The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

by Jilly Cooper

‘Page three. He’s quite a good writer, this George Eliot.’

  Lysander was very hurt when Ferdie roared with laughter. He knew he was thick but he’d just executed a dangerous assignment with great skill and put a lot of dosh into Ferdie’s pocket.

  ‘Mrs Gunn was so grateful this morning, she’s given me twenty grand to spend at Ralph Lauren so I can buy lots of sharp suits.’ If he’d been bitchy he’d have added that Ferdie had put on a lot of weight and there was no way he could get into any of them. ‘And she offered me a yacht with my own mooring at the Hamble whenever I want, which I told her I didn’t.’

  ‘You dickhead!’ exploded Ferdie. ‘Ring her up and accept and we’ll flog it.’

  Marigold was overjoyed to see Lysander.

  ‘Chanel Number Fayve, oh you remembered, oh Laysander.’

  As she flung herself into his arms, Lysander noticed that she had, like Ferdie, put on a lot of weight. But as they had been held up in traffic there was no time to do more than bath and change before setting off to Georgie’s. Maggie the puppy, who was still dopey, having devoured a bowl of bread and milk and been inspected by Jack and Patch, had now fallen asleep on the sofa.

  ‘Poor little thing came from the National Canine Defence Kennels in Evesham,’ lied Ferdie, as Lysander, still a bit pale and black under the eyes, came downstairs rolling up the sleeves of a dark blue shirt.

  ‘God, Gregor knows how to iron.’

  ‘You look gorgeous,’ sighed Marigold. ‘Lucky Georgie.’

  She wanted to come along to effect the introductions. It had been her idea. But Ferdie didn’t want any feminine compassion softening the hard bargain he intended to drive.

  ‘Well, at least nag Georgie about the village fête,’ said Marigold. ‘We desperately need any clothes she doesn’t wear any more for the Nearly New Stall.’

  Georgie watched a dying wych-elm showering yellow leaves on the burnt lawn. It hadn’t rained since the storm that had delayed Flora the first day she’d had singing coaching with Rannaldini. Honeysuckle buds like bloody red hands clawed at the terrace walls. The hay had been cut for a second time in Rannaldini’s field below, the bales like yellow coffins symbolizing the death of the summer. Georgie had had a terrible day – not a note of music or a word written. Having made a dropped telephone call earlier she had found out that Julia was back in the cottage at Eldercombe. So Guy’s compulsive mowing, even though there was no grass, would go on.

  She didn’t know what had made her agree to see Lysander and Ferdie. The whole enterprise would distract her from work and cost a fortune and her confidence had taken such a battering she’d never pull it off. There’s no way Guy was going to stop seeing Julia.

  They were shooting clays across the valley in preparation for 12 August. Bang, bang, bang, like a relentlessly approaching army. She turned on the prom. It was the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, which Guy was always playing, probably because it was one of his and Julia’s ‘tunes’. Georgie started to cry.

  ‘Marigold looks well, doesn’t she?’ said Lysander as they stormed up a drive lit by hogweed and dog-daisies. ‘When you think what she looked like last February. I can’t wait to see Georgie.’

  In nervous excitement Lysander smoothed his windswept hair in Ferdie’s wing mirror.

  Georgie, however, was in a far worse state than Marigold had ever been. Even done up on their last notches, her belt and her watch hung loose. The stones of her engagement ring, fallen inwards, scratched against her wine glass. Like purple worms the veins rose on her thin hands. Her hair had lost its lovely Titian glow and had no life, like a dull village. She hadn’t shaved the back of one of her emaciated legs and her ankles were scratched with brambles from wandering aimlessly through the woods. It also looked as though someone had grated coconut on the shoulders of her black T-shirt.

  Getting drinks took ages.

  ‘I’m sorry this tonic’s flat,’ she said when they’d finally sat down on the terrace. ‘There’s a bottle in the fridge,’ she added as Ferdie leapt up. ‘I’m sorry the place is a mess. Mother Courage, my cleaner, has gone to the Costa Brava for a week.’

  ‘Lovely dog,’ said Lysander, as Dinsdale wriggled along the bench until his head and shoulders were resting on Georgie’s lap. She winced as the dog’s elbows dug into her fleshless thighs.

  ‘I spend my time taking grass seed out of his eyes.’

  Which are only marginally more red-rimmed than your own, thought Lysander. ‘We had a basset,’ he told her. ‘They’re terrible at getting up in the morning.’

