by Jilly Cooper
‘I expect Georgie’s infatuated with your dad,’ she went on. ‘As he’s almost as ’andsome as you, I don’t blame ’er, and that makes her ever so jealous of your mum. I mean you know how huptight she was about Rachel and Julia. She’s worse than ’im.’ Kitty pointed to Jack who was sitting on the kitchen table glaring at Maggie who was now lying like a baby in Lysander’s arms.
‘I don’t ’spect she meant half the fings she told you. Some people just need extra frills in marriage,’ Kitty added sadly, as she dipped her brush in glue and pasted Donald Duck and Rannaldini under Princess Michael.
‘Christ, it’s a horrible world!’ Lysander, who was still wearing Guy’s cricket sweater, dipped a ginger biscuit in his tea and handed it to Jack. ‘I don’t understand why everyone plays games. I loved Georgie so much, we were having terrific sex, twice a day at least, but it wasn’t enough for her. She had to have Dad as well.’
As Kitty was reflecting that if Georgie were working really hard she might have preferred the perhaps lesser sexual demands of David Hawkley, Lysander noticed Donald Duck.
‘God, I’m jealous of Rannaldini meeting him. Did he get Donald’s autograph? This screen is lovely. You’re brilliant at cutting out. Can I have a go?’
‘What d’you really want from life?’ asked Kitty, passing him the scissors and a picture of Rannaldini laughing with Pavarotti.
‘I’d like Arthur to make a come-back and win the Rutminster with me riding him. I want a job with horses. I’d like a place of my own, a wife who loved me as much as I loved her, and,’ he added on reflection, ‘I’d like some kids. I’m bored with racketing around. D’you know, I asked Georgie to marry me, and she’s bonking my father.’ He started to shake violently again. ‘Oh Christ, I’ve cut Rannaldini’s head off. I’m sorry, I can’t do anything right. Can I possibly stay with you until I get myself together?’
In fact it was highly inconvenient. Kitty had so much to do and, instead, had to listen to Lysander banging on and on with all the egotism of utter despair and extreme youth. As a very truthful person, she hated having to lie so much on Rannaldini’s behalf, and now she had to lie for Lysander, as Ferdie, Marigold, an increasingly frantic Georgie, and even David Hawkley and Aunt Dinah (in the morning admittedly) rang or rolled up to ask if she’d seen or heard from him. And then Mrs Brimscombe, who’d had to be let into the secret, went down with flu so Kitty had to cope on her own.
Having hidden Lysander in an attic bedroom in the oldest part of the house, Kitty felt like the monks living at Valhalla harbouring some Cavalier during the Civil War: Astley perhaps, or Rupert of the Rhine, or even Charles I. With his flopping hair, his gentleness and his beauty, Lysander made the perfect Cavalier, and would certainly have been dashingly fearless in cavalry charges. No Cavalier seeking sanctuary, however, would have had the diversion of the sixty-two instalments of EastEnders and Neighbours, which Kitty had taped for him while he was away. After four days almost concentrated viewing, some excellent plain cooking, and a very good 100-1 win at Lingfield, Lysander was beginning to perk up. At least Kitty managed to finish the screen and the angels’ wings as she listened to him.
He only left in the end — and then reluctantly — because Natasha was coming home from Bagley Hall; and that had been another of Georgie’s lies, that Flora had broken up the day he’d returned from Australia. Anyway he didn’t want that bitch Natasha drooling over him, and he felt he’d traded on Kitty’s hospitality enough.
Within a couple of hours of his departure, however, he was on the telephone.
‘Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, come and have dinner at Magpie Cottage tomorrow night.’
‘’Ow lovely. Shall I bring Natasha?’
‘God no! Don’t say a thing to her. I’m going to cook you a wonderful dinner.’
Alas, Lysander woke the next morning with a blinding headache and the shakes. In fact he ached all over. He must have caught Mrs Brimscombe’s flu. He wanted to collapse into bed, but he couldn’t let Kitty down.
What followed was not just a chapter but a whole book of accidents. The avocados he bought were harder than hand grenades. The coq au vin took five hours and tasted disgusting. He cooked the spinach early and boiled it away to a grit purée. For pudding, he tried to make syllabub. One just followed a recipe, but after hours of whisking and even more hours in the fridge, the syllabub separated — like everything else in Paradise, he thought sourly.
