The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4
Page 5
‘After such a disturbed night, you must be pooped. Lie down and I’ll oil you.’
Sherry had been trained as a masseuse and her provocative smiling eyes made Lysander even hotter than the sun as she kneeded and stroked his body. As her braceleted hands moved downwards, her sarong seemed to work loose so he could see straight down her deep brown cleavage and feel her bare thighs against his hip bone.
Only the constricting tightness of Franco’s shorts had hidden a large erection.
‘Do my back.’ Embarrassed, he rolled over.
Sherry laughed softly. ‘The maid’s going shopping in a minute, then you can get brown all over.’
Sticky with oil, her hand slid down his backbone and disappeared under Franco’s shorts. Lysander moaned. God, her fingers were going everywhere. She was doing such magical things any moment his cock would lift him into the air like a one-handed press-up. Then, as the sarong fell apart, he felt soft fur caressing his thighs and realized she was wearing no knickers.
Lysander never got a suntan. He and Sherry spent a lazy, boozy day, making love, watching racing on satellite, having outlandish bets and feeding each other spoonfuls of caviar and strawberries dipped in Dom Perignon.
Around five o’clock Lysander had given himself enough Dutch courage to go back to Elmer’s barn and collect his luggage and polo sticks. Hopefully, Elmer would be safely in Washington drinking vodka and electronics with George and Barbara. As Lysander could only pull up Franco’s jeans mid-thigh, Sherry drove him to Worth Avenue and, despite his protests, kitted him out in boxer shorts, Lacoste polo shirts, chinos, several pairs of loafers and a dark blue baseball cap with SAINTS on the front. She tried to buy him half a dozen suits.
‘You shouldn’t. I’ve had a really good time,’ he told her as she drove him back to Elmer’s.
‘Me, too. Franco’s gay, as you probably gathered,’ said Sherry. ‘He’d die of jealousy if he knew who I’d spent the day with.’
Lysander, who’d drunk a lot of Dom Perignon, had tears in his eyes. ‘But that’s awful. A beautiful woman like you wasted on some shirtlifter. Why don’t you leave him?’
Sherry shook her head. ‘Guys are like gold dust after you’re forty,’ she said, drawing up outside Elmer’s barn. ‘At least Franco’s a husband and as a couple you get asked out so you get the chance to meet new guys. The wages of single life is social death, I promise you.’
Flinging his arms round her bare neck, Lysander collapsed on her warm, gold, scented breasts. ‘As soon as I’ve sorted out things here, I’ll get a taxi back to your place.’
If she hadn’t dropped him at the bottom of the long white rose colonnade leading up to Elmer’s barn, he would have bolted straight back into her car.
Reluctant to admit he’d been cuckolded and that his impregnable security system had been violated, Elmer had tried to hush up last night’s escapade. But he’d reckoned without the Press, particularly when one of the maids, seeing such a stunning streaker, had leaked the story.
As Lysander weaved into the yard, a dozen camera lenses were turned on him and an immigration officer grabbed him, pinning his arms behind his back. ‘You’re going back to the UK, Lover Boy.’
‘I can’t,’ protested Lysander, ‘I’m going to Disneyland tomorrow. I’ve got to get Donald Duck’s autograph. Hallo, Mrs Ex.’ He waved at the long yellow face peering out of a nearby box.
‘You’re not going anywhere. Now walk.’
‘I’ll run if you like,’ said Lysander as a gun jabbed his spine.
‘Don’t smart ass me, Pretty Boy.’
‘What about my polo sticks?’
‘All your gear’s packed.’
‘But I haven’t said goodbye to Martha or Sherry. Talk about coming down to earth without a bang. Oh, Mr Deporter, whatever shall I do?’ sang Lysander tunelessly as he danced a few steps. ‘I wanted to go to Disneyland and you sent me back to—’
‘Walk,’ howled the immigration officer and all Elmer’s security guards.
