by Jilly Cooper
Unable to bear any more, Lysander stumbled from the room.
Now’s my chance, thought Natasha leaping up.
For a second Kitty dropped her guard.
‘You don’t think he’s going to blow his brains out?’
‘With that little brain,’ sneered Rannaldini, ‘he’d have to be a bloody good shot.’
54
The orgy roared on.
‘Toga, toga, burning bright,’ shrieked Marigold tossing her sheet into the morning-room fire and rushing pinkly up the stairs pursued by a man in a Neil Kinnock mask.
It didn’t occur to any of the guests as they charged in and out of bedrooms that there was something odd about Mr Brimscombe pruning the Valhalla honeysuckle in the middle of winter.
Downstairs Rannaldini was dancing with Rachel, bopping through the rose-petals and fixing her with his deadly stare. Utterly suicidal Kitty was being lugged round the floor by the vicar – the hostess with the leastest. If she’d known Lysander was coming she’d have tried to look prettier, but at least he’d brought her snowdrops. If she were truthful, what she dreaded most was his no longer loving her. Last thing at night when she lost control of her thoughts, she dreamt she was a little mole (with its blind eyes, pink hands and lack of waist – the two of them had a lot in common) and she was tunnelling under the gates of Valhalla, beneath the River Fleet, not stopping until she joined the other molehills on the lawn of Magpie Cottage.
Seeing Rannaldini had disappeared, Kitty left the vicar in mid-foxtrot and escaped to the summer parlour. Unable to find Lysander’s snowdrops to put them in water, she crept up the main stairs, tripping over entwined couples and her own long skirt, praying she might bump into Lysander.
Through a landing window she noticed the moon’s increasing halo, mother of pearl now and ringed with darkened rainbow colours. Kitty was reminded of Lysander who shone like an angel in her dreams. Next moment Lady Chisleden rushed shrieking past in her bra and roll-on pursued by a man wearing Lysander’s donkey head.
‘Take me dancing naked in the rain,’ roared the loud speaker, ‘and cover me in ecstasy.’
Suddenly it was October again and she was dancing round the field at Magpie Cottage. It was no good. She’d have to find Lysander.
‘Mrs Rannaldini,’ a defeated-looking caterer called up the stairs, ‘there’s a policeman down here come to complain about the noise.’
‘Hooray, a spare man at last,’ called back Kitty. ‘If he’s handsome introduce him to Rachel or the vicar.’
Giggling hysterically, she felt light with happiness. She and Lysander loved each other – nothing else mattered.
‘Take me dancing naked in the rain,’ sang Kitty as she rocked down the gloomy landing.
She could hear terrible sobbing but to hell with people’s problems. Then she realized it was coming from Natasha’s room. Tiptoeing to the doorway she found her stepdaughter crying so hysterically that her whole bed seemed to heave.
‘Sweet’eart, what’s the matter?’
‘Everything. I’m going to die. You’ll be pleased because it means Dad and Hermione are caput.’ As Natasha looked up, Cleopatra’s kohl and mascara were streaked down her face like a yashmak. ‘Oh, Kitty, I can’t bear it. I love him so much.’
‘Poor lambkin.’ Seizing a handful of pink tissues, Kitty put an arm round Natasha’s shuddering shoulders, drying her eyes and glad to be allowed for once to comfort.
‘What is it? Tell me.’
‘Lysander’s fucking Hermione.’
‘What did you say?’ The pink tissues fell like rose-petals from Kitty’s hand.
‘Making love, if you prefer it,’ howled Natasha.
‘I don’t believe it.’ Kitty sat down very suddenly on the bed, her lips were trembling so much she could only mumble, ‘L-l-lysander l-loathes H-h-h-ermione.’
‘Funny way of showing it. Go into Papa’s dressing room. They’re all watching him.’
Narrowly avoiding crashing into the open door, sending a big vase of dried poppies flying, Kitty stumbled along endless winding passages up and down stone steps, cold beneath her bare feet.
‘The Ride of The Valkyrie’ was now pounding out of a different set of speakers, more and more menacing.
It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t.
