The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  Lysander glanced down at the crumpled grey suit and the blue and white striped shirt.

  ‘Basically I put on the thing that least needed ironing,’ he said apologetically.

  He’d have pinched one of my shirts if they hadn’t been too big, thought Ferdie darkly, then caught sight of an empty bottle of Moët in the waste-paper basket.

  ‘You’ve been drinking.’

  ‘Only half the bottle.’

  ‘You can’t fucking afford champagne.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Lysander smugly. ‘An incredibly nice girl turned up with it from The Scorpion. She left me her card.’

  Examining it, Ferdie gave a groan.

  ‘Beattie Johnson! Are you crazy? She’s the most bent journalist in England.’

  ‘Well, she was sweet to me. Said she’d read all the Palm Beach stuff and wanted me to have the chance to tell my side of the story, and if I told her all about Martha and Sherry, The Scorpion might give me a Ferrari.’

  Ferdie went white. ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘Course not.’ Lysander assumed an air of great virtue. ‘I couldn’t do that to Martha. Besides, Dolly would do her nut. Off the record I did tell her how funny it was escaping from Elmer’s and being picked up by Sherry. She took some pictures. She said she could get me some modelling work.’

  ‘Christ, when will you learn?’ Ferdie was in despair, but there was no time for reproaches.

  Sighing, he straightened Lysander’s tie, gave his shoes a last polish and brushed Jack’s white hairs off his suit. He then put a couple of Roger Westwood’s cards in both Lysander’s breast and inside pockets and turned down the A — Z with the relevant road ringed. Finally he gave Lysander an Extra Strong mint to hide the champagne fumes and his last twenty-pound note in case he needed some cash.

  ‘Now, don’t forget to steer Roger on to racing. That’s the only thing you know anything about, and try and look interested. No, you haven’t got time to watch Neighbours. Move it.’

  An insanely fast driver, Lysander reached Roger’s office near Holborn ten minutes early and pulled up his battered dark green Golf outside a television shop to watch the end of Neighbours and the runners going down to the start for the 2.15. He’d been right to back that dark brown mare, she looked really well. Neighbours ended on a clinch, which reminded Lysander that Dolly was due back this evening. Worried about the side-effects of being on the Pill since she was fourteen, Dolly had recently come off it, so he had better nip into the next door chemist’s shop to buy some condoms. He was just waiting at the counter wondering if rainbow ones would improve his performance — Dolly was very demanding — when a girl swept into the shop sending a rack of bath caps flying.

  She was very tall and thin, with fine pale hair drawn back from a long, beautiful unmade-up face into a tortoiseshell clip. Very inadequately dressed in a grey wool midi-dress, she had the gangling panicky air of a giraffe who’d escaped from the zoo into rush-hour traffic.

  ‘I want some eye-gel,’ she announced in a high, trembling voice. ‘No, not that one, it’s tested on animals. In fact I want three tubes. I’m going to be doing a lot of crying in the next few days. My husband’s just left me.’ And she burst into tears.

  The pharmacist forced to serve her, because his assistant was late back from lunch, was totally thrown. His scrubbed face turned dark crimson, as his little eyes darted round looking for a way of escape. Lysander showed no such reticence. Leaping forwards, knocking over a rack of tweezers, he put an arm round the girl’s shuddering shoulders. Gently steering her towards the chair kept for pensioners awaiting prescriptions, he broke into a nearby box of pale blue Kleenex and started to blot up the tears. Unlike Martha, there was no mascara to run.

  ‘You poor thing, what a bastard. He’ll come back.’

  ‘Never, never,’ gulped the girl.

  ‘Go and make a cup of tea, Diane,’ snapped the chemist to his assistant who, buckling beneath carrier bags, had tried to sidle in undetected and was now gazing at Lysander in wonder.

  Gradually between sobs and sniffs, Lysander elicited the information that the distressed beauty’s name was Rachel and that her husband Boris was a Russian dissident and an assistant conductor of the London Metropolitan Orchestra.

  ‘But he never gets to conduct in public because that bastard Rannaldini — he’s the London Met’s musical director — never gives him the chance. Boris’s compositions are wonderful, too, but no-one will programme them because they’re rather difficult.’

  ‘Dropped saucepan sort of stuff?’ asked Lysander helpfully.

