The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Lucky bloke,’ sighed Lysander.

  ‘Lysander,’ called Seb sharply.

  Glancing round, Lysander saw the other players were already lined up for the throw-in and galloped over to join them.

  ‘Don’t chat up girls in the middle of a game,’ said Seb in a furious undertone, ‘particularly when they’re the patron’s wife.’

  ‘She’s married to Elmer?’ asked Lysander, appalled.

  ‘Yup, and unless we win, he’ll take it out on her afterwards.’

  In the last chukka, with Mr Beefy only one goal ahead, the tension got to both sides. Then Juan O’Brien swore so badly at the umpire for ignoring one of Elmer’s more blatant fouls that the umpire retaliated by awarding a penalty against Juan.

  As Seb took the hit for Safus, Lysander belted back to the pony lines to change horses and have another look at Elmer’s wife. The way her white silk shirt was clinging to her body was nothing short of spectacular. How could she have married such an ape?

  While Seb circled his pony then clouted the ball between the posts, Juan O’Brien came off the back line and blocked the shot with his pony’s shoulder. Lysander winced. He’d seen players stop goals with their pony’s heads. Enraged, he galloped upfield, picked up the ball, played cat and mouse with it, hit it in the air, before slamming it between the posts. The spectators honked their horns in ecstasy.

  The storm had passed. Ponies steamed. Bits, stirrups and the huge silver cup on its red tablecloth glittered in the returning sun.

  ‘I guess Safus is going to stage a come-back situation,’ said the commentator.

  Juan O’Brien guessed otherwise. In the closing seconds of the game he roared downfield, black curls streaming under his hat, swinging his stick, driving the ball gloriously before him, then, unmarked and overconfident, just in front of goal he hit wide.

  Pouncing, Lysander backed the ball upfield to Seb who passed to Dommie, who carried on through the puddles until he encountered a wall of Argentine resistance and hastily cut the ball to a furiously racing-up Lysander, who met it gloriously. With twenty seconds on the clock, Lysander was perfectly poised to score the winning goal but, seeing Elmer scowling red-faced in front of the posts, and remembering Elmer’s drenched wife, who would get hell after the game, he passed instead to Elmer. The twins groaned in disbelief, but, by some miracle, on the bell Elmer managed to coax the ball between the posts.

  All Elmer’s senators, flown down by private jet, who’d been wondering what the hell to say to him after the game, cheered with deafening relief. The company cameraman decided not to shoot himself after all. At last he had a clip he could show at the sales conference and later he was able to film Elmer brandishing the huge silver cup while his beautiful wife clapped so enthusiastically that she spilled champagne down her pink skirt.

  Back at Elmer’s barn, Lysander, having drunk a great deal of Moët from the cup, hazily checked the legs of his ponies, thanking them profusely as he plied them with Polo mints. He then thanked the grooms with equal enthusiasm and passed round the individual magnum of Moët he’d been given as a member of the winning team.

  ‘You’re certainly flavour of the month,’ said Astrid. ‘Elmer reckons you’re the best Brit he’s ever played with. He wants you to stay on for the Rolex next month.’

  In moments of excitement Lysander could do little more than open and shut his mouth.

  ‘Really?’ he gasped finally.

  ‘Really!’ Pretending to buckle under the weight, Astrid handed him a sheaf of faxes. ‘Here are your racing pages.’

  ‘I’d forgotten those!’ Lysander gave a whoop of joy. ‘Now I can have a bet.’

  ‘No you can’t!’ Seb marched in, already changed, with his hair slicked back from the shower. ‘It’s nearly midnight in England and the only thing racing at the moment is the very unblue blood through Elmer’s veins. In between copies of Sporting Life the fax managed to spew out confirmation of his Jap deal. Elmer is several million bucks richer now and he wants to party. So move it.’

  ‘But I want to get pissed with this lot.’ Lysander gazed wistfully at Astrid.

  ‘Lysander,’ said Seb wearily, ‘you want to play polo for a living. If you’re prepared to be charming and diplomatic, you can brownnose your way into riding some of the most fabulous horses in the world, but for a start lay off Elmer’s wife and his grooms.’

  ‘He sure is the cutest guy,’ sighed Astrid as Lysander was dragged protesting away.

