by Jilly Cooper
‘You’ve got to dress up as a Roman,’ said Ferdie, ‘preferably a decadent one. Most people’ll go in sheets and Duo-tan.’
‘I loathe fancy dress.’ Lysander had gone whiter than the snow outside at the thought of seeing Kitty again. ‘And I’ve got a zit.’
‘First time in your life. I can’t see it.’ Then, as Lysander lifted the curls off his forehead, ‘That’s nothing.’
‘It’s massive. If I stood in Paradise High Street, I’d stop the traffic.’
‘You better start eating.’
‘I can’t. I must go into Rutminster and get Kitty some flowers before the shops close.’
‘You could go in the buff as an Ancient Brit,’ suggested Ferdie. ‘You’ll be so blue with cold at Valhalla, you won’t have to bother with woad.’
53
The thunder and surge of Schoenberg could be heard all the way down the valley which glittered in the icy light of a moon hardly softened by a rusty halo presaging storm. Outside Valhalla the Press stamped their feet, desperate for the latest on Kitty and Lysander. But, determined to prevent any drawbridge crashers, Rannaldini had posted a fleet of minions and guard-dogs on every gate. Only guests with invitations were allowed in and, directed by Mr Brimscombe, who was almost more desperate to join the orgy than the Press, to park their cars and helicopters on the lawn.
Rannaldini had laid his plans with care. The scarlet morning room and the yellow summer parlour were radiant with candles and carpeted with pink rose-petals. The central heating, most uncharacteristically, was turned up to tropical, huge banked logs smouldered like the fires of hell in every grate so anyone who had turned up in anything hotter than a toga was soon stripping off.
Great vases of lilies, roses and jasmine poured forth their overpoweringly voluptuous scents, recalling Rannaldini’s garden during last summer’s heatwave. The air was blue with many kinds of smoke as soothsayers, slaves, emperors, Mercurys in tinhats and fig-leaves and goddesses, holding in their tummies and wishing they’d cut down on the turkey left-overs, got stuck into the Krug.
Having frozen at Rachel’s party, Larry had made the mistake of wearing a lion’s costume and was now twitching a yellow tail as he yelled into his mobile.
‘He’s trying to set up a new business with some Japs,’ explained Marigold, who’d come as Minerva. Having fallen asleep under the sun lamp she was redder in the face than Percival Hillary who, as Julius Caesar, had recycled his Cavendish House nightgown and put a laurel wreath on his wispy grey curls.
‘Julius Seize-him, more likely,’ giggled Meredith, lissom in a beige tunic. ‘Rannaldini is not promiscuous, Marigold, just terribly, terribly frightened of the dark, so he cannot sleep alone.’
‘What are you on about?’ said Marigold, adjusting the owl on her shoulder.
‘I’ve come as a Christian,’ said Meredith, folding his hands piously, ‘so I can’t bitch about anyone. Isn’t Hermione a sweet person? Hasn’t Percy got lovely breath? Doesn’t Rachel cheer one up? How the hell did Gwendolyn Chisleden wangle an invite? She could have come as Caligula’s horse without dressing up. Whoops, I’ve sinned again!’
‘Ay think Gwendolyn looks very dignified in that midnaight-blue shirtwaister,’ signed Marigold. ‘Ay wish Ay hadn’t bothered with fancy dress.’
Most chillingly sinister of all was Rannaldini as Janus, the two-faced Roman God, guardian of the gateways and appropriately of January. A best-selling item at music shops round the country was a Rannaldini mask, so lifelike that musicians crossed themselves when they suddenly encountered it. Tonight Rannaldini had attached this second face to the back of his head so wherever you were in the room the black hypnotic eyes seemed to follow you. With his smooth brown torso, black loincloth, and thick gold snake coiled round his arm, he looked menacing and terrifyingly sexy.
Belle of the ball, however, was definitely Hermione as the Botticelli Venus with her glorious figure barely disguised by a flesh-coloured body stocking and her serenely beautiful face framed by a long curling strawberry-blond wig looped back with a silver ribbon.
‘You can count every hair on her pubes, silly old tart,’ fumed Meredith, ‘I don’t know why she didn’t come as herself. She’s so lifted no-one would have recognized her. Doesn’t Bobby look divine as Brutus?’
‘The nobbliest Roman of them all,’ said Bob deprecatingly, looking down at his bare knees. ‘Christ, it’s hot in here. Shouldn’t someone open a window?’
