by Jilly Cooper
‘I expect he does,’ agreed Hermione. ‘But I still don’t really like Georgie Maguire’s voice.’
‘I love it,’ said Lysander.
‘So do I,’ agreed Kitty defiantly, then, seeing Hermione’s glare, ‘I must go.’
‘I’ve got a great pile of contracts at home,’ said Hermione to punish her, ‘so perhaps you could pop over tomorrow and check them for me.’
So you don’t have to fork out for a lawyer, thought Marigold furiously.
As Lysander showed Kitty out, Hermione reproached Marigold for fraternizing with young men.
‘He’s probably G-A-Y, the way he was going on about Rupert Campbell-Black.’ Then patronizingly as she refilled her glass, ‘You’re not in your first youth, Marigold.’
‘I’m about to be into my first youth,’ muttered Marigold through clenched teeth.
‘Blow the wind southerly,’ sang Hermione on the tape.
‘Who was that girl?’ asked Lysander returning.
‘Didn’t you realize?’ said Marigold. ‘That’s Kitty Rannaldini.’
‘Rannaldini’s daughter?’ Lysander took a cigarette from Marigold’s pack.
‘No, his wife.’
‘His wife!’ said Lysander. ‘Bloody hell, I thought Rannaldini was into fantastic-looking women.’
Hermione had been about to reproach Lysander for smoking. Instead she bowed in acknowledgement of the implied compliment, then added sententiously: ‘Some people think she’s rather common, but I maintain Kitty Rannaldini is very much her own woman.’
‘Hardly be anyone else’s, looking like that,’ said Lysander. ‘He must have got her from Pug Rescue.’
‘That’s unkind.’ Hermione laughed heartily.
‘Kitty’s sweet,’ protested Marigold angrily. ‘She’s such a good listener — unlaike some — and so kaind you forget how plain she is.’
Outside the setting sun, like a great red air balloon, was turning the mist which had suddenly filled the valley the softest rose-pink. Having polished off another drink, Hermione, known locally as the Great White Hinter, asked if the Ferrari outside the door was Lysander’s and whether he could run her home.
‘I walked here, but it’s a bit chilly, and we singers are paranoid about getting colds. Goodbye, Marigold, don’t take everything quite so personally.’
Lysander returned ten minutes later to find Marigold gibbering with rage. Her fury at Hermione’s jibes and smugness had been exacerbated by a sudden, violent explosion of jealousy because she had waltzed off with Lysander. This was the more appalling because after all she had suffered over Larry, Marigold thought she was immune from feeling jealous about anyone else.
‘The bitch,’ she stormed, ‘not taking saides indeed. “Don’t be bitter, Marigold, if you like your hair, that’s what matters.” And being so patronizing about Georgie and poor darling Kitty.’
‘Have a drink. One won’t hurt. What’s brought all this on?’
‘Then insistin’ you drove her home. God, I’m unhappy.’
Marigold was so upset, she unthinkingly picked up the remaining quarter of chocolate cake and was about to shove it into her face when Lysander grabbed her hand, squeezing it until she dropped the cake on the floor. Then he took her in his arms.
‘Don’t be miserable. She’s just jealous. I think you’re absolutely gorgeous.’
‘You do?’ whispered Marigold.
‘Yarss,’ said Lysander, and catching her off guard as she giggled, he kissed her, nearly losing his tongue in the process as Marigold clamped her teeth and lips together with a squeal of horrified rage.
‘How dare you?’ With shock fuelled by years of respectability and inhibition, she was fighting him off, pummelling his chest like Frank Bruno. ‘No, no, no!’
But Lysander grabbed her arms, and much stronger than her, drew her towards him, tantalizing her with the lithe, youthful warmth of his body, refusing to let go, until, panic-stricken, she raised her leg to knee him in the groin. But somehow her leg never reached its target, for far above it, Lysander was whispering words of such affection and desire into her hair.
‘I want you, Marigold. You creep into my thoughts like that pink mist stealing up the valley.’
Glancing up, amazed by such poetic sentiment, and seeing the gentleness in his adorably innocent eyes, and feeling his fingers stroking her face, seeking some loving message in braille, she let him put his beautiful mouth on hers.
