by Jilly Cooper
Dinsdale was slumped on a coral-pink chair on the other side of the empty fireplace, which still contained the ashes from the dinner party. Georgie crossed the room to sit on the arm.
‘I had a wonderfully happy marriage with Ben,’ Julia was saying bitterly. ‘Guy pestered and pestered me to sleep with him. Ben used to joke about it and call him my Dirty Old Man. Finally I gave in, because I felt sorry for him, he seemed so lonely and bored with his marriage, and now I’ve fallen in love with him, and he’s totally fucked my marriage.’
‘And you too, by all accounts.’ Georgie was nettled by the DOM reference. She was the only person allowed to slag off Guy. ‘I can’t imagine him pestering anyone. Guy and I love each other. Bored husbands don’t police their wives’ every moment.’
‘You stupid idiot,’ said Julia almost pityingly. ‘The reason why Guy polices your every move when you’re in London is because he doesn’t want you to bump into him and me.’
Fumbling in the back pocket of her jeans, Julia brought out a red diary.
‘Look!’ She turned the pages. ‘Georgie recording, Georgie Promo, Georgie recording, Georgie in America – that was a bonus.’ The green pentelled arrow went through two weeks in February and into March.
‘Guy told you he couldn’t leave the gallery. It was me he couldn’t bear to leave. Here’s the key to Guy’s flat.’ Like a hypnotist, she swung it in front of Georgie’s nose.
‘Do you need a key?’ said Georgie, taking another great gulp of Bacardi to fortify herself. ‘I would have expected you to come in through the cat flap.’
‘Stop taking the piss,’ screamed Julia.
‘And how does Ben fit into this?’ asked Georgie, taking Dinsdale’s ginger ears and putting them on top of his head like a Second World War pin-up. ‘Is his software not hard enough for you?’
‘Ben works in Chelmsford,’ said Julia through gritted teeth, ‘and he’s abroad selling computers all week. It wasn’t difficult.’
‘The writing on the pink envelope.’ Georgie examined the diary again. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Of course. And I gave him the china puppy for his birthday, and when he’s in the country he rings me the whole time, when he goes for petrol for the mower, when he’s having drinks with the vicar.’
Julia was hissing down a bobsleigh run now and couldn’t stop. ‘I saw Angel’s Reach before you did,’ she stammered. ‘We slept in the spare room when you were in London with the Mail on Sunday.’
Letting Dinsdale’s ears fall, Georgie shut her eyes and breathed in. The anaesthetic of shock was beginning to wear off. Getting to her feet, she tried to gather the shattered rags of dignity round her.
‘I don’t believe a word you’re saying. Guy isn’t like this.’
She felt strengthened by the sight of headlights in the drive and by Dinsdale’s thick tail whacking her thighs once again. Guy was home. She was so desperate to run to him, that the bad dream should be over.
‘He called me his second Peregrine,’ said Julia quietly.
Georgie stopped in her tracks. The knitting-needle dipped in acid plunged straight into her heart.
‘He what?’
‘His second Peregrine.’
Peregrine had been a schoolfriend Guy had loved at Wellington, the one great unconsummated passion of his life. When Peregrine had drowned falling out of a punt at some wild Cambridge party, Guy confessed that it was only his faith that had kept him from suicide. It was this sadness, and the fact that for ages he didn’t make a pass at her, that had drawn Georgie to him when they’d first met. Peregrine was sacrosanct, a love Georgie respected and of which she had never been jealous.
‘I’ve got letters to prove it and photographs Guy took of me in the nude,’ sobbed Julia.
‘Hardly conclusive evidence, unless he’s in them, too,’ said Georgie as Guy came through the door.
He looked sulky and aggressive, like a small boy caught stealing sweets.
‘It seems your affaire with Mrs Armstrong is more extended than you’ve admitted.’
Guy pursed his lips and looked proconsular.
‘Well, if she says it is.’
‘She does.’ Georgie moved towards the drinks table.
‘If you care to come upstairs with me, Ju Ju, and look into a suitcase under Guy-Guy’s bed, you’ll find a large folder of photographs Guy’s taken of me with nothing on. Some, I hate to tell you, with Angel’s Reach in the background.’
‘You said you never slept with her,’ Julia turned, screaming at Guy.
