by Jilly Cooper
In panic, Guy rang Larry who was in the middle of making love to Marigold.
‘Julia came down and dumped.’
‘Christ,’ said Larry, who when he was with Nikki, had made up several foursomes at dinner with Julia and Guy. It was all much too close to home. ‘We’re off to Jamaica in a few hours,’ he added, ‘or I’d say come on over. Are you OK?’
‘No, I’m not. Georgie’s run off bollock-naked into the night.’
‘No sweat,’ said Larry. ‘Snow’s forecast. She’ll come home when she’s cold.’
‘But what if people in the village see her?’ spluttered Guy. ‘The road goes straight past the vicarage. There’s a meeting to discuss my election to the Parish Council on Friday.’
Larry tried not to laugh.
‘I’d put your feet up, watch the boxing and have a large Scotch.’
‘I can’t. Georgie’s broken every glass in the house, and plate, too, for that matter.’
‘People who live in Cotswold-stone houses shouldn’t throw glasses,’ said Larry. ‘At least it shows she cares. Take her away for a little holiday.’
‘Guy’s mistress has come down and dumped,’ he told Marigold as he switched off the telephone and took her in his arms.
‘Guy’s got a mistress?’ said Marigold, collapsing back on her ivory silk pillows in amazement. ‘Ay can’t believe it. Gay’s not laike that. He’s so upraight. Georgie must be shattered.’
‘It’s plates that are being shattered. She’s throwing them at Guy,’ said Larry, not displeased that Guy, who was always so sanctimonious, had been caught with his hand in the sexual till.
‘Oh, poor Georgie!’ Marigold climbed back on top of her husband, then gave a shriek of anguish as she impaled herself on his upright cock: ‘Oh, may God!’
‘What’s the matter, Princess?’ said Larry in alarm. ‘Are you still sore down there?’
‘No, they’re our plates,’ wailed Marigold. ‘They were a matchin’ set, Ay lent to Georgie for the dinner party.’
Sitting in the kitchen, Guy lined up all the milk bottles Mother Courage never put out on the kitchen table, so Georgie’d have something to smash when she came home.
Georgie actually burst out laughing when she saw them, then the laughter turned to tears, and although they rowed most of the night, in between sobbing on each other’s shoulders, Guy felt by morning that he had calmed Georgie down enough to go back to London.
‘I’ll call you the moment I get to London,’ he promised, but as she waved him off, Georgie felt like Demeter seeing Persephone disappear into the Underworld.
Slowly she began to piece together the horrors of the previous night. One moment she was freezing, the next boiling hot. She kept putting on and taking off jerseys. She still couldn’t get rid of the sick taste in her mouth.
Mother Courage had laid out a page from the Sunday Telegraph under the cat’s plate. As Georgie emptied a tin of Choosy on to it, she noticed a large piece by Peregrine Worsthorne about John Major.
You don’t call a child who won’t leave you alone, your second Peregrine, thought Georgie, and felt so furious she rushed into Guy’s study and put a message on the ansaphone saying: ‘Go screw yourself.
Then she put on another jersey and cleaned her teeth again. She felt she was rotting inside. Half an hour later Mother Courage came storming up the drive.
‘I’ve just had Mr Seymour on the telephone. He can’t get through. Can you ring him urgent?’
Sulkily Georgie dialled Guy at the gallery.
‘What the hell are you playing at, Panda?’ thundered Guy. ‘You’re totally over-reacting. What happens if the Press ring, or, even worse, the vicar or Lady Chisleden?’
‘I don’t care,’ screamed Georgie.
Out of the window she saw that a sudden fall of snow had covered the sweet spring promise of the primroses, and burst into tears.
22
The marriage limped on full of spats. Guy came down at midday on Good Friday looking wretched and carrying a box of glasses. ‘To replace the ones you threw at me,’ he said heavily, then, priding himself on his frugality: ‘From the Reject Shop.’
‘Why don’t you put me in the window,’ snarled Georgie.
Unable to suppress a craving for information that Guy was plainly not going to volunteer, Georgie asked if he’d seen Julia.
