by Jilly Cooper
Larry and Marigold left immediately afterwards. They were followed by Rannaldini, who was flying to Milan first thing to do The Barber of Seville at La Scala.
Just for a second, as he and Georgie were alone in the hall together, he took her hands.
‘I’d love to talk to you sometime about Flora’s career,’ she heard herself stammering.
‘Of course,’ said Rannaldini. ‘Let us have lunch, and then we will have a chance to talk about ourselves.’
She felt he was just about to kiss her when Kitty came out, saying what a lovely evening it had been, and that Georgie and Guy must come over to Valhalla next time Rannaldini was home.
Georgie had the feeling that, with the departure of his boss, Bob would have liked to stay on and unwind, but that, for the same reason, Hermione felt the evening had lost all point, and dragged him away.
‘Look after Julia,’ Guy called out briskly to Georgie. ‘I’m taking Ben and Meredith round the house.’
Georgie was a little alarmed about what grand redecorating schemes Meredith might lure him into, but it was bliss to kick off her shoes, throw another of their own logs on the fire, and relax with a bottle of Kümmel and Julia.
‘How beautiful both Marigold and Hermione are,’ said Julia. ‘I’d so love to paint either of them.’
Feeling slightly deflated Julia didn’t want to paint her, Georgie suggested Julia approached them through Larry and Bob.
‘They both obviously love your work, and Larry’s on such a high with Marigold at the moment, he’d commission anything. I do hope it lasts.’ Georgie collapsed on the floor so she was level with Dinsdale on the sofa. ‘Larry’s been such a shit to her. I’m sorry I was so uptight this evening, but two couples cancelled at the last moment because their marriages had gone up the spout.’
Julia had chewed off her lipstick and her eyeliner had smudged beneath the fox-brown eyes, but her skin was unlined in the candle-light, and the scorpion glinted evilly between her breasts as though it might plunge its sting into the soft white flesh at any moment. She must be Scorpio, that most passionate and complicated of signs, thought Georgie.
‘I’m so lucky to be married to Guy,’ she went on hazily. ‘I used to be very wild when we were first married,’ and a bit now, she thought, luxuriating at the prospect of lunch with Rannaldini. ‘I think Guy feels so much safer now I’m tucked away in the country. Even when I used to go into the West End from Hampstead, he used to police my every move.’
Dinsdale, half-asleep, grunted with pleasure as Georgie scratched his back.
‘Guy’s been so wonderful about my career,’ she went on. ‘So happy to bask in any reflected glory, but he’s going to get glory himself soon — not just your exhibition which I’m sure will be terrific — but because of Rock Star. I know The Scorpion’s a rag, but they’ve nominated Guy Hubby of the Year, and if he wins, he gets ten thousand pounds. I expect Guy will insist on it going to charity, but it means he’ll be a star in his own right. It’s lovely that people have started recognizing him in the street and asking him for his autograph.’
Julia’s eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger.
‘It’s so sad when marriages break up. You hang on to your Ben,’ urged Georgie, then thought, I don’t think she should at all, he’s ghastly, I must be pissed. As she refilled their glasses, she noticed an adorable china puppy tangled in blue ribbon clambering out of a flowered bowl among the ornaments on a side table.
‘How lovely! Victorian,’ she examined it, ‘I wonder where that came from.’
‘Geraldine and the girls from the gallery gave it to me as a moving-in present,’ said a returning Guy smoothly. ‘I kept forgetting to bring it home.’
‘The puppy’s exactly like Dinsdale,’ said Georgie enchanted. ‘How clever of Geraldine.’
Saying they must go, Ben bore off Julia and Meredith whom they were going to drop off on the way.
‘Nice, aren’t they?’ said Guy, gathering up glasses.
‘Juliet’s lovely,’ said Georgie. ‘Not sure about him though.’
‘She’s called Julia,’ said Guy, ‘and Ben’s a genius.’
20
The next morning Guy and Georgie were woken ridiculously early by the telephone.
‘Leave it,’ mumbled Guy.
‘Someone might have died.’
‘Well, I wish they’d die later in the day.’
