by Jilly Cooper
‘Hi, Trouble,’ said Meredith, tossing a handful of rosepetals over him. ‘Calves in Ancient Rome were always garlanded with flowers before they were sacrificed.’
Lysander was followed by a tottering, leering Ferdie, who, as Bacchus, had draped himself in a wine-stained tablecloth. His mouth was smeared dark purple with one of Lysander’s lipsalves and a wreath of plastic vine leaves borrowed from The Pearly Gates fell over his nose.
‘Hie,’ said Ferdie, lifting a flagon of red to his lips.
‘Haec hoc,’ added Meredith. ‘Hermione should have come as Frontus. Any moment Guy will tumble down her cleavage.’
Kitty was so used to staying in the background that Rannaldini had the greatest difficulty in dragging her out of the kitchen. He certainly didn’t want Lysander sloping off there. Because she had no idea Lysander was coming, she had listlessly acquiesced when Rannaldini insisted on dressing her as a Vestal Virgin in clinging pleated white, which only emphasized her lack of colour, her swollen reddened eyes and her dumpy little figure.
Now she was carrying a big terracotta bowl loaded with green grapes and crimson cherries past the red morning room along to the dining room.
‘Kitty, darling, how are you? Let me take that,’ called out Bob, but next minute he had been waylaid by the leader of the orchestra, who’d come plus fiddle as Nero and who was already half-cut.
‘Where’s this famous toy boy who got off with Kitty?’ he demanded, not realizing she was within earshot.
‘I want to shake him by the hand for rattling that shit. I’ve never known him so histrionic, screaming down the telephone about deps at four o’clock this morning: “Those were completely deeferent musicians to zee ones I saw in rehearsal.” So I said: “It’s not surprising, Rannaldini. The first lot were so fucking frightened of being shouted at.” That must be him in the Donald Duck sweater. Jesus, what a beauty. It’s going to be like the first day of the sales once we start orgying.’
Hearing this, Kitty shot into the room and found herself looking straight at Lysander. He was clutching Jack and a huge bunch of snowdrops. Next minute the terracotta bowl crashed into the rosepetals.
‘Oh, Lysander,’ she whispered.
Unable to speak, Lysander stumbled forward thrusting the snowdrops into her hands, closing her fingers round them and stroking them. For a second they gazed at each other, stunned by the devastation both had wrought.
‘I can’t go on,’ stammered Lysander.
‘Welcome to the Underworld, Orpheus,’ murmured Rannaldini, gliding up. Then, snapping his fingers at a couple of waitresses to clear up the broken pieces, he turned to Kitty. ‘I want you to come and meet Rudolpho who’s going to play Macbeth.’
Dropping her snowdrops contemptuously on a side table, he frogmarched her across the room.
‘I thought you’d promised to geeve up Lysander,’ he hissed, squeezing her arm till she gasped with pain. Switching to purring conciliation, he introduced her to a very fat tenor covered in white make-up and his harpist boyfriend whose costume consisted of brown curling leaves. They had come as Decline and Fall.
‘Rudolpho, caro, I would like you to meet my wife, Keety, who’ll be sorting out your contract. Ring her eef you have any problem.’
From then on Kitty kept her eyes firmly down, deliberately avoiding looking at Lysander, who had collapsed dolefully on the sofa, muttering to Jack.
‘I assume you’d rather talk to that dog than me,’ said Hermione archly.
‘Yes, I would,’ snapped Lysander, holding out his glass to an admiring waitress for a refill.
The party was hotting up. Gluck’s Orphée was pouring out of the speakers. Ravishing female musicians and handsome gay opera stars, realizing that spare heterosexual beefcake was in short supply, hovered hungrily around Lysander, hoping he’d tread on their togas.
‘I wouldn’t mind a house down here,’ said Rudolpho, the very fat tenor.
‘I have secret information,’ said Ferdie in an undertone, ‘that Paradise Grange across the valley might be coming on to the market. I could show you around tomorrow if you like. Goodness, that’s nice,’ he added as a stunning blonde, inadequately clad in a pale blue cot sheet, appeared in the doorway. Perhaps she could jolt Lysander out of his despair.
‘That’s Chloe, Boris Levitsky’s girlfriend,’ said Rudolpho. ‘I did Aïda in Cardiff with her. Marvellous voice.’
‘Chloe, carissima.’ Rannaldini dropped a kiss on her bare brown shoulder, licking off wild strawberry and rose-hip body lotion. ‘How did you give Boris the slip?’
