The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

by Jilly Cooper

  Guy had just announced he was going to London, she’d been so bitchy she couldn’t blame him. For the first time since March, ‘Rock Star’ had dropped out of the Top Twenty. Nor were her spirits raised when a dark blue Ferrari drew up at the front door in a cloud of dust.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ shouted Flora.

  Elongated as a piece of asparagus between two slices of brown bread, she lolled between Ferdie and Lysander in the pistachio-green dress which Georgie had just spent hours looking for.

  ‘Boot, saddle to whore and away,’ sang Lysander in his high tuneless falsetto.

  ‘See you lot in a bit,’ said Flora as she clambered over Ferdie with much giggling.

  ‘Georgie,’ yelled Lysander, but Georgie had slammed down the window.

  Babbling on about her gorgeous day, Flora met her mother in the hall.

  ‘Lysander rides so well and poor Ferdie so badly, I’m afraid Natasha’s been put off for life,’ and she went on to describe the plunge into the lake.

  ‘Stupid exhibitionist,’ said Guy coming downstairs with his suitcase.

  ‘As a result Rannaldini wants Lysander to ride for him.’

  ‘Supper’ll be ready in half an hour,’ said Georgie, ‘I thought we could watch Howard’s Way and have supper on our knees.’ Only possible because Guy, who disapproved of soaps, would be gone.

  ‘Oh Mum, I’m sorry. I’m going out with Ferdie and Lysander. They want me to meet Arthur and then we’re going to the cinema.’

  ‘Good idea!’ Guy was absolutely delighted. ‘If you buck up I’ll drop you off on the way.’

  ‘That’s really kind.’ Not wanting to witness her mother’s disappointment, Flora bolted upstairs.

  ‘Still stupid exhibitionism,’ said Guy, pouring himself a weak whisky. ‘But I’m glad Lysander and Flora have got together. They’re the right age.’

  Somehow Georgie managed not to cry until they’d left. She knew Guy was off to see Julia. He’d deliberately played squash with Larry after tea as an excuse to shower and change before going to London. She was ashamed how depressed she felt that suddenly Guy and Flora were getting on. But most painful of all was that Flora had obviously got off with Lysander. Georgie had grown so fond of him over the past three weeks, although, despite Guy’s suspicions, he hadn’t laid a finger on her. Admittedly when they’d disappeared into the wood yesterday he’d squeezed her waist and, with his lovely infectious laugh, said, ‘Shall we play it for real?’ But she knew he was joking. Young boys didn’t fancy hoary wrinklies, although it was clear from the suicidal way she felt now the reverse was possible. She couldn’t even win Guy back like Marigold had recovered Larry. She was an utter, utter failure.

  Ferdie returned to Fountain Street three days later in even lower spirits. He’d just taken Natasha out for a ludicrously expensive dinner. Her first course of two scallops had cost twenty-five pounds. She’d spent the whole evening quizzing him about Lysander and bitching about Kitty. Unfortunately Ferdie’s increasing dislike did nothing to diminish his lust. Lunging with all the finesse of a grisly bear, he was rewarded with a slapped face.

  It was after midnight but the telephone was ringing as he let himself in. Hope that it might be Natasha apologizing gave way to fury when it turned out to be Lysander.

  ‘Oh Ferd, I’m so depressed. I don’t think this campaign’s going to work. Guy’s showing no sign of giving up Julia and Georgie’s really ratty with me and she’s losing weight again. Basically I think we should scrap the whole thing and pay her her money back.’

  ‘Don’t be so fucking wet.’ Ferdie had already invested his 10 per cent. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day. Try a bit harder. Take Georgie on some decent jaunts. You’ve got the church fête on Saturday, haven’t you?’

  ‘The party of the decade,’ said Lysander gloomily. ‘I want to go clubbing, Ferd. I need some fun.’

  ‘You’re to beat Guy at everything – shooting, chucking coconuts, tug of war, guessing the weight of the pig.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell me how much Natasha weighs.’

  ‘Shuddup, and you’ve got to win the best-chocolate-cake-made-by-a-man competition.’

  ‘Don’t talk bollocks, I can’t cook.’

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ howled Ferdie. ‘So I have to make it for you. I can’t get down till late Friday. Get the recipe from Marigold.’

  32

  Georgie’s mood did not improve the following week when Marigold kept borrowing Lysander to pick up stuff for the fête and then roping him in to set up stalls. Why the hell should she pay Lysander to give Marigold kudos?