The sleepy smile was wiped off Georgie’s face when she found it was Hermione, too lazy to write, but priding herself on her good manners.
‘Thank you for a pleasant evening. We so enjoyed meeting Julia Armstrong.’
Hermione wanted recipes of everything Guy had cooked — anyone would think he’d had a baby or landed on Mars, thought Georgie irritably. Then, before ringing off, she announced, ‘Sabine Bottomley has asked me out to lunch.’
She doesn’t seem like a Sabine, thought Georgie as she put back the receiver. She’s the one who’d do the raping.
For a few moments she tried to burrow like a mole back into the dark furry tunnel of sleep, but Guy was stroking her breasts and putting increasing pressure on her clitoris, like a stiff button on the cordless telephone, until grumbling Georgie lumbered out of bed, muttering that she must clean her teeth and wash, but Guy pulled her back. ‘I want you now.’
Head turned and mouth clamped shut to divert garlic-and-wine fumes, she admired her bobbing body in a long dusty mirror, wondering if she should move more, and tried to remember to grip Guy with her inside muscles. She found it hard to come unless she was still and concentrating on her orgasm. Beneath her Guy looked tired, his face rumpled, and his white-blond fringe fallen back off his forehead.
‘Tell me about the last time you went to bed with Tancredi,’ he whispered.
So Georgie told him about the last time Guy thought she had been to bed with Tancredi.
Afterwards, he said, ‘I’m sorry. That was selfish of me,’ and he brought her breakfast in bed with grape hyacinths in a little vase. Only able to keep down the coffee, Georgie buttered the croissant for Dinsdale. When she staggered down, hungover to the hairline, everything had been cleared up, and once again she realized how lucky she was to be married to Guy, her rock star.
She felt less chipper when she opened their joint bank statement. The outgoings had been horrific and had almost mopped up the massive advance from Catchitune. The advance on Ant and Cleo had been spent months ago. Conciliatory before a screw, brisk afterwards, Guy was waving the bank manager’s letter and just getting into his must-tighten-our-belts routine when all worry temporarily evaporated because The Scorpion rang to say Guy had been voted Hubby of the Year.
‘To be quite honest there wasn’t a lot of choice,’ the reporter confided to Georgie. ‘Faithful husbands are an endangered species. Can we come and interview you and him tomorrow for Monday’s paper?’
At least the house had been bulled up for the dinner party, so Guy didn’t have to spend the rest of the day tidying. Sunday was a lovely day. After the reporter left, they sat watching an orange sun setting like a tiger down the black bars of the wood listening to the Top Twenty on Radio I, apprehensive almost to the end, until they heard the opening bars of Dancer Maitland’s ‘Recession Blues’ at Number Two, and knew it hadn’t knocked Georgie off the Number One spot. When ‘Rock Star’ came on, Guy turned up the wireless, so it blared round Paradise.
‘I’m so proud of you, Panda,’ he said opening the only bottle of Dom Perignon left from the dinner party.
‘I wish I could really tell you how much I love you,’ said Georgie.
Then, in a brief twilight wander round the garden, Guy outlined his long-term plans for the house and garden.
‘A new heaven and a new earth,’ murmured Georgie.
She must get on with Ant and Cleo tomorrow to pay for it.
Guy was in amorous mood again at bedtime.
‘Don’t be too long,’ he urged Georgie.
But Georgie got stuck into the Penguin Book of Narrat
ive Poetry in the bath, and by the time she’d finished The Pied Piper, marvelling at Browning’s gift for rhyme, particularly as there were no rhyming dictionaries in those days, Guy was snoring with the light on.
Next morning he set off for London in his new BMW looking splendid. His blue-striped shirt and indigo tie brought out the light Messianic-blue of his eyes, as if he was some explorer setting out to discover new continents. Noticing his beautifully brushed pin-stripe jacket and his cases in the back and breathing in his English Fern aftershave as she hugged him goodbye, Georgie felt utterly desolate at being left on her own for five days. Flora was away staying with friends. But it would be nice to watch what she wanted on television, not tidy up and work all night if she felt like it.