‘He’s working on his Requiem,’ said Chloe petulantly. ‘He didn’t even notice I’d gone out.’
‘Silly boy to neglect something so exquisite.’ Beckoning to a waitress, Rannaldini put a beaker of Krug in each of Chloe’s little hands. ‘You ’ave catching up to do. We are about to dine.’
‘I’m not sitting next to Rachel?’
‘No, next to me. That will upset everyone.’
Kitty’s snowdrops gave a long despairing hiss as he tossed them into the fire.
Dinner was served in the blue dining-room which was more intimate than the great hall. Guests lounged on multi-coloured silk cushions piled round low tables on which was arranged suitably Roman fare: great fishes swimming in herbs and butter, lobsters, barbecued geese, sucking pigs, great flagons of wine and big bowls spilling over with grapes, cherries and pomegranates.
Wrapped in imperial purple paper beside each gold plate was a condom and an Ecstasy pill. Rannaldini’s version of Ravel’s Bolero, said to be the sexiest ever, was pulsating out of the speakers like a great heartbeat, with the leader of the orchestra playing along.
‘I wish Rannaldini would spend as much on church flowers,’ grumbled Joy Hillary, glaring at the cliffs of freesias.
‘Who did the seating plan?’ grumbled Georgie who was stuck between the vicar and Rudolpho.
‘Rannaldini and I,’ said Hermione smugly. ‘I’ve put Guy next to the two prettiest women in the room — Rachel and Natasha. Is your phone out of order, by the way? I saw Guy coming out of the call box in Paradise High Street this afternoon.’ Then, suddenly furious, ‘What the hell’s Chloe doing next to Rannaldini? She must have gatecrashed. He was supposed to have Gwendolyn Chisleden on his right.’
Lysander, who was already absolutely plastered, found himself between Hermione and a really ugly female double-bass player who’d come as Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia.
‘Wouldn’t get a chance to be anything else but above suspicion with a face like that,’ said Meredith, who was sitting opposite and sucking a lobster claw.
At the same table were Guy, Rachel, Natasha, whose cat’s eyes beneath her black fringe were devouring Lysander, and Ferdie on her right who was depressed that he still wanted her so desperately.
Rannaldini, who had deliberately put Kitty at his side, had also arranged it so that Lysander was gazing straight at the back of Kitty’s head with the evil, mocking Janus mask beside it. Throughout dinner Rannaldini deliberately caressed his wife, stroking her very clean neck as though he was an executioner pondering where to drop the axe, fondling her breasts and her back as though he were working in suntan oil, and all the time kissing her and whispering in her ear.
Lysander had to exert every ounce of self-control not to get up and hit Rannaldini across the room. Looking washed-out and not remotely pretty, Kitty moved him more than ever. Putting the Ecstasy pill in his mouth, he washed it down with half a pint of Krug.
‘You don’t seem very happy, Lysander,’ said Hermione, putting a hand on his leg.
‘I’m not,’ said Lysander, removing it. ‘Kitty’s gone back to Rannaldini and she’s the only truly good person, apart from Arthur, I’ve ever met.’
‘That’s because she’s young and hasn’t experienced life,’ said Hermione dismissively.
‘It isn’t.’ Furiously Lysander pulled off a piece of goose and gave it to Jack. ‘She’s good because she’s good.’
‘Your
friend isn’t in a very cheerful mood,’ Hermione shouted across to Ferdie.
Not wanting to blow themselves out before orgying, people were drinking more than eating, already openly necking and beginning to undress one another. As the Ecstasy struck home Hermione engineered the conversation on to favourite fantasies.
‘I’d like to be playing Desdemona to Domingo’s Otello at Covent Garden,’ she began, ‘and to charm him into making love to me instead of killing me in front of a huge audience.’
‘That’s quite a rewrite,’ said Meredith. ‘I’d like to be raped by Mel Gibson — very slowly.’
‘I’d like to see three gorgeous women making love,’ Guy smiled at Hermione, Rachel and Natasha, ‘and be invited to join in.’
Natasha, who was chucking grapes at Lysander to rouse him from his black gloom, said she’d like to be abducted and seduced by a highwayman.
‘My name’s Turpin. Call me Dick,’ offered Ferdie, topping up her golden goblet.
Even Natasha laughed. ‘What’s yours then?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to have a woman in love with me,’ said Ferdie simply.