  Having savagely prayed for rain on the day, Georgie was ashamed to find her hopes fulfilled. But the rain only chucked down for a couple of hours, leaving puddles all over the rock-hard ground and the weather hotter and closer than ever.

  Georgie found opening the fête even more frightening than her own launching party. Embarrassed to show the world such a diminished version of the abandoned beauty on the Rock Star album, she was also desperate to shine in front of Hermione, Marigold, Joy Hillary and, most of all, Guy – particularly as she had repeatedly refused both his and the vicar’s offers to rehearse in front of them. If by some miracle she did it well, she didn’t want them taking the credit.

  Guy spent Saturday morning commuting between Angel’s Reach and the vicarage. Every vegetable had been dug up in the garden to find longer carrots and larger marrows than Rannaldini’s, Larry’s and Bob’s. He’d even tried his hand at some elderflower wine. But competition was at its fiercest in the class for the best chocolate cake made by a man. Guy had baked four cakes last night before he was satisfied. Larry was rumoured to have enlisted the help of Anton Mosimann and to be flying the cake down from London. Rannaldini had made his cake last weekend and Kitty, having removed it from the deep freeze, had just delivered it to the flower-tent wondering if she should leave Tabloid on guard.

  She now despondently surveyed her bric-à-brac and was wondering how she was going to sell cracked 78s, single book-ends, cake knives, jigsaw puzzles of Norwegian fjords, purple plastic roses and a flowered vase she had given Hermione last Christmas, when Lysander came rushing up.

  ‘Kitty, Kitty, help, help. Ferdie’s going to murder me. He stayed up all night making me the perfect chocolate cake and I’ve just dropped it in a puddle.’

  Kitty giggled. They decided against pinching a cake from Joy Hillary’s stall next door in case the cook responsible recognized it. But by the time Kitty had found a clean plate and a white lacy paper mat, squeezed out the cake, shoved it together, disguised the cracks with Cadbury’s flake sprinkled on top, and written a new card, Lysander’s offering looked quite presentable.

  ‘God, you’re a star,’ he hugged her. ‘I don’t know how you made all those cakes for that cricket tea. It took Ferdie and me till four in the morning.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Now, Georgie’s opening the fête at two-fifteen. That gives us ages to have a bet on the one-thirty and a quick one or three in The Pearly Gates. Come on.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Kitty sadly. ‘I promised Marigold and Joy I’d watch their stalls.’

  She refused all Lysander’s entreaties so he was reduced to boosting her turn-over by buying an old fox fur as a present for Jack and Maggie and insisting she kept the change from twenty pounds.

  ‘It’s for the spire. Oh Jesus, here comes Marigold. I don’t want to blow up any more balloons.’ And with that he shot into The Pearly Gates.

  Back at Angel’s Reach, Georgie was livid with Guy for insisting she wear a dress. Her only presentable one had disappeared with Flora. Why the hell Flora needed a pistachio-green silk tunic to go backpacking, Georgie couldn’t imagine. And she’d have to shave her legs and put Clinique on her varicose veins.

  ‘I’ll just ring Marigold to check everything’s on target. We must leave by five to two,’ said Guy as Georgie switched on her hair dryer.

  Switching it off a second later to spray on some mousse, she heard Guy say, ‘Hi, it’s me.’

&n
bsp; ‘Marigold OK?’ Georgie asked later, as she ringed her eyes with dark brown pencil.

  ‘Couldn’t be bothered to ring her.’

  ‘I heard you saying: “Hi, it’s me.” ’ Then, as Guy put on his mental-nurse face, ‘I did, Guy.’

  ‘You must be going mad. I didn’t ring anyone. Promise to go and see Dr Benson on Monday.’

  Unearthed from a black dustbin bag in the attic, Georgie’s grey denim midi was wrinkled like a rhino.

  If I composed classical music it wouldn’t matter, she thought savagely, everyone would say I looked charmingly eccentric.

  ‘Why are you spraying scent on the back of your knees to open a village fête?’ asked Guy.

  ‘I might meet a ravishing dwarf,’ snarled Georgie.

  ‘You are not bringing Dinsdale.’

  ‘No Dinsdale, no me. You can open the fucking fête yourself.’

