The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  The situation was getting desperate, a flustered Paradise had started dropping catches. Lysander’s supporters had moved back into the shade under the mulberry trees and, when he was sent to field on the boundary near them, barracked him because his side was doing so badly.

  ‘Can you ring Ladbroke’s for me?’ he shouted to Ferdie. ‘My card’s on the dashboard. Cover Point just told me Blue Chip Baby’s a cert in the 4.15. Can you put on five hundred pounds on the nose?’

  In the light of his new bank balance, Lysander had considerably upped his stakes.

  ‘Rich as well,’ murmured Meredith excitedly.

  ‘Spoof you for him,’ sighed Natasha.

  ‘Bloody stupid putting on that kind of money,’ snapped Ferdie.

  ‘You got anything to eat?’ called Lysander, who’d already accepted an iced Carlsberg.

  ‘I’ll make you a sandwich.’ Natasha leapt down off the bonnet. ‘Would you like chicken or smoked salmon?’

  Mulberries were falling on the parked cars. The crowd were melting. Bob and the horn player had put on 140.

  ‘If someone doesn’t get out soon,’ grumbled Marigold, ‘Larry won’t get a knock.’

  ‘God, she’s pretty,’ mumbled Ferdie, as Natasha sauntered on to the pitch with Lysander’s sandwich.

  ‘Quite,’ said Meredith, who’d hung two pairs of cherries over his ears like earrings, ‘but an awful bitch.’

  Lysander, however, only had time for one bite. Things were getting so desperate that the Archangel Michael beckoned him over.

  ‘You bowl?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘Can’t do worse than this lot.’ Mike lobbed the ball at him. ‘Wicket’s harder than Rannaldini’s heart. Try and keep the ball up to the bat.’

  ‘This should be interesting,’ said Ferdie, as he finished off Lysander’s sandwich.

  ‘Bowler’s name,’ shouted the scorer.

  ‘Hawkley,’ yelled Mike.

  The crowd, particularly the women, perked up. So this was the gorgeous man who’d moved into Magpie Cottage. The London Met, bored with playing classical music, launched into ‘Hey, Goodlookin’.’

  Meredith waved in time with a chicken drumstick.

  ‘Hi, Teddy!’ Lysander grinned at Mr Brimscombe as he paced out his run. The two had become great mates when Lysander was sorting out Marigold. Lysander had been a nice young lad, always prepared to carry logs or dustbins, even if he couldn’t mow in a straight line.

  His shirt billowing out, long-legged and loose-limbed as a West Indian, Lysander loped up to the wicket. A split second later the ball had removed Bob’s middle stump. The crowd exploded in joy and relief which turned to ill-disguised mirth as Larry came in to bat. He had padding on his thighs, chest and gut and he was wearing Ian Botham gloves, Astra-turf trainers with plastic studs, a short-sleeved cricket shirt that was much too tight for him, a helmet and a face guard. His bat had never been used. Fortunately the laughter was drowned by loud applause as Bob came back with seventy-eight runs on the board.

  ‘What sort of a ball was it?’ asked Larry pompously.

  ‘I think it was a red one.’ Bob mopped his brow. ‘It’s like a furnace out there.’

  ‘And here’s Larry Lockton,’ said the commentator, ‘who, we’re told, had a trial for Surrey.’

  As Larry made a prolonged fuss about taking guard, Lysander walked back rubbing the ball up and down his trousers.

  ‘Oh, to be that ball,’ sighed Meredith.

  Lysander’s second ball hit Larry on the snow-white pad.

  ‘’Owzat?’ howled the Paradise slips.

  ‘Out,’ intoned Mr Brimscombe to the noisy chagrin of Marigold.

  ‘Bollocks,’ bellowed Larry, mouthing like a gorilla behind his face guard.

  ‘Out,’ confirmed Clive the doghandler, who didn’t like Larry any better.

  ‘Don’t think you’ll ever get your fucking job back,’ roared Larry as he stalked back to the pavilion.

  ‘Must have been a trial to Surrey, rather than for them,’ giggled Meredith as Marigold rushed off to give solace.

  Lysander had taken a devastating five wickets for nine runs and ended his second over with London Met looking suddenly in trouble, when Guy came in. Immediately the band launched into ‘Rock Star’.

  ‘Mum is clever,’ admitted Flora. ‘It does sound lovely played by a proper orchestra.’