The sink was by this time blocked solid with the food he’d chucked out. There were saucepans all over the lawn and he’d singed his beautiful eyelashes when he realized Jack was missing and set out with Maggie, a spade and a torch into the freezing night to find him. After twenty minutes, with every fox, badger and rabbit for miles around rustling in the wood to distract them, a demented Maggie finally located some faint yapping, and Lysander and she spent a further twenty minutes digging Jack out, after which the little sod wasn’t remotely grateful and tried to shoot back down the hole again.
Hearing her master’s language, Maggie fled home in terror. Following her, Lysander found the chicken burnt out. How did people run restaurants? He’d have to take Kitty out. He was feeling so shivery, he better have a hot bath. All his problems that day had stemmed from feeling he ought not to ring Kitty every five minutes to ask her how to do things.
Unfortunately a frantic Georgie had just returned from London and, seeing lights in Magpie Cottage, chose that moment to ring. By the time Lysander had told her to fuck off, and his father had rung and been told roughly the same thing, and Ferdie had rung and been told Lysander was pushed for time, the bath had run over and flooded the light fitting below. Getting electric shocks every time he touched a switch, Lysander tried to mend the fuse and blew the lights.
Kitty was so behind with her Christmas preparations that she felt dreadfully guilty going out, particularly as she was abandoning Natasha on her first night home. To her amazement, Natasha couldn’t have been more amenable, even when they met on the landing, both reeking of scented bath oil with their bodies and their newly washed hair wrapped in towels.
‘I’m just popping out, Natasha.’
‘Have you got a meeting?’
‘Sort of.’ Kitty stood on one pink leg.
‘Have a nice time. Don’t hurry back.’
Natasha was also unbelievably complimentary about her appearance, saying, ‘You’ve lost so much weight. Papa won’t recognize you,’ that when Kitty found Magpie Cottage in total darkness, she suspected some fiendish practical joke to get her out of the house. As she stumbled up the overgrown path, she was knocked sideways with relief and by the stench of burnt chicken.
‘Oh Kitty, Kitty, talk about coq-up au vin!’ Nearly in tears, Lysander greeted her with a candle and was just thinking how sweet she looked despite the awful beige dress, when the wind blew the candle out. They had just groped their way to the fuse box when the telephone rang.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Lysander, knocking over a stool. ‘It’s bound to be Natasha.’
‘I’m desperately sorry, I can’t make it,’ Kitty could hear him saying. ‘Basically I’ve got the flu. Honestly, I’m best on my own. I’m really infectious. I’ll just crash out with a dozen Anadin Extra. See you in a bit.’
‘You are awful,’ said Kitty, who had found some matches and was pushing in plugs.
As the lights came on, she saw Lysander was once more pouring with sweat and shaking. Thinking it was probably delayed shock, she tucked him up in bed once more.
‘I’ll make it up to you, Kitty, I’ll take you to Miss Saigon, I know a bloke who can get tickets.’ And he drifted off to sleep, but spent most of the night crying out for his mother.
Staggering down the following afternoon, he felt woolly legged, drained, but normal. It was as though the devil had left his body. The cottage was unrecognizable. Kitty had unblocked the sink and cleaned everything. As Jack had been muddy after his tunnelling, she had even given him a bath, and was drying him in front of a glowing crackling fire,
as she chatted to Arthur who was peering in through the window. A delicious smell of shepherd’s pie reminded Lysander he hadn’t eaten for two days.
‘Oh, you angel. God, it looks wonderful and smells even better.’ Lysander hugged her. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, but please don’t get too thin.’
‘Chance’d be a fine fing,’ said Kitty, blushing.
Putting his fork down after a second helping, Lysander said, ‘What shall we do this afternoon?’
‘I thought you was ill,’ chided Kitty.
‘I’m too ill to do anything I don’t want to do, if you know what I mean.’
It was the first time he’d giggled since he’d come back from Australia, and it was such a lovely sound that Kitty giggled, too.
‘I’ve got to go back to Valhalla,’ she sighed. ‘Rannaldini’s bound to ’ave rung and I’ve got so much to do, and I promised Rachel I’d pick up her kids from school and keep them overnight. Poor fing’s got to go to London to see her solicitor.’
