The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Will you come back here on the way to London?’ Georgie hated to plead.

  ‘I really ought to get up first thing and bash up the motorway,’ said Guy, removing one of his favourite jerseys from Flora’s trunk. ‘I’ve got a lunchtime meeting with an American collector. I can take Flora back to Bagley on the way to Wales. So get your finger out,’ he added to Flora.

  Georgie worked late that night until she was so tired that she slept through a massive thunderstorm which blew down several of the silver-painted trees in the wood. Then she had a marvellous morning’s work, joyfully playing the piano, singing, scribbling and rubbing out. She could hear all the themes of the individual instruments in her head, and she kept doing different things to prove to herself that what she’d written in the first place was the right thing.

  By a quarter-past one, she’d drunk so much black coffee she was beginning to jump, so she went down to the kitchen to get some lunch. Mother Courage had already left, so she decided to cook that ox’s heart for Dinsdale. As she was looking for it, the telephone rang. It was Geraldine from the gallery.

  ‘You don’t know where Guy is? His lunch date’s arrived and his car phone’s on the blink. I rang The Leek and Daffodil. They said he checked out at eight-thirty.’

  ‘Oh, help,’ said Georgie going cold. ‘You don’t think he’s had a shunt?’

  ‘No, probably a tree across the road or something. They had force ten gales in Wales last night.’

  ‘Will you ring me when he gets in?’

  ‘Sure. How’s the country?’

  ‘Bliss. While you’re on, Geraldine, you might be able to help me. A lovely puppy vase with blue ribbons turned up in the move. Someone must have sent it to us as a moving-in present, or to me for going to Number One. You’ve no idea who it could be?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue, sounds lovely though,’ said Geraldine. ‘I must go and force-feed Moët to Guy’s disgruntled lunch date.’

  Heart thumping, Georgie collapsed on the window-seat. Guy, who was so truthful he made George Washington look like Matilda, had been caught out in a second lie — first the wrong number, now the puppy coming from Geraldine. Feeling dizzy and sick, she found she had thrown all today’s post in the dustbin. Loathing herself, she rang directory enquiries, and then The Leek and Daffodil.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, this is Georgie Seymour.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Seymour,’ gushed the manageress, ‘I’m so glad you rang. We’re such fans, and it was lovely the way your husband signed you in under another name. We all thought you looked so young and lovely. I expect you’re ringing about your scorpion necklace.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Georgie numbly.

  ‘My daughter found it in the bed. If you give me the right address, I’ll post it back to you.’

  ‘It’s Angel’s Reach, Paradise Lost,’ said Georgie and hung up.

  In the Exhibitions in Progress file in Guy’s office, she found a formal letter from Julia and dialled her number.

  ‘She’s not back from Wales,’ said a voice with a strong Rutshire accent. ‘I was expecting her hours ago. Who’s that speaking?’

  But Georgie had hung up again. Her first emotion was passionate relief that she hadn’t been going crazy, thinking Guy was up to something. He’d always been so adamant about his utter fidelity and now he’d been caught out. Wondering what to do next, Georgie decided to drive over to Julia’s and confront her. It couldn’t be very far with a Rutshire address, SHADOW COTTAGE, MILES LANE, ELDERCOMBE, said the letterhead.

  On the way, it started to bucket down again. Georgie got terribly lost and nearly bumped into several cars. But finally she found the ravishing Stanley Spencer village, with a lazy, weed-choked stream meandering between the High Street and the faded red cottages. The rain had driven everyone in, so there was no-one to ask the way. On the right of the war memorial she found Miles Lane.

  Getting out of the car, Georgie realized Dinsdale was still wearing his blue birthday bow and whipped it off, putting her belt through his collar, as she started to trudge through the deluge. She hoped Miles Lane wasn’t miles long, and wished she knew on which side was Shadow Cottage. But the next moment, Dinsdale’s nose had gone down and, sweeping her past three modern houses, tail waving frantically, he took a sharp right up the path of the prettiest garden filled with scillas, primulas and early forget-me-nots. Toys were neatly stacked on a table in the window, and someone had left a paper-bill addressed to Armstrong in the porch. Dinsdale’s tail was really going, bashing Georgie’s legs.

  The door was answered by an elderly woman in a red mac and a crinkly plastic rain hat.

  ‘Mrs Armstrong?’ asked Georgie.

  ‘No, she’s out.’ It was the same Rutshire accent that had answered the telephone.

  ‘I’m Mrs Seymour.’ Georgie tried to control her breathing, ‘Guy’s wife. He’s putting on an exhibition of Mrs Armstrong’s work.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ The woman in the rain hat looked suddenly more friendly. ‘You must be Georgie Maguire. We’ve got all your records at home. Can I have your autograph?’

  Somehow Georgie held the pen to sign the piece of paper.

  ‘I’m expecting Julia any minute. She’s so excited about her exhibition. She’s just rung. She’s been ’eld up four hours on the Severn Bridge. There were cross winds so they reduced the traffic to single line. I’ve just got to pop out and pick up the kids. If you want to wait, she won’t be long.’

  That woman doesn’t know anything about Guy and Julia, thought Georgie, watching her splashing down the path. Perhaps I’m imagining things. Julia’s cottage was absolutely gorgeous inside, a rainbow riot of pastel colour with her paintings on every wall.