  Yellow leaves dislodged by the rain tumbled out of the limes around the village green. The high street was hung with red-and-white bunting. Parked cars glittered like shingle in the newly cut barley field next to the vicarage. Sheltered by high walls, seldom exposed to the winds which swept up from the Bristol Channel, the Hillarys’ garden was a top-coat warmer than Valhalla or Paradise Grange. It boasted a yellow catalpa covered in big creamy white flowers and two massive horse chestnuts, whose leaves, touching the ground like cardinal’s robes, added a suitable ecclesiastical note. A rainbow of different coloured clematis rose out of a bed of lavender against the ancient lichened walls of the house.

  The crowds already milling round the stalls agreed on Joy Hillary’s green fingers, but chuntered that the vicar must have been sprinkling illicitly to produce such a perfect lawn.

  ‘Turning all that wine he drinks back into water,’ suggested Bob Harefield, whose bald head had tanned as brown and freckled as a farm egg and who, in his quiet, steadily efficient way, had achieved far more than anyone else. Having set up most of the stalls, priced the goods and refereed squawking matches he was now taking money at the gate.

  ‘You two ought to get in free,’ he told Georgie and Guy, who insisted on paying.

  ‘How good of you to come,’ chorused the vicar’s wife, Marigold and Lady Chisleden. As they all surged forward to ‘receive the personality’, the recently drenched grass pegged their high-heeled advance.

  ‘We don’t really allow dogs,’ said Joy Hillary, remembering Dinsdale without enthusiasm.

  ‘Well, at least keep him on a lead,’ said Marigold.

  ‘A quick whisk round the stalls to thank our caring helpers,’ said Lady Chisleden, ‘and then we’d better proceed with the opening.’

  Poor Kitty was running bric-à-brac single-handed because last year’s Miss Paradise, who was supposed to be helping her, hadn’t turned up.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Meredith, waving a cardboard disk.

  ‘You put it at the bottom of your pans to stop fings boiling over.’

  ‘Pity you can’t stand Rannaldini on it. I’ve just bought a first edition of a book called The Autobiography of a Cad for 10p.’

  ‘Written by every husband in Paradise,’ said Georgie, pausing in front of them.

  Joy Hillary shot her an alarmed look. Marigold had promised that Georgie could be relied on to behave, but she had a wild look about her and she must have slept in that dress.

  ‘I think you know Kitty Rannaldini,’ said Lady Chisleden, ‘a tower of strength.’

  ‘An absolute bric-à-brac,’ giggled Meredith. Grubbing around in a cardboard box he discovered the purple plastic tulips and handed them to Georgie. ‘Just in case Marigold forgets your bouquet, dear.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Meredith,’ snapped Joy Hillary, bustling Georgie on to the plant stall where Marigold was urging people to buy plants to enhance their Best-Kept gardens.

  ‘We’ve got some lovely heartsease,’ she told Georgie.

  ‘Take more than a plant to ease mine.’

  ‘Come and guess the weight of the pig,’ interrupted Joy Hillary hastily, ‘and then I think we’ll have your opening.’

  ‘’Allo, Georgie,’ yelled Mother Courage.’

  ’Ot isn’t it? People are passing out like ’ot cakes.’

  After the rain, the wasps were beginning to dive-bomb fruit and the jam tarts on the cake stall.

  ‘I had a coffee cake in here a minute ago,’ announced Lady Chisleden, gazing into a carrier bag in bewilderment.

  On the way to the platform, Georgie caught sight of Ferdie who was having a ghastly afternoon giving pony rides on Tiny, who, maddened by flies and general ill-temper, had bitten him three times and lashed out at several small children.

  ‘Where’s your bloody little friend?’ hissed Georgie. ‘He promised never to leave my side.’

  Ferdie was tempted to snap back that his bloody little friend had promised to be there to control Tiny, but, as there was so much money at stake, he murmured soothingly that Lysander would be here any second.

  Guy, like his father the bishop, always whisked hither and thither at church occasions, big hand on bare elbows, telling willing helpers how splendid they were being. Now he was manning the loud speaker, his strong voice ringing round Paradise: ‘Pray silence for our vicar.’

  Everyone milled around patting Dinsdale, who was thoughtfully licking coffee cake off his whiskers. Percival Hillary then went into an orgy of platitudes about Georgie needing absolutely no introduction and how she and her husband Guy had been a most acceptable addition to our little community and how grateful they were to Georgie for taking time out from her busy schedule.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ began Georgie.