It had rained heavily in the night, and where the valley was drying off, mist the same blue as Guy’s eyes drifted upwards. Georgie wondered how far away Julia Armstrong lived and if she sent up smoke signals to some lover. She couldn’t be in love with that fearful Ben.
Georgie was just looking at The Scorpion headline: ‘CARING GUY, THE HUNKY HUBBY’, when she realized he’d forgotten to take the little Hockney drawing to be framed for Flora’s birthday which was on Sunday. Ringing him, she found his car telephone engaged. He must hardly have reached the outskirts of Paradise, but it remained engaged for the next thirty minutes.
Georgie was distracted by her agent ringing, saying the Gas Board were definitely firming up the offer for her and Guy to do a commercial, and that a champagne firm had rung to check out Georgie’s availability.
‘Better pay us in kind after Friday night,’ said Georgie.
Remembering it was dustbin day, and Mother Courage wasn’t due for half an hour, Georgie started to empty the waste-paper baskets. In the basket in Guy’s study she found a pink envelope, torn up into pieces smaller than confetti. Was it practising for this that one did so many jigsaws as a child? thought Georgie. Having laboriously pieced the envelope together, she saw it was addressed to: GUY SEYMOUR, private, at the gallery.
‘I must not let it put me off my work,’ she told herself sternly. ‘Women have always had crushes on Guy. Look at the way Kitty Rannaldini goes scarlet every time he speaks to her.’
All the same, she jumped as though she’d been caught snooping when the telephone rang. It was London Weekend asking how she was getting on with Ant and Cleo and whether there was anything they could see.
‘It’s going really well, but it’s still in draft form,’ Georgie told them airily, but starting to shake.
After they’d rung off, she decided to look for Act One. Perhaps Guy had picked it up. His study was so tidy, she was frightened of disrupting anything. Opening a desk drawer, searching for a sheaf of manuscript paper, she stumbled on the most charming nude drawing of a girl in a primrose-yellow bath cap with, except for the full breasts, a long slim, almost childish, body. It was a second before Georgie realized it was Julia. The drawing was unsigned, but it didn’t have the narrow-eyed, scowling intense look of a self-portrait.
It was perfectly normal for Guy to buy drawings of artists he exhibited; but Georgie nevertheless felt her happiness seep away like water out of a crooked plughole.
There was the bloody telephone. How was she getting on in the country, asked the girl from the Daily Mail. Was she meeting lots of interesting people?
‘I don’t meet people down here, I meet fucking deadlines,’ snarled Georgie, then had to apologize to the reporter, who knew what hell deadlines were, and who congratulated her on Guy being voted Hubby of the Year, and asked if she could do a telephone interview with her about Guy.
Feeling guilty that she’d been harbouring jealous thoughts about pink envelopes and nudes, Georgie was even more glowing about her husband than usual.
The rest of the week was punctuated by thank-you letters for the dinner party praising Guy’s cooking. Not to be outdone, Georgie wasted a whole workday making a fish pie for Guy’s return on Friday night. Putting the first bluebells in his study and his dressing room, she welcomed him with clean hair and a rust angora jersey which he loved because it made her feel all soft and cuddly. As he came out on to the terrace after unpacking, he handed her the Evening Standard.
‘They’ve given Julia’s exhibition a terrific advance plug, I brought it down to show you. God, it’s beautiful here.’
A week of sun had brought out the wild cherries and palest gold criss-cross leaves like kisses on the willows.
‘From you have I been absent in the spring,’ murmured Guy, sliding his hands up under the rust angora. ‘Will that deliciously smelling fish pie keep for half an hour?’
Next day was just as beautiful, and Georgie decided to walk down to Paradise with Dinsdale, trying out the new path that had been hacked out through the wood. On either side, trees soared tall and gangling from being planted too close. Many of them were smothered to the top in ivy. Georgie noticed how many of the trunks had been daubed with silver paint, which meant they would soon be cut down to make more room for the others. Georgie felt really sad. Some of the condemned were really splendid trees, happily putting out palest green leaves, unaware of their fate. Would that make a theme for a song? She was about to scribble the idea on the back of her shopping list when she realized she’d left it behind, and calling to Dinsdale, who was baying in the woods after rabbits, ran back home.