‘Ah, but then he told me he’d only been to bed with you once. I think you two ought to get your stories straight.’
Grabbing the Bacardi bottle Georgie turned to Guy. ‘You’re a fucking hypocrite, and I’m leaving you tomorrow. I’m going to sleep in the spare room.’
On the kitchen table, she discovered a note Mother Courage had left earlier.
‘Georgie – change in the envelope, heart in the deep freeze.’
Upstairs in the spare room, Georgie felt boiling hot. She took off her clothes and crawled under the duvet. Then she remembered that this was where Guy had slept with Julia. It was the repository of all their worst furniture, even a china Alsatian which Flora had won at the fair on Hampstead Heath at the age of eight. On the windows were ghastly curtains put up by a previous occupant, which clashed with the equally ghastly wallpaper. Would Guy have explained that this room hadn’t been done yet, or had he been too busy bonking? She gave a groan and took a huge slug of Bacardi. She’d ring the Ideal Homo and order new curtains tomorrow morning – but what was the point when she was leaving anyway? Seeing the reflection of her flushed face on the pillow, she realized the mirror on the dressing table had been adjusted so that you could see what was going on in bed. Guy’d always liked watching himself. She heard a car starting up, and, rushing to the window, saw Julia’s car lighting up the little green beacons of the poplar colonnade.
‘Whore,’ she screamed after her, and was so plastered and furious that she rushed downstairs in the nude and went completely berserk. First she smashed Julia’s puppy and then she rushed into the kitchen and started breaking glasses.
‘Stop it!’ Guy came rushing in. ‘Don’t be infantile, Julia’s a complete fantasist. It’s all lies.’
‘She knows my diary better than I do, and what about fucking Peregrine, or rather fucking your second Peregrine, you bastard?’
Georgie’s yelling face was like a tomato that had been hurled at a rock. Guy ducked as a pint mug hurtled towards him. Finally, having taken down one of Julia’s paintings, and tried to smash it over Guy’s head, ‘It’s you in the pin-stripe suit, you disgusting lech,’ Georgie raced off into the night.
In panic, Guy rang Larry who was in the middle of making love to Marigold.
‘Julia came down and dumped.’
‘Christ,’ said Larry, who when he was with Nikki, had made up several foursomes at dinner with Julia and Guy. It was all much too close to home. ‘We’re off to Jamaica in a few hours,’ he added, ‘or I’d say come on over. Are you OK?’
‘No, I’m not. Georgie’s run off bollock-naked into the night.’
‘No sweat,’ said Larry. ‘Snow’s forecast. She’ll come home when she’s cold.’
‘But what if people in the village see her?’ spluttered Guy. ‘The road goes straight past the vicarage. There’s a meeting to discuss my election to the Parish Council on Friday.’
Larry tried not to laugh.
‘I’d put your feet up, watch the boxing and have a large Scotch.’
‘I can’t. Georgie’s broken every glass in the house, and plate, too, for that matter.’
‘People who live in Cotswold-stone houses shouldn’t throw glasses,’ said Larry. ‘At least it shows she cares. Take her away for a little holiday.’
‘Guy’s mistress has come down and dumped,’ he told Marigold as he switched off the telephone and took her in his arms.
‘Guy’s got a mistress?’ said Marigold, col
lapsing back on her ivory silk pillows in amazement. ‘Ay can’t believe it. Gay’s not laike that. He’s so upraight. Georgie must be shattered.’
‘It’s plates that are being shattered. She’s throwing them at Guy,’ said Larry, not displeased that Guy, who was always so sanctimonious, had been caught with his hand in the sexual till.
‘Oh, poor Georgie!’ Marigold climbed back on top of her husband, then gave a shriek of anguish as she impaled herself on his upright cock: ‘Oh, may God!’
‘What’s the matter, Princess?’ said Larry in alarm. ‘Are you still sore down there?’
‘No, they’re our plates,’ wailed Marigold. ‘They were a matchin’ set, Ay lent to Georgie for the dinner party.’
Sitting in the kitchen, Guy lined up all the milk bottles Mother Courage never put out on the kitchen table, so Georgie’d have something to smash when she came home.
Georgie actually burst out laughing when she saw them, then the laughter turned to tears, and although they rowed most of the night, in between sobbing on each other’s shoulders, Guy felt by morning that he had calmed Georgie down enough to go back to London.
