The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  Among other raffle presents were a basket of fruit from The Apple Tree, a set of crystal glass donated by the local antique shop, dinner for two from The Heavenly Host and an array of bottles from The Pearly Gates.

  Georgie was mindlessly scuffling round in the drum praying that she wouldn’t pull out Julia’s ticket when everyone was distracted by a piercing shriek from the flower-tent. Ancient Miss Cricklade, who had only just left her post at the Nearly New Stall to check how many prizes she’d won, came scuttling up to Marigold.

  ‘All my wine’s been drunk,’ she screamed. ‘That’s three bottles and it’s him what’s done it.’

  On cue out of the flower-tent, supported by Miss Paradise ’89 and ’90 with their crowns askew, came Lysander with his legs running away in every direction and his eyes crossing.

  ‘There is a green-fingered Hillary far away — whoops — without a city wall,’ sang Lysander waving a half-eaten rock bun in time. Georgie had never seen anyone so drunk. Suddenly Lysander turned his head with a superhuman effort.

  ‘Georgie!’ He tried to focus. ‘Oh Georgie, darling, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. When are you going to make your speech?’

  Then Georgie flipped.

  ‘Piss off,’ she screamed, advancing on him with her bouquet. ‘Just piss off you little fucker to your playpen and never come back again.’

  There was an appalled silence.

  ‘Georgie,’ wailed Lysander.

  Desperate to reach her, he lunged forward, tripping over a guy rope and lumbering into the raffle table, sending everything flying with a deafening crash. The Copenhagen dinner service was in smithereens, as were the Waterford glass and the bottles from The Pearly Gates.

  ‘Put not your trust in princes,’ murmured Bob.

  ‘Time for a natural break,’ said Meredith who was quite hysterical with laughter.

  Hermione, who had hysterics of a different kind, was whisked inside the vicarage by Joy Hillary. Guy seized control of the microphone telling people to leave now to avoid broken glass, assuring them that the raffle would be drawn at a later date and all the winners would get their prizes in due course.

  ‘And that little shit is going to pay for them,’ he said grimly as he switched off the microphone.

  After the broken glass and china had been swept up, organizers and helpers retreated to the vicarage for a well-earned drink while the money was counted. Georgie, who was shaking with mortification, only wanted to slope off home but Guy insisted she came too.

  ‘You’ve made a complete fool of yourself, Panda. You owe it to the committee and to me to put in an appearance and show a bit of contrition.’ The moment they entered the vicarage, he was off congratulating stall holders.

  Hermione, as a result of smelling salts, two large whiskies and a vat of buttering up, was recovered enough to draw Georgie aside. Having misinterpreted Georgie’s tight lips earlier, she said: ‘I want to put your mind at rest. Guy admires me — very much indeed — it was so caring of him to buy my posy, but I’m far too much of a friend of yours to encourage him. Anyway he’s not my type.’

  ‘Why d’you kiss him on the fucking mouth every time you see him?’ Georgie was appalled to hear herself saying.

  ‘Oh Georgie.’ Hermione put her head on one side. ‘I thought by showing you everything was in the open, you’d realize nothing was going on.’

  This time misreading Georgie’s stunned silence for approval, Hermione went on: ‘We all feel so sorry for Guy, he’s such a darling man, so dependable and so different when you’re not around glowering at him like a wardress. He may have lied to you, but men do lie when they’re frightened. Anyway, any man of gumption keeps a mistress,’ Hermione lowered her voice. ‘You wouldn’t want to be married to a wimp. Take a leaf out of Kitty Rannaldini’s book and accept it. Brickie knows how to behave with dignity.’

  ‘Because she doesn’t kick against the lack of pricks,’ snarled Georgie.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure Rannaldini fulfils her every need.’

  Stumbling away from Hermione, Georgie searched for a friendly face, but all the stall holders, holding their glasses of cheap wine like unexploded bombs, averted their eyes. Poor Guy to be lumbered with such a liability. Did liabilities always turn men into liars?

