by Jilly Cooper
Alpheus flipped. Not only was his Jaguar totalled but how dare Rannaldini also lie to Cheryl that he’d been humping Pushy, Chloe and Hermione? Cheryl was threatening to divorce him and expose him to the tax-man if he didn’t accede to her outlandish demands.
‘And she wants custody of Mr Bones, the family dog,’ Alpheus shouted finally.
‘I am not surprised.’ Admiring his beautiful hands, Rannaldini picked up a nail file. ‘Eef Mr Bones can hold down job worth two hundred thousand dollars a year on your books and bite the postman, he’s quite a find. I ’ave to confess I find that emerald stud in Cheryl’s labia minora quite enchanting, but I think she has the ’ots for Mikhail, so I suggest you get it insured before they get together.’
‘I’ll get you, Rannaldini . . .’
Alpheus’s bellows of rage could be heard all over Valhalla.
Flora had just screwed up enough courage to punch out George’s number when Rannaldini catfooted up, suggesting a walk round the garden. Flora was so depressed she thought Rannaldini would be better than no-one to talk to. She was wrong.
As they reached the pond near the rose garden, Rannaldini said, ‘I wonder when Baby will tell his little friend Isa that he’s just tested HIV positive.’
Flora stopped in her tracks, breathing in a sudden stench of fox. ‘How d’you know?’
‘I recommended him to a doctor,’ said Rannaldini smoothly. ‘The poor boy only heard this morning. He’s demented, and so must you be, my darling.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well, if you swing all ways and sleep around as much as Baby does, it was only a matter of time.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Flora slumped on a stone bench.
Trevor had disappeared after the fox. In the almost non-existent water of the pond, a couple of carp gasped and writhed. Then, from his inside pocket, Rannaldini produced an even worse horror.
‘What will George theenk of these pretty pictures?’
Flora gave a groan because the top one was of Baby making love to her on the lawn at Angels’ Reach.
‘Give them to me,’ she screamed, snatching the polythene folder.
‘Have them.’ Rannaldini gave a sigh of delight. ‘I have the negs. They should make George relinquish his plans for a Paradise bypass. And, eef not, Gordon Dillon will adore them.’ And whistling ‘This is my last, my finest day,’ Rannaldini sauntered back to the house, pausing only to switch on his mobile:
‘Bussage, my dear, can you ring Fleet Water Board and get them to fill up the lake and the ponds?’
Flora whimpered with terror. Baby, who’d been mysterious about his weekend plans, always switched off his mobile. There was no way she could call him and check the truth. Looking round, she saw that Trevor was tossing something in the air.
‘Stop!’ she screamed.
But by the time she had got there it was too late. It was a little black mole, probably in search of water. Lost above ground, blinded by the sun, the earth was baked too hard for him to tunnel to safety. There was something so pathetic about his tiny pink hands. Sobbing helplessly followed by an insufficiently contrite Trevor, Flora set out to find a spade to bury him. She felt she had bypassed Paradise for ever.
Entering Valhalla, Rannaldini had bumped into his leading mezzo.
‘“Dear Chloe, how blubbered is thy pretty face,”’ he quoted, in amusement.
‘It’s all because of Beattie’s horrible piece,’ sobbed Chloe. ‘Howie’s just rung in his undertaker’s voice saying I haven’t got Delilah. Even worse he says the money’s on Gloria.’
‘She is a newer face, my dear. Your voice is not really strong enough to fill the Garden. The last thing we need is terrible reviews for Delilah, just as Carlos is previewing.’
Chloe was the second person in twenty-four hours to slap Rannaldini’s face.
And now he was in his watch-tower, working on his memoirs, the evil smile playing constantly over his lips. Pushy had left several furious messages on his machine. Having had access to helicopter, orange Lamborghini Diablo and Rannaldini’s bank balance while they’d been having an affaire, she was now feeling the draught.
Rannaldini took her next call.
‘You promised Ay’d be the next Lady Rannaldini.’
‘You were queen for a night, my dear Gloria. Poor Eboli only had two minutes of bliss. You had two weeks. Count yourself lucky. Now, pees off.’
Rannaldini turned back to his memoirs. What a lot he had on the rest of the cast.
That very morning, poor, silly Granny had been so unhinged that Clive had snapped him doing something very stupid in Rutminster. There was no way Hype-along would be able to buy all the nationals once the story broke. And what a lot too he knew about goody-goody Rozzy.