Poor Georgie had felt absolutely stunning in gold robes and a black wig as Cleopatra until Natasha rolled up totally unexpectedly after ten days in Barbados, as an infinitely more seductive version in her mother’s Angel Gabriel gold tunic and with her own dark curls straightened and cut in a fringe.
‘Two Cleos! You should have come as Georgie’s daughter,’ said Hermione laughing heartily.
‘Bags I be your asp,’ said Guy, who was showing off his splendid legs as a centurion.
Unlike most fathers, Rannaldini was not remotely inhibited by his daughter’s presence. Seeing a miserable, utterly upstaged Georgie retreating into an alcove, he went over to fill up her glass: ‘Hallo, Georgie.’
‘Oh hi, Rannaldini. God, I’m unhappy. I screwed up courage to go to Relate in Rutminster last night and came home full of resolutions to be nicer to Guy only to find he’d gone round to see Rachel and what is more—’
‘Georgie,’ Rannaldini cut into her monologue mockingly, ‘I only came to say Hallo. Talk of zee devil.’
Leaving Georgie squirming with humiliation he sauntered across the room to kiss Rachel, who, having been to a candle-lit peace vigil to protest against the Gulf War, had arrived in an embattled mood. Dressed as Ben Hur, she was brandishing a large whip.
‘Ah, Dolores, Lady of Pain,’ he said softly, sliding a brief caressing hand inside her thighs just below her tunic, ‘let me pull your chariot.’
‘I loathe fancy dress,’ snarled Rachel, but she had lost her audience, because Lysander had just walked in and as usual brought the room to a halt.
He wore ripped jeans, a dark blue shirt and Kitty’s Donald Duck jersey. His deathly pallor set off by the dark stubble and the purple shadows beneath the cavernous eyes, which searched endlessly for Kitty, only made him stand out more from the gaudy yelling revellers swarming around him.
‘Hi, Trouble,’ said Meredith, tossing a handful of rosepetals over him. ‘Calves in Ancient Rome were always garlanded with flowers before they were sacrificed.’
Lysander was followed by a tottering, leering Ferdie, who, as Bacchus, had draped himself in a wine-stained tablecloth. His mouth was smeared dark purple with one of Lysander’s lipsalves and a wreath of plastic vine leaves borrowed from The Pearly Gates fell over his nose.
‘Hie,’ said Ferdie, lifting a flagon of red to his lips.
‘Haec hoc,’ added Meredith. ‘Hermione should have come as Frontus. Any moment Guy will tumble down her cleavage.’
Kitty was so used to staying in the background that Rannaldini had the greatest difficulty in dragging her out of the kitchen. He certainly didn’t want Lysander sloping off there. Because she had no idea Lysander was coming, she had listlessly acquiesced when Rannaldini insisted on dressing her as a Vestal Virgin in clinging pleated white, which only emphasized her lack of colour, her swollen reddened eyes and her dumpy little figure.
Now she was carrying a big terracotta bowl loaded with green grapes and crimson cherries past the red morning room along to the dining room.
‘Kitty, darling, how are you? Let me take that,’ called out Bob, but next minute he had been waylaid by the leader of the orchestra, who’d come plus fiddle as Nero and who was already half-cut.
‘Where’s this famous toy boy who got off with Kitty?’ he demanded, not realizing she was within earshot.
‘I want to shake him by the hand for rattling that shit. I’ve never known him so histrionic, screaming down the telephone about deps at four o’clock this morning: “Those were completely deeferent musicians to zee o
nes I saw in rehearsal.” So I said: “It’s not surprising, Rannaldini. The first lot were so fucking frightened of being shouted at.” That must be him in the Donald Duck sweater. Jesus, what a beauty. It’s going to be like the first day of the sales once we start orgying.’
Hearing this, Kitty shot into the room and found herself looking straight at Lysander. He was clutching Jack and a huge bunch of snowdrops. Next minute the terracotta bowl crashed into the rose-petals.
‘Oh, Lysander,’ she whispered.
Unable to speak, Lysander stumbled forward thrusting the snowdrops into her hands, closing her fingers round them and stroking them. For a second they gazed at each other, stunned by the devastation both had wrought.
‘I can’t go on,’ stammered Lysander.
‘Welcome to the Underworld, Orpheus,’ murmured Rannaldini, gliding up. Then, snapping his fingers at a couple of waitresses to clear up the broken pieces, he turned to Kitty. ‘I want you to come and meet Rudolpho who’s going to play Macbeth.’