  ‘If you mean atonal,’ said the girl bridling slightly, ‘yes, it is. Rannaldini could help; but he’s jealous of Boris’s genius. He actually told Boris, Boris’s compositions emptied concert halls. Thank you,’ she added as Diane, the assistant, now in a white coat, returned newly made-up and reeking of scent, and handed her a cup of pallid tea.

  ‘You’re all being so kind. Boris is kind really,’ she went on despairingly, ‘but being Russian he gets frustrated trying to communicate and we’ve got young children and they get on his nerves in a small flat.’

  ‘That’s no reason to walk out,’ said Lysander indignantly. ‘Have a slug of that tea, although you really need something stronger.’

  Lifting the cup, Rachel’s shaking hand spilled so much, she put it down again.

  ‘Boris is in love with a mezzo called Chloe,’ she announced miserably. ‘The London Met’s recording Otello at the moment. She’s singing Emilia, so he sees her all the time and Rannaldini’s positively encouraging it.’

  ‘What a shit.’ Lysander tugged out another wadge of blue Kleenex.

  ‘I was so desperate,’ continued Rachel with a sob, ‘I went to see Rannaldini this morning, just barged past his secretary. Rannaldini had the temerity to offer me a gin and tonic, saying he couldn’t understand why I was making a fuss. He feels the “affaire”,’ Rachel choked on the word, ‘has added a new depth to Boris’s compositions, and Chloe has never sung so well. He’s a fiend, Rannaldini, he corrupts everyone.’ She broke into noisier sobs.

  Having exhausted one box of Kleenex, Lysander broke into another. Due to the slow service of Diane, who was not the only one transfixed with interest by this beautiful couple, a long queue had formed — many of whom were beginning to chunter. The pharmacist also noticed that several regulars, who were too embarrassed to ask so publicly for cures for piles or chronic constipation, had sidled out again. He cleared his throat, then when Lysander took no notice, told him and Rachel they couldn’t stay indefinitely.

  ‘No, of course not.’ Rachel rubbed her forehead in bewilderment. ‘My God, I should have picked up the children.’

  ‘Where are they?’ asked Lysander, who’d been squatting down beside her, rising stiffly to his feet.

  ‘With a girlfriend.’

  ‘Well, we’ll find a pub and ring her. Then I’ll run you over there.’

  Ferdie’s afternoon had been no more rewarding than his morning. A mega-rich German, for whom he’d been searching for months, had suddenly been found a two million pound property by a rival agent and an appalling survey had scuppered a deal that looked certain. Returning home that evening frozen and exhausted, Ferdie caught the telephone on its last ring.

  It was Roger Westwood in a rage. He’d lunched with the Chief Executive of the PR firm and asked him back to the office to meet Lysander.

  ‘And the little fucker never showed. Didn’t even bother to call. Christ — what kind of idiot did that make me look?’

  Ferdie had to crawl. ‘He left here at half-past one, Roger. I don’t see how he could have lost the address.’

  ‘Well, he’s lost the fucking job. After all the business I’ve put your way, Ferdie, you could have come up with someone better.’

  ‘Look, I’m really sorry.’

  But Roger had hung up.

  I am too young to have a coronary, thought Ferdie. How the hell could Lysander do this to me?

  Fumbling to
turn on the lamp by the fire, he once more surveyed the chaos. Jack, fed up with being alone, had chewed several tapes. Ferdie put the rest back in their box.

  In the kitchen, nothing had been returned to the fridge. The milk had gone off, the pink grapefruit juice was tepid. Lysander had polished off his whisky last night. In a fury Ferdie ate quarter of a pound of cheese and the last of the Scotch eggs. His brooding was interrupted by Jack leaping on to the sofa, bristling with rage and wagging his stumpy tail as he peered out of the window.

  Wearily joining him, Ferdie swore in disbelief. There, staggering down the street, was Lysander, arm in arm with a blind man, both of them being led by a resigned-looking guide-dog. Ferdie threw up the window.

  ‘We are two little lambs that have gone astray, Baa, Baa, Baa,’ sang the blind man and Lysander tunelessly as they tottered across the road.

  Windows were going up all along the street. The gays opposite were nearly falling off their balcony. Passers-by stopped and stared as Lysander paused, swaying, outside the front door. Breaking a bar of chocolate into pieces he gave it to the drooling guide-dog, then handed Ferdie’s last fiver to the blind man. He took so long getting his key into the latch that Ferdie let him in. Lysander’s hair was flopping all over his face. The faded orange tan had a blue tinge.