For a terrifying second she thought Rannaldini was defying her to enter his dressing room. Then she realized it was his mask and that he and Bob, who was using a video camera, and Meredith, who was dabbing Maestro behind his ears, and Rudolpho and his boyfriend, who were both down to their boxer shorts, were all gazing excitedly through a two-way mirror. Moving closer, clinging on to a bust of Schubert, Kitty could now see Lysander and Hermione both naked in Rannaldini’s big pale grey four-poster with the little Renoir and Watteau girls looking indifferently down from the faded cherry-red damask walls. Jack, beadily glaring at his master, had taken up sentry duty in an armchair.
Rannaldini turned smiling viciously.
‘Come een, Kitty.’
‘Two-way mirror on the wall,’ giggled Meredith, ‘who is the fairest of us all?’
‘No doubt about that,’ said Rudolpho, taking hold of his boyfriend’s cock. ‘Can we have him next, Rannaldini? Hell, did you ever see anything so beautiful?’
Collapsing against the mirror Kitty was amazed her anguish didn’t shatter the glass. How could Lysander not see her? Although entwined with Hermione there was a slumped, utterly defeated look about his pale body on those silken red sheets.
‘Oh God, please help me,’ she whispered.
‘Peety, you mees a wonderful performance,’ said Rannaldini, ‘your boyfriend make love with all the brio of a youth orchestra. A few wrong notes but such energy.’
It’s the Paradise Lad, thought Kitty in horror, as Hermione slid down Lysander’s still body and took his limp cock between her beautiful, smiling lips.
Screaming, Kitty fled to her bedroom where she found Lady Chisleden lying on her flower-patterned duvet doing exactly the same thing to a man in a donkey’s headdress.
Slamming the door, Kitty leant against it for a second, trying to ride the pain, which was far, far worse than anything she’d suffered from Rannaldini’s infidelities. Of all his mistresses, Hermione had used, abused, patronized and humiliated her the most and now she had calmly stolen Lysander, the only man, Kitty knew now, that she had ever loved. You could stop torturers by telling them what they wanted, but there was no way to end this agony.
‘I’ve never known such breakages!’ One of the caterers was scratching her head over the broken glass which glittered among the trampled rose-petals, as Kitty rushed out into the snow. She was dimly aware of the vicar, followed by a trail of screaming Bacchantes, chasing a panic-stricken police constable, naked except for his helmet, into the Valhalla Maze. But as she looked up at the moon, howling in anguish, she noticed that, like Lysander, it had lost its halo.
The party showed no sign of abating. Salt lay like patches of snow over the wine stains. Even worse howls came from Lady Chisleden when she discovered that the man in the donkey’s head, whom she’d enjoyed for the last hour, was none other than a leering Mr Brimscombe.
Joy Hillary, who’d been kept very busy failing to stop couples coupling, stiffened with delight as she saw Marigold disappear giggling into the broom cupboard followed by the naked man in a Neil Kinnock mask.
Wrenching open the door she chucked the contents of a rusty fire bucket over them, crying: ‘How can you bring such disrepute on the Parish Council, Marigold?’
‘Ay’m makin’ love to may husband, you stupid cow,’ shrieked Marigold, who was straddling a drenched Larry, who’d received most of the deluge.
‘But he came in as a lion,’ said Joy in bewilderment.
‘And he’s not goin’ out laike a lamb,’ said Marigold, and throwing a dustpan at Joy, kicked the door shut.
‘I want my mother,’ sobbed Natasha.
‘Where is she?’ said Ferdie, stroking her tear-drenched hair.
‘In New York, I think,’
‘I’ll take you to her,’ said Ferdie. ‘The moment I’ve shown Rudolpho over Paradise Grange.’
‘If I were you, Gwendolyn,’ said Joy Hillary, trying to regain some ascendancy, ‘I’d get that nice shirtwaister dry cleaned.’
Over in his tower, lying in his other huge bed surrounded by cheering opera crowds as he listened to his own recording of Salome, Rannaldini drew heavily on a joint.
‘According to Sade,’ he murmured, ‘enjoyment increases in proportion to the intensity of the sensations the imagination receives. The most intense sensation’ – he groaned in ecstasy, as Chloe plunged a long-nailed finger deep inside him – ‘ees produced by pain. The true voluptuary will impose the greatest amount of pain.’
He smiled round at Chloe, drawing on the joint until it glowed, then placing its burning end within a millimetre of her smooth brown face.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said softly as she winced away. ‘Listen.’
