The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

by Jilly Cooper

  Lysander gave a sob. For a second his distress jolted Dinah out of her stupor. ‘Damn, I thought I’d burnt that one.’

  Mrs Bingham gave a crow of triumph.

  ‘Why, you naughty, naughty girl,’ she gloated.

  For scraping away in his earth box, the cat had revealed a green bottle of Gordon’s gin, three-quarters empty.

  ‘Turn up the telly,’ said Dinah airily. ‘There’s William Morris on The Animal Road Show.’

  Lysander only just reached the lavatory in time, before he threw up and up and up.

  Stumbling down three flights of stairs and rushing out into the street, narrowly avoiding being mown down by cars trying to get home before the rush hour, he took Maggie and Jack for a run on the beach at dusk. He was acutely conscious of the indifference of the sea, as it reared up in a long white wall of foam, then collapsed at his feet. The pier was already lit up against a darkening sky. Ahead the little fairground where Pippa had often taken him had closed down for the winter. The red train rested on its buffers. No children whizzed, shrieking with delight, down the blue-and-yellow helter-skelter. The merry-go-round horses had been zipped away in their leather covers. Even the ghouls on the ghost train had fled.

  ‘Oh no,’ pleaded Lysander, as he frantically wiped away the tears. ‘Oh please, Mum, oh no, no, no.’

  But he knew that his childhood had gone for ever.

  45

  Wearily Kitty made lists for a Christmas she dreaded. All Rannaldini’s Christmas cards had to be sent off and presents bought for his numerous children and each member of the London Met. Rannaldini had to compensate for his chronic bloody-mindedness somehow. Even more lavish presents had to be bought for his multitude of mistresses, but the London secretary, who had better taste, dealt with that. Kitty wondered if Flora or Rachel had been added to the list. He’d been away so long, she wasn’t au fait with the latest developments. But the deep freezes still had to be filled. Rannaldini liked to have Cecilia and all his children for Christmas, and Hermione, Bob and little Cosmo came over for Christmas dinner. Kitty was also desperately trying to cover her screen with photographs of Rannaldini and the famous, and had just cut out one of him gazing admiringly up at Princess Michael.

  It was nearly midnight on the wildest of nights. Everything rattled and creaked. Creepers clawed at the windows, the wind moaned down the chimneys like women desperate to get at Rannaldini. Kitty had already had three dropped telephone calls, and didn’t know if she’d rather it were burglars checking anyone was at home or mistresses checking Rannaldini’s whereabouts. She’d also had increasingly distraught calls from Georgie trying to trace Lysander.

  ‘We had a stupid lovers’ tiff and he stormed off. You know how impulsive he is. Make him ring me at once if he rings or turns up.’

  Kitty had been jumpy all evening. The wind was really wailing now. Suddenly she heard a jangling of bells and a distant pounding on the front door. Terrified, she seized a saucepan and crept along the dark, panelled passages, guided by the rough slither of a tapestry, or the sharp blade of a hanging sword, edging round cannon-balls and suits of armour, not daring to betray her identity by turning on a light. The pounding grew louder, and was now accompanied by terrible spine-chilling sobbing. Kitty gasped with terror as she saw an anguished shadowy face at the hall window.

  ‘Oh, God!’ Frantically she crossed herself – it was the Paradise Lad.

  ‘Go away,’ she screamed.

  ‘Kitty, Kitty, let me in.’

  ‘Oh, fank goodness.’

  As she unbolted the door, Lysander fell inside, clutching a koala bear, followed by a very subdued Maggie and Jack. He was absolutely plastered and blue with cold beneath his suntan, his teeth chattering convulsively, his eyes crazy, his face drenched with sweat. Kitty had never seen anyone shake so much.

  ‘Help me, Kitty. Georgie, it’s her fault, not Mum’s. She’s a bitch, and Dad’s a bastard, and Uncle Alastair, oh Christ.’

  Putting her arms round him, propping him up, Kitty steered him two steps forward, one step sideways or back until, knocking over several suits of armour and the screen, they finally reached the kitchen, where she steered him into an armchair by the Aga.

  ‘Why did she do it? Jack, Maggie, I haven’t fed them. Oh, Kitty,’ he started to cry.

  ‘There, there, my lambkin, I’ll see to them. Let me run and get one of Rannaldini’s jumpers, then I’ll make you somefink hot. Wherever ’ave you been?’

  ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I won’t be a sec.’

  But when she came back with jerseys, including Guy’s lost Free Forester’s cricket sweater, and blankets, he had passed out.

  Tucking them round him, she fed the dogs, who appreciated the steak and kidney she was about to freeze for Boxing Day far more than Rannaldini’s faddy family ever would.

  She then curled up on the window-seat. She didn’t want Lysander falling into the Aga, or waking terrified and not knowing where he was. He and Georgie had plainly had far more than a lovers’ tiff.

  It was a good thing she stayed. Two hours later he was awake and screaming the house down, and she only got him to the 100 in time, where she had to hold his head for the next quarter of an hour until she thought he’d heave his entrails out. Somehow she managed to get him upstairs to bed, but he continued to rave and gabble incoherently, begging her to stay with him. Only when she gave him one of Rannaldini’s Mogadons did he finally fall asleep.

  Next day Kitty abandoned the hundred and one things she had to do, including making a dozen sets of angels’ wings for the annual Valhalla nativity play, and nursed Lysander, feeding him dry toast and clear chicken soup, and letting him talk. She didn’t fill in the silences as he frantically tried to get his image of his mother into some kind of shape.

  ‘She was so kind, Kitty,’ said Lysander. ‘We had a really awful groom, who bullshitted her way into the job. She couldn’t even ride and she was vaguer than me. Mum finally screwed up courage to sack her, but four hours later Mum had said so many nice things to her to soften the blow that the groom thought she’d been promoted.’

  ‘Kind people find it ever so hard to say no,’ said Kitty who was cutting out a picture of Rannaldini shaking hands with Donald Duck. ‘Your mum was so beautiful, and so many men must ’ave wanted her, she must ’ave felt unkind refusing them.

  ‘I expect Georgie’s infatuated with your dad,’ she went on. ‘As he’s almost as ’andsome as you, I don’t blame ’er, and that makes her ever so jealous of your mum. I mean you know how huptight she was about Rachel and Julia. She’s worse than ’im.’ Kitty pointed to Jack who was sitting on the kitchen table glaring at Maggie who was now lying like a baby in Lysander’s arms.

  ‘I don’t ’spect she meant half the fings she told you. Some people just need extra frills in marriage,’ Kitty added sadly, as she dipped her brush in glue and pasted Donald Duck and Rannaldini under Princess Michael.

  ‘Christ, it’s a horrible world!’ Lysander, who was still wearing Guy’s cricket sweater, dipped a ginger biscuit in his tea and handed it to Jack. ‘I don’t understand why everyone plays games. I loved Georgie so much, we were having terrific sex, twice a day at least, but it wasn’t enough for her. She had to have Dad as well.’

  As Kitty was reflecting that if Georgie were working really hard she might have preferred the perhaps lesser sexual demands of David Hawkley, Lysander noticed Donald Duck.

  ‘God, I’m jealous of Rannaldini meeting him. Did he get Donald’s autograph? This screen is lovely. You’re brilliant at cutting out. Can I have a go?’

  ‘What d’you really want from life?’ asked Kitty, passing him the scissors and a picture of Rannaldini laughing with Pavarotti.

  ‘I’d like Arthur to make a come-back and win the Rutminster with me riding him. I want a job with horses. I’d like a place of my own, a wife who loved me as much as I loved her, and,’ he added on reflection, ‘I’d like some kids. I’m bored with racketing around. D’you know, I asked Ge
orgie to marry me, and she’s bonking my father.’ He started to shake violently again. ‘Oh Christ, I’ve cut Rannaldini’s head off. I’m sorry, I can’t do anything right. Can I possibly stay with you until I get myself together?’

  In fact it was highly inconvenient. Kitty had so much to do and, instead, had to listen to Lysander banging on and on with all the egotism of utter despair and extreme youth. As a very truthful person, she hated having to lie so much on Rannaldini’s behalf, and now she had to lie for Lysander, as Ferdie, Marigold, an increasingly frantic Georgie, and even David Hawkley and Aunt Dinah (in the morning admittedly) rang or rolled up to ask if she’d seen or heard from him. And then Mrs Brimscombe, who’d had to be let into the secret, went down with flu so Kitty had to cope on her own.