  ‘You two should get along,’ said Ferdie, returning with the tonic.

  In the fridge he had also found blackening avocadoes, tomatoes spotted with grey, whiskery sweetcorn and mouldy cheese. All the plants in the kitchen were dying. Phlox and night-scented stock drooped round the terrace unwatered. This was definitely a house out of control.

  Lysander loathed the moment when Ferdie told the wives where they were going wrong. Rannaldini’s haybales reminded him not of coffins but of school trunks and sobbing into his pillow every night at prep school, until every boy in the dormitory had hurled their regulation black lace-up school shoes at him. No wonder he was brain damaged.

  He was still smarting over Ferdie’s amusement. How was he to know George Eliot was a woman? Down below he could see Rannaldini’s horses seeking shade beneath a huge oak tree. He must get Arthur sound. Box rest had done no good. He’d turn him out when he’d got him back to Paradise.

  ‘I can’t afford that,’ an aghast Georgie was saying as she rotated her leather bracelet. ‘Marigold never said it’d be that much.’

  ‘Inflation’s gone up three per cent since we sorted her out,’ said Ferdie, ‘and Lysander must have a soft-top Ferrari.’

  ‘I am due a big royalty cheque,’ said Georgie. ‘If it arrives when Guy’s not here I suppose I could stash it away and pay you with that.’

  ‘No sweat. The important thing is to get Guy back. He’s away Monday to Friday, I presume.’

  Georgie nodded. ‘But the coast isn’t always clear. Guy keeps telling his lady friends that I’m lonely. Last night bloody Hermione dropped in, had three whiskies and scrambled eggs, and I had to miss EastEnders, The Bill, After Henry and Capital City.’

  Lysander turned even paler. ‘How dreadful. Couldn’t you have taped them?’

  ‘I was buggered if I’d show her I’m hooked on soaps. She thinks I’m an utter philistine as it is. Then she had the cheek to tell me I wasn’t unhappy, just suffering from rejection and hurt pride, the smug cow.’

  ‘Well, if the lady friends roll up it doesn’t matter.’ Ferdie was anxious to get down to basics. ‘It’ll be no bad thing if they tell Guy Lysander was here.’

  ‘But Guy’s always been turned on by my having other men,’ said Georgie, bursting into tears. ‘When we were first married and I went on tour and had the occasional one-night stand he used to love hearing about it when I came home – although he made me promise never to see them again. I often made things up to excite him, so he thinks I’m far more promiscuous than I was.’

  ‘But he’s never faced serious competition on his own doorstep,’ interrupted Ferdie. ‘The first thing to do is to start eating, cut out the booze and get some sleeping pills.’

  ‘I won’t be able to work. They make me so uncoordinated in the morning,’ said Georgie in panic.

  ‘You’re not working anyway. When he starts next week, Lysander will take you shopping. Don’t buy anything strapless or sleeveless. You’re too thin at the moment. And no minis, either, it looks too feverish. And,’ Ferdie added sternly, ‘you must do something about that scurf.’

  ‘It isn’t scurf.’ Georgie frantically brushed her shoulders. ‘It’s sand from burying my head like an ostrich for so many years.’

  Back at Marigold’s house, Lysander sank into the blackest gloom. Even Marigold taping EastEnders and The Bill didn’t raise his spirits. He’d last seen Marigold six months ago, when she’d been down to eight stone,
looking terrific and was giving off sexual vibes like a mare in season. She had also provided him with comfort and a home when he desperately needed it. He had therefore carried an idealized picture of her in his head, which had sometimes merged with that of his mother. The reality was a let-down. Marigold was more matronly, bossier – all that fuss because they’d forgotten to ask Georgie about the Nearly New Stall – and much commoner than he’d remembered her.

  She was now having a double chinwag with Ferdie as she painted bluebells on a pink chair.

  ‘Gay, Ay’m afraid, has been rather a swayne to Georgie,’ she was saying.

  Part of Lysander’s buzz at taking on Georgie had been that it would give him the chance to bonk Marigold again. Now he wasn’t sure he wanted to. And Georgie had been harrowing. He was fed up with self-obsessed, desperately unhappy, married women. He wanted some fun. Clutching Jack, as he always did in moments of stress, he announced: ‘I can’t take Georgie on. She’s too old and too far gone. She ought to be in the funny farm.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Marigold, who was secretly relieved Lysander didn’t fancy Georgie. ‘She’s so low and you were so wonderful at bringing Larry back.’