  ‘Mr Rock Star himself,’ crackled the loudspeaker. ‘No mean cricketer if my spies tell me right.’

  With his athlete’s stride, his powerful body, his strong handsome face and arctic-blond hair glinting in the sunlight, Guy looked worthy to have pop songs dedicated to him. He wished Ju Ju was watching and where the hell was Georgie? Who could blame him being unfaithful to a woman who never gave him any support? Then, just as he was taking guard, he saw her arrive with Dinsdale, wandering round the wooded side of the pitch, past Lysander who was now fielding in the deep again. Her newly washed hair was tied back with a blue ribbon and she was wearing a duck-egg-blue shirt tied under her slender midriff and yesterday’s flowered trousers.

  ‘And if I’m not mistaken, here’s Georgie Maguire herself; Mrs Rock Star’s just arrived in time,’ said the commentator, and the band struck up again.

  Guy kicked off with a wristy single to loud applause. Then the tenor, who had the reputation for being a big hitter, blocked four balls, then clouted a six over Lysander’s leaping outstretched fingers deep into the dark midgy wood behind. Next moment, Lysander, Georgie and Dinsdale, followed by a racing-up yapping Maggie and Jack, disappeared in search of it. At first the players were happy to sit down and rest, then all eyes were turned to the wood as Dinsdale emerged carrying the ball. Waddling across the pitch he proudly dropped it to shouts of laughter at his master’s feet.

  As the field changed over, it was Lysander’s turn to bowl again and all the Paradise fielders yelled for him to come back because the ball had been found. Then everyone waited and waited and waited until, finally, a good five minutes later Lysander and Georgie came out of the wood grinning from ear to ear. Lysander was ostentatiously wiping off the remains of Georgie’s peach-pink lipstick with the back of his hand and Georgie’s hair had escaped the blue ribbon.

  Once more the whole crowd burst out laughing and the band struck up: ‘If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise’ at Rannaldini’s instigation. Guy was shaking so much that Lysander proceeded to bowl and catch him with his first ball for only one run.

  Flora had wandered over to join Rannaldini by the pavilion as Guy stormed past.

  ‘You’re a single parent now, Dad,’ she called out. ‘As Lysander was being free in the forest with Mum, he should wear your sweater.’

  Rannaldini’s eyes sparkled with evil amusement.

  Poor Guy was absolutely livid. Never had he needed his green-and-magenta sweater as a badge of former achievement more. A reporter from the Rutminster News who’d witnessed the whole scene wondered if it would be an idea to ring Dempster about the rocking of Rock Star. Larry had suddenly cheered up hugely.

  ‘Your toy boy seems to have transferred his affections to Georgie,’ he told Marigold nastily.

  ‘Pity Wolfie’s not here to make some runs for you,’ Flora murmured to Rannaldini. ‘Aren’t you sorry now you pinched his girlfriend?’

  ‘It was worth eet. Have you missed me a leetle?’

  ‘No,’ said Flora, then, looking up at him from under her thick eyelashes, ‘I missed you a lot.’

  ‘Once the London Met and your father are safely in the field we can slope off to the tower, Tabloid will keep watch.’

  30

  London Met was all out for 160 followed by tea in the great hall which was blissfully cool. White tablecloths had been laid over big oak tables. Huge vasefuls of red-hot pokers and early scarlet dahlias flamed like beacons in each corner. Kitty had provided a wonderful tea. Her sandwiches, made of smoked salmon, prawns swimming in real mayonnaise, scrambled eggs filled with
herbs and the most delicate turkey breast, contained more filling than bread. There were also home-made scones to eat with mulberry jam and clotted cream, walnut, lemon and chocolate cakes, beautifully decorated on top and groaning with butter icing inside and a huge rainbow cake on whose white icing she had piped in blue: LONDON MET V. PARADISE 1990. Everything had been done to please Rannaldini. It was a pity that because of the heat more praising went on than eating.

  ‘I can’t go in there,’ whimpered Georgie, who’d already been mobbed by autograph hunters, as she saw the crowds milling in the great hall. ‘Guy’s about to murder me for disappearing.’

  ‘I’ll stay with you the whole time,’ said Lysander soothingly. ‘Actually, I’m bloody hungry. Very Gothic this house, isn’t it?’

  Nor could the heat of hellfire put Percival Hillary, the vicar of All Saints, Paradise, off his grub. A consummate cadger of other people’s food and drink, with a fish face redder than Ferdie’s Ferrari and breath that could crack a safe at fifty yards, he was now piling his plate with sandwiches and crying in a fluting voice: ‘What a wonderful, wonderful spread.’