As she kissed him back, the raised leg retreated and coiled itself round the other leg in ecstasy, and the pummelling Frank Bruno fists unclenched, and, ‘may goodness’, she was hanging from Lysander’s neck like a chimpanzee because she was so dizzy with lust it was the only way she could stand up.
Slowly, slowly like a Harrods lift at Christmas, Lysander progressed downwards. Worried that her breasts might be droopy, she clamped her arms back over them, but as Lysander caressed her neck, she couldn’t remember if she’d plucked out that bristle on her chin this morning. Raising her hand to check, she left her right breast exposed. Next moment it had fallen like a ripe pear into his hand, as he unhooked her bra.
‘Let’s go to bed.’
‘We can’t. Ay’ve never been to bed with anyone but Larry, and he says Ay fuck laike a dead… ’ Marigold gave a wail.
‘Hush, just regard it as a superior form of work-out.’
People are said never to remember how they get upstairs to the bedroom’ but it was imprinted on Marigold’s memory, because Lysander kissed her on every stair, but still half her mind was fretting about stretch marks and whether her body would be creased by such tight jeans and, although she’d had a bath two hours ago, whether she should wash again, so she wouldn’t smell of mouldy old woman. As they reached the landing, she nearly led him into the airing cupboard.
‘No, not in our bedroom,’ she squeaked with a resurgence of virtue, ‘and certainly not in there,’ as Lysander tried another door. ‘That’s where I caught Larry and Nikki.’
‘Good, I can lay you and the ghost.’
‘But the central heating’s been off for days.’
Lysander’s body was warmer than any radiator as he drew her close, and slowly began to unbutton her navy-blue cardigan.
‘Turn off the laight,’ moaned Marigold as she shot between the peach satin sheets.
‘I want to look at you,’ said Lysander.
In the end they compromised by leaving the light on on Lysander’s side with the lampshade tipped outwards.
‘God, I love snogging. Let’s go on for hours.’
And Marigold, who hadn’t snogged since the Purley Odeon in the sixties, responded with alacrity.
Then with the joyful excitement of a child unpacking a Christmas stocking he began to explore her body.
‘Christ, these are beautiful.’ He buried his face in her heavy breasts. ‘And do you like being stroked here?’ He turned her over to admire her surprisingly high rounded bottom. ‘This is my favourite bit.’ His hands crept up the velvet inside of her thighs. ‘No, it isn’t quite. This is.’ His long fingers disappeared into the sticky, spongy burrow.
‘Aaaaaah,’ sighed Marigold.
‘Eureka,’ said Lysander as like a doorbell in the dark his middle finger found the nub of her clitoris.
‘Ay reek of what?’ Marigold jumped away in horror. She knew she should have washed beforehand.
‘The only Greek I know. Come here.’
‘Ay truly shouldn’t.’
‘Isn’t it nice?’
‘Heavenly, but we mustn’t, oh, please go on, oh, gracious me, how lovely, oh, help me, help me.’ Marigold went silent and rigid, her breath came in little gasps, and she forgot to hold her tummy in. Finally she gave a contented moan.
‘Oh Laysander, that was top ’ole.’
‘It certainly was.’ Opening her eyes, she saw he was smiling down at her. ‘Open your legs, and I’ll turn you to cream. Did you enjoy it?’
‘Oh, very much, and now Ay must give you pleasure.’
Duti
fully Marigold reared up on her elbow. The progress of her hand down his flat belly into the down of hair was impeded by a cock rearing up like the Tower of Pisa.
‘May word.’
Marigold had never really liked Larry’s cock, which was rather small and, because he preferred to make love in the morning, she’d never known after a night’s sleep what was under the folds. She’d always treated it like an unexploded bomb.
But Lysander, having had a shower after their jog, smelled as fresh and sweet as the violets that had scented the valley that afternoon, and his cock tasting faintly of Pear’s soap was so hard and smooth beneath her lips that she began to give it puppy licks.
Used to Dolly’s snake-like flickering expertise, Lysander was curiously turned on. But when she grew bolder and tried to take his cock in her mouth he sensed her fear, and detaching himself slithered down the satin sheets, pulling her on top of him.
‘Oh, that’s wonderful,’ gasped Marigold, feeling gloriously thrust upward. ‘Oh Laysander, I’m flaying from your flagpole. Oh Laysander. LAY-SANDER!’
‘That was miraculous,’ said Lysander, retrieving the duvet from the floor, as he collapsed back on to the satin pillows.