Straining her ears, Chloe could hear the faint tolling of a bell.
‘How would you like to play Lady Macbeth, Chloe?’ asked Rannaldini.
Lysander woke around ten with a murderous headache. Groaning, he tried to focus on a strawberry-blond wig flowing down from one of the posts of a big double bed.
There was Jack asleep on his Donald Duck jersey, and several pink nude girls looking down at him from the pictures, and a strong scent that boded evil. Slowly his aching eyes took in scarlet toenails, smooth brown waxed legs swelling to plump cushiony thighs and glossy brown pubic hair trimmed in the shape of a heart.
Like a massive electric shock he realized something was dreadfully wrong. Kitty’s bush had been shaved in France and would now only be sprouting stubble. Dragging his eyes laboriously up over billowing breasts he reached Hermione’s smug satisfied face, a fat tabby who had just wolfed a side of smoked salmon.
‘What in hell happened?’
‘We made love,’ Hermione stroked his forehead, ‘and it was wonderful.’
‘It couldn’t have been. You must have spiked my drink. I’ve never wanted to go to bed with you. I like Bob too much anyway.’
‘How ungallant!’ Hermione still smiled, but her nails raked savagely across Lysander’s scalp.
‘Ouch, don’t. I love Kitty.’
‘Oh, come, we all know you were being paid.’
‘The love was real, damn you.’
‘And did she say afterwards: “That was ubsolutely mudgic, Lysunder”?’
‘Whadyamean?’ Lysander, totally awake now, leant up on his elbow, glaring into Hermione’s lovely spiteful face.
‘That’s what Kitty always says; ‘Thut was mudgic, Rannaldini.’ You’ve been putting a lot of marriages asunder, Lysunder.’
Suddenly frightened, she waved a hand in front of his murderous, bloodshot eyes.
‘D’you mean Rannaldini tells you about him and Kitty in bed?’
The bastard. How horrible that Kitty should say Rannaldini was ‘mudgic’ too.
‘Oh, come. Pillow talk. Rannaldini doesn’t pretend to be a gentleman. He loves stories and he adored watching you and me through the two-way mirror last night.’ She gave her deadly little laugh. ‘So did Kitty.’
‘Kitty!’ Lysander froze. ‘Kitty. The poor angel. What did she say?’
‘She’ll be OK,’ said Hermione, irritated by his sudden desperate concern. ‘The working-classes don’t feel pain like we do. I can’t think why you’re making such a fuss, you must have made a fortune out of the whole thing. Come on,’ she patted the red silk sheets enticingly. ‘Let’s try again now you’re sober. You’ll soon forget Kitty.’
Revolted, Lysander leapt out of bed, clutching his head as waves of nausea almost floored him, and, tugging on his jeans, ripped them even further. Hermione lost her temper.
‘Why should Kitty leave Rannaldini?’ she hissed. ‘Look at this beautiful house and all this beautiful land.’
Out of the narrow windows Lysander could see snow-covered chimneys soaring to a brilliant blue sky. Across the valley, like a Brueghel, people were already skiing and tobogganing in the sloping fields below Paradise Grange, hurtling downhill with dogs barking joyously after them – a scene so reminiscent of Monthaut and Kitty that Lysander had to cling on to the window-ledge.
‘Think of her thrilling lifestyle, married to a man of genius.’ Hermione’s voice was now tolling like the punishment bell. ‘Think of her future in New York. What the hell have you got to offer her?’
‘Only my heart.’
With Hermione’s mocking laughter ringing in his ears, he went in search of Kitty. The landing was deserted except for the odd bra and pair of knickers. Downstairs, wading through sandals, daggers, laurel wreaths, fallen fig-leaves, place cards, cigarette ends, condoms and burst balloons, Lysander breathed in a stench of sex, stale tobacco and half-full glasses.
Not wishing to wake the vicar, who was stretched out on a sofa with a bunch of dried poppies in his arms, Lysander finally stumbled on a cheerful, bleary-eyed group having a post-mortem round the kitchen table.
‘I never knew Gwendolyn Chisleden had had a tummy tuck,’ said Georgie, who was actually holding hands with Guy.
‘And the first decent bonk in forty years,’ said Meredith. Then, noticing Lysander. ‘Hallo, duckie. How are you?’
