by Jilly Cooper
‘It’s about Davie,’ said Julian apologetically.
‘Where did he end up?’
‘My room, eventually. He’s snoring so loudly, Brünnhilde will hear him in Rutminster, and I can’t wake him. He’s going to miss this goddamn roll-call.’
‘Give me five minutes.’
Barry the Bass, who was highly experienced in these matters, from his days in a rock band, kicked Davie in the ribs.
‘Get up, you drunken bastard.’
Davie groaned, but didn’t stir.
Deodorant sprayed into his face had no effect.
It was only when Barry seized the foot with the sprained ankle and twisted it round and round that Davie finally woke up.
The three made it outside just in time.
In the absence of Miles, Knickers begged George to inspect the troops. ‘And please, please chew them out. I simply can’t control them any more.’
Dawn was making flamingo-pink in-roads on the East as George walked slowly down the row. The Spaniards, he decided, could not have seen so many wrecks since the Armada. Flora looked frightful, her face chalk-white, her eyes through crying as red as a white rat’s. Slumped against the coach, slitty eyes gazing into space, Viking looked even whiter than she did. Of the whole lot, only the Steel Elf, who didn’t drink, looked beautiful, the violet shadows under her eyes increasing her look of fragility.
‘Where’s Cherub?’ intoned Knickers, checking his list.
‘It’s not his fort,’ piped up Noriko. ‘Poor Cherub’s lost all his crows.’
On cue, Cherub shot through the swing doors, holding a tambourine over his cock and totally naked except for his shoes.
Scuttling down the steps, he slid into the line-up just as George reached him. The players, despite hangovers, were in total hysterics – waiting for a blistering undressing down. But George’s eyes merely ran over Cherub for a second.
‘Shoes need cleaning, Wilson,’ he said coldly and moved on.
The next moment, Noriko had hurtled down therow and wrapped Cherub in her long pink cardigan.
George returned to the middle of the row, climbing back up three of the hotel steps so he could talk to his orchestra. In his haste to reach the gaol, he had put his dark blue poloshirt on inside out – lucky for him, thought Flora wistfully.
‘You’re all an absolute disgrace,’ he roared, then, like the turned-up corner of a page, a faint smile lifted his square face. ‘We’ll be in Toledo by ten o’clock. Beethoven Nine is appropriately scheduled to start at nine. As you can play it in your sleep, I suggest a short rehearsal at eight after your meal-break, but only on condition that you spend the afternoon in bed, alone and you play out of your boots this evening.’
And he strode off towards the car-park.
‘He’s in a jovial mood,’ said Miss Parrott in surprise.
Out of masochistic yearning, Flora stationed herself in front of Hilary and the Steel Elf, but they both slept all the way to Toledo. A rowdy party carried on at the back of the coach, but they couldn’t persuade Flora to join them.
‘Milesie loves me, yes I know,
Cos my pay cheque tells me so,’ sang Cherub to the tune of ‘Jesus Loves Me’.
Viking sat by himself. The sky clouded over as they drove into Toledo. Viking could see a red traffic-light reflected in the bus window like a setting sun. If only he could have turned back the clock twelve hours. He was in the kind of eruptive, jungle-cat mood where everyone avoided him.
But, as they surged into the hotel reception which was appropriately filled with glossy dark jungle plants, to collect their new keys from Knickers, Randy shouted ‘Lunch on Viking, everyone.’
‘I’m crashing out,’ Viking shot a warning glance in Flora’s direction.
‘Dom Perignon all round,’ went on Randy evilly.
A mocking Dixie put his arm round Flora’s shoulders.
‘You missed all the fun last night.’
‘Shot your face,’ howled Viking.
‘What are you talking about?’
Flora didn’t believe Dixie at first. Then he waved a polaroid under her nose, and she flipped. All her pent-up misery over George going back to his wife and the thieving bloody randiness and fecklessness of men in general, poured out of her, as she screamed at all of them.
‘How could you do that to Abby, you bastards, BASTARDS. You swore you’d break her, and now you bloody well have.’
Locking herself in her room she threw herself down on the bed, sobbing her heart out, ignoring the bombardment on the door until they all got bored and wandered off. Then the telephone went. It was Viking.