Then there was Chloe’s frolic with the goat on the Internet. And Isa’s parents certainly wouldn’t want to know what he’d been getting up to with Baby, or Isa what Baby had been getting up to with Flora. How gay was Baby, really? And what a shame Mikhail had lapsed last night. That marriage would take a long time to repair.
Sighing with pleasure, Rannaldini picked up his photograph album. What a lot of beautiful women he’d slept with! There was Flora, a plump, ravishing schoolgirl, and Chloe, whose skin was white-hot in texture, but who had been almost too easy to bed. And Wolfie’s mother Gina, hangdog because she’d loathed being photographed in the nude. Not a beauty but incredibly rich, she had given him his start in life.
Sharing a page were Serena the nympho and Pushy, whose pillow talk had been very limited. Over the page was Beattie Johnson, who was helping him with his memoirs and who knew rather too much about him. Beattie had been a marvellous fuck, his second wife, Cecilia, an even better one. And there was his third wife, plump Kitty, so anxious to please, who had escaped to marry Rupert’s friend Lysander. One day he would get even with those two.
Across the centre spread was an emaciated Helen – what a contrast to Hermione: rosy, Rubenesque, probably the most beautiful of them all, and certainly the best in bed. Yesterday he had punctured her self-esteem, but she was turned on by punishment and would soon bounce back.
Before the end of filming he would screw Lucy. She deserved a treat. And what a wonderful evening he had had last night, watching Cheryl and Lara exploring each other’s bodies. He’d hardly been able to get a cock in edgeways.
But, flipping through the pages, there were two Everests still to conquer: Rupert’s women. There was only a head shot of the divine Taggie, taken at Tab’s wedding, but by secreting hidden cameras in both her bedrooms, at Valhalla and at Magpie Cottage, he had some stunning shots of Tabitha, naked, slender and most disdainful of them all.
Rannaldini felt chained to a lunatic by his lust, his cock about to detonate. He had fantasized recently of marrying Tab, and giving her blond, beautiful babies.
But things hadn’t gone to plan. Rannaldini found himself increasingly identifying with Philip II. He had ‘sought in the vast desert of men, for a friend’. He had found Tristan, but Tristan had flouted his authority and won Tab’s affection.
It was the same with Wolfie. Rannaldini had wanted his son back so much, but how could it happen that Flora once, and now it seemed Tabitha, had grown increasingly fond of such a ham-fisted, formal, slightly ridiculous, hopelessly romantic young man.
Tab was infatuated with Tristan, but Wolfie was busy gaining ground. In his son’s top drawer, under the lining paper, Rannaldini had found Polaroids of Tab in her dunce’s cap. He’d kill rather than relinquish her to Wolfie. Suddenly he had a brainwave and picked up the telephone.
‘Clive, I want you to make a trip to Penscombe.’
Tab was amazed and touched when Chloe rang her the following day, which was a Sunday, asking her to come to Harvey Nichols’ sale in Rutminster. But who was there to buy dresses for? Isa was as cool as ever, and Tristan hadn’t telephoned since he’d blown her out. But knowing that he wanted polo in Don Carlos and that Rannaldini was baulking over the expense, Tab explained to Chloe t
hat she was going over to Rutminster Polo Club that afternoon, to try and persuade some of the England players, all mates of Rupert, to appear in the film for a crate of Moët apiece.
‘Not much of a hardship negotiating with those guys,’ said Chloe. ‘At least drop in on the tennis tournament later.’
‘I can’t, Chloe. Evenings are the only time it’s cool enough to work The Engineer.’
‘Well, look after yourself, little one.’
Tab wiped away the tears. How kind of Chloe to be so solicitous.
Inspired by a fortnight’s Wimbledon, and the fact that it was 8 July, the day the real Carlos had been born, the tennis tournament had been scheduled for early evening in the forlorn hope that the heat might have subsided. Alas, it was hotter than ever, with black storm-clouds massing like the Grand Inquisitor’s army in the west.
The tennis courts at Valhalla flanked Hangman’s Wood. Already the poplars were yellowing and every chestnut leaf was edged with brown. It was so still, the smouldering trees seemed turned to stage scenery. Rannaldini had retired to his watch-tower to drool over the newly arrived rushes of himself on the rostrum. Over and over again the opening bars of the overture, like hunting horns deep in the wood, advertised his evil presence.