  ‘Christ, it’s cold!’ Bending down to gather up an ecstatically yapping Jack, Lysander had great difficulty getting up again.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ yelled Ferdie.

  ‘In The Goat and Boots,’ said Lysander with a hiccup.

  ‘Why didn’t you go to that interview?’

  ‘Ohmigod!’ Lysander’s palm smote his wide-open mouth. ‘I completely forgot. I’m really sorry. I’ll ring and explain. Basically I just nipped into the chemist to get some condoms, when this poor, poor girl rushed in to buy some eye-gel. Can you beat it? Her husband had just left her.’

  ‘Oh no,’ moaned Ferdie.

  ‘Well, I had to look after her.’ Gently putting Jack down Lysander wandered into the kitchen fretfully upending the empty whisky bottle. ‘Honestly, she was so sad and so beautiful, and she had adorable children — God, I love kids — and her husband’s a Russian diffident. We went back to the flat. We got a bottle on the way and she was just telling me all about this bastard Rannaldini, who’s led her husband astray. She said he was legendary.’

  ‘Legendarily difficult,’ snapped Ferdie.

  With mounting anger he watched Lysander get a tin of Pedigree Chum out of the fridge, fork it into a blue bowl of Bristol glass which normally lived in the sitting room, and scatter dog biscuits all over the floor.

  ‘Who is he?’ asked Lysander.

  ‘Rannaldini. About the greatest conductor in the world. Jesus, you’re a philistine.’

  ‘Well, he’s Boris’s boss. Rachel played some of Boris’s music. It sounded quite awful — like a lot of buffaloes in a labour ward. But it reminded her of him so she started crying, and I was comforting her when Boris walked in. He’d decided not to leave her. He wasn’t at all diffident when he saw me, and he’s a big bugger so I legged it before he blacked my eye.’

  ‘Then you could have used the eye-gel,’ said Ferdie, sourly sweeping up dog biscuits. ‘Well, you screwed up that bloodstock account job.’

  ‘I’m desperately sorry, Ferd, I couldn’t just leave her. The other problem is basically my car’s been nicked. When I came out of her flat in Drake Street it had gone.’

  ‘Probably towed away.’ Ferdie was furiously crashing plates and mugs into the dishwasher.

  ‘It wasn’t. I stopped off at a champagne tasting at Oddbins on the way home. They let me use their telephone. Then I went to The Goat and Boots. That’s where I met Syd, that blind bloke. His guide-dog was incredible; she was called Bessie. You’d have loved her, Jacko.’

  As he opened the kitchen door, Jack rushed out and an icy blast rushed in.

  ‘We’d better call the police about your car,’ said Ferdie.

  ‘Rachel was so pretty in a leggy sort of way.’ Lysander glanced at his watch. ‘Hell, I’ve missed Coronation Street.’ Going into the sitting room he switched on the television. ‘I must find out who won the 2.15. Where’s the remote control?’

  But, as he upended a box of tapes on to the floor in an attempt to find it, Ferdie flipped.

  ‘Just shut up for once,’ he howled, ‘and go to fucking bed.’

  6

  Next morning Ferdie had to relent because Lysander woke up, as he so often did, crying for his mother.

  ‘Oh Ferd, I dreamt she was alive, the fog came down and I couldn’t find her.’

  Dripping with sweat, reddened eyes rolling in terror, bedclothes thrown all over the sitting room, Lysander reached for a cigarette with a shaking hand.

  Slumped in despair, he let the bubbles subside in the Alka Seltzer Ferdie brought him. The cartoons on TV AM which usually produced whoops of joy failed to raise a smile. He was too low even to switch over to Ceefax for the day’s runners and his horoscope.

  ‘What’s the point of Russell Grant rabbiting on about a romantic day for Pisces when I’ve got to go and tap Dad?’ He started to shake again.

  Ferdie sighed. As Lysander’s car hadn’t been found and he’d promised to be at Fleetley, the public school in Gloucestershire where his father was headmaster, by eleven-thirty, Ferdie agreed to drive him down for a fee. Not that he’d ever get it, and he’d have to pretend to the office that he was out viewing properties.

  ‘You ought to get something inside you,’ he chided Lysander. ‘You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning.’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  Lysander jumped at the telephone, always hoping it might be his mother and her whole death a terrible dream.