‘Aaaaah,’ said everyone at the table except Rachel, who now was staring at Rannaldini’s table with as much horror as Lysander.
‘What’s Chloe doing here?’ she whispered to Guy.
Although Rannaldini was publicly stroking Kitty with his left hand, his right hand had disappeared under the table.
‘And what’s your secret fantasy, Lysander?’ asked Hermione.
‘No secret. I want to marry Kitty,’ said Lysander flatly.
There was a pause. Then Natasha led the howls of derisive mirth.
‘You’re beautiful,’ sighed Ferdie, unable to keep his eyes off Natasha’s soft gold thighs.
‘Marry me then,’ taunted Natasha. ‘As Lysander only lusts after married women, it’s the one way I’ll get him into bed.’
Georgie got lower and lower. On her right Rudolpho and his boyfriend were busy pulling grey hairs out of each other’s heads like chimpanzees and the only man who’d come dressed as Anthony was a counter-tenor who displayed a cock the size of a three-year-old boy when his toga fell open. She was only too aware of the shrieks of laughter coming from Guy’s table. To her right the vicar was gazing at Lysander who was looking so grim that he reminded her for an agonizing second of David Hawkley. If only David would forgive her.
Across the table Lady Chisleden was getting very uncorked and had undone nearly all the buttons of her midnight-blue shirtwaister.
‘I want to go somewhere that will give me new horizons and widen my experience in life,’ she was telling Bob.
‘Why not try Bexley Heath?’ said Meredith, plonking himself down between them.
Drunken dining was followed by even more drunken dancing. Hermione opened the ball with Guy, rocking and rolling just to show the younger generation that they’d invented the dance, and when Guy hoisted Hermione in the air she clasped him with her body-stockinged legs.
Hermione’s smug smile was wiped off her face, however, when Rannaldini led Kitty on to the floor. A mesmerizing serpentine dancer, he was soon practically raping her, his body writhing against her, kissing her shoulders and then her mouth, sticking his tongue down her throat until she nearly gagged, letting his hands wander over her body, yet his feet never losing the rhythm of the music.
Deliberately he danced past Lysander, so close that the hem of Kitty’s pleated skirt brushed Lysander’s foot and he could smell her hot frightened body and caught a faint agonizing waft of the Diorissimo he had given her at the airport, a scent he would now associate even more with loss.
‘Oh Mum, oh Christ, oh Kitty, oh Maggie,’ he muttered hopelessly and drunkenly.
Daring to glance at him, Kitty thought how desperately ill and diminished he looked. His jeans were ripped everywhere. There were buttons off his shirt. The tip had been eaten off one of his shoes. He needs me, she thought in anguish, not feeling Rannaldini’s fingers until they were pinching really hard.
Unable to bear any more, Lysander stumbled from the room.
Now’s my chance, thought Natasha leaping up.
For a second Kitty dropped her guard.
‘You don’t think he’s going to blow his brains out?’
‘With that little brain,’ sneered Rannaldini, ‘he’d have to be a bloody good shot.’
54
The orgy roared on.
‘Toga, toga, burning bright,’ shrieked Marigold tossing her sheet into the morning-room fire and rushing pinkly up the stairs pursued by a man in a Neil Kinnock mask.
It didn’t occur to any of the guests as they charged in and out of bedrooms that there was something odd about Mr Brimscombe pruning the Valhalla honeysuckle in the middle of winter.
Downstairs Rannaldini was dancing with Rachel, bopping through the rose-petals and fixing her with his deadly stare. Utterly suicidal Kitty was being lugged round the floor by the vicar — the hostess with the leastest. If she’d known Lysander was coming she’d have tried to look prettier, but at least he’d brought her snowdrops. If she were truthful, what she dreaded most was his no longer loving her. Last thing at night when she lost control of her thoughts, she dreamt she was a little mole (with its blind eyes, pink hands and lack of waist — the two of them had a lot in common) and she was tunnelling under the gates of Valhalla, beneath the River Fleet, not stopping until she joined the other molehills on the lawn of Magpie Cottage.
Seeing Rannaldini had disappeared, Kitty left the vicar in mid-foxtrot and escaped to the summer parlour. Unable to find Lysander’s snowdrops to put them in water, she crept up the main stairs, tripping over entwined couples and her own long skirt, praying she might bump into Lysander.