‘You’re amazing, a complete revelation.’
‘Men are supposed to go on for hours, I never last more than a minute — if I’m lucky, so I make up for it beforehand.’
‘Ay should feel guilty.’
‘Why — we must have lost at least five hundred calories.’
Then, suddenly, he sat up, put the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, screwed up his face engagingly like Hermione, and sang in a high falsetto: ‘Blow the cock, southerly, southerly, southerly,’ and they both collapsed with giggles.
‘We mustn’t tell Ferdie,’ said Marigold.
‘No, he’d be livid,’ said Lysander in alarm. ‘He insisted no bonking.’
‘We won’t do it again.’
‘We might. If we use up another five hundred calories, we could get a take-away for supper.’
‘Oh, yes please.’
‘How about now.’
Marigold glanced at the clock in amazement. ‘But you’ll miss Neighbours.’
‘Some things are more important.’
‘Oh Laysander, that’s the greatest compliment Ay’ve ever been paid. Why don’t we phone Mrs Brimscombe and ask her to record it?’
11
This and subsequent glorious couplings cheered Marigold up immensely, particularly when her two sons came home from prep school for the weekend, and fell almost more in love with Lysander than she had. Not only did he play endless billiards and darts with them, and took them to the amusement arcades in Rutminster and to the stables to mess around with Arthur and Tiny, but he also initiated them into the more dubious pleasures of poker, chemmy and betting.
Jason’s shriek of delight when he won £120 on an each-way bet at Chepstow was only equalled by Mark’s quiet satisfaction that, by the end of the weekend, Lysander owed him £5,225 at poker.
Marigold was wryly aware that Lysander was far nearer to the boys in age and behaviour than he was to her. But she was overjoyed to see her sons emerge from pale monosyllabic shell-shock, no doubt induced as much by two terms at an English prep school as by the collapse of their parents’ marriage. She was also gratified that whenever the boys were absorbed with anything, Lysander sloped out to the kitchen for a surreptitious, but no less passionate, embrace. He couldn’t keep his hands off her.
She had lost a further seven pounds a week later when she got a telephone call on her private line. Knowing it could only be Larry, she was only just stopped by Lysander from snatching up the receiver on the first ring. The warmth of his hand over hers gave her strength.
‘Make him wait ten rings, and play it cool.’
Larry was telephoning to say he’d be in the area that evening, could he drop in for a very quick drink. Marigold was thrown into total panic.
‘We’d better ask Ferdie’s advice on this one,’ said Lysander.
Ferdie, bored of not selling houses in London and wanting to suss out properties in Paradise, said he would be straight down to orchestrate the whole thing.
Larry Lockton was a bully with a mega-ego and no small talk, who was used to ordering around thousands at work. Having lost weight, found a decent dentist and coaxed his coarse black hair forward to hide a receding hairline, he had developed sex appeal late in life. Huge success at work and a decent tailor had accelerated the process. When addressing his social superiors, he talked with an orchard of plums in his mouth.
Landing the helicopter, he saw a blur of yellow and purple. What the hell was Marigold doing spoiling his perfect lawn with crocuses? It would take ten grand off the asking price. He must remember to remove his gold discs, the Picasso, the Stubbs and the framed Beethoven sonata, before Marigold got too grasping over the spoils. Letting himself in, Larry was surprised not to be welcomed by Marigold. Only Patch greeted him, and then with reservation. Larry meant fewer chewsticks and banishment from her mistress’s bed at night. Going into the kitchen, he found a table with pink candles laid for two, pink freesias and hyacinths everywhere and two bottles of Moët in the fridge.
Oh Christ, he hoped Marigold wasn’t planning to lure him into staying for dinner. Nikki was expecting him back. They were going to a party to meet Kiri Te Kanawa and Marigold’s attempted candle-lit lobster thermidor last month had ended in total hysterics and both lobsters being hurled at him. He’d better watch out for flying sauceboats.
He could hear noises overhead. Finding a navy-blue overcoat covered in dog hairs hanging over the banisters, Larry went slowly up to his former bedroom where he was shocked to discover his naked wife blow-drying her hair. Seeing him, she jumped only slightly, then languidly wrapped round herself a fluffy yellow towel which matched her eyes.