In the end they locked him up for the night to sober up in order to smuggle him on to the first plane the next morning. Just as he was leaving, the twins came racing up with a large envelope. Inside was a silver pen from Tiffany’s with a clip in the shape of a polo stick, ten thousand dollars and a scrawled note from Martha:
‘Darling Lysander, I’m sorry it’s all over the papers, but at least Elmer’s been all over me since you left. You sure know how to make husbands jealous. I’ll call you when I’m coming to the UK, probably for Ascot. Love, Martha.’
Feeling like a billionaire with hundred-dollar bills spilling out of his pockets, Lysander boarded first class. He tried to concentrate on the air hostess’s pep-talk about exits and life-jackets. If the plane crashed he wouldn’t have Martha’s swipe card to help him.
Then, glancing down at the paper another hostess had handed him with a distinct smirk, only his seat-belt stopped him hitting the plane roof. For there was Martha smiling up at him. The photograph had been taken before she lost weight. She looked gorgeous and there was Elmer looking absolutely repulsive and there was Elmer’s pink palace with a large caption: FORT KNOCKS-UP, and there, oh Christ, was Lysander himself, surrounded by immigration officers and giggling and waving like the village idiot.
Being dyslexic it took him some time to wade through the copy. There was a lot of guff about Safus security system being violated and national secrets being in jeopardy. Elmer was quoted as saying: ‘It was just a lover’s tiff, Martha and I are now reconciled.’
Lysander shook his head in bewilderment. Then, as the plane started taxiing down the runway, jumped out of his skin again, for across the gangway a glamorous blonde was reading another newspaper with a front-page headline: MARTHA’S TOY BOY DEPORTED AT GUNPOINT and a huge picture of him looking mercifully less asinine. What the hell were Dolly and his father going to say? Perhaps the story wouldn’t reach England. No-one knew Elmer over there. He did hope the bastard wasn’t being beastly to Martha.
The only answer when the champagne started to flow after take-off was to get drunk again. One of the freebies handed out by the airline was a pack of cards. Getting into conversation with a foxy smiling Irishman beside him, Lysander discovered a fellow drinker and poker player.
By the time they reached Heathrow Lysander had managed to lose the Tiffany pen and most of Martha’s ten thousand dollars, but he had enough left to buy a slab of Toblerone for Jack the dog, Fracas for Dolly and a bottle of whisky for Ferdie, his flatmate.
Before landing, the blonde across the gangway vanished into the lavatory for ages and emerged looking even more stunning — obviously tarting herself up for someone meeting her. Then, as she passed, Lysander’s pleasure turned to pain. For a second he couldn’t locate it. Then he recognized her scent: Diorissimo. His mother had never worn anything else.
When he’d first gone away to prep school he was so distraught she had drenched a handkerchief with it to comfort him at night. Now he leant back in his seat trying to handle the appalling feeling of desolation. Instinctively on landing he would have nipped into a telephone box to reassure her he was safe.
‘I’m only happy when all my children are back in England,’ she used to say, but he’d always known that his return made her happiest of all.
The post-champagne downer, plus a dank, dark, cold January evening did nothing to improve his spirits. As he slid through customs out into the airport, there was a firework display of camera bulbs exploding and cries of: ‘That’s him’, ‘Over here, Sandy’.
Fortunately Lysander was fitter than any of the paparazzi. Escaping them was a doddle compared to shaking off Elmer’s guard-dogs.
‘Can you drive like hell to Fountain Street in Fulham,’ he gasped to a taxi driver, ‘and can I possibly borrow your Evening Standard?’
Only when he’d finished the racing pages did Lysander turn to the front of the paper to find another vast picture of himself and the headline: MYSTERY STREAKER A BRIT. SENATE CALL FOR PUBLIC I
NQUIRY.
Digesting the details, Lysander had to leave the back-seat light on all the way into London.
‘You better charge me extra for electricity,’ he said, handing back the Standard.
‘Worf it for a fantastic bird like that,’ said the driver, as the taxi jolted over discarded vegetables littering the North End Road.
Thank Christ Dolly was still in Paris. London was at its most tatty. Most of the shops had sales on, the bitter east wind was rattling frozen litter along pavements and gutters.
‘Fink we’ve lost them,’ said the driver as he turned into Fountain Street.