  Having hidden Lysander in an attic bedroom in the oldest part of the house, Kitty felt like the monks living at Valhalla harbouring some Cavalier during the Civil War: Astley perhaps, or Rupert of the Rhine, or even Charles I. With his flopping hair, his gentleness and his beauty, Lysander made the perfect Cavalier, and would certainly have been dashingly fearless in cavalry charges. No Cavalier seeking sanctuary, however, would have had the diversion of the sixty-two instalments of EastEnders and Neighbours, which Kitty had taped for him while he was away. After four days almost concentrated viewing, some excellent plain cooking, and a very good 100-1 win at Lingfield, Lysander was beginning to perk up. At least Kitty managed to finish the screen and the angels’ wings as she listened to him.

  He only left in the end – and then reluctantly – because Natasha was coming home from Bagley Hall; and that had been another of Georgie’s lies, that Flora had broken up the day he’d returned from Australia. Anyway he didn’t want that bitch Natasha drooling over him, and he felt he’d traded on Kitty’s hospitality enough.

  Within a couple of hours of his departure, however, he was on the telephone.

  ‘Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, come and have dinner at Magpie Cottage tomorrow night.’

  ‘’Ow lovely. Shall I bring Natasha?’

  ‘God no! Don’t say a thing to her. I’m going to cook you a wonderful dinner.’

  Alas, Lysander woke the next morning with a blinding headache and the shakes. In fact he ached all over. He must have caught Mrs Brimscombe’s flu. He wanted to collapse into bed, but he couldn’t let Kitty down.

  What followed was not just a chapter but a whole book of accidents. The avocados he bought were harder than hand grenades. The coq au vin took five hours and tasted disgusting. He cooked the spinach early and boiled it away to a grit purée. For pudding, he tried to make syllabub. One just followed a recipe, but after hours of whisking and even more hours in the fridge, the syllabub separated – like everything else in Paradise, he thought sourly.

  The sink was by this time blocked solid with the food he’d chucked out. There were saucepans all over the lawn and he’d singed his beautiful eyelashes when he realized Jack was missing and set out with Maggie, a spade and a torch into the freezing night to find him. After twenty minutes, with every fox, badger and rabbit for miles around rustling in the wood to distract them, a demented Maggie finally located some faint yapping, and Lysander and she spent a further twenty minutes digging Jack out, after which the little sod wasn’t remotely grateful and tried to shoot back down the hole again.

  Hearing her master’s language, Maggie fled home in terror. Following her, Lysander found the chicken burnt out. How did people run restaurants? He’d have to take Kitty out. He was feeling so shivery, he better have a hot bath. All his problems that day had stemmed from feeling he ought not to ring Kitty every five minutes to ask her how to do things.

  Unfortunately a frantic Georgie had just returned from London and, seeing lights in Magpie Cottage, chose that moment to ring. By the time Lysander had told her to fuck off, and his father had rung and been told roughly the same thing, and Ferdie had rung and been told Lysander was pushed for time, the bath had run over and flooded the light fitting below. Getting electric shocks every time he touched a switch, Lysander tried to mend the fuse and blew the lights.

  Kitty was so behind with her Christmas preparations that she felt dreadfully guilty going out, particularly as she was abandoning Natasha on her first night home. To her amazement, Natasha couldn’t have been more amenable, even when they met on the landing, both reeking of scented bath oil with their bodies and their newly washed hair wrapped in towels.

  ‘I’m just popping out, Natasha.’

  ‘Have you got a meeting?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Kitty stood on one pink leg.

  ‘Have a nice time. Don’t hurry back.’

  Natasha was also unbelievably complimentary about her appearance, saying, ‘You’ve lost so much weight. Papa won’t recognize you,’ that when Kitty found Magpie Cottage in total darkness, she suspected some fiendish practical joke to get her out of the house. As she stumbled up the overgrown path, she was knocked sideways with relief and by the stench of burnt chicken.

  ‘Oh Kitty, Kitty, talk about coq-up au vin!’ Nearly in tears, Lysander greeted her with a candle and was just thinking how sweet she looked despite the awful beige dress, when the wind blew the candle out. They had just groped their way to the fuse box when the telephone rang.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Lysander, knocking over a stool. ‘It’s bound to be Natasha.’

  ‘I’m desperately sorry, I can’t make it,’ Kitty could hear him saying. ‘Basically I’ve got the flu. Honestly, I’m best on my own. I’m really infectious. I’ll just crash out with a dozen Anadin Extra. See you in a bit.’