  Ferdie noticed the Picasso and the Stubbs had vanished from the drawing-room wall. He’d always suspected Larry was over-leveraged. It must have cost a bomb getting rid of Nikki, or keeping her quiet if he’d perhaps weakened and seen her again. Marigold might well need Lysander’s services.

  The puppy, who was stretched out beside Lysander on the sofa, gave a whimper and flexed her toes in her sleep. Her skin drooped between each rib. Ferdie knew how to touch Lysander’s heart.

  ‘Georgie’s like that little dog,’ he said gently. ‘She may not have cigarette burns on her back, but she’s in just as bad a way. Give it a try for a week.’

  There was a long pause. Safe from the banging clays, pigeons cooed contentedly in Marigold’s wood.

  ‘Oh, OK,’ said Lysander crossly.

  ‘Come and have a look at the cottage I’ve found for you,’ said Marigold, ‘and then we’ll have some dinner.’

  Magpie Cottage stood in the far side of dense woods on the edge of Larry’s land. Approached from the road by a rough cart-track, its front garden consisted of neat squares of lawn bordered by iceberg roses. Pink rambler roses and purple clematis swarmed over the door. Inside there was a kitchen, a dining room and drawing room knocked through and two bedrooms upstairs. Out at the back was another little lawn, a scented flower-bed filled with white stocks, pinks and tobacco plants, a pond and a white bench under a walnut tree. A four-acre field filled with dog daisies and red sorrel curved round the house and garden like a magnet.

  ‘It’s seriously nice. Arthur’ll love it,’ said Lysander, who had cheered up. ‘He’s so nosy he’ll be able to put his head in through all the downstairs windows.’

  ‘It’ll need a few pennies spending on it,’ admitted Marigold.

  ‘Judging by the smell a few pennies have been spent in it already,’ said Ferdie.

  ‘A keeper had it,’ explained Marigold, ‘hence the pong of ferret. Ay’ll get it painted and cleaned up and you’ll need a cooker. Would you prefer gas or electricity?’

  ‘Basically I don’t cook,’ said Lysander, ‘but gas is better for lighting cigarettes.’

  ‘You will keep the garden taydy, won’t you, Lysander? Paradayse has won the Best-Kept Village award ten years runnin’.’

  Marigold worked fast furnishing the cottage with, among other things, a large brass four-poster, blue-ticking sofas and chairs and a big wooden bishop’s chair she’d found in a jumble sale. Eight days later, Lysander, Arthur, Jack, Tiny and little Maggie moved in. Loot from grateful wives now included six polo ponies which Lysander was keeping over at Ricky France-Lynch’s yard at Eldercombe and Mrs Gunn’s promised yacht which Ferdie had already swapped for a new soft-top dark blue Ferrari. He felt it was important for people to be able to see Lysander driving round Paradise and, besides, he wanted to appropriate the red Ferrari himself.

  After moving in, he and Lysander went out to The Heavenly Host where they dined outside under the stars in the buddleia-scented dusk. Taking off his jacket Ferdie noticed Lysander’s post which he’d left in his inside pocket.

  ‘I forgot to give you these. Fan mail still coming in for Arthur and three letters from your father.’

  ‘I don’t want to see Dad. He was so horrible last time.’

  ‘Well, at least open the one from your bank.’ Ferdie chucked a thick white envelope across the red-check tablecloth.

  ‘Are you determined to ruin my dinner? Gregor and I lost a hell of a lot of money in the casino at Palma. If only you’d let me come home straight away.’

  ‘Open it,’ said Ferdie, ‘I promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised.’

  With shaking hands Lysander tore open the envelope and holding up a candle scanned the contents for a long time, his lips moving as he read, growing paler and paler.

  ‘My God,’ he whispered, ‘I’m £102,000 overdrawn and I’ve got to pay £750 interest. What am I going to do? The Ferrari’ll have to go and the ponies and what about Arthur’s vet bill? Oh Christ.’

  ‘It’s in credit, you jerk,’ said Ferdie. ‘And you made £750 in interest just last month. So you can bloody well buy me dinner.’

  It took him several minutes to convince Lysander, who promptly suggested they went out later and blew some of it at the nearest casino.