5
Fountain Street was a charming Victorian terrace lined with cherry trees. Number 10 had been taken by Ferdie for a low rent because it was on the market and would sell better if lived in. Ferdie had repainted the bottle-green door and tied back the red rose which swarmed up the pink-washed front of the house. Ignoring the empty dustbins by the gate and the frantic waving of the two gays opposite, Lysander let himself in. Among the leaflets for decorators, window cleaners and minicabs was a postcard from Dolly saying she missed him and would be home tomorrow. There was also a mountain of brown envelopes which he didn’t open. Thank goodness he was starting his new job with Ballensteins in March. His father had fiddled it for him as a quid pro quo for taking Rodney Ballenstein’s son into his smart public school. The good-luck cards from all Lysander’s old office cronies were still up in the drawing room.
The house looked awfully tidy — and it wasn’t even the Filipino cleaner’s day. Lysander switched on the simulated log fire which sent shadows flickering over the dark red wallpaper. In the fridge next door he found Bio Yoghurt and pink grapefruit juice (Ferdie must be on one of his endless diets), ham, Scotch eggs and a bottle of Moët.
He’d just helped himself to most of the ham and the last of Ferdie’s whisky when a white envelope thudded through the letter-box. Addressed to him it was marked: URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL.
‘Dear Hawkley,’ read Lysander with a giggle, again it took him several seconds to take in the fact that Ballensteins was an old-established firm who prided themselves on their utter discretion. In view of Lysander’s recent very unfortunate publicity, the job was no longer open.
The truth was that Rodney Ballenstein was not only a business friend of Elmer’s but also had a new bimbo wife, whom he didn’t entirely trust, and an equally glamorous PA on whom he had long-range designs. There was no way Rodney was going to have Lysander lounging round his office causing havoc.
‘Fucking hell!’ Lysander screwed up the letter and threw it on the gas logs.
At that moment the front door opened, there was a frantic scampering of paws and Jack the Jack Russell hurtled in like a bullet, yapping and jumping with all four feet off the ground, to greet his master.
Jack was followed by Ferdie bringing in the emptied dustbins.
‘Hi,’ he said, chucking the Evening Standard on the hall table, ‘I was expecting you.’
Ferdinand Fitzgerald was a fixer, as fly and commercially orientated as Lysander was ingenuous and unmaterialistic. A schoolfriend of Lysander’s, he was also an estate agent who, despite the recession, was doing very well. In addition to selling houses, he charged for dinner parties and for friends to stay the night in Fountain Street and let out properties on his firm’s books by the afternoon for chums visiting London to bonk in. Ferdie’s Achilles’ heel was Lysander, whom he adored and had protected both from the bullying and the advances of older boys at school and beyond and whom he let get away with murder.
Very plump with a double chin and pink cheeks hiding an excellent bone structure, Ferdie looked like a clean-shaven Laughing Cavalier who’d slicked back his hair in an attempt to pass as a Roundhead. Cheerfulness, however, kept breaking in. He and Lysander were known to their friends as Mr Fixit and Mr Fucksit.
Today as he hung up his long navy-blue coat in the hall, the Roundhead mood predominated, particularly when Lysander, who always poured out everything at once, immediately told him he had lost both the Palm Beach and the Ballenstein jobs.
‘Pretty stinking, getting fired before I’ve even got there,’ grumbled Lysander, feeding Scotch eggs to a slavering Jack.
‘You should have signed the contract before you left,’ reproved Ferdie. ‘It’s still on the kitchen table.’
‘There must be some party to go to,’ said Lysander, ‘I feel very depressed. How am I going to support Jack and the horses?’
As Ferdie read the Ballenstein letter looking for loopholes, Lysander opened the bottle of champagne from the fridge and threw the cork on to the floor. Ferdie picked it up.
‘You live in a cork-lined room, Lysander. Sadly you lack Proust’s application. This house has been tidy since you’ve been away. Annunciata took two days to muck out your room. No self-respecting pig would have dossed down in it. And you’ll have to sleep on the sofa tonight. I’ve rented it to Matt Gibson and that’s his Moët and his Scotch eggs you’re feeding to that seriously spoilt dog. Look at the way he’s scratched every door. And that is disgusting.’ Ferdie removed two strips of ham fat from the gas logs with a shudder. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? This is not a real fire.’