Dropping her snowdrops contemptuously on a side table, he frogmarched her across the room.
‘I thought you’d promised to geeve up Lysander,’ he hissed, squeezing her arm till she gasped with pain. Switching to purring conciliation, he introduced her to a very fat tenor covered in white make-up and his harpist boyfriend whose costume consisted of brown curling leaves. They had come as Decline and Fall.
‘Rudolpho, caro, I would like you to meet my wife, Keety, who’ll be sorting out your contract. Ring her eef you have any problem.’
From then on Kitty kept her eyes firmly down, deliberately avoiding looking at Lysander, who had collapsed dolefully on the sofa, muttering to Jack.
‘I assume you’d rather talk to that dog than me,’ said Hermione archly.
‘Yes, I would,’ snapped Lysander, holding out his glass to an admiring waitress for a refill.
The party was hotting up. Gluck’s Orphée was pouring out of the speakers. Ravishing female musicians and handsome gay opera stars, realizing that spare heterosexual beefcake was in short supply, hovered hungrily around Lysander, hoping he’d tread on their togas.
‘I wouldn’t mind a house down here,’ said Rudolpho, the very fat tenor.
‘I have secret information,’ said Ferdie in an undertone, ‘that Paradise Grange across the valley might be coming on to the market. I could show you around tomorrow if you like. Goodness, that’s nice,’ he added as a stunning blonde, inadequately clad in a pale blue cot sheet, appeared in the doorway. Perhaps she could jolt Lysander out of his despair.
‘That’s Chloe, Boris Levitsky’s girlfriend,’ said Rudolpho. ‘I did Aïda in Cardiff with her. Marvellous voice.’
‘Chloe, carissima.’ Rannaldini dropped a kiss on her bare brown shoulder, licking off wild strawberry and rose-hip body lotion. ‘How did you give Boris the slip?’
‘He’s working on his Requiem,’ said Chloe petulantly. ‘He didn’t even notice I’d gone out.’
‘Silly boy to neglect something so exquisite.’ Beckoning to a waitress, Rannaldini put a beaker of Krug in each of Chloe’s little hands. ‘You ’ave catching up to do. We are about to dine.’
‘I’m not sitting next to Rachel?’
‘No, next to me. That will upset everyone.’
Kitty’s snowdrops gave a long despairing hiss as he tossed them into the fire.
Dinner was served in the blue dining-room which was more intimate than the great hall. Guests lounged on multi-coloured silk cushions piled round low tables on which was arranged suitably Roman fare: great fishes swimming in herbs and butter, lobsters, barbecued geese, sucking pigs, great flagons of wine and big bowls spilling over with grapes, cherries and pomegranates.
Wrapped in imperial purple paper beside each gold plate was a condom and an Ecstasy pill. Rannaldini’s version of Ravel’s Bolero, said to be the sexiest ever, was pulsating out of the speakers like a great heartbeat, with the leader of the orchestra playing along.
‘I wish Rannaldini would spend as much on church flowers,’ grumbled Joy Hillary, glaring at the cliffs of freesias.
‘Who did the seating plan?’ grumbled Georgie who was stuck between the vicar and Rudolpho.
‘Rannaldini and I,’ said Hermione smugly. ‘I’ve put Guy next to the two prettiest women in the room – Rachel and Natasha. Is your phone out of order, by the way? I saw Guy coming out of the call box in Paradise High Street this afternoon.’ Then, suddenly furious, ‘What the hell’s Chloe doing next to Rannaldini? She must have gatecrashed. He was supposed to have Gwendolyn Chisleden on his right.’
Lysander, who was already absolutely plastered, found himself between Hermione and a really ugly female double-bass player who’d come as Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia.
‘Wouldn’t get a chance to be anything else but above suspicion with a face like that,’ said Meredith, who was sitting opposite and sucking a lobster claw.
At the same table were Guy, Rachel, Natasha, whose cat’s eyes beneath her black fringe were devouring Lysander, and Ferdie on her right who was depressed that he still wanted her so desperately.
Rannaldini, who had deliberately put Kitty at his side, had also arranged it so that Lysander was gazing straight at the back of Kitty’s head with the evil, mocking Janus mask beside it. Throughout dinner Rannaldini deliberately caressed his wife, stroking her very clean neck as though he was an executioner pondering where to drop the axe, fondling her breasts and her back as though he were working in suntan oil, and all the time kissing her and whispering in her ear.