  ‘What a feast,’ cried his wife Joy, who was always described as a ‘tower of strength’. A bosomless chatterbox with a ringing laugh, she spent her time bullying the unwilling into charity work and hovering round Paradise flushing out lapses of behaviour like Milton’s God.

  ‘I always feel I should wear my fig-leaf outside my shorts when Joy’s about,’ grumbled Meredith.

  It was a running battle between Joy, Marigold and Lady Chisleden who actually ran Paradise. Despite her high moral tone, however, Joy Hillary shared her husband’s weakness for good-looking men and was potty about Guy. Guy was only prepared to be buttonholed by her for so long. Yanking Georgie from Lysander’s side, hissing, ‘How dare you show me up in front of the whole of Paradise,’ he shoved her at Joy Hillary.

  ‘Joyful, my dear, I’d like you to meet my wife, Georgie.’

  A staunch vegetarian, who was systematically opening and casting aside sandwiches which contained meat, eggs or fish, Joy told Georgie that she’d just been saying to Guy that she couldn’t understand why there were so many wild oats about this year.

  ‘Symbolic of the times,’ said Georgie bleakly and, when Joy Hillary looked blank, ‘Men can’t resist sowing them.’

  ‘No-one sowed them,’ said Joy patiently. ‘The field behind us has been sprayed for twenty years, but we’ve still got wild oats.’

  ‘At least it’s better than that ghastly rape,’ said her husband Percival, coming over on the pretext of introducing himself, but actually to cut a huge slice out of Kitty’s utterly delectable chocolate cake. Alas, he was just about to plunge in the knife when Dinsdale lifted his big mournful face on to the table, and sucked in the entire cake.

  Georgie burst out laughing. Then, seeing their horrified deprived faces: ‘I better absent myself from the scene of the crime and go and congratulate Kitty.’

  Even in her current state of self-absorption, Georgie was appalled by Kitty’s appearance. She’d put on weight and her reddened eyes gazed into space as she filled cup after cup from a huge brown teapot. She was always quiet when Rannaldini was around, but she seemed to have lost all her warmth and her interest in other people. She didn’t even smile over the story of Dinsdale’s pilfering the chocolate cake and when Georgie ducked under the table to stand beside her and thank her for letting Flora spend so much time at Valhalla, Kitty said nothing, just lowered her eyes.

  ‘You OK, Kitty? You’re shaking.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  How could she tell Georgie that her daughter was having a raging affaire with Rannaldini? A month ago, when poor Wolfie had sobbed all night like the Paradise Lad, Kitty had steeled herself to tell Rannaldini that he shouldn’t pinch his son’s girlfriend, particularly when she was thirty years his junior and still an impressionable child. Whereupon Rannaldini had launched into one of his petrifying tirades, screaming that Wolfie was an insanely jealous, paranoid fantasist who had to make up stories to justify Flora falling out of love with him and how dare Kitty virtually accuse him of child molesting.

  He had punished her ever since by withdrawing all affection and Kitty was nearly at breaking-point. Almost worst of all, she had previously hero-worshipped Flora for sticking up for her so often, but in the end Flora had not just taken her part but her husband from her as well.

  And now Kitty had spilt tea all over the snow-white tablecloth because Rannaldini and Flora were approaching. Flora, in fact, was starving. Georgie didn’t feed her family much and it was a long time since breakfast.

  ‘Hi, Kitty,’ she said in delight. ‘How are you?’

  ‘OK.’ Kitty spilled even more tea.

  ‘Here, let me take that, Brickie.’ Guy seized the teapot as though it was a large fractious baby Kitty couldn’t quiet. ‘I’ll fill the cups. You chat to Flora.’

  ‘I’ll just get more ’ot water.’ Frantically, Kitty seized a big silver jug. ‘’Ave a sandwich.’ She shoved a plate at Flora.

  ‘Oh yum, I’m so hungry,’ cried Flora, then found that suddenly she wasn’t, because fat, hopeless, red-eyed defeated Kitty looked absolutely wretched and couldn’t even meet her eyes.

  She knows about us, thought Flora in horror. And Kitty had been so sweet to her. But as she felt Rannaldini just behind her, surreptitiously caressing the bare sweating insides of her thighs, such was her longing, she couldn’t stop herself pressing back against him.