‘Don’t you want to hear about Palm Beach?’
‘Not particularly. I’ve read most of it in the Standard. Look, we’ve got to talk about dosh.’
‘I’ve just got in.’ Lysander was now feeding Jack Toblerone and trying to read Ferdie’s Evening Standard, which was a later edition, upside down.
‘EastEnders is on in a minute.’ He got up to turn on the television. ‘Then let’s go clubbing later, Ferd. My overdraft’s so big I might as well make it bigger. I must just check my horoscope,’ he added, switching over to Ceefax and Patric Walker.
‘It’ll tell you the debtors’ prison is looming,’ said Ferdie.
Turning off the television, he sat Lysander down and made him open the brown envelopes. The bills were horrific.
‘Barclaycard, Ladbroke’s, Foxtrot Oscar, Tramps, British Telecom,’ intoned Ferdie. ‘Christ, your telephone bill’s longer than your telephone number.’
‘It’s not all me.’
‘The long-distance calls are itemized and all to Dolly. And how in hell did you spend seven hundred pounds at Janet Reger?’
‘That was Dolly’s Christmas present.’
‘Not to mention bills for bootmakers, saddlers, vets, feed bills, livery fees, blacksmith, Interflora; and here’s a letter from the off-licence complaining your cheque bounced. How did you manage to run up a bill for five hundred pounds at an off-licence?’
‘The girl with the big boobs lets me have it on tick. It’s useful when we have parties.’ Having filled up his glass, Lysander filled up Jack’s water-bowl. ‘I watched satellite in Palm Beach. You can watch racing twenty-four hours a day. Turn on the telly. It’ll be The Bill in a minute.’
‘You are not going to watch anything,’ snapped Ferdie, stacking the bills tidily and chucking the brown envelopes in the waste-paper basket. ‘You owe me four months’ rent and you can at least sign on tomorrow.’
Lysander shuddered. ‘They might find me a job. Basically, I need a holiday.’
‘Matt Gibson saved his dole money for six months and went skiing,’ said Ferdie sternly.
‘I’ve never saved anything in my life. OK, I’ll go and tap Dad tomorrow.’
Knowing how Lysander loathed going to see his father, Ferdie relented. Ringing a head-hunting friend called Roger Westwood, he arranged for Lysander to see him the following day.
‘There’s a PR job going,’ said Ferdie switching off the telephone. ‘The firm’s got two bloodstock agencies and a polo club. At least you know something about horses.’
But turning round, he found Lysander had fallen asleep with Jack clutched in his arms like a teddy bear. He looked about twelve. He could sleep anywhere, curling up in patches of sunlight like a cat. Sighing, Ferdie removed his shoes and covered him with his own duvet.
Ringing the office from his car, he learnt that a Greek couple had ratted on a deal on a half a million pound Radnor Walk house.
Twelve thousand pounds the poorer, Ferdie abandoned his perennial diet and mindlessly devoured two bacon rolls. Ringing Lysander to check he was on course for the interview with Roger Westwood he got no answer. Ferdie cursed. Roger was a vital contact because people he placed in jobs were often moving and needed to sell houses and buy new ones. Ferdie was putting his own reputation on the line, sending Lysander to see him. He’d better go back to Fountain Street to see what was going on.
Lysander appeared compliant but ended up doing exactly what he chose. Ferdie was reminded of an English Setter his family had once owned, who was beautiful, sweet natured, thick but also cunning, with a nose on elastic for bitches, and virtually untrainable.
He found the place in chaos. Lysander shed possessions like leaves in autumn. Records, tapes, telephone books, glasses, the remains of breakfast, over-flowing ashtrays, the racing pages of the Sun and several discarded ties littered the sitting room. Lysander, already dressed for the interview, was ringing Ladbroke’s.
‘Why the hell can’t you shut my bedroom door?’ Ferdie retrieved a Gucci loafer from Jack’s ravening jaws. ‘And what do you look like?’