‘It wasn’t like you think,’ he begged. ‘Please put in a good word to Abby.’
‘Oh, fuck off. I am just writing a stinking letter to St Patrick, telling him there was one utterly poisonous snake he didn’t drive out of Ireland. Haven’t you any idea either how this will hurt Marcus?’
The moment she slammed the telephone down, it rang again.
‘Fuck off, fuck off,’ shrieked Flora.
‘Is thut Room 854?’
‘How do I know?’
‘It’s George.’
‘Whadja want?’ She mustn’t start crying again.
‘You once said you wanted to go oop in an air balloon.’
‘I’ve got a headache.’
‘Fresh air’ll do you good – a car’ll pick you up at two o’clock.’
SIXTY
Remembering the coiffured, manicured Ruth, Flora decided two could play at that game. Systematically, she worked her way through the little bottles in her bathroom, washing her hair, then lying in a bubble bath, in a shower cap as transparent as her motives, as she scrubbed her body with a tiny oblong of soap. Then she rubbed in all the available moisturizer and gargled away all the pink mouthwash. She would have scrubbed her entrails if she could have got at them. She put on a dove-grey sundress, thrown out by her mother as being too young, and left her hair loose so it shone and swung like a copper bell. With a desperately trembling hand, she just managed to draw two thick lines round her eyes until they dominated her face like a bush baby’s, and painted her lips the glowing coral of japonica in spring. The gentle dove-grey was wonderfully becoming. Jumping with nerves, she went downstairs to find various members of the orchestra passed out on chairs and sofas in the foyer. The bar was propping up a green-faced Davie. Others were setting out on jaunts with guide books.
‘I’ve got to see something of Spain other than concert halls and ceilings,’ announced Nellie.
In a nearby booth, Randy’s big checked shoulders were hunched over the telephone as he called home for the first time in six days. The next moment he was crying so much he could hardly tell his wife he’d see her tomorrow.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’ asked Flora.
‘Kirsty put each of the children on to speak to me,’ sobbed Randy, ‘I miss them all so much.’
‘Then why play around so much, when you’ve got such a lovely family?’
‘I don’t know,’ Randy blew his nose, then caught sight of Flora. ‘God, you look sexy, come ’ere.’
But Flora had bounded away. Calm down, she kept telling herself, it’s daft to get so excited.
‘You car’s here, Mees Seymour,’ announced a hot-eyed chauffeur sweating in black uniform.
‘How d’you know it’s me?’ squeaked Flora.
‘I was told you was gorgeous with red ‘air.’
‘Oh goodness.’ Flora bolted down the steps.
But all her happiness drained away as inside the car she found Juno looking so bloody beautiful in a pale pink shirt and shorts, showing off tiny suntanned thighs half the width of Flora’s. It was no comfort that Juno was as cross to see her, or that they were soon joined by Simon (perhaps George was after him, too) and Hilary. Flora slumped in the back; she might as well have got drunk on Viking’s ill-gotten champagne with all those other bastards.
They drove past ploughed fields and rocks the colour of lobster bi
sque through beautiful white villages, up an avenue of yellowing, peeling plane trees to a ravishing castle about five miles out of town.
A crowd of people in light trousers and rather well-pressed shirts, dressed up with nattily tied silk scarves, were making a din on the terrace. On the unblemished and blatantly sprinkled lawn below, a panting Spaniard in blue dungarees was wrestling with a purple-and-emerald-green dragon’s skin spewing out of a vast basket.
‘What a lovely spot,’ said the Steel Elf.
George came straight up. The rings under his eyes were heavier than his eyebrows. He had turned his navy-blue polo shirt the right way round, but tucked into his white trousers, it showed he had completely lost his spare tyre. His feet looked vulnerably pale in loafers. Flora suppressed an insane urge to drop to her feet and kiss them. She must get a grip on herself.
‘What does anyone want to drink?’
‘Perrier, please,’ said Juno.
‘And me, too,’ simpered Hilary.
‘I’ll have an orange pressé if it’s feasible,’ said Simon.
