by Jilly Cooper
‘Oh, poor Kitty.’ Lysander got up and hugged her. ‘Once we get you glammed up, he’ll get really jealous.’
‘Some ’ope,’ sighed Kitty. ‘How’s Georgie?’
‘Suddenly terribly uptight about Rachel.’ Lysander poured more Perrier for Kitty and Muscadet for himself.
‘That Guy’s keen on her?’ asked Kitty. ‘I expect he’s just jealous because Georgie likes you so much, and Rachel’s so pretty.’
‘Pretty awful,’ said Lysander. ‘I hate Georgie being miserable. Do you think I should ask her to marry me?’
‘Marry you!’ said Kitty in amazement.
‘We get on so well. I’d look after her.’
He was so touching in his total seriousness, his bluey-green eyes suddenly as vulnerable as Maggie’s, his cheeks flushed with sudden excitement, that Kitty said: ‘Oh, I know you would.’
Lucky Georgie, she thought, taking a grey silk shirt from the pile. ‘The only problem,’ she went on, ‘is I don’t fink Georgie could cope with your present job, hangin’ round neglected wives. I mean she feels safe with me because I’m not a fret. But she had such a shock wiv Guy and Julia, I think her next hubby would need to do somefing which didn’t involve women.’
‘Then I must get Arthur sound,’ said Lysander earnestly, ‘and get a proper job.’
‘How is Arfur?’ asked Kitty fondly.
‘The vet’s coming tomorrow. I’m terrified he’ll say he needs another year’s rest. He loved those rock buns you made him.’
‘Don’t talk about food. I’m starving,’ moaned Kitty.
‘You’ve lost ten pounds,’ encouraged Lysander.
‘I wish I could climb into the tumble-drier and shrink myself down to a size eight like Natasha’s purple flares.’
‘Rachel doesn’t approve of tumble-driers,’ said Lysander. ‘She’d peg you up on the clothes-line.’
Meanwhile the subject of such intense speculation was wrestling with the fiendish complexities of Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto. The recording was not until late October. It was not a work Rachel approved of — too flash and overtly romantic — but she was obsessively determined the London Met, and Rannaldini in particular, should find no fault with her. She was also desperate for her career to take off again to keep pace with Boris whose Berlin Wall symphony was being premiered in the Mozart Hall in November, and even more with Chloe who’d just opened in Don Carlos at the ENO to rave reviews.
Rachel was still burying herself in work, because, apart from her children, who got increasingly on her nerves, there was little cheer in her life. Her longing for Boris made her vile to him every time he came to pick up the children. She couldn’t even bring herself to say anything nice about the Requiem, because Chloe had been sitting outside in the car. It was she, not the poor laboratory animals whom she was always campaigning to save, who should have had her vocal cords cut.
She had had high hopes of Lysander as the ideal dalliance, but, beyond kindness, he had shown no interest. She had hoped even more of Bob, who was on her wavelength intellectually. When Hermione was away, they’d taken the children for a picnic by the River Fleet. Bob was the only person who could control the appalling Cosmo, although yesterday the little fiend had disrupted all the wildlife along the river banks with a new toy speedboat.
When Rachel had tried to explain about noise pollution, Cosmo had told her to piss off, and her own disloyal children had roared with laughter, refusing to make daisy chains because they wanted to play with the boat, too. Realizing Rachel was worried about whirlpools, Bob had helped the children dam up one of the little tributaries still running into the Fleet, so they could paddle and sail their boat.
‘I’m not eating this crap,’ said Cosmo, when offered carrot cake and cauliflower quiche for tea.
Bob refused more politely. ‘Honestly, Rachel darling, I never eat tea.’ No wonder he kept that lean taut body.
Bob had also chucked away his cup of tea, flavoured with goats’ milk, when she wasn’t looking, and instead encouraged her to stretch out on the dusty bank with a cold bottle of Sancerre. After the second glass, seeing her children engrossed in their dam, Rachel had tried, over the appalling din of Cosmo’s speedboat to discuss the far more appalling behaviour of Rannaldini and Hermione.
But Bob had deflected her. ‘Not on such a lovely day. I truly don’t want to talk about it.’