Lysander had to exert every ounce of self-control not to get up and hit Rannaldini across the room. Looking washed-out and not remotely pretty, Kitty moved him more than ever. Putting the Ecstasy pill in his mouth, he washed it down with half a pint of Krug.
‘You don’t seem very happy, Lysander,’ said Hermione, putting a hand on his leg.
‘I’m not,’ said Lysander, removing it. ‘Kitty’s gone back to Rannaldini and she’s the only truly good person, apart from Arthur, I’ve ever met.’
‘That’s because she’s young and hasn’t experienced life,’ said Hermione dismissively.
‘It isn’t.’ Furiously Lysander pulled off a piece of goose and gave it to Jack. ‘She’s good because she’s good.’
‘Your friend isn’t in a very cheerful mood,’ Hermione shouted across to Ferdie.
Not wanting to blow themselves out before orgying, people were drinking more than eating, already openly necking and beginning to undress one another. As the Ecstasy struck home Hermione engineered the conversation on to favourite fantasies.
‘I’d like to be playing Desdemona to Domingo’s Otello at Covent Garden,’ she began, ‘and to charm him into making love to me instead of killing me in front of a huge audience.’
‘That’s quite a rewrite,’ said Meredith. ‘I’d like to be raped by Mel Gibson – very slowly.’
‘I’d like to see three gorgeous women making love,’ Guy smiled at Hermione, Rachel and Natasha, ‘and be invited to join in.’
Natasha, who was chucking grapes at Lysander to rouse him from his black gloom, said she’d like to be abducted and seduced by a highwayman.
‘My name’s Turpin. Call me Dick,’ offered Ferdie, topping up her golden goblet.
Even Natasha laughed. ‘What’s yours then?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to have a woman in love with me,’ said Ferdie simply.
‘Aaaaah,’ said everyone at the table except Rachel, who now was staring at Rannaldini’s table with as much horror as Lysander.
‘What’s Chloe doing here?’ she whispered to Guy.
Although Rannaldini was publicly stroking Kitty with his left hand, his right hand had disappeared under the table.
‘And what’s your secret fantasy, Lysander?’ asked Hermione.
‘No secret. I want to marry Kitty,’ said Lysander flatly.
There was a pause. Then Natasha led the howls of derisive mirth.
‘You’re beautiful,�
�� sighed Ferdie, unable to keep his eyes off Natasha’s soft gold thighs.
‘Marry me then,’ taunted Natasha. ‘As Lysander only lusts after married women, it’s the one way I’ll get him into bed.’
Georgie got lower and lower. On her right Rudolpho and his boyfriend were busy pulling grey hairs out of each other’s heads like chimpanzees and the only man who’d come dressed as Anthony was a counter-tenor who displayed a cock the size of a three-year-old boy when his toga fell open. She was only too aware of the shrieks of laughter coming from Guy’s table. To her right the vicar was gazing at Lysander who was looking so grim that he reminded her for an agonizing second of David Hawkley. If only David would forgive her.
Across the table Lady Chisleden was getting very uncorked and had undone nearly all the buttons of her midnight-blue shirtwaister.
‘I want to go somewhere that will give me new horizons and widen my experience in life,’ she was telling Bob.
‘Why not try Bexley Heath?’ said Meredith, plonking himself down between them.
Drunken dining was followed by even more drunken dancing. Hermione opened the ball with Guy, rocking and rolling just to show the younger generation that they’d invented the dance, and when Guy hoisted Hermione in the air she clasped him with her body-stockinged legs.
Hermione’s smug smile was wiped off her face, however, when Rannaldini led Kitty on to the floor. A mesmerizing serpentine dancer, he was soon practically raping her, his body writhing against her, kissing her shoulders and then her mouth, sticking his tongue down her throat until she nearly gagged, letting his hands wander over her body, yet his feet never losing the rhythm of the music.
Deliberately he danced past Lysander, so close that the hem of Kitty’s pleated skirt brushed Lysander’s foot and he could smell her hot frightened body and caught a faint agonizing waft of the Diorissimo he had given her at the airport, a scent he would now associate even more with loss.
‘Oh Mum, oh Christ, oh Kitty, oh Maggie,’ he muttered hopelessly and drunkenly.
Daring to glance at him, Kitty thought how desperately ill and diminished he looked. His jeans were ripped everywhere. There were buttons off his shirt. The tip had been eaten off one of his shoes. He needs me, she thought in anguish, not feeling Rannaldini’s fingers until they were pinching really hard.