Climbing back in through the low kitchen window, she found Guy on the telephone.
‘All alone in a huge house,’ he was sighing, ‘God, if only you were here.’ Then, seeing Georgie, without missing a beat, he said, ‘I’m sorry, you must have got the wrong number. This is 284 not 285. OK, no problem,’ and hanging up, ‘Hallo, Panda, what did you forget?’
Georgie collapsed astride the window because her trembling legs wouldn’t hold her up.
‘Who were you talking to?’
‘Wrong number.’
‘But I heard you saying you were alone in a huge house, and if only whoever it was, was here.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Guy’s mouth gave a little pop of incredulity as he pronounced the ‘B’ of beg. His eyes were as innocent as a kitten’s.
‘Guy, I heard you.’
‘Are you out of your mind? If I get a wrong number, you accuse me of having other women. You’re spending too much time on your own. Ask Kitty over to supper next week, or get some pills from the local doctor. Benson he’s called. Everyone swears by him.’
Such was his assurance that Georgie felt she was the one in the wrong. She ought to have left well alone, but she was badly frightened.
‘Who were you spending thirty minutes talking to on the telephone within seconds of leaving the house on Monday then?’
‘Harry,’ replied Guy calmly. ‘I was bringing him up to date about selling all those Armstrongs, and talking about a couple of British Impressionists Rannaldini’s after. He is my partner and we had a lot to catch up on. I had a week off moving you, and a Friday off to organize your dinner party.’
‘You asked Julia and Ben. No, stay outside, darling, I’ll be with you in a sec,’ Georgie added as Dinsdale’s lugubrious face appeared at the window.
‘And who sent that pink envelope marked “Private” which you tore up and threw in your waste-paper basket?’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ snapped Guy, sliding a squeezed-out dishcloth along the runnels of the sink. ‘Geraldine and the girls in the gallery probably sent it as a joke.’ He extracted a piece of bacon rind and fish skin, both of which she supposed she should have removed from last night’s fish pie, from the plughole.
‘And what about the charming nude of Julia?’ she hissed.
‘That does it,’ said Guy, losing his temper. ‘You said you liked Julia, so I kept back that little nude for you for Easter. It’ll be worth a lot one day, and I know how you like women,’ he added nastily.
Georgie flushed. In her wild sixties days, she and Tancredi had had the odd threesome with other girls.
‘And don’t you get turned on he
aring about it?’ she said furiously.
The row escalated, until Georgie burst into tears and said she was sorry. Then Guy apologized. He hadn’t meant to be ratty, but he was worried about their overdraft.
‘We must pull in our horns.’
Cuckolds have horns, thought Georgie as she hugged him in passionate relief.
She was particularly glad the row was made up because Flora was coming home on Sunday for her birthday before going back to Bagley Hall for the summer term in the evening. Having forgotten to get the Hockney framed, Guy gave her a cheque instead. Georgie gave her a sand-coloured shorts suit from Jigsaw which she’d wanted. Dinsdale, who’d been decked out in a big blue bow for the occasion, gave her a basket from the Body Shop.
‘I don’t want to go back,’ grumbled Flora, chucking all the clothes, which were marginally more crumpled after Mother Courage had ironed them, into her trunk, and putting two hundred Marlboros on the top.
‘Ought you to take these?’ asked Georgie. ‘You’ll ruin your voice. Do try and do some work, darling, and don’t get caught drinking. You know how it upsets Daddy.’
Guy had seldom looked less upset as he walked in.
‘Goodness, what a shambles,’ he said. ‘Panda, that’s worked out really well. You remember that old boy in Wales whose private collection hasn’t been looked at for fifty years? He’s just rung. He’s going abroad tomorrow, but he’s invited me up to stay at the local and have dinner with him tonight.’
‘Oh, a jaunt,’ said Georgie in excitement. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You can if you like.’ Guy didn’t sound too enthusiastic. ‘But he’s an old queen and doesn’t like women, so I’d better go on my own. As I had to book at the last moment, I only got a single room.’
‘When we were first married we slept on sofas,’ said Georgie sadly.
‘Darling, be reasonable. You’ve got to work and someone’s got to look after Dinsdale.’