‘But you must feel so humiliated. They’re so odiously public. You ought to have some outlet. You can’t dam the libido up for ever.’ Rachel started to cry. ‘I know I can’t. I’ve been celibate for seven months now. Come over to supper after the kids have gone to bed.’
As if they had a separate life of their own, her pale slim fingers walked across the burnt grass and crept into Bob’s.
‘Daddee,’ it was little Cosmo’s screech. ‘The boat’s stuck.’
‘Well, for Christ’s sake, unstick it,’ screeched back Rachel. But Bob’s fingers, which had not returned the pressure, were gently withdrawn as he got up to help.
Wandering home along the river, when their eyes weren’t meeting, Bob had said, ‘Sweet of you, Rachel dear, but I’ve got to go back to London.’ Then, smiling slightly to soften the snub, ‘Let’s take an acid-rain check on this one.’
And the hot flush of mortification had kept sweeping over Rachel ever since.
Even Rannaldini, who’d been so disgustingly suggestive at the tennis, hadn’t been in touch so that she could reject him.
Hoards of men used to run after me, thought Rachel despairingly as she sunk her sweating, aching fingers once more into the keys, banging out the doomed, infinitely sorrowful opening theme.
‘Dum, da-di-da, da-di-da, da,’ sang Rachel. No-one will ever chase me again except married lechers who get a buzz out of deceiving their wives.
If only she could transmit the depth of her sadness to her playing, but she was hampered by the colossal technical demands of the piece, the explosions of notes which must be perfect.
Boris had warned her of the viciousness of Rannaldini’s criticism. Horrible man. Rachel had a vision of his face, heartless, cold, yet the black eyes blazing with lust and sensuality. Despite the punishing airless heat, Rachel shivered.
The church clock striking three brought her back to earth. She must collect the children at four. Lysander had given her a litre of gin some time ago, which she’d never drunk because she loathed the stuff, but had been intending to turn into sloe gin. Walking over to the tennis tournament at Valhalla, she’d noticed a bumper crop of sloes still green along the footpath which Rannaldini had closed to the public. They should be ripe now. Rannaldini was away. If she were quick she could make a detour on her way to school.
She had been concentrating so hard. Only when she went outside did she realize that it had been raining, a brief violent shower, which flattened the bleached grass and drenched the trees, but made as much impact on the rock-hard ground as spitting on an iron. As she ran up the forbidden footpath, Rannaldini’s woods lay ahead pulsating and boiling like a jungle, incubating insects, dark greeny-grey beneath a white-hot sun which had already dried the tops of the trees.
‘Dum, da-di-da, da-di-da, da,’ sang Rachel, breathing in the rank stench of drying nettles, which had grown so tall they concealed the first PRIVATE — KEEP OUT notice. Blackberry fronds clawed her bare ankles and arms like importuning creditors. She could hear a rattle of distant thunder. Her head ached from gazing at little black notes all day.
Traveller’s joy draped acid green leaves and lemon-yellow flowers over the NO FOOTPATH: TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED sign. Nature doesn’t care about trespassers, thought Rachel. As she waded through waist-high grass, her shoes filled with water. Gretel had taken the children to school this morning, so Rachel had gone straight to the piano without bothering to wash. She supposed this was as good a bath as any.
To her joy, the blackthorn copse was groaning with sloes, shiny and dark like Rannaldini’s eyes, but softened by the palest powdery-blue bloom. H
olding her shopping bag underneath to catch the loot, she systematically stripped each branch, swearing as the sharp thorns plunged into her fingers. She glanced at her watch, she must go in ten minutes. She only need fill half the bottle. The recipe said white sugar, but she’d get unrefined brown from The Apple Tree instead. Just as she was reaching up to a high branch, she heard voices and started violently, shrieking as a particularly sharp thorn stabbed her arm.
‘What was that?’ said Rannaldini’s voice sharply.
Rachel dropped to the ground, burying her face in the soaking grass, heart pounding, praying he’d go away. She cringed as a brown slug, big as a rat, edged towards her. How ghastly if Rannaldini caught her. Instead the sinister Clive jumped over a small wall just beyond the blackthorn clump and trained his rifle on her.
‘Don’t shoot,’ screamed Rachel.
Rannaldini followed at a more leisurely pace.