To add to the tension, people who had fondly arranged to partner one another weeks ago were no longer on speaking terms. Pushy was playing with Alpheus, which would put Cheryl into orbit, Chloe, a reputed demon on the court, with Mikhail, which would equally enrage Lara.
After Friday’s débâcle Mikhail had also decided he loathed Chloe, and rolled up at the tennis tournament swigging vodka out of a two-litre Smirnoff bottle.
‘“ ’Appy birthday, Don Carlos, ’appy birthday to you,”’ sang Mikhail, ‘And I hop’ he had better bloody birthday than I ’ave on Friday.’
‘Today’, boomed Griselda, resplendent in a vast white tent dress, ‘is also the birthday of Rozzy’s husband, Glyn, probably an even greater shit than the original Carlos, so horoscopes do work.’
‘And it is my aunt Hortense’s birthday,’ piped up Simone. ‘She is terrible tart too.’
‘I think you mean “tartar”, sweetie,’ said Griselda fondly.
‘Uncle Tristan is probably still at her birthday party now,’ said Simone, glancing at her watch. ‘She’ll be very angry I rattled at the last moment.’
‘You couldn’t miss a chance of having Wolfie as your partner,’ mocked Chloe, swiping at a passing wasp with her racquet.
Seeing poor Simone – who was unaware that her crush on Wolfie was common knowledge – going absolutely crimson, Griselda said quickly, ‘Rozzy’s been cooking chicken breasts to be wrapped in smoked salmon, sea trout and raspberry Pavlova for that bastard Glyn all weekend.’
Paid for by me, thought Lucy bitterly.
‘Oh, look,’ said Meredith, as a black helicopter approached from the south-east and landed on the lawn of River House. ‘Hermione has returned from Milan. She’s clearly not too mortified to make use of Maestro’s chopper.’
Meredith was partnering Flora, neither serious players, particularly Meredith, whose Christopher Robin sunhat fell off if he ran too fast. To everyone’s amazement, they took out Mikhail and Chloe, because Mikhail smote every ball into the dark midgy canopy of Hangman’s Wood.
‘I hop’ I break every window of his bloody vatchtower,’ he growled.
‘Why don’t you take up golf?’ snarled Chloe, as they walked off the court.
Afterwards they could be heard yelling at each other in the maze, in which they would be filming next week.
‘No doubt rehearsing the bit when Posa pulls a knife on Eboli,’ said Flora, collapsing on the burnt, scratchy grass to watch Bernard and Jessica, Sexton’s beautiful secretary, pounding balls at Lucy and Ogborne, who was still keeping the midges at bay with Hermione’s wine-stained sunhat.
Flora was coming apart at the seams, in floods one minute, screaming with laughter the next. Now she was crying because she could hear Tabloid, the Rottweiler, howling and stuck in baking solitary confinement beneath Rannaldini’s watch-tower.
‘Why doesn’t bloody Clive take him for a walk?’
Then, as the hunting horns from the rushes echoed through Hangman’s Wood again, ‘If I hear that overture once more, I’ll scream.’
The horror of the photos Rannaldini had shown her had now kicked in. She hadn’t come on yet. What happened if she was pregnant and produced a little HIV baby? If George saw those pictures, he’d never take her back. Every time a mobile rang, she leapt three feet in the air.
Granny, who was partnering Griselda, was equally suicidal. How could he have let himself go in Rutminster yesterday? Every time a car came up the drive, he expected blue lights and sirens. Even more cruelly, an indignant Howie had just confirmed that Serena Westwood was on the cruise ship with Giuseppe. Rannaldini’s evil matchmaking had worked a treat. Granny’s dreams were now as shredded as his patchwork quilt. But, being Granny, he refused to spoil everyone else’s fun, and plucked his tennis racquet like a banjo.
‘“He said that he loved her but, oh, how he lied,”’ sang Granny. ‘“Oh, how he lied, oh, how he lied.”’
‘“And then they were married and somehow she died. Somehow she di-hi-hi-ed,”’ joined in Flora.
On three glasses of white, and no food since Friday, Granny was also in a fuck-it mood. His sneaky underarm service was soon whistling over the net. Griselda, galumphing around in her white tent, turned out to have a murderous backhand. To everyone’s noisily cheering surprise, they routed the number-one seeds, Alpheus and Pushy.
‘Pushy’s gone white with rage to match her tennis kit,’ muttered Ogborne to Lucy. ‘I reckon Alpheus threw that game.’