‘We spoke briefly on the telephone,’ said Guy, who had his back to her at the drinks table. ‘I’ve talked to Harry, and because we’ve sent out the invites and done a lot of press lobbying and advertising, we’ve decided to go ahead with her exhibition.’
‘Did Julia mention me?’ asked Georgie.
‘We didn’t discuss you,’ said Guy crushingly, pouring half an inch of whisky into one of his new glasses. ‘Harry will deal with Julia from now on. But I shall obviously have to attend the private view.’
‘Thought you’d viewed her enough in private.’
‘Don’t be petty. Julia wants us to be friends, as much as we can be. She’d like you to be there as well.’
If he says ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’, I shall scream, thought Georgie.
‘To err—’ began Guy.
‘I’m not gracing her private view,’ said Georgie flatly, ‘just because she needs a celeb to pull in the Press.’
‘That is the most horrible remark I’ve ever heard,’ said Guy. ‘It’s my gallery and I make fifty per cent out of every sale. I would have thought you would have wanted to attract the Press.’
And Georgie had promptly burst into tears and run out of the house.
As she ran down the path Guy had cut out of the wood for her, she heard the cuckoo for the first time. The angelic third floating through the trees.
‘Unpleasing to a married ear, cuckoo, cuckoo,’ sobbed Georgie.
Ahead lay Valhalla. She was tempted to dump on poor Kitty Rannaldini, who had been endlessly cuckolded and survived — just. But as Rannaldini might be there, who would be amused rather than sympathetic, she stumbled on. There had never been anything like the pain.
Wandering aimlessly she arrived home to find the BMW gone. The red sun was disappearing over the horizon, a cricket-ball hit for six — like Guy over Ju Ju. Sunsets were only bearable because the sun would rise again tomorrow. If Guy never came back, she’d die. Leaping into her ancient Golf she set out to look for him. She didn’t have to go as far as Eldercombe. There was the BMW crookedly parked in the churchyard, which in the twilight was still lit by daffodils. The church was decked for Easter. Breathing in the smell of narcissi and furniture polish, Georgie saw Guy slumped over the front pew, head bowed on clasped hands. When she touched his shoulder, his face was streaming with tears.
‘Oh, Panda,’ he sobbed, ‘I’ve made such a cock-up of my life, but I love you so much. Please don’t leave me.’
Georgie pulled his head against her belly.
‘It’s OK I love you, too. I nearly died when I saw the car gone. I thought you’d gone to her.’
‘Never, never, never.’
Stumbling out of the church, they stopped to kiss each other in the doorway, and were seen by a photographer who worked for the Rutminster News on his way home from football. On Monday morning The Scorpion printed a picture of the happiest couple in England.
The truce was fleeting. In the weeks that followed Guy talked of commuting, but he never did. The weight fell off Georgie, who tried to glam herself up when he came home, but however quick she was in the bath, he was asleep by the time she came to bed.
Georgie was distraught. She couldn’t stop crying, and, unable to believe Guy’s protestations that he wasn’t seeing Julia any more, she felt as venomous and rejected as ragwort in a field of cows. Not only had she lost her hero and her best friend, but her image of herself as a nice person, which Guy’s great imagined love had given her.
The rows were terrible, with Georgie boozing and ranting into the night, then apologizing in panic in case she’d gone too far and Guy really would leave her.
The wastage was awful, too: milk going sour because it wasn’t taken in; Dinsdale getting the casserole Mother Courage had made for the weekend, which no-one had touched; fuzzy potatoes on their third day in a saucepan of water; black volcanic shapes discovered in the Aga days later; and all the vegetables leaking in the rack. Even Dinsdale finally went off his food. The Press were also sniffing around. So many marriages were breaking up, they wanted to know the secret of a happy one.
‘Ignorance,’ Georgie told The Scorpion in an unguarded moment.
On automatic pilot, she managed to go up to London, talk about Rock Star on Aspel, open a supermarket and have a long session with the whizz-kid producer who was revamping some of her old songs for the new Catchitune album. ‘Rock Star’ still topped the charts, but every time she heard this celebration of Guy’s dependability on the radio she felt sick.
She also had to live through the nightmare of Julia’s exhibition. She didn’t go to the private view, Guy didn’t want any more glasses smashed. But there was a large piece in You magazine. Julia, from the photographs, had cut her hair, and now had a head of russet curls rather like the Bubbles painting.