  2

  The party was held in one of the soft brown houses clustering round the polo field. Male guests ranged from lithe, bronzed, professional polo players of all nationalities to rich businessmen, some of them patrons, some of who merely liked to be part of the polo scene. The women included glamorous groupies of all ages, wearing everything from T-shirts and jeans to strapless dresses showing off massive jewels.

  The feeling of jungle warfare was intensified by the forest of glossy green tropical plants in every room and by the fact that all the professionals were on the prowl for rich patrons, and the patrons, despite having wives present, were stalking the prettiest groupies who were, in turn, hunting anything in trousers.

  Loud cheers greeted the arrival of the Safus team.

  ‘If you have oats, prepare to sow them now,’ murmured Seb as the cheering died away and a hush fell over the room.

  ‘Talk about Elmer’s angels,’ drawled a predatory blonde in a fire-engine-red dress licking her scarlet lips.

  Elmer, mean little eyes flickering with rage, was the only person who didn’t laugh. He’d kept on his brown boots and white breeches which the game had hardly marked, so that everyone should know he was a polo player, but had changed into a clean blue Safus polo shirt. As groupies started edging through the vegetation towards the rest of his team, Elmer, competitive as ever, was determined to annex the prettiest. Soon he was bosom to pectorals with a mettlesome brunette called Bonny whose bottom lip protruded more than any of the scented orchids massed in the centre of the living room, and whose buttocks swelled out of the briefest white shorts like an inverted Nell Gwyn.

  Refusing to admit how blind he was without glasses, Elmer had to peer very closely to see the logo on her jutting orange T-shirt.

  ‘If you can read this,’ he spelled out slowly, then peering even closer, ‘You’re a dirty old man.’

  Bonny shrieked with laughter. Reluctantly Elmer decided to join in. ‘That’s kinda neat.’

  ‘Yours is neater,’ said Bonny. ‘That deep blue is just great with your eyes. Has anyone told you how like Richard Gere you are? I’d give anything for a Safus T-shirt.’

  ‘Swappyer then,’ said Elmer.

  ‘He’d never have stripped off in public,’ muttered Seb, ‘if he hadn’t got a Barbados suntan and just lost ten pounds, none of it admittedly off his ego, on a pre-season crash diet. Jeees-us.’ He choked on his drink as Bonny’s head disappeared into the orange T-shirt and her upstretched wriggling arms showed off a pair of magnificent brown breasts.

  Elmer’s eyes were popping like a garrotted Pekinese. The orange T-shirt, once he had wriggled into it, clashed with his port-wine face but in no way doused his lust.

  ‘I see your picture every time I pick up the Wall Street Journal,’ Bonny was now telling him. ‘But you are so much cuter in the flesh.’

  ‘The flesh is weak where lovely young women like you are concerned,’ said Elmer thickly.

  The logo on Lysander’s faded grey T-shirt read:

  Sex is evil,

  Evil is sin,

  Sin’s forgiven

  So get stuck in.

  He was getting drunker by the minute and had now been cornered by two stunning but interchangeable suntanned blondes.

  ‘Did you fly commercial?’ asked the first.

  Lysander looked blank.

  ‘She’s trying to figure if you came over by private jet, preferably your own,’ explained the second.

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Lysander. ‘No, I flew Virgin. The air
hostesses were really sweet.’

  ‘Surprised they were still intacta with you on board,’ said the first.

  Glancing round for a waitress with a bottle, Lysander caught sight of Martha Winterton. Shaded by a vast yucca, she was chatting mindlessly to a senator’s wife and trying not to watch Elmer. Her desolation was tangible.

  ‘You’re not really a good friend of George Bush?’ Bonny was growing more raucous. ‘I would just love to meet him.’

  ‘It could be arranged.’ Elmer’s pudgy right hand was surreptitiously stroking her left buttock as they leant side by side against a dragged yellow wall.

  The senator’s wife had drifted off to talk to Butch Murdoch. Martha was gazing despairingly into her empty glass. Oblivious of Seb’s stern warning that trespassers would be put on the next plane, Lysander crossed the room.

  ‘Have you dried off?’

  Martha jumped. Her huge eyes, the clear brown of Tio Pepe held up to the light, were swimming with tears. It was a second before she recognized him.

  ‘Oh sure – it was so dear of you to bring me that blanket.’

  She had a husky, hesitant voice. Her creased white shirt still clung to her body. Her dark hair, which had dried all fluffy, was pulled back in a bandeau making her freckled face look even thinner.