  If she’s taken my husband, thought Georgie, I’m entitled to help myself to her drink. There was only elderflower wine, but it was better than nothing. Georgie took a slug, then opened the desk by the window, and nearly died. For there were a sheaf of Rock Star cuttings and the same Express picture of Guy in a handsome silver frame.

  Slamming the desk shut, Georgie was pleased to see Dinsdale had left muddy pawmarks all over Julia’s pale blue sofa, and when the telephone rang she answered it.

  ‘Ju Ju,’ said Guy’s voice.

  ‘No, it’s Georgie.’

  For a few seconds Guy thought he had rung home by mistake.

  ‘Panda, hallo,’ he said, cheerfully. ‘I’ve only just got to London. I was stuck on the Severn Bridge for four hours.’

  ‘I’m at Julia’s,’ said Georgie quite matter-of-factly. ‘How long have you been having an affaire with her?’

  Desperate to wriggle out of the situation, Guy found his mind moving as sluggishly as maggots in a dustbin surprised by a torrent of boiling Jeyes fluid. All he could manage was a feeble, ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘You’re the mad one, mad about Julia,’ Georgie’s voice rose to a screech. ‘You bastard, Geraldine didn’t give you that puppy. And you took Ju Ju-fucking-Armstrong to The Leek and Daffodil last night, and passed her off as me. “You look so lovely and young, Mrs Seymour, you left your scorpion necklace behind, Mrs Seymour”, and they’ve put it in the post to me at Angel’s Reach, so you haven’t got a clay foot to stand on. How long’s it been going on?’

  There was a long pause, during which Guy decided against bluffing it out.

  ‘Well, I’ve taken her out once or twice in London.’

  ‘Bed?’

  ‘Not before last night. I’m sorry, Panda, we’ve been working very hard, getting ready for the exhibition. These things happen. She’s only a child and she’s got this terrific crush on me, probably because her marriage isn’t very happy, and I’m getting her work recognized, and you know how gratitude turns into hero-worship. Dad had it all the time as a bishop.’

  ‘I hope he didn’t end up in the Leek and Daffodil. Do you want to marry her?’

  ‘Of course I don’t. Look, she’ll be home any minute. Don’t say anything that’ll encourage her to blow it up into anything more serious.
You’ve got to protect me. Go home and I’ll come down. I’m leaving now. I love you.’

  ‘How dare you bring Dinsdale into this bordello?’ shouted Georgie.

  She got even more lost on the way home. The torrential rain had let up, rainbows were lacing a sky the colour of Guy’s cornflower-blue shirt. The white cherries were luminous in the unearthly light. Only when she got home did Georgie realize she was still wearing her pyjamas.

  21

  Georgie was so shivery that she had a bath and was just cleaning her teeth to get rid of the terrible sick acid taste when the doorbell rang.

  Running to the window, she could see hair as red as dried blood. It was Julia. She must find out if her version tallied with Guy’s. Throwing up the window, she said she’d be down in a minute. Having pulled on an old grey jersey and a pair of leggings, brushed her hair and slapped on a bit of base, she was amazed to see she looked rather beautiful. Scent, she decided, was pushing it. She would play the whole thing magnanimously. Running downstairs, she saw Julia in the hall dressed in jeans and a black polo-neck. Her hair was pulled back from her deathly white face into a pony-tail. She looked younger than Flora.

  Georgie held out her arms. ‘Julia, poor little duck, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Julia thrust her violently away.

  ‘Well, at least let’s have a drink.’

  Only as they went into the drawing room did Georgie remember Julia’s faceless pin-stripe lover in the paintings. Two of the paintings were still on the wall.

  ‘I don’t want a drink.’ Julia was shuddering as though she had malaria, her eyes staring. ‘How much has Guy told you?’

  ‘That he went to bed with you for the first time last night, that he’s taken you out one or twice in London. Guy’s a kind man. Girls are always getting crushes on him.’

  ‘A crush?’ Julia collapsed on the gold corduroy sofa. ‘Guy and I have been having an affaire for nearly two years. Since you moved to Angel’s Reach we’ve spent virtually every night together when he’s up in London.’

  ‘Virtue doesn’t seem to have much to do with it,’ said Georgie, pouring herself such a massive Bacardi that there was only room for an inch of Coke.

  ‘He loves me,’ said Julia flatly. ‘He’s never had another woman since he’s been married to you.’

  ‘I know,’ admitted Georgie. ‘He’s been a wonderful husband.’

  ‘And you’ve totally neglected him. All you did at that dinner party,’ reproved Julia, ‘was burn the broccoli and leave slugs in the lettuce.’

  Guy’s been sneaking, thought Georgie, taking her drink to the window and admiring the pale green of the wood against the navy-blue thunderclouds.

  ‘You don’t take any interest in the gallery. You didn’t even know my Christian name.’

  ‘I hope now I may call you Ju Ju,’ said Georgie gravely; she was getting rather a charge out of being bitchy. The Bacardi was beginning to put fire in her empty belly.

  ‘You don’t share any of his interests,’ said Julia, flushing.

  ‘Well, I certainly didn’t share his interest in you.’

  ‘And you had endless affaires.’

  ‘I did not. I had the odd one-night stand when we were first married years ago,’ said Georgie, thinking that Tancredi had been going on so long and so infrequently that he didn’t count.

  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 stra
ight.’

  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.