‘I’ll have a quadruple vodka and tonic,’ said Flora.
‘You won’t be able to play,’ reproved Hilary.
‘I’ve got to sing,’ said Flora. ‘It’s so hard, I’ll never get onto the platform if I’m sober.’
Having taken Flora at her word, and persuaded the others to accept a glass of champagne each, George introduced Ruth, who was much too done-up, in a frilly white shirt and shocking-pink trousers with gold high heels, for lunch-time in the campa.
Having given Flora a not-altogether friendly look she introduced her ‘partner’ Trevor.
Flora giggled. ‘I’ve got a partner called Trevor, too,’ she said. ‘Only in my Trevor’s case, he has black eyes, and a tight skin and a very curly tail, and a squeaky bark, and I rescued him.’ She rattled on. ‘You don’t look as though you need rescuing.’
Trevor II smirked, gave Flora slightly too hot a glance for Ruth’s liking, and asked her if she’d ever been up in an air balloon before.
Flora shook her head. Suddenly she was too shy to say anything in George’s presence.
‘We’re coming along to the concert this evening to look at George’s latest toy,’ said Ruth with a slight edge. ‘I love Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. To think the wonderful old man wrote the whole thing when he was deaf.’
She beckoned the maid to bring over the bottle.
‘Have some more shampoo.’
‘I shouldn’t,’ giggled Juno, ‘it makes my nose tickle.’ She smiled roguishly at George, who had also fallen oddly silent.
‘Just a half,’ said Hilary. ‘I expect we’ll be in the balloon soon.’
‘Oh no, Pedro-Maria takes at least half an hour to get it up,’ said Ruth.
‘Poor Mrs Pedro-Maria,’ murmured Flora. Just for a second her eyes met George’s and, to stop herself laughing, she sloped off and gazed at a hideous bed of red gladioli and purple asters. Ruth was hell. George was the one who needed rescuing.
Only George and the four musicians from the RSO, and Pedro-Maria to steer the thing, went up in the balloon. Extraordinary, reflected Flora, as they took off into the blue, that a slain dragon could swell up into something so huge and beautiful with the orange flame belching up into the purple-and-emerald-green dome. Turning, she saw George’s waving wife getting smaller and smaller.
It was literally heavenly. This is how God must feel, thought Flora, as she gazed down on the turning, tawny woods and the gold and green fields, as the darkness of the balloon’s shadow fell over the face of the earth. Below them flocks of sheep and herds of cows scattered in temporary terror.
Flora had deliberately positioned herself at the front of the basket as far away from George as possible, giving him the chance if he wanted to stand behind the Steel Elf. Everyone was oohing and aahing as they floated over a little village, driving dogs to hysterical barking and bringing children screaming with excitement into the streets.
Then a sudden gust tipped the basket forward and she felt a body, solid as a Rottweiler, thrown against hers, and knew instantly with a thumping heart that it was George’s.
‘Sorry,’ she gasped, ramming herself even harder against the front of the basket, putting half an inch between them, but a second later, the wind tossed the basket backwards, throwing her against him. As she leapt away, his big hands closed on her hip bones, steadying her, and he was right behind her giving her absolutely no room for manoeuvre. With St George and the dragon pitted against one poor damsel – what chance of escape did she have?
I must be dreaming, thought Flora in bewilderment, but she could have sworn George dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder and now his thumbs were softly stroking her ribcage, as the flames surged upwards with another dragon roar.
For a second, he took his right hand away, resting a muscular arm on her shoulder, the soft dark down tickling her cheek, as he pointed out hares racing up and down the rows of stubble.
‘What a wonderful view,’ gushed Hilary.
‘Mine’s much better,’ murmured George into Flora’s hair.
His right hand was back but higher up her ribs this time, and oh my God, his thumb was slowly caressing her right breast outside her dress, and now, oh heavens, it had crept inside – there was no mistaking it. Her nipples were pushing out the dove-grey sundress as proof, and it was the most blissfully erotic thing that had ever happened to her. It knocked any of Rannaldini’s caresses into a cocked cock. She was so faint with desire her insides were churning and disintegrating like peaches in a liquidizer.