Seeing Bob at the end of the table deep in the music pages of the Observer, Lysander went scarlet and mumbled: ‘Where’s Kitty?’
‘Not herself, poor lamb. She put salt in all our coffee. Then, when I asked her very politely for some butter for our croissants, she got two pounds out of the freezer and chucked them down on the table like bullion.’
‘I should think you, Larry and I are the only people who didn’t catch Aids last night,’ said Marigold, pushing Kitty into a chair against the Aga and handing her a cup of black coffee to warm her numb frozen hands. Her teeth were rattling between blue lips. She was wearing an old sheepskin coat over her torn vestal virgin dress.
The few maiden ladies, waiting in vain in All Saints, Paradise, for the vicar to take Matins, had been electrified instead by the sight of poor little Mrs Rannaldini, always so quiet and retiring, wandering in in a white ball dress with bleeding feet and collapsing in a back pew, piteously sobbing, ‘Oh, please God, help me, help me.’
Miss Cricklade had run out to ring Marigold from the telephone box, much used by Paradise adulterers, begging her to come and collect Kitty.
‘I think the poor little soul’s finally gone off her head.’
Now Marigold was half-tidying up, as Rudolpho the tenor was due to see over Paradise Grange in a minute. It did look beautiful with the big rooms lit up by the snow. If only all the pictures hadn’t gone off to Sotheby’s. Larry was fast asleep upstairs. They both agreed they hadn’t enjoyed a party so much in ages. Relieved that Kitty seemed calmer, Marigold was now being very practical.
‘Ay know Lysander went to bed with you, Kitty dear. He laikes you very much, but he also went to bed with Georgie and me, yes Ay’m afraid he did, he just can’t resist a bonk, and yes he’s a genius in bed. He makes you feel so desirable and funny and, well, beautiful.’
Aware that Kitty was flinching at every adjective, Marigold felt one had to be cruel to be kind: ‘And he was about to go to bed with Rachel and he did with Martha in Palm Beach and God knows who else when working away from Paradise, and now Hermione. I know it’s a shock, but let’s face it, he’s a playboy, out for what he can get and whom he can bonk.’
Kitty took a gulp of coffee so scalding her eyes watered.
‘I fort he’d changed.’
‘Men don’t change,’ said Marigold, ‘except their partners. Lysander wouldn’t be any more faithful than Rannaldini, but at least if you stay put, you live in luxury.’
Kitty started to cry. ‘But I love him, Marigold.’
‘Because he was so kaind. That’s another thing. He gets ladies not just by the saize of his winkle, but by hi
s ears, because he’s so good at listening.’
Restored to Rannaldini’s arms later in the day, Kitty was allowed one incoming telephone call. It was all she needed.
‘Go away,’ she screamed, cutting through Lysander’s hysterical pleadings. ‘You’re worse than all the uvvers. All you fink about is sex. Leave me in peace. I never want to see you no more.’
Half an hour later Lysander’s hopes flared for a second as he heard steps coming up the path of Magpie Cottage, but when he ran to the door he found only a note in the porch from Bob, summoning him to lunch in London the following day: ‘You and I have to do some serious talking about Hermione.’
55
Sick with terror Lysander rolled up at Radnor Walk the following day. Was Bob going to cite him as co-respondent or to call him out for bonking Hermione? The house was absolutely beautiful inside and seemed far too subtly decorated to be Hermione’s taste. The drawing room had burnt-orange curtains, a big white carpet strewn with blue flowers and drained blue walls covered with musical books, scores, Hermione’s records and tapes, a mournful Picasso clown, not unlike Bob, and a Cotman of a soft gold wood in autumn.
A huge portrait of Hermione as Donna Elvira was reflected in the big gilt mirror over the fireplace. Lysander turned his back on both of her, but couldn’t avoid photographs of the awful old bitch everywhere. Delicious smells of wine and herbs drifted from the kitchen. Despite the bitter cold of the day, the house inside was warm enough for Bob to be wearing a grey striped shirt tucked into jeans showing off the flattest stomach and neatest hips in Gloucestershire.
Lysander, who seemed to have been cold for days, felt a passionate, almost tearful, relief at the equal warmth of Bob’s welcome.
‘Come in, dear boy. You look frozen and in need of a whole fur of the dog. Morning, Jack. Put him down. There aren’t any cats.’
