guy’ was much quoted from the South of France, insisting that there was no question of divorce and that Lysander Hawkley was a friend of the family, particularly his daughter Flora. At least Lysander wasn’t going to be dragged through some messy court case.

  Feeling slightly more cheerful, particularly after some excellent kippers and three slices of toast and Oxford marmalade, David decided to have it out with Lysander. He found Magpie Cottage locked and deserted, except for Arthur and Tiny who were standing gloomily by the gate in the continuing downpour. Paradise Village sw
armed with reporters splashing round in the flooded High Street, desperate to find Lysander and a story. More of them were doorstepping Angel’s Reach waiting for Georgie to emerge.

  Receiving a tip-off from Miss Cricklade, who was unblocking a drain clogged with leaves outside her cottage, David approached Angel’s Reach from the south side, crossing the Fleet a mile upstream and walking through the woods. The rain had stopped, but the downpour continued as the water sifted and worked its way through twigs, leaves, traveller’s joy and dog mercury to the leafy floor below. The weather was still in the seventies, but not stifling like yesterday. Robins were singing, beech masks and acorns crunched beneath his feet like shingle, but a drenched blackberry he picked was as tasteless as his life.

  Reaching the edge of Georgie’s land, he could see the house with its soaring angels turned amber by the rain, and the lake flanked with bulrushes, glinting in the sunshine. Beech trees, stingingly red as Georgie’s hair after yesterday’s deluge, trailed their leaves in the water. Statues gleamed seal-like, red hips glittered on rose bushes puffed out by their weight of water like enraged tomcats. Saffron and sea-green lichen on the flagstones as he walked up the path were almost luminous. The rain seemed to have given the garden back its youth.

  In a clump of drying lavender, he found a page of pink flimsy on which Georgie had scribbled some lyrics.

  ‘You’re a snake on the make, a minx of a sphinx

  You’re a wog, I’m a wop, but I can’t give you up,’ he read, then jumped at a Baskerville bay. Dinsdale trying to look fierce at the front, but waving his tail, kept looking back at the potting shed. Here David found Georgie. She was perched on a garden roller, wearing a grey T-shirt and yellow trousers, reading Antony and Cleopatra. Yesterday’s downpour had brightened her pale cheeks (David thought of Lavinia in The Aeneid) and fluffed up her hair, which was tied back with a yellow ribbon.