‘I might have guessed,’ he said softly. ‘Bugger off,’ he added to Clive. ‘I’ll handle this.’
Lying flat on her face, Rachel was aware of sloes scattered all round her.
‘Get up,’ ordered Rannaldini.
Leaping down like a great cat, he still made sure he was on higher ground, when she scrambled, raging with embarrassment, to her feet.
‘Can’t you read? This is private property, you stupid bitch. You’re trespassing as well as stealing.’ The words came out like rifle shots.
‘This is a public footpath.’
‘Was,’ snapped Rannaldini. ‘And the wall was always mine. I didn’t know you were a thief.’
Deliberately he stamped on half a dozen sloes, then, removing his shiny brown ankle boot, showed their wounded crimson flesh.
Rachel winced. ‘You bastard!’
Looking down, she was appalled to see how transparent the wet grass had made her muslin shift and her cheap white rose-patterned trousers. She could see the moulded line of her breasts and sticking-out nipples, the pink flesh of her legs, and the dark GIVE WAY sign of her pubic hair. Rannaldini, however, had no intention of giving way.
‘Today I not bastard. I forgeeve them who trespass.’
Rachel’s heart pounded even more painfully, but she couldn’t move as he reached out, testing the pudgy warmth of her breast through the drenched muslin.
‘Bra-less in Gaza,’ he mocked. ‘You certainly advertise your wares.’
He couldn’t tell if her thin face was wet with tears or rain, as his hand strayed downwards. ‘No knickers either.’
‘I got up first thing to practise,’ stammered Rachel, ‘then rushed out in a hurry. I didn’t want to be late picking up the children.’
‘You left plenty of time to steal my sloes.’ Rannaldini clenched and unclenched his fingers.
With his other hand he drew her to him, kissing first her forehead, then both her unplucked eyebrows, then her mouth.
‘No!’ Suddenly aware she hadn’t cleaned her teeth, and loathing herself for minding, Rachel clamped her lips shut.
‘No?’ Rannaldini moved away slightly. ‘Do you have any choice?’
His hand slipped inside her sleeve, caressing its way up her arm, pulling at her long, silky armpit hair, before curling round to caress her breasts.
Rachel gave a moan, trying to duck her head away, as Rannaldini ruffled the slight down on her upper lip with his tongue.
‘Leetle wild thing, eet will be like making love to an animal. A goat perhaps.’
‘I hate you.’
‘No, no, you ’ate yourself for wanting me so much, Mrs Levitsky.’
Rannaldini relished calling women by the names of the husbands he was cuckolding.
‘I’m not Levitsky any more, I’m back to Grant now. Someone’s coming,’ gasped Rachel, hearing a snatch of ‘For All The Saints’ sung in a loud baritone.
Rannaldini pushed her back on to the ground, crouching beside her, holding his hand, which smelt faintly of Maestro, over her mouth, until the vicar had gone.
Then, when she tried to leap to her feet, mouth open in protest, Rannaldini plunged his tongue inside, until she forgot her uncleaned teeth and kissed him back. Rannaldini wanted to take her now, but the vicar might surprise them on his return.
‘The kids! I must pick them up!’ said Rachel, fighting to get free.
Back in his tower, it was Rannaldini who got the number of the school by ringing Kitty. Then he rang the school.
‘Mrs Levitsky is stuck in traffic jam, and will be three-quarters of an hour late. She ask me to ring, she is very, very sorry. But she is not,’ he added, switching off the telephone. ‘You ought to get out of those wet things,’ he said softly, then, sliding his hand down inside her trousers, ‘and this is the wettest thing that I should eenstantly get into.’
‘Let me undress myself, for fuck’s sake,’ snarled Rachel.
But so overjoyed was Rannaldini by the early conquest of something he thought would take him weeks, perhaps months, that his face assumed a quite uncharacteristic delight and tenderness. He also had a water diviner’s skill in testing the depth of women’s loneliness. He knew when to be kind.
‘You have been so sad and lonely,’ he crooned, drawing her into his arms and stroking her hair. ‘You deserve some happiness. This time it will be queek, because of your children, but the next time… it will be ecstatic.’