As she waited outside the school playground, Kitty was overwhelmed with tiredness. She’d have to spend the evening wrapping up the dozens of overseas presents to be despatched before the last day for posting. She could have done without Rachel’s children. For someone always banging on about the wickedness of nannies and not bringing up one’s own kids, Rachel was remarkably adept at palming her own off on other people.
‘Kitty, Kitty.’ Masha emerged from the coloured stream of children flowing out of the gates. ‘We learnt about the olden days today. You know when Jesus was alive and you were a little girl.’
‘Lo, Kitty,’ said Vanya. ‘Is it OK if Cosmo comes to tea as well?’
Sighing, Kitty agreed. Rachel’s children had speedily sussed out little Cosmo’s advantages as a companion. There was no way he’d put up with health foods or building castles out of 100 rolls.
‘Mummy says we’ve got to practise our carol for the nativity play,’ said Masha, as she and Vanya got into the back.
‘I hate music.’ Little Cosmo clapped his hands over his ears, as he jumped into the front. ‘All I hear in my house is fucking music.’
Over increasing clamour, Kitty drove wearily back to Valhalla to pick up some cash to get some supper that Cosmo would approve of. But as she came out of the house, Lysander’s Ferrari stormed up the drive, and he jumped out clutching an armful of Super Macs and chips, a video of Pretty Woman and a huge round tin of toffees.
‘Here you are,’ he said chucking the tin at the children. ‘Have some Quality Street time, and if you’re good you can play football with Jack in the chapel.’
They all adored Pretty Woman. Lysander alternately roared with laughter, wiped his eyes, or said, ‘Bastard, bastard, how dare he treat her like that?’ But by the end he liked Richard Gere very much indeed.
‘Pretty Woman’s rather like Mummy,’ said Masha.
It was unfortunate for Rachel that on his way home to Magpie Cottage after the children had been tucked up in bed, Lysander saw a light ahead in Jasmine Cottage. Crawling past, because of a car casually parked outside, he saw a couple in a clinch in the doorway. Then the man ran down the steps. Turning, blowing a kiss to the woman, he was spotlit for a second in Lysander’s headlights. It was a triumphantly smirking Rannaldini.
Having dropped off the three children at school the following morning, Kitty set out for Tesco’s. As she staggered out half an hour later, pushing two groaning trolleys of food for supper after the nativity play which she was going to cook and freeze that day, she suddenly saw that a big pot of yoghurt was leaking. Leaning forward to remove it, she took her hand from the right-hand trolley which veered off with a mind of its own. Gathering speed it rolled down a small slope and, narrowly missing an ancient pensioner with a string bag, went slap into a dark green Porsche, scraping it down one side, then toppling over with a sickening crash of broken glass.
‘Oh, God,’ screamed Kitty, surveying the debris of pastry cases and cracked eggs, floating in a disgusting goo of double cream, yoghurt, Hellmann’s, whisky and red wine. ‘It’s not fair, it’s not bloody fair.’
It took her ages to clear up the chaos. Then she put a note on the Porsche’s windscreen: ‘Dear Driver, I’m ever so sorry about your car. I will pay all damage. Could you write to me at Valhalla, Paradise? Yours truly, Kitty Rannaldini.’
That’s all my running-away money and more, she was thinking despairingly, when the note was whipped away.
‘Car looks much better that way. Gives it character,’ said a voice.
Springing round, Kitty saw Lysander. ‘Mrs Brimscombe said you were here,’ he said, opening the door of the Porsche for her.
‘That’s not your car,’ stammered Kitty.
‘Garage lent it to me,’ said Lysander. ‘Ferrari’s got engine trouble. Honestly, it couldn’t matter less.’
He was feeling very virtuous. Finding Georgie’s paying-in book under the bed at Magpie Cottage, he’d written her a cheque for fifty thousand, the sum she’d paid him overall for his services, and despatched it to her bank. He thus cancelled any debt between them.
‘Look what I’ve got!’ He waved two tickets for Miss Saigon. ‘You and I are going on a seriously good jaunt.’
‘I can’t. Rannaldini came ’ome unexpectedly last night, and buzzed off this morning to LA, leaving me so much more to do. Anyway,’ she sighed, ‘I’m married. I don’t fink I should.’