Through a landing window she noticed the moon’s increasing halo, mother of pearl now and ringed with darkened rainbow colours. Kitty was reminded of Lysander who shone like an angel in her dreams. Next moment Lady Chisleden rushed shrieking past in her bra and roll-on pursued by a man wearing Lysander’s donkey head.
‘Take me dancing naked in the rain,’ roared the loud speaker, ‘and cover me in ecstasy.’
Suddenly it was October again and she was dancing round the field at Magpie Cottage. It was no good. She’d have to find Lysander.
‘Mrs Rannaldini,’ a defeated-looking caterer called up the stairs, ‘there’s a policeman down here come to complain about the noise.’
‘Hooray, a spare man at last,’ called back Kitty. ‘If he’s handsome introduce him to Rachel or the vicar.’
Giggling hysterically, she felt light with happiness. She and Lysander loved each other — nothing else mattered.
‘Take me dancing naked in the rain,’ sang Kitty as she rocked down the gloomy landing.
She could hear terrible sobbing but to hell with people’s problems. Then she realized it was coming from Natasha’s room. Tiptoeing to the doorway she found her stepdaughter crying so hysterically that her whole bed seemed to heave.
‘Sweet’eart, what’s the matter?’
‘Everything. I’m going to die. You’ll be pleased because it means Dad and Hermione are caput.’ As Natasha looked up, Cleopatra’s kohl and mascara were streaked down her face like a yashmak. ‘Oh, Kitty, I can’t bear it. I love him so much.’
‘Poor lambkin.’ Seizing a handful of pink tissues, Kitty put an arm round Natasha’s shuddering shoulders, drying her eyes and glad to be allowed for once to comfort.
‘What is it? Tell me.’
‘Lysander’s fucking Hermione.’
‘What did you say?’ The pink tissues fell like rose-petals from Kitty’s hand.
‘Making love, if you prefer it,’ howled Natasha.
‘I don’t believe it.’ Kitty sat down very suddenly on the bed, her lips were trembling so much she could only mumble, ‘L-l-lysander l-loathes H-h-h-ermione.’
‘Funny way of showing it. Go into Papa’s dressing room. They’re all watching him.’
Narrowly avoiding crash
ing into the open door, sending a big vase of dried poppies flying, Kitty stumbled along endless winding passages up and down stone steps, cold beneath her bare feet.
‘The Ride of The Valkyrie’ was now pounding out of a different set of speakers, more and more menacing.
It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t.
For a terrifying second she thought Rannaldini was defying her to enter his dressing room. Then she realized it was his mask and that he and Bob, who was using a video camera, and Meredith, who was dabbing Maestro behind his ears, and Rudolpho and his boyfriend, who were both down to their boxer shorts, were all gazing excitedly through a two-way mirror. Moving closer, clinging on to a bust of Schubert, Kitty could now see Lysander and Hermione both naked in Rannaldini’s big pale grey four-poster with the little Renoir and Watteau girls looking indifferently down from the faded cherry-red damask walls. Jack, beadily glaring at his master, had taken up sentry duty in an armchair.
Rannaldini turned smiling viciously.
‘Come een, Kitty.’
‘Two-way mirror on the wall,’ giggled Meredith, ‘who is the fairest of us all?’
‘No doubt about that,’ said Rudolpho, taking hold of his boyfriend’s cock. ‘Can we have him next, Rannaldini? Hell, did you ever see anything so beautiful?’
Collapsing against the mirror Kitty was amazed her anguish didn’t shatter the glass. How could Lysander not see her? Although entwined with Hermione there was a slumped, utterly defeated look about his pale body on those silken red sheets.
‘Oh God, please help me,’ she whispered.
‘Peety, you mees a wonderful performance,’ said Rannaldini, ‘your boyfriend make love with all the brio of a youth orchestra. A few wrong notes but such energy.’
It’s the Paradise Lad, thought Kitty in horror, as Hermione slid down Lysander’s still body and took his limp cock between her beautiful, smiling lips.
Screaming, Kitty fled to her bedroom where she found Lady Chisleden lying on her flower-patterned duvet doing exactly the same thing to a man in a donkey’s headdress.
Slamming the door, Kitty leant against it for a second, trying to ride the pain, which was far, far worse than anything she’d suffered from Rannaldini’s infidelities. Of all his mistresses, Hermione had used, abused, patronized and humiliated her the most and now she had calmly stolen Lysander, the only man, Kitty knew now, that she had ever loved. You could stop torturers by telling them what they wanted, but there was no way to end this agony.