‘I’ll call you the moment I get to London,’ he promised, but as she waved him off, Georgie felt like Demeter seeing Persephone disappear into the Underworld.
Slowly she began to piece together the horrors of the previous night. One moment she was freezing, the next boiling hot. She kept putting on and taking off jerseys. She still couldn’t get rid of the sick taste in her mouth.
Mother Courage had laid out a page from the Sunday Telegraph under the cat’s plate. As Georgie emptied a tin of Choosy on to it, she noticed a large piece by Peregrine Worsthorne about John Major.
You don’t call a child who won’t leave you alone, your second Peregrine, thought Georgie, and felt so furious she rushed into Guy’s study and put a message on the ansaphone saying: ‘Go screw yourself.
Then she put on another jersey and cleaned her teeth again. She felt she was rotting inside. Half an hour later Mother Courage came storming up the drive.
‘I’ve just had Mr Seymour on the telephone. He can’t get through. Can you ring him urgent?’
Sulkily Georgie dialled Guy at the gallery.
‘What the hell are you playing at, Panda?’ thundered Guy. ‘You’re totally over-reacting. What happens if the Press ring, or, even worse, the vicar or Lady Chisleden?’
‘I don’t care,’ screamed Georgie.
Out of the window she saw that a sudden fall of snow had covered the sweet spring promise of the primroses, and burst into tears.
22
The marriage limped on full of spats. Guy came down at midday on Good Friday looking wretched and carrying a box of glasses. ‘To replace the ones you threw at me,’ he said heavily, then, priding himself on his frugality: ‘From the Reject Shop.’
‘Why don’t you put me in the window,’ snarled Georgie.
Unable to suppress a craving for information that Guy was plainly not going to volunteer, Georgie asked if he’d seen Julia.
‘We spoke briefly on the telephone,’ said Guy, who had his back to her at the drinks table. ‘I’ve talked to Harry, and because we’ve sent out the invites and done a lot of press lobbying and advertising, we’ve decided to go ahead with her exhibition.’
‘Did Julia mention me?’ asked Georgie.
‘We didn’t discuss you,’ said Guy crushingly, pouring half an inch of whisky into one of his new glasses. ‘Harry will deal with Julia from now on. But I shall obviously have to attend the private view.’
‘Thought you’d viewed her enough in private.’
‘Don’t be petty. Julia wants us to be friends, as much as we can be. She’d like you to be there as well.’
If he says ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’, I shall scream, thought Georgie.
‘To err—’ began Guy.
‘I’m not gracing her private view,’ said Georgie flatly, ‘just because she needs a celeb to pull in the Press.’
‘That is the most horrible remark I’ve ever heard,’ said Guy. ‘It’s my gallery and I make fifty per cent out of every sale. I would have thought you would have wanted to attract the Press.’
And Georgie had promptly burst into tears and run out of the house.
As she ran down the path Guy had cut out of the wood for her, she heard the cuckoo for the first time. The angelic third floating through the trees.
‘Unpleasing to a married ear, cuckoo, cuckoo,’ sobbed Georgie.
Ahead lay Valhalla. She was tempted to dump on poor Kitty Rannaldini, who had been endlessly cuckolded and survived – just. But as Rannaldini might be there, who would be amused rather than sympathetic, she stumbled on. There had never been anything like the pain.
Wandering aimlessly she arrived home to find the BMW gone. The red sun was disappearing over the horizon, a cricket-ball hit for six – like Guy over Ju Ju. Sunsets were only bearable because the sun would rise again tomorrow. If Guy never came back, she’d die. Leaping into her ancient Golf she set out to look for him. She didn’t have to go as far as Eldercombe. There was the BMW crookedly parked in the churchyard, which in the twilight was still lit by daffodils. The church was decked for Easter. Breathing in the smell of narcissi and furniture polish, Georgie saw Guy slumped over the front pew, head bowed on clasped hands. When she touched his shoulder, his face was streaming with tears.
‘Oh, Panda,’ he sobbed, ‘I’ve made such a cock-up of my life, but I love you so much. Please don’t leave me.’
Georgie pulled his head against her belly.
‘It’s OK I love you, too. I nearly died when I saw the car gone. I thought you’d gone to her.’