  ‘We will not,’ said Ferdie tartly. ‘I’ll be fired if I don’t put in some work at the office and you’ve got to move in first thing on Georgie. Here’s the way I suggest you play it.’

  28

  A heavy dew silvered the parched fields. Invisible larks carolled joyously in a sky as blue as Mary’s robes. However, as Lysander drew up at Angel’s Reach the following morning, Georgie Maguire greeted him in a dressing gown and tears.

  ‘I thought Guy’d left me a little love note on the kitchen table,’ she sobbed, ‘but when I looked it just said: Don’t forget the dustbins. And even worse he’s written Julia’s number, without her name of course, on the inside of his Parish Council file.’

  She waved a buff folder. ‘I felt so miserable I’ve written Cuckoo beside it in biro, and now I can’t rub it out.’

  ‘Pas de problème.’ Taking the folder, Lysander tore off the corner with Julia’s number and chucked it in the bin.

  ‘Guy will notice that even more,’ said Georgie aghast.

  ‘Say it’s mice, or better still, moths. The waitress at The Heavenly Host says there is a plague of moths because of the drought.’

  ‘There aren’t any clothes for them to eat because they’ve all gone to Marigold’s Nearly New Stall,’ said Georgie, but she stopped crying.

  ‘Go and have a nice long bath and get dressed,’ said Lysander, dumping several carrier bags on the kitchen table. ‘I’m going to make you porridge for breakfast. No, I promise it’s delicious, with cream and treacle, and then croissants with black-cherry jam.’

  ‘D’you know how to make porridge?’ asked Georgie.

  ‘I’ve made enough bran mashes in my life. You just read the directions. Then I’m going to take you to meet Arthur and then we’ll have lunch at The Pearly Gates to get people gossiping and then go shopping for lots of glamorous clothes. Bath’s better than Rutminster. Oh look, there’s a little green van going up Marigold’s drive.’

  ‘That van goes to all the big houses in Paradise every Monday,’ said Georgie sadly. ‘It takes away old plants and replaces them with shiny new ones with flowers. They ought to do the same with wives.’

  ‘Now, now,’ reproved Lysander. ‘You’ve got to stop sniping and cheer up.’

  The ice was broken by Lysander reading all the directions wrong and making porridge so thick the spoon set in it like cement – so they had three croissants each and gave the porridge to Arthur. When they returned much later in the day they discovered that the video that Lysander’d thought was a jolly musical turned out to b
e an incredibly blue movie about rent boys.

  As a result Lysander sat through the entire video in mounting horror with his T-shirt neck pulled up over his eyes, only lowering it occasionally when Georgie, in fits of laughter, said it was safe to look or when he wanted another drag at his joint.

  ‘I really like gays,’ he kept saying in bewilderment. ‘Who would have thought my friend Gregor could do things like that? I’m sorry, Georgie.’

  He’s still only a child, thought Georgie, but certainly a very endearing one.

  When Guy returned on Friday he was relieved to find the house a lot tidier and flowers in the downstairs rooms – but no little posy to welcome him in his dressing room. Nor any whisky, nor dinner on, nor any sign of Georgie. Usually the sniping started as he crossed the threshold. When she drifted down the backstairs from her study half an hour later she looked noticeably better, as though an iron had smoothed out her face.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked in amazement.

  ‘I usually come home on Friday,’ said Guy nettled.

  ‘Is it Friday? I didn’t realize. O God, I haven’t done anything for supper.’

  ‘Work must be going well!’ Guy was nonplussed. Coming home had recently been like being parachuted into an effing mine field.

  Next morning Georgie rose early insisting she must walk a surprised and intensely irritated Dinsdale before it grew too hot. She put on a new and becoming T-shirt, and lots of lipstick and scent before she left, then stayed away for two hours reading Billboard and The Face under a chestnut tree. On the way home she carefully removed her lipstick with a Kleenex and rubbed into Dinsdale’s fur some of Lysander’s Eau Sauvage, which they’d hidden in an oak tree on the edge of the wood. This made her giggle so much she walked into the house looking happy for the first time in months.

  Returning from a Sunday afternoon trip to get more petrol for the mower and ring Julia, Guy was disconcerted to find a note from Georgie: ‘Just popped down to The Apple Tree to get some milk.’

  ‘You’ve lived here for over four months,’ reproved Guy when she returned an hour later, ‘and you hadn’t realized The Apple Tree is shut on Sunday afternoon. They have to have some time off.’