‘There is a wistful air about lovely Julia Armstrong,’ ran the copy. ‘Slim as a boy…’
More like the first Peregrine than ever, thought Georgie savagely. But it made her realize how awful it must be for Julia reading about her and Guy all the time.
Poor Guy wasn’t having much fun either. Julia’s paintings had sold well, but the art market had taken a dive and he’d also bought a couple of minor French Impressionists for a property developer, who’d suddenly called in the receiver. Guy was left with the bill.
But he could have put up with business being so awful, and Georgie’s tantrums, and the nightmare of his marriage, if he’d still had Julia to lighten his darkness. He missed her terribly. It broke his heart when she rang up and tearfully pleaded with him to see her.
Nor were his men friends any help. Larry, in his now-married bliss in Jamaica, showed no interest in buying Guy’s paintings, but insisted on being incredibly sanctimonious.
‘If I can give up Nikki, why can’t you give up Julia?’
‘She’s refusing to give me up.’
‘Get an answering machine. That’ll stop the dropped telephone calls.’
‘I’ve got an answering-back machine at home,’ said Guy. ‘It’s called Georgie.’
Rannaldini was vastly amused by the whole thing.
‘Find another mistress, dear boy. There are plenty more fishwives in the sea.’
Guy was fed up. How could he find anyone else? He was desperately strapped for cash. There were all those pretty separated women who made warm eyes at him at gallery parties and in church on Sunday, but he could hardly afford to buy them a drink.
In the old days both Julia and Georgie had adored him, told him he was marvellous and asked his opinion on absolutely everything — two loves had he of comfort and comfort. Now they were both displaying all the venom of tabloid newspapers denied an exclusive. Hell certainly knew no fury like two women scorned. Guy felt like a worm done over by a blackbird.
23
Georgie couldn’t work. There had been no rain in Paradise for weeks, and as the springs that had hurtled past her study window when they moved in had dried up, so had her inspiration. Trailing through St Peter’s churchyard with Dinsdale towards the end of May, she noticed Queen Anne was losing her lace and the wild garlic its flowers. There were white petals everywhere, and yellowing leaves flattened probably by lovers, but not by her. Georgie’s eyes were so full of tears she didn’t see Kitty Rannaldini approaching with her arms full of huge scented pink peonies to decorate the church.
‘Ow are you, Georgie?’ Seeing she was plainly not all right and not knowing what to say, Kitty added, ‘Come and ’ave dinner on Monday, about one o’clock.’
Arriving at Angel’s Reach on Monday morning, Mother Courage persuaded Georgie not to cry off.
‘Nice girl that Kitty. Rattledicky gives her the run around. She’ll have cooked you something nice. Do you good to fatten yourself up.’
‘Seven stone twelve on the scales this morning,’ said Georgie.
Getting thin was the only good this terminally ill wind seemed to blow her.
‘Make a nice day out for you,’ encouraged Mother Courage. With Georgie gone she could help herself to the gin and slope off early. ‘Be a tonic.’
‘Only if she adds vodka,’ said Georgie gloomily. ‘However, I’d quite like to see inside Valhalla.’
‘It’s ’aunted,’ said Mother Courage, getting a black dustbin bag out of the cupboard. ‘I don’t know ’ow Kitty can sleep there on her own. She ought to get the vicar in to circumcise the ghost. Mind you that Rattledicky’s pretty spooky. In his watch tower he’s got one of them Ju-Jitzu baths.’
Had Guy ever had a Ju Ju-Jitzu bath with Julia? wondered Georgie.
At twenty-three Kitty Rannaldini was exactly half her husband’s age (and his better half according to most people who knew them). Brought up in the suburbs of London, she had had a strict but happy childhood. Her father had been nearing retirement as a station master when she was born, and her mother, who took in ironing and minded other people’s children, had been in her forties. Every Sunday, Kitty had been taken to St Augustine’s Church round the corner, which her mother had cleaned for nothing. Nowhere else had brass gleamed more brightly. An industrious rather than a bright pupil, Kitty had left school with eight O levels at sixteen and taught herself to type. The family were staunch Tories — the only time Kitty remembered a bottle of wine being opened at home was when Mrs Thatcher first became Prime Minister. So it was natural that, as well as the Guides and the Youth Club, Kitty should have joined the Young Conservatives where she met a local bank clerk called Keith to whom she was engaged when she went to work as a temp for Rannaldini.