  ‘Rannaldini’s little wife’s done so well,’ said Joy Hillary, taking a third piece of walnut cake. ‘We must utilize her properly at the fête. Perhaps we should take her off bric-à-brac and put her in charge of teas.’

  As Kitty bolted down the dark passages to the kitchen, Lysander, leaning nonchalantly on a suit of armour, blocked her path.

  ‘D’you remember me? We met at Marigold’s and at the Rock Star party. Here, let me take that jug. Stunning tea. I’ve stuffed myself so much I won’t be able to bat. My mother hated doing cricket teas. She never produced more than a bought cake and curling Marmite sandwiches.’

  He found it a relief to mention Pippa, even in a faintly derogatory fashion, and to find that it didn’t hurt so much.

  Kitty raised her eyes. The terribly strong spectacles magnified the inflamed lids and the red-threaded eyes grotesquely. God, she looked unhappy.

  ‘Marigold told me about your muvver,’ she stammered. ‘She was so young. You must miss her somefink awful.’

  Lysander, who often picked up vibes others missed, had noticed Rannaldini touching up Georgie’s sexy-looking daughter. What chance did Kitty have? Rannaldini was a shit, after all, he decided, as he carried the jug of boiling water back to the hall.

  Natasha, who couldn’t imagine what Lysander could have to say to her boring stepmother, charged up with Ferdie, whom Lysander introduced to Kitty. Ferdie and Kitty might do rather well together, decided Lysander. Before they had time to find out, Guy had butted in with a plate of sliced rainbow cake.

  ‘You must eat something yourself, Brickie.’

  ‘Why d’you call her that?’ asked Natasha.

  ‘Because she’s an absolute brick,’ said Guy warmly.

  ‘How many bricks are there in a tower of strength?’ asked Georgie, earning herself a dirty look from Guy as she joined the group.

  ‘We’ll be eating this stuff for weeks,’ Rannaldini told his wife as he glared at the still-loaded tables. People were lighting cigarettes and drifting back to the pitch. ‘You’ve over-catered as usual, Kitty.’

  ‘It’ll all go,’ snapped Lysander. ‘I’ll come and help you wash up, Kitty. It’s nice and cool in here.’

  ‘Lysander,’ called out Marigold, ‘you were going to bowl to the boys.’

  ‘You’re bloody not,’ hissed Ferdie. ‘You’re being paid to rattle Guy. Stick to Georgie.’

  But as soon as Lysander had sat down beside Georgie on a bench under a chestnut tree, the Archangel Mike ordered him to pad
up and open the batting. Instantly his seat was taken by Larry whom Georgie had been avoiding all afternoon.

  ‘How’s the album coming on?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Guy said it was going really well and you might deliver early.’

  ‘Pigs might fly,’ snapped Georgie.

  ‘My guess is that things are rough at the gallery,’ said Larry, ‘and you should help out by finishing as soon as possible. Guy’s always looked after you in the past, Georgie.’

  ‘It’s a conspiracy. I’m being forced to rush things,’ cried Georgie hysterically. ‘Guy put you up to this over dinner.’

  ‘Guy cancelled,’ announced Larry. ‘He had too much on.’

  Georgie started to shake. In a sentence Larry had chucked her into the pits.

  ‘You’re psyching yourself into this block,’ he went on bullyingly. ‘All we want is something warm, sincere and happy, that kids and older folk can relate to. Just like “Rock Star”.’

  ‘I wrote “Rock Star” when I was happy,’ hissed Georgie. ‘How can I be warm, loving and sincere when my heart’s breaking and my world’s fallen apart?’

  Taking the field, Guy noticed Georgie leaping up and sending a deck-chair flying as she stumbled away from Larry. Christ, he hoped Larry hadn’t mentioned his cancelling dinner. He should have warned him, but, as a bishop’s son, he found it tacky saying: ‘Could you possibly tell Georgie it was you who ducked out?’

  ‘Could you possibly donate half a dozen signed copies of Rock Star to the fête as prizes?’ Joy Hillary met Georgie head on.

  ‘No, I fucking can’t,’ screamed Georgie. ‘Contrary to what you might think, I don’t get my own albums free and I don’t get the full whack every time a record is sold. Remind me to ask your husband to hand over the entire church collection to the Musicians’ Benevolent Society next Christmas. Oh look, Lysander’s batting. Excuse me.’ And she walked off, leaving Joy unjoyfully mouthing.