  ‘You needed a lifeboat,’ said Lysander.

  ‘I could use one now.’

  ‘Have a drink first.’

  As Lysander grabbed a bottle from a passing waitress, Martha noticed a badge saying: ‘Birthday Boy’ pinned to his grey T-shirt. Clutching her glass of champagne as though it was boiling tea and she a shipwreck victim, she took a great gulp.

  ‘There’s a nice fire in the garden,’ said Lysander seeing the goose-flesh on her thin freckled arms.

  Outside, the dull aquamarine of the swimming-pool reflected a few faint stars. Rain had bowed down the hibiscus and the oleander bushes, but their flowers, pink, red, amethyst and yellow, glistened jewel-like in the floodlighting. Great drenched pelts of purple and magenta bougainvillaea clung to the house and the garden fences.

  To an almost overpowering scent of orange and lemon blossom was added a tempting smell of roast pork, garlic and rosemary as half a dozen sucking pigs jerked above the glowing coals of the barbecue. Apart from an inscrutable Mexican houseboy who occasionally plunged a skewer into their shining gold sides, the place was deserted.

  Caressed by the warm night air Lysander gave a sigh of pure joy.

  ‘Such bliss to go outside and not shiver, but I expect it’s cold for you.’ Solicitously, he edged her towards the fire.

  ‘Poor little things,’ Martha looked sadly at the sucking pigs, then, pulling herself together, ‘You’re kind a tanned for someone just arrived from England.’

  ‘It’s fake,’ confessed Lysander, lifting the light brown hair flopping over his forehead. ‘Look how it’s streaked on the hairline and turned my eyebrows orange. I borrowed the stuff from Dolly, my girlfriend. She’s a model and always having to turn herself strange colours. I wanted to terrorize everyone into thinking I’d got brown playing in Argentina all winter. But I was pissed when I put it on last night.’

  She’s so sweet when she smiles, he thought. To hell with Seb and Dommie.

  ‘And it’s your birthday?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Lysander glanced down at his birthday-boy badge, ‘but it gets me lots of free drinks.’ He opened his blue-green eyes very wide and then roared with such infectious laughter that people standing in doorways and sitting in windows and even the inscrutable Mexican houseboy looked up and smiled.

  ‘When is your birthday?’ asked Martha.

  ‘25 February, I shall be twenty-three.’

  ‘You’re a Pisces.’

  Lysander nodded. ‘Friendly, warm, considerate, easygoing, but cross me and you’ll see how tough I can be. My father who’s a classical scholar pronounces it, “Piss-ces”.’

  ‘What does your daddy do?’

  ‘He’s a headmaster. Supposed to be a great teacher, but he spends most of his time raising funds and wowing mothers.’

  ‘Does your mother wow the fathers?’

  For a second an expression of utter anguish spilled over the boy’s sunny, innocent, charming face. Shutting his eyes he took a couple of deep breaths as though trying to survive some horrific torture without crying out.

  ‘She just died,’ he mumbled, ‘last October.’

  ‘Ohmigod!’ Martha put a hand on his arm which was clenched like cast iron, ‘Whatever happened?’

  ‘She had a fall on the road. The horse went up. She wasn’t wearing a hard hat.’

  As the Mexican plunged in another skewer the boiling fat dripped on to the red coals which hissed and flared up, lighting Lysander’s face like a soul in hell.

  ‘You poor little guy,’ said Martha. ‘Were you very close?’

  Lysander nodded. ‘She was more like my sister. All my friends were in love with her.’

  ‘Your father must have been devastated.’

  Lysander’s face hardened. ‘Dad doesn’t show his feelings. Basically we don’t talk. He prefers my brothers, Hector and Alexander. They’re better at things.’

  From inside the house the band struck up. ‘I get no kick from champagne,’ crooned a mellow tenor.

  ‘I do,’ said Lysander, emptying the bottle into Martha’s glass.

  ‘What d’you do?’ asked Martha.

  ‘Estate agent.’

  ‘Not much fun with the recession.’

  ‘Best thing that ever happened to him.’

  Gliding up, Seb Carlisle topped up both their glasses. ‘Recession enables Rip-Off Van Winkle here to sleep and sober up all day in the office when he’s not ringing Ladbroke’s or sloping off home to watch Neighbours. He couldn’t do any of that if he had to sell houses.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Seb,’ said Lysander. ‘Now guard Martha for a minute.’