  ‘I wasn’t always like this,’ Georgie wanted to plead.

  ‘You all right?’ It was Marigold.

  ‘No, I’m not. That fucking Lysander!’

  ‘Hush.’ Marigold drew Georgie towards the window. The ledge was covered in dust. A vase of roses was dripping petals. Joy Hillary’s thoughts had been elsewhere this week.

  ‘And what were you doing letting Guy buy you drinks?’

  ‘I was thirsty,’ said Marigold apologetically, ‘and Ay do like him. Oh, Georgie, we’ve made six thousand pounds and Ferdie’s just given us a cheque for a thousand to pay for Lysander’s breakages.’

  ‘Where is the little beast?’

  ‘Passed out in the field next door.’

  ‘I hope they burn the stubble with him in it.’

  But Marigold wasn’t listening. ‘We’ve made six thousand and, oh, Georgie, Lady Chisleden has asked me to call her Gwendolyn.’

  33

  Somehow, because Georgie was busy working out whether to kill Guy with a bread knife or a carving knife they managed to get home without a row. She had just fed Charity and Dinsdale when he came into the kitchen carrying a file.

  ‘I’m off, Panda. I told Joy and Percy I’d help clear up. Don’t bother with supper. I’ll grab a sandwich at The Pearly Gates. I’ve got a Best-Kept Village meeting later.’

  ‘Why don’t you enter Julia in the Best-Kept Mistress competition?’ screamed Georgie. ‘You might even beat Hermione.’

  Georgie cried and cried, had a large Bacardi, got down her suitcase and couldn’t think where to go. It was so hot she put on an old denim bikini scrumpled up in the ironing. Then she took a plum from the fruit bowl and found she’d put the stone in her mouth and chucked the fruit in the ashy muck-bucket. Everything turned to ashes. Poor Julia had looked devastated, too. Georgie found she didn’t hate her any more. And maybe Marigold, Hermione and all the ladies of Paradise were right and Guy was different and really nice when he wasn’t with her. Why had Lysander let her down? Because she simply wasn’t important enough to him. She jumped as the telephone rang. It was Flora.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Lake Geneva — er — staying in a youth hostel. It’s great here.’

  ‘And where the hell is my white silk shirt? No doubt split across the back of one of your rugger-playing boyfriends, or being used to clean his car.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Look behind the spare-room door,’ said Flora huffily. ‘You’ll find it there. Go and look now.’

  Belting upstairs Georgie found her white shirt, then remembered it was the spare room where Guy had adjusted the mirror to sleep with Julia, and started to cry again. By the time she got downstairs Flora had rung off. Georgie felt awful — poor darling Flora might jump in Lake Geneva.

  I was beastly to her, said a small voice, because I was jealous of her and Lysander. She was overcome by a sick, heart-thumping, craving for information. She daren’t snoop in Guy’s study. She was a bit drunk and he’d notice if papers had been moved.

  Loathing herself, she went into Flora’s room. The radio and the record player were still on. Clothes carpeted the floor. On the wall was a poster of a gorilla; underneath it someone had written: FLORA SEYMOUR ON A GOOD DAY. Here was Flora’s diary; Georgie’s hands were shaking so much that at first she couldn’t focus.

  ‘August 13: Read The Franklyn’s Tale (not bad for a set book) about a man who sleeps with a disgusting old woman who turns into a beautiful princess. I can really relate to the Franklyn.’

  Would I turn into a princess if I went to bed with Lysander? wondered Georgie.

  ‘August 14: Sunday.’ Here it was. ‘Lunch at Valhalla, Lysander and Ferdie there and Hermione being a pa
in.’ Then followed a lot of guff about Lysander riding into the lake. ‘He’s gorgeous but quite old. He and Ferdie really sweet and invited me over to Magpie Cottage. Daddy really nice, too, gave me a lift. We had a good chat. Later we had fantastic sex in the wood. I’m terrified I’m falling in love