  ‘You are awful,’ said Kitty, who had found some matches and was pushing in plugs.

  As the lights came on, she saw Lysander was once more pouring with sweat and shaking. Thinking it was probably delayed shock, she tucked him up in bed once more.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you, Kitty, I’ll take you to Miss Saigon, I know a bloke who can get tickets.’ And he drifted off to sleep, but spent most of the night crying out for his mother.

  Staggering down the following afternoon, he felt woolly legged, drained, but normal. It was as though the devil had left his body. The cottage was unrecognizable. Kitty had unblocked the sink and cleaned everything. As Jack had been muddy after his tunnelling, she had even given him a bath, and was drying him in front of a glowing crackling fire, as she chatted to Arthur who was peering in through the window. A delicious smell of shepherd’s pie reminded Lysander he hadn’t eaten for two days.

  ‘Oh, you angel. God, it looks wonderful and smells even better.’ Lysander hugged her. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, but please don’t get too thin.’

  ‘Chance’d be a fine fing,’ said Kitty, blushing.

  Putting his fork down after a second helping, Lysander said, ‘What shall we do this afternoon?’

  ‘I thought you was ill,’ chided Kitty.

  ‘I’m too ill to do anything I don’t want to do, if you know what I mean.’

  It was the first time he’d giggled since he’d come back from Australia, and it was such a lovely sound that Kitty giggled, too.

  ‘I’ve got to go back to Valhalla,’ she sighed. ‘Rannaldini’s bound to ’ave rung and I’ve got so much to do, and I promised Rachel I’d pick up her kids from school and keep them overnight. Poor fing’s got to go to London to see her solicitor.’

  As she waited outside the school playground, Kitty was overwhelmed with tiredness. She’d have to spend the evening wrapping up the dozens of overseas presents to be despatched before the last day for posting. She could have done without Rachel’s children. For someone always banging on about the wickedness of nannies and not bringing up one’s own kids, Rachel was remarkably adept at palming her own off on other people.

  ‘Kitty, Kitty.’ Masha emerged from the coloured stream of children flowing out of the gates. ‘We learnt about the olden days today. You know when Jesus was alive and you were a little girl.’

  ‘Lo, Kitty,’ said Vanya. ‘Is it OK if Cosmo comes to
tea as well?’

  Sighing, Kitty agreed. Rachel’s children had speedily sussed out little Cosmo’s advantages as a companion. There was no way he’d put up with health foods or building castles out of 100 rolls.

  ‘Mummy says we’ve got to practise our carol for the nativity play,’ said Masha, as she and Vanya got into the back.

  ‘I hate music.’ Little Cosmo clapped his hands over his ears, as he jumped into the front. ‘All I hear in my house is fucking music.’

  Over increasing clamour, Kitty drove wearily back to Valhalla to pick up some cash to get some supper that Cosmo would approve of. But as she came out of the house, Lysander’s Ferrari stormed up the drive, and he jumped out clutching an armful of Super Macs and chips, a video of Pretty Woman and a huge round tin of toffees.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said chucking the tin at the children. ‘Have some Quality Street time, and if you’re good you can play football with Jack in the chapel.’

  They all adored Pretty Woman. Lysander alternately roared with laughter, wiped his eyes, or said, ‘Bastard, bastard, how dare he treat her like that?’ But by the end he liked Richard Gere very much indeed.

  ‘Pretty Woman’s rather like Mummy,’ said Masha.

  It was unfortunate for Rachel that on his way home to Magpie Cottage after the children had been tucked up in bed, Lysander saw a light ahead in Jasmine Cottage. Crawling past, because of a car casually parked outside, he saw a couple in a clinch in the doorway. Then the man ran down the steps. Turning, blowing a kiss to the woman, he was spotlit for a second in Lysander’s headlights. It was a triumphantly smirking Rannaldini.

  Having dropped off the three children at school the following morning, Kitty set out for Tesco’s. As she staggered out half an hour later, pushing two groaning trolleys of food for supper after the nativity play which she was going to cook and freeze that day, she suddenly saw that a big pot of yoghurt was leaking. Leaning forward to remove it, she took her hand from the right-hand trolley which veered off with a mind of its own. Gathering speed it rolled down a small slope and, narrowly missing an ancient pensioner with a string bag, went slap into a dark green Porsche, scraping it down one side, then toppling over with a sickening crash of broken glass.