In the long mirror, as Rachel lay back white and slender as a snowdrop against his mahogany chest, they looked wonderfully exotic. Some three inches shorter than her, perched on the back of a grey silk chaise-longue, it was simplicity for him to slide his iron-hard cock slowly in and out of her as he gently caressed her in front with the artistry of a Casals playing a cello concerto.
But the moment she came Rachel’s moans of pleasure turned into wild sobs.
‘Cry, leetle darling,’ purred Rannaldini. ‘Eet is what you need.’
‘No, no,’ wept Rachel. ‘It’s the wrong person in the mirror. You should be Boris.’
41
On Monday morning after Guy and Larry had left for the London train, Marigold and Georgie had got into a habit of ringing each other to grumble about their respective husbands — their Moan-day session, they called it. As September dragged on with no break in the drought and the recession deepened, Marigold’s complaints were increasingly of Larry’s stinginess, Georgie’s increasingly of Rachel.
‘He’s stopped may account at Harvey Nicks,’ announced Marigold indignantly the first Monday in October, ‘and he’s cancelled our box at Covent Garden and he won’t let Patch have steak any more.’
‘Better than Guy who’s trying to turn poor Dinsdale into a vegan,’ said Georgie darkly. ‘And he’s rigged up a washing-line. I mean, he’s never let me hang out clothes even in our brokest days; said it was horrifically suburban. Now his Turnbull & Asser shirts are waving in the lack of wind for all at see.’
‘He could be trayin’ to save money.’
‘Rubbish, the only thing Guy is saving at the moment is the whale and the rain forests.’
‘But your marriage has been so much better since Laysander came on the scene.’ Alarmed, Marigold detected the old obsessive rattle in Georgie’s voice.
‘It was, until Guy started pursuing Rachel. I can’t cope, Marigold, it’s like going through chemotherapy, then finding another lump.’
‘Ay’m sure you’re imaginin’ things.’
‘I am not. Guy’s started using organic toothpaste, and he won’t have white 100 paper in the house, because the “bleach pollutes our waterways”, and worst of all,’ Georgie’s voice rose hysterically, ‘Dinsdale came back from a walk smelling of a quite different scent. I’m certain it comes from the Body Shop.’
‘Perhaps Guy wanted to test it on an animal.’
‘Don’t make sick jokes. I’ve lost my sense of humour, and even, even worse, because Rock Star’s selling so well overseas, your rotten husband’s marketing Guy and Georgie T-shirts and key rings, and even Guy and Georgie balloons. What happens when people rumble
how bad our marriage is?’
‘They won’t unless you tell them.’
‘And to cap it all, Guy’s off to the South of France for three days to look at some private collection, and he’s picked the week of my concert so I can’t go with him. I caught him admiring himself in the mirror in his new goggles and flippers yesterday. He jumped out of his skin. “Off to save the whales,” I said. “The pollution’s awful in the Med.” He was livid and went into his “Are you mad, Panda? You must see a doctor” routine.’
Two minutes after ringing off, she rang Marigold back.
‘Oh darling, I’m sorry to bang on. I must still love Guy for him to get so much under my skin.’
Lysander was so worried about Georgie he bought her a diamond necklace, a beautiful black backless Lycra dress and a book of Fred Basset cartoons. Then, deciding she was barn sour, he tried to take her away for a jaunt to coincide with her concert and Guy’s trip to France. Kitty had lost over a stone and could be left unsupervised for a few days.
But Georgie was nervous of being recognized and only allowed Lysander to join her at the Ritz in her room overlooking Green Park where Catchitune had put her up for the night. Catchitune also sent a limo to collect her from Paradise. But, again to avoid the Press, she made Lysander drive up on his own to join her later in the day.
Having stayed with Marigold in the Ritz in Paris, Lysander promptly rediscovered the joys of room service. Georgie once again realized how young he was, as he ordered smoked salmon with gauze-wrapped half-lemons, club sandwiches and vast Bloody Marys, then played with the telephone in the bathroom and all the bottles of shampoo and bath gel before discovering a television where he could watch everything from blue movies to Donald Duck.
Most of all he wanted Georgie to romp with him in the big blue Jacuzzi and take advantage of a huge double bed, flanked by walls of darkened mirrors. But all Georgie wanted to do before a concert was to crash out with cold eye-pads, then spend an hour in trance-like silence making herself beautiful.