  The microphone let out an eldritch screech.

  ‘Speak up,’ yelled old Miss Cricklade who’d been home-made wine champion for ten years running.

  ‘Thank you for making us so welcome.’ Georgie sounded as though she was coming from outer space. ‘It all looks absolutely lovely, but I know events of this kind do not spring up over-night like mushrooms. They take months of hard work and organization and I’d specially like to thank—’

  She was interrupted by the doodle-bug chug of Larry’s helicopter which landed in the next-door field blowing chaff over everyone. Miss Cricklade, who had been a fire watcher during the war, took refuge under a trestle table.

  ‘As our opener was saying,’ prompted Percival.

  But Georgie had lost her place and couldn’t remember whom she’d thanked. She could see that Mother Courage, her wisteria-mauve hair piled on top, her over-made-up face flushed from the I pub, was holding Dinsdale and egging her on.

  ‘I’d like to thank the Reverend and Mrs Hillary for lending us their lovely garden,’ stammered Georgie, and was about to urge everyone to dig deeply into their pockets and spend, spend, spend and tell a little joke at the end when she realized she’d lost her audience. Looking down, she saw that Lysander’s Jack had rolled up and was vigorously fornicating with Dinsdale’s back leg.

  ‘Don’t, Debenham, that’s rude,’ squawked Mother Courage as her white plastic boot sent Jack for six.

  ‘And I declare this fête open,’ mumbled Georgie to very muted applause.

  ‘I am going to murder Jack and Lysander,’ vowed Georgie furiously. ‘And Larry,’ she added as she saw him scuttling into the flower-tent to get his chocolate cake in on time.

  But there was no time for brooding.

  Hissing, ‘If only you’d allowed Percy and I to rehearse you,’ Guy whisked her off to judge the fancy dress.

  ‘She never thanked Produce, Nearly New or Coconuts,’ Miss Cricklade was grumbling to Marigold.

  ‘Well done. You’ll need a bullet-proof vest,’ murmured Bob as he ushered Georgie into a ring full of shepherdesses, gypsies, clowns and pop stars.

  Georgie liked children and ear-marked Marigold’s boys dressed as Margaret and Dennis Thatcher and Archangel Mike’s two daughters sweating inside a white pantomime horse as Desert Orchid, as the likely winners, when a diversion was caused by He
rmione, looking wonderfully cool in a cream Chanel suit and a big straw hat.

  ‘I do hope we’re not too late,’ she was saying in her deep thrilling voice as she posted an angelic little boy in a sailor suit with a sailor hat on his dark curls into the ring. This must be Cosmo, Hermione and Bob’s ‘treasure’.

  ‘Hallo, darling, you only made it just in time. Let’s have a look at you.’ Crouching down beside him, Georgie nearly dropped the clipboard with her markings on. For, looking out of a tiny version of Hermione’s face, were the shiny black, deadly nightshade eyes of Rannaldini.

  Next moment she gave a shriek as Cosmo kicked her sharply on the shin and then laid about Denis Thatcher with his telescope. This speedily concentrated Georgie’s mind. She put Marigold’s boys first, Desert Orchid a close second, Miss Muffet’s spider third, Cosmo nowhere.

  ‘Little Cosmo is very sensitive. He won’t like that decision,’ said Hermione ominously as she retrieved her bawling child.

  ‘You’re going to need that bullet-proof vest more than ever,’ whispered Bob.

  ‘Can we have all animals in the ring for the Best Pet shown by a child?’ shouted Guy.

  ‘Pity Rannaldini’s in Geneva or we could have entered him,’ said Meredith.

  ‘Judged by our very own Hermione Harefield,’ added Guy to loud cheers which temporarily assuaged Hermione’s ire.

  ‘I must have tubes of Smarties for everyone,’ she was now insisting. ‘I will not have any little one disappointed.’

  ‘Hermione’s so caring,’ said Joy Hillary.

  Seeing Ferdie give Tiny a great kick, Miss Cricklade reported him to the RSPCA who had a tent by the exit. Numbly Georgie signed autographs, still dazed by the fact that little Cosmo was Rannaldini’s son. How did Bob and Kitty put up with such a constant public reminder? Finally, over the loud speaker, Guy announced that judging had finished in the flower-show tent and the public would be admitted shortly to see who’d won. Where the hell’s Lysander? thought Ferdie and Georgie in murderous unison.