  Turning, he was nearly sent flying by the predatory blonde in the fire-engine-red dress.

  ‘If you’ve finished with your toy boy,’ she said pointedly to Martha, ‘I’d love to dance with him.’

  ‘You’re sweet,’ said Lysander, ‘but I must have a slash.’

  ‘He’s just adorable.’ Martha watched Lysander drifting gracefully as smoke across the lawn.

  ‘Isn’t he?’ agreed Seb. ‘Unfortunately his boss put him on commission only and as he’s not selling any houses he’s running up terrible debts, betting and going out clubbing every night.’

  ‘He ought to do something else.’

  ‘He’s about to go to a new job working in the City for some merchant bank which specializes in pretty, personable young men; but he’ll never last. He’s not cut out for the City. He ought to be a jump jockey or a polo player. You saw what a beautiful horseman he was this afternoon, but it took him four chukkas to get his act together.’

  ‘He’s very upset about his mother.’

  ‘Devastated,’ agreed Seb. ‘Completely lost his base, drinking himself stupid; can’t settle to anything. Unlike his pompous achieving brothers, he’s pretty dyslexic and he left school without an O level. His mother spoilt him rotten – the worse the prank the more she laughed, but she always bailed him out when he ran out of money. Pity Elmer can’t sign him up for the whole season. Pedro Cavanali broke his leg falling on the boards this afternoon. He plays medium goal with Elmer.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Martha.

  The Mexican had carved two of the sucking pigs. Maids were carrying bowls of salad and baked potatoes through to the dining room as Lysander bounded through the french windows brandishing another bottle.

  ‘Clear the lawn for ballet,’ he shouted, then standing on one leg executed a pirouette, spilling a lot of champagne and only just avoided collapsing on the grass.

  ‘You need an early night,’ said Seb pointedly.

  Inside the house, Lysander could see Elmer bending over Bonny, playing with the ends of her hair, no doubt boasting that Mrs
Ex’s equine ancestors had come over in the Mayflower.

  ‘I’ll stick around,’ said Lysander.

  ‘Well, at least behave yourself,’ warned Seb.

  ‘Some hope,’ said Dommie, who wandered over tearing the flesh off the leg of a sucking pig with very white teeth. ‘Grub’s up. It’s very good, although,’ he dropped his voice so only Seb could hear, ‘our patron seems to have started already. He’s eating that slag alive.’

  Going towards the house, Martha caught sight of Elmer and went into reverse.

  ‘That Bonny’s a bucket,’ said Lysander in outrage. ‘You’re much, much prettier.’

  ‘She’s newer.’ Martha took out a cigarette with a trembling hand. ‘Have you got a light?’

  Lysander hadn’t, but, before Martha could stop him he’d plunged a twenty-dollar bill into the coals of the barbecue.

  ‘You’re crazy but awful sweet,’ reproached Martha, as he almost burnt his fingers getting the charred paper to her cigarette in time, but she was too immersed in her own misery.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she confessed. ‘My last husband was faithful and dull and I was bored out of my skull, so I ran off with Elmer, who had a roving eye and I haven’t slept since.’

  ‘Elmer’s a shit,’ said Lysander with such disapproval that Martha looked up. ‘Dad was a shit to my mother and he’s already found someone else, a Mrs Colman, an army widow. She’s got veiny ankles and wears shirts with pie-frill collars,’ he went on in disgust. ‘The boys call her “Mustard” because she’s so keen on Dad. She helps him fund-raise. They’re turning the stables where Mum kept her horses into a new music school.’

  ‘The speed with which Mrs Ex carted you this afternoon,’ said Martha bitterly, ‘is only equalled by the haste with which men shack up if they’re divorced or widowed, or bored with their wives. Oh God, no!’

  Following her gaze, Lysander saw Bonny run off shrieking excitedly into the wet depths of the shrubbery followed by Elmer.

  ‘Could you bear to take me home?’

  ‘Oh wow, that’s like offering me a ride in the National,’ said Lysander. ‘Could I bear? I certainly could.’ Then, seeing Seb beadily advancing on them with two platefuls of food, ‘Look, I don’t want the twins getting heavy. Let’s escape through the garden.’