As Pushy came off the court, Meredith was reading out a Sunday Times piece claiming that the coveted part of Delilah had not gone to Chloe or even Pushy, but to Rannaldini’s ex, Cecilia. With a frantic jangling of bracelets and earrings, Pushy burst into tears.
‘Sir Roberto promised me that part, and he promised Ay could be the next Lady Rannaldini,’ she sobbed.
‘We’ve all been promised that,’ said a mocking voice. ‘It comes after being told we’ve got the most beautiful voice in the world.’
Abandoning Mikhail, who’d passed out under a weeping ash, Chloe had returned to the court.
‘Oh, God,’ her smile disappeared, ‘here comes Helen and that ugly cow Eulalia Harrison. I gather she had luncheon at River House.’
Pushy’s sobs subsided. She longed for an in-depth interview with the Sentinel.
But Eulalia, pallid beyond belief, with the evening sun showing up a moustache and a gap of hairy leg between flowing skirts and leather boots, had her sights set higher.
‘Chloe Catford,’ she cried, ‘I was appalled by that drivel Beatrice Johnson wrote about you in the Scorpion.’
‘The bitch completely misquoted me,’ said Chloe, unfreezing slightly.
‘That was apparent. I resented the way she trivialized you.’ Eulalia’s blinking unmade-up eyes behind her granny specs were full of compassion. ‘Could you spare me a moment tomorrow?’
‘Why don’t we do lunch?’ Chloe turned to Lady Rannaldini, who had drifted on ahead of Eulalia, clearly reluctant to get sucked into the tennis. ‘Hi, Helen, that is a gorgeous dress.’
Helen paused for a second, holding out the mauve silk, patterned with purple lilac and pale yellow honeysuckle. ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ Then, looking coldly at Pushy, ‘My husband brought me back the silk from Tokyo.’
Wolfie and Simone easily dispatched Lucy and Ogborne to reach the final against Granny and Griselda.
‘We’re going to have trouble beating those two,’ sighed Griselda. ‘Wolfie plays like Boris Becker.’
‘Boris Better. Wolfie’s much nicer looking and such a good boy,’ said Granny approvingly, as Wolfie topped up everyone’s glass and handed round strawberries, giving Simone time to get her breath back before the final. He had lost so much weight, his signet ring
kept falling off, so he gave it to Lucy to look after.
As the chapel clock struck half past nine, the finalists took up their positions. Lucy and Simone are so sweet, thought Wolfie, as he jumped from foot to foot on the baseline. Why was he too hopelessly in love with Tab to consider anyone else? Glancing across the valley he felt sick to see a car, looking suspiciously like his father’s Merc, creeping stealthily up the little lane to Magpie Cottage. An ace from Griselda whizzed past his ear. He mustn’t give in to weakness. If he was incapable of returning Simone’s love, he could at least ensure her victory.
‘Oh, well played, Wolfie,’ said Simone, five minutes later, as he aced Granny for a second time.
Alpheus, sitting away from the rabble on the other side of the court, much envied the way Simone ran around picking up balls for Wolfie. It was high time he had an adoring young woman in his life again. He picked up his mobile.
Moths were bashing against the floodlights. Even Rannaldini’s sapphire delphinium bed, the only thing watered in the garden, was losing colour in the dusk. A mobile rang, everyone dived hopefully – but it was for Chloe.
‘OK,’ she purred, ‘terrific. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
Not having had any exercise, she announced she was going for a jog and, giving Mikhail a kick in the ribs as she passed the weeping ash, disappeared into the darkness. Shortly afterwards, Alpheus muttered about swimming his twenty lengths, drained his glass of Perrier and also left.
‘He and Chloe must have started up again,’ hissed Flora.
‘I hate Rannaldini,’ said Pushy.
‘So do I,’ agreed Bernard, stunning everyone, because he never bitched.
‘No-one hates him as much as I do,’ said Griselda, as she remembered Rannaldini wrecking Hermione’s dress.
Mikhail must have been roused by Chloe’s kick for suddenly he reared up and sang, ‘“Thunder rumbles deep in the heavens, a man must die,”’ then slumped back to sleep.
Everyone exchanged nervous glances, particularly when real thunder started to grumble round the hills in sympathy. A slight breeze rattling the summer-hardened poplar leaves sounded like rain. Lucy put her arms round a quivering James: she’d have to trank him if the claps grew louder.