She couldn’t bear it, gradually they were losing height, drifting down over a sage-green poplar copse. The lovely balloon of her happiness was going to subside.
‘That’s very good timing, George,’ said Simon.
In despair, Flora noticed two chauffeurs leaning against two hearse-like limos waiting at the edge of the big yellow field below them. She glanced sideways and realized that Hilary was gazing at George’s still-wandering right hand in absolute horror. Then another greater gust of wind caught the balloon. The next moment Hilary and Juno were screaming as they crashed and bumped to the ground like cats in a basket chucked out of a car, with everyone falling higgledy-piggledy on top of each other.
‘Get me out of here,’ shrieked Hilary, outraged to find herself trapped beneath an excited Pedro-Maria, who was in turn beneath an even more excited Simon.
‘You OK, Flora, luv?’ George’s accent was even broader with anxiety.
‘Gone to heaven,’ sighed Flora, squirming blissfully under the weight of his body.
A second later George had pulled her to her feet, lifted her out of the basket and dragged her across the stubble into the first limo.
Jumping into the driving seat, he screeched off in a cloud of dust, leaving behind the two drivers and the rest of the party waving and shouting impotently.
‘Plenty of room for the rest of them,’ he said, nearly removing a gatepost as he swung into the road. ‘Do oop your seat belt,’ then, after a long pause, ‘I luv you, I luv you, I bluddy luv you to distraction.’
‘What?’ squeaked Flora, ‘I thought you still loved Ruth.’
‘I came here last night to ask her for a divorce.’
‘I thought it was you who refused to give her one.’
‘You know a lot about my life, don’t you?’ said George, murdering unfamiliar gears as he swung onto the main road, and rammed his foot on the accelerator.
‘I hated Trevor,’ he said. ‘He was one of my competitors and he took my wife off me. Now I know he’s done me a good deed. I didn’t hate him any more today. Anyway, I want to be free to marry someone else.’
Flora was speechless, and reached for the strap above her window as the needle hit 100 m.p.h.
‘But I don’t understand, I mean —’ then, as the car only just missed a bank – ‘Jesus!’
‘Yes, you better shoot up, and let me concentrate on driving.’
Reaching Ruth’s h
acienda, he grabbed Flora’s hand again and, ignoring the party that was still roaring on the terrace, dragged her up three flights of stairs into his bedroom, and locking the door took her in his arms. For a second he gazed into her face, so sweet and apprehensive and striped by the sunlight streaming through the shutters, and then he kissed her.
Flora had never experienced such tenderness, nor passionate enthusiasm nor clumsiness all at once. Then he ripped off her sundress, and kissed her breasts, before tearing off her knickers and throwing her on the bed.
‘I’m not on the p-p-pill,’ Flora hated herself for stammering.
‘Doesn’t matter. I want to fook you more than anything in the world,’ George stammered even more as he fumbled with his belt, ‘but I want you to know I luv you and want to marry you as well.’
Flora helped him with his zip and boxer shorts.
‘Oh my,’ she said in a choked voice, ‘you are well Hungerford.’
‘Don’t take the piss,’ pleaded George. ‘I can’t ’andle it. Let’s take things very slowly.’
‘’Andel’s Largo,’ began Flora, until George stopped her nervous prattle by kissing her.
Having exhausted the bed, they moved into the bathroom. Lying on the shag-pile, Flora admired the gleaming undersides of the lavatory bowl, and thought she must remember to clean under the loo at the cottage. Then she thought of nothing else except George.
Finally ending up on a pile of duvets on the bedroom floor, she staggered to her feet.
‘I have to sing “Ode to Joy”, in a few hours,’ she sighed, ‘but I’m so happy it’ll probably sing itself this evening.’
‘I luv you,’ repeated George, who was running water into a round cyclamen-pink bath next door. ‘I mean it about marrying you.’
‘And I mean it, too,’ said Flora, bending over to kiss him, ‘it’sjust a bit new and all. The bliss of having a bathroom en suite,’ she went on, ‘is that you don’t have to scuttle across the landing trapping a towel between your legs.’
A shadow flickered across George’s face.
‘Have you done that lots of times?’