It took Rannaldini less than a week to realize Kitty’s genius as a secretary. He was in the middle of a production of Rigoletto, everyone was walking out, writs were flying around like Valhalla bats at dusk. In twenty-four hours, Kitty somehow restored order. She was not only meticulous, conscientious, unobtrusive, worked till she dropped and exuded an air of absolute calm, but somehow, by listening patiently to everyone from soloists to scene shifters and sympathizing with their problems, she diffused the all-out warfare.
Exceptionally kind by nature, she was very shy and cautious. Decisions took a lot of thought. It had, therefore, taken Rannaldini a long time to persuade her to work for him permanently, involving as it did a long journey into London every day, and leaving her mother to nurse a sick father. One of the few impulsive acts of Kitty’s life, and she never stopped feeling guilty about it, was to chuck Keith and all the plans for setting up house with him and her now-widowed mother, and run off with Rannaldini a week before the wedding.
But it was not until Rannaldini promised that her mother would at least be financially provided for that Kitty had agreed to leave home. In fact the financial provision was never enough, and Kitty had to scrimp constantly on the housekeeping and take in typing Rannaldini didn’t know about to help her mother out.
Beneath her calm exterior, Kitty was not only a worrier but an incurable romantic. She admired people who were wild and free-spirited and stood up for themselves. Although her temperament and looks conditioned her to hold back, the moment her gentle heart was moved, she was the softest touch in the world. She didn’t resent all she did for Rannaldini, but her greatest pleasures were the occasional hours snatched in church or in reading another chapter of Danielle Steel when she went to bed, which was often long after midnight.
Kitty had been desperately upset by the rumours about Guy and Georgie. Their apparent happiness had briefly restored her faith in marriage which had been shattered by the examples around her in Paradise, particularly her own.
Guy was so kind, thoughtful and thoroughly boy-scout decent. Seeing how he protected Georgie and did so much both at the Ro
ck Star launch and at the Angel’s Reach dinner party had convinced her he was an exceptional husband. Being married to Rannaldini, Kitty knew about living in someone’s shadow. Happier in the shade herself, she felt it must have been difficult for a man as forceful and as charismatic as Guy. Although shocked to hear he was having an affaire with Julia, she could see he might need the boost to his morale, and working with someone was so seductive. She had only to remember the way she had given in to Rannaldini.
Guy had looked so wretched in church recently, and when he stayed praying long after the service, she had noticed there were holes in the soles of both his shoes. She felt he longed to talk, but thought it was a weakness to dump. Kitty didn’t judge, but she felt Georgie didn’t look after Guy as well as she might, and knew whose side she was on. Then she met Georgie trailing through the churchyard in tears and she felt so sorry for her that she asked her to lunch.
The boiled chicken in white sauce and the roast potatoes were now in the oven, the mint lying on top of the new peas, and the apple tart waiting to be warmed up. Kitty was a good, plain cook. Plain in all senses of the word, she thought, wiping her steamed-up glasses before glancing ruefully at her round, sweating face in the mirror.
The telephone rang and she guessed it was Georgie cancelling. But it was Guy.
‘Darling Kitty!’ Oh, that deep commanding voice. ‘You’re such a brick for having Georgie to lunch, I’m going to call you “Brickie”. She’s bound to be late. She’s so unhappy and got everything so out of proportion. Please try and calm her down.’
Even on a hot, brilliantly sunny day, with white hawthorns exploding everywhere like grenades and cow-parsley still foaming up to touch the foliage of great trees, nurtured over the centuries, Valhalla looked sinister. Pigeon-grey, hidden from the road by a great conspirator’s cloak of woodland, mostly evergreens, the house itself had originally been built as a medieval monastery, but had been considerably enlarged during the Restoration. The result was H-shaped, with rooms of all sizes on different levels, and low beams and doorways, which concussed every visiting male except Rannaldini.