‘Pretend you’re going Christmas shopping.’
They took the train to Paddington. The restaurant car attendant was so taken with Lysander that he ran them up some bullshots.
‘They’re heavenly,’ said Kitty, taking a great gulp. ‘What’s in them?’
‘Oh, clear soup and tomato juice,’ said Lysander, conveniently forgetting the huge tots of vodka and sherry. ‘Have another.’
‘Oh, yes please. I’ve never travelled first class before.’
Kitty gazed in ecstasy at the silver foam of blackthorn dividing the frozen fields and the furry white-antlered branches of the trees tossing a glittering yellow sun as it bowled along with the train. What was the point of life where she was always rushing and never had time to look at beautiful things? She didn’t even worry when they bumped into the vicar’s wife as they got off the train.
Lysander took her straight to Harrods.
‘I’m going to buy you a dress,’ he said as he went down the rails pulling out clothes and being gazed at by Way-In shop assistants, not over-busy because of the recession.
He finally chose one in dark grey-green wool, which matched Kitty’s eyes and showed off her bosom and now so-much-slimmer waist, but which had a flowing skirt which disguised her still plump hips.
‘Lovely,’ he said, looking at her in delight. ‘Like ivy clinging to a beautiful statue.’
The dress was followed by black tights and flat, black pumps.
‘You’re never to wear those flesh-coloured horrors again. Now we better buy something to keep you warm.’ And ignoring her cries of protest, he chose her a blanket coat in a rainbow riot of colours, three pairs of leggings and two huge, sloppy jerseys.
Whisking her past the baby-wear department: ‘You don’t want to look at them — only depress you. It’ll happen one day, I promise,’ he bore her off to the toy department to admire huge stuffed donkeys, giraffes, tigers, lions, gorillas and teddy bears.
‘They always remind me of a dogs’ home,’ said Lysander. ‘I used to try not to catch their eyes when Mum brought me here as a child. We ought to go to Battersea and get you a puppy to protect you at Valhalla.’
Instead, when she was looking at computer games to keep Cosmo quiet at Christmas, he bought her a vast fluffy life-size collie with a shiny black plastic nose.
‘Here’s Lassie, to guard you.’
‘Oh, Lysander,’ Kitty was overjoyed, ‘you shouldn’t ’ave, but I love her.’
‘In a place that won’t let us feel,
in a life where nothing seems real,’ sang Miss Saigon as t
hey passed the record department. Next minute they were brought up short by Rannaldini’s cold unsmiling face, looking out from a montage of his record sleeves, as the haunting strains of the first movement of Mahler’s Fourth with its jangling sleigh-bells swept through the store.
Turning right, they saw huge blow-ups of Cecilia and Hermione as Donna Anna and Donna Elvira and even a cardboard cut-out of Georgie clutching a rock.
‘Fucking hell,’ said Lysander in outrage, and before reality could reassert itself, he dragged Kitty off to lunch at San Lorenzo.
Here her calm, sweet unmade-up face and full body were in total contrast to the slender, painted beauties around them, who all seemed to be wearing scarlet and crimson suits, lots of rouge, red lipstick and red nails, and seemed never to draw breath. They were obviously fascinated to see an utterly stunning man with such a nondescript girl.
They’re all so beautiful, thought Kitty.
She’s so peaceful, thought Lysander protectively, like a leveret, or a female mallard.
He also noticed, as her face, used to Rannaldini’s cold house, grew pink in the warm room that her spots had gone.
‘I do hope Joy Hillary tells Rannaldini she saw us on the train,’ he said, ‘and makes him seriously jealous.’
With a start, Kitty remembered they were only here because Lysander was being paid by Georgie and Marigold to glam her up. How very kind, she thought humbly, of him to make everything such fun.
‘It’s driving me crazy.’ A blonde paused at their table on the way out. ‘What part in EastEnders do you play?’ she asked Kitty.
But later when the helicopter landed on the stage of the Coliseum, she forgot everything except Miss Saigon, as she and Lysander cried their eyes out and went through a whole box of Kleenex and a box of Belgian chocolates.
‘That was the best fing I’ve ever seen,’ she said, as they had supper together afterwards in a Fulham wine bar. ‘I fink this is the nicest day I’ve ever had.’
She’s so sweet to take out, thought Lysander.