  Picking up the receiver, Ferdie listened for a minute, before snapping: ‘He’s not here, and if he were, he wouldn’t have anything to say,’ and crashed it down again.

  ‘You’re going to feel even sicker. That was the Sun. Beattie Johnson’s dumped in The Scorpion. They’ll all be baying at the door in a second. We better move it.’

  On top of The Financial Times and the Estate Agent’s Gazette, the newsagent on the corner placed a copy of The Scorpion.

  ‘Lover Boy’s in trouble again,’ he told Ferdie with a smirk. ‘Remind him he owes me sixty quid for mags and fags.’

  ‘I’m first in the queue,’ said Ferdie, grabbing a packet of toffees. ‘Oh my God!’

  On the front of The Scorpion was a ludicrously, wantonly glamorous photograph of Lysander surrounded by foliage and wearing nothing but a flannel. ‘WHO COULD BLAME MARTHA WINTERTON?’ said the huge headline.

  ‘What the hell possessed you to pose virtually naked for Beattie Johnson?’ asked Ferdie as he got back into the car.

  ‘I was having a bath when she arrived,’ said Lysander sulkily.

  Lysander, whom Ferdie described as the Geoffrey Boycott of reading, was still digesting the full horrors when the BMW shook off the remnants of rush-hour traffic and reached the M4.

  ‘Drop dead handsome,’ he read out laboriously. ‘And he nearly did when the bullets of Elmer’s guards rang out. Frozen in his tracks, Lysander could have passed for a statue of Adonis (who’s he?) in that moonlit garden!

  ‘“I aim to be a jump jockey,” says twenty-two-year-old Lysander, who should have no trouble with Bechers, if he can clear Elmer’s twenty-foot electric fence without a horse.

  ‘Oh Christ, it goes on about me being “the youngest son of David ‘Hatchet’ Hawkley, headmaster of Fleetley, one of England’s snootiest public schools (fees £12,000 a year). Perhaps Hatchet will give cheeky Lysander six of the best when they meet.”

  ‘Jesus, Beattie is a bitch,’ said Lysander furiously. ‘She promised she wouldn’t print any of the things I told her off the record. I’d have taken that Ferrari if I’d known. We’d better step on it before some do-gooder shows Dad The Scorpion. Thank goodness it’s banned at Fleetley. Dolly’s going to be livid, too. I feel seriously s
ick.’

  He groped for a cigarette and was soon coughing his lungs out and dropping ash and toffee papers all over Ferdie’s very clean car.

  ‘That is the ultimate obscenity,’ he said disapprovingly as they got stuck in the fast lane behind a blonde in a Porsche going just below the speed limit, so Ferdie was forced to overtake on the inside.

  ‘Ought to be driving funeral cars.’ Lysander swung round to glare at her, then changed his mind. ‘Quite pretty though. Perhaps she’s just passed her test. Looks like that girl in the house next door. Did you ever bonk her?’

  Ferdie nodded gloomily. ‘We had a bloody good four days while you were in Palm Beach. I even took her to San Lorenzo. Then she announced she was flying back to Australia to get married, and she’d only been practising on me.’

  Ferdie told it as a big joke, but Lysander sensed the hurt. He longed for Ferdie to attract girls as effortlessly as he did.

  ‘Stupid cow,’ he said crossly, then to cheer Ferdie up, as they came off the motorway, ‘God, you shift this car. I’ve never done it this fast even at night.’

  As they approached Fleetley through the bleak winter landscape with its patches of snow and icy wind flattening the pale grass on the verges, Jack started to snuffle at the window at familiar territory and Lysander grew lower and lower.

  ‘I can’t believe she won’t be here,’ he muttered, pulling Sherry’s blue baseball cap further over his nose.

  He could never understand why his mother had stayed married to his stiff-upper-lipped, rigidly conventional, father. But, as a gesture of conciliation, he stopped in Fleetley Village to buy him a bottle of port and a packet of Swoop for his parrot, Simonides.

  Fleetley School had once been inhabited by dukes. Now only the iron gates flanked by rampant stone lions and the avenue of towering flat-bottomed horse-chestnuts, and the great house itself, square, yellowy-grey and Georgian, remained. All round like mushrooms had sprung up classrooms, science labs, gyms and houses for masters and boys. The great lake had been turned into a swimming pool.