‘Never, never, never.’
Stumbling out of the church, they stopped to kiss each other in the doorway, and were seen by a photographer who worked for the Rutminster News on his way home from football. On Monday morning The Scorpion printed a picture of the happiest couple in England.
The truce was fleeting. In the weeks that followed Guy talked of commuting, but he never did. The weight fell off Georgie, who tried to glam herself up when he came home, but however quick she was in the bath, he was asleep by the time she came to bed.
Georgie was distraught. She couldn’t stop crying, and, unable to believe Guy’s protestations that he wasn’t seeing Julia any more, she felt as venomous and rejected as ragwort in a field of cows. Not only had she lost her hero and her best friend, but her image of herself as a nice person, which Guy’s great imagined love had given her.
The rows were terrible, with Georgie boozing and ranting into the night, then apologizing in panic in case she’d gone too far and Guy really would leave her.
The wastage was awful, too: milk going sour because it wasn’t taken in; Dinsdale getting the casserole Mother Courage had made for the weekend, which no-one had touched; fuzzy potatoes on their third day in a saucepan of water; black volcanic shapes discovered in the Aga days later; and all the vegetables leaking in the rack. Even Dinsdale finally went off his food. The Press were also sniffing around. So many marriages were breaking up, they wanted to know the secret of a happy one.
‘Ignorance,’ Georgie told The Scorpion in an unguarded moment.
On automatic pilot, she managed to go up to London, talk about Rock Star on Aspel, open a supermarket and have a long session with the whizz-kid producer who was revamping some of her old songs for the new Catchitune album. ‘Rock Star’ still topped the charts, but every time she heard this celebration of Guy’s dependability on the radio she felt sick.
She also had to live through the nightmare of Julia’s exhibition. She didn’t go to the private view, Guy didn’t want any more glasses smashed. But there was a large piece in You magazine. Julia, from the photographs, had cut her hair, and now had a head of russet curls rather like the Bubbles painting.
‘There is a wistful air about lovely Julia Armstrong,’ ran the copy. ‘Slim as a boy . . .’
More like the first P
eregrine than ever, thought Georgie savagely. But it made her realize how awful it must be for Julia reading about her and Guy all the time.
Poor Guy wasn’t having much fun either. Julia’s paintings had sold well, but the art market had taken a dive and he’d also bought a couple of minor French Impressionists for a property developer, who’d suddenly called in the receiver. Guy was left with the bill.
But he could have put up with business being so awful, and Georgie’s tantrums, and the nightmare of his marriage, if he’d still had Julia to lighten his darkness. He missed her terribly. It broke his heart when she rang up and tearfully pleaded with him to see her.
Nor were his men friends any help. Larry, in his now-married bliss in Jamaica, showed no interest in buying Guy’s paintings, but insisted on being incredibly sanctimonious.
‘If I can give up Nikki, why can’t you give up Julia?’
‘She’s refusing to give me up.’
‘Get an answering machine. That’ll stop the dropped telephone calls.’
‘I’ve got an answering-back machine at home,’ said Guy. ‘It’s called Georgie.’
Rannaldini was vastly amused by the whole thing.
‘Find another mistress, dear boy. There are plenty more fishwives in the sea.’
Guy was fed up. How could he find anyone else? He was desperately strapped for cash. There were all those pretty separated women who made warm eyes at him at gallery parties and in church on Sunday, but he could hardly afford to buy them a drink.
In the old days both Julia and Georgie had adored him, told him he was marvellous and asked his opinion on absolutely everything – two loves had he of comfort and comfort. Now they were both displaying all the venom of tabloid newspapers denied an exclusive. Hell certainly knew no fury like two women scorned. Guy felt like a worm done over by a blackbird.
23
Georgie couldn’t work. There had been no rain in Paradise for weeks, and as the springs that had hurtled past her study window when they moved in had dried up, so had her inspiration. Trailing through St Peter’s churchyard with Dinsdale towards the end of May, she noticed Queen Anne was losing her lace and the wild garlic its flowers. There were white petals everywhere, and yellowing leaves flattened probably by lovers, but not by her. Georgie’s eyes were so full of tears she didn’t see Kitty Rannaldini approaching with her arms full of huge scented pink peonies to decorate the church.