‘Larry! Ay didn’t hear you arrive. Let me finish my hair. You know it drays crinkly if Ay stop in the middle.’
Marigold then kept him waiting half an hour, giving him time to absorb all Lysander’s clutter of drying boots, breeches, Sporting Lifes, and a pile of beautifully ironed Harvie & Hudson shirts on the hall table. When she wandered down, still in the yellow towel, Marigold was delighted to see Larry’s shirt was crumpled and missing a button.
She also noticed how old he looked — compared with Lysander — and that, with hair long enough for a pony-tail, a new black moustache, bags under his eyes and designer stubble flecked with grey (all no doubt Nikki’s work), he looked seedy rather than sexy. He was also dressed uncharacteristically butchly in a studded leather jacket, and black jeans belted with a large silver buckle.
‘Where’s your motor bike?’ she said teasingly. ‘I thought you’d have got fat gobblin’ up all those poor little companies, but you seem to have lost even more weight. Have a glass of bubbly. Ay’m going to.’
It’s my fucking champagne, thought Larry, noticing that as she took the bottle out of the fridge, she replaced it with another, and that her hair was streaked very blond and her toenails had been newly painted scarlet. The towel was showing a great expanse of stunning, recently waxed, Duo-tanned legs. Marigold, in fact, was looking fantastic, as though she’d been restored and a picture light shone over her.
Larry then asked her if she’d mind coming to the party next week to launch Georgie Maguire’s new album, Rock Star.
‘I’ve brought the whole package.’ Larry threw the tape, the single and the album down on the kitchen table. The sleeve showed Georgie Maguire clinging wetly to a rock, with her head thrown back, eyes closed, nostrils flaring, long, drenched red hair snaking down her back. ‘I think it looks terrific.’
‘Hermione was barefoot on the sleeve of Blow the wind southerly,’ said Marigold, who knew Nikki had worked on the design. ‘Are you trying to tell folk your artistes can’t afford shoes?’
Larry refused to rise. ‘Album’s going to be a massive hit. It’s storming up the American charts, so the party’ll be a celebration.
Loads of names accepted already. Hermione and Rannaldini are coming.’
‘And presumably Nikki to add glamour,’ said Marigold sweetly.
‘She might look in,’ admitted Larry. ‘Should be a terrific bash.’
I’ll bash her, thought Marigold, narrowly missing Larry as the champagne cork flew out.
Larry adjusted his leather jacket, bought new that morning, wondering if it were over the top. He felt more at home in pin-stripe.
‘Pop in for half an hour,’ he said gruffly, ‘just to show Georgie there’s no hard feelings.’
‘Because she won’t sign another contract with you, if she has an inkling what an absolute shit you’ve been to me,’ said Marigold flaring up.
‘Chill out,’ said Larry, which irritated Marigold more than ever. ‘It’s in your interest. You’ll be able to screw far more maintenance out of me if Georgie signs that contract,’ he added heartily. ‘Besides it’s her first big break in twenty years. She wants her best friend there.’
Weighing up the options, Marigold let the towel slip a fraction.
‘And I’d like you to be there,’ Larry was shocked to hear himself saying.
‘All right, Ay’ll show,’ Marigold agreed flatly, ‘and tray and behave.’ Then, glancing at the kitchen clock, ‘I must get ready. Don’t hurry, finish your drink.’
Utterly thrown, expecting either abuse or pleading to stay, Larry drained his whisky, and was then even more flabbergasted when Marigold said: ‘Ay’ve decided Ay’ve been horribly selfish over the kids. One must be civilized for their sakes. And they must get to know Nikki, she’s so near them in age.’ Let Larry experience some of the same guilt she felt about cradle-snatching. ‘In fact, you can have them next weekend. I’m goin’ away.’
‘To your mother?’ asked Larry.
‘No, to Paris.’ Marigold smiled beautifully. ‘And Mummy would be decaydedly de trop.’
If Larry had looked round he would have seen the tears in his wife’s eyes. Instead, trampling crocuses underfoot as he strode furiously out to his helicopter, he was incensed to see a red Ferrari, unleashed by a signal from Ferdie, storming up the drive. Larry had refused to listen to Hermione’s hints about an over-familiar workman. Workmen in his experience did not drive Ferraris. Only when he looked back from his helicopter did he read: CATCHITUNE in yellow and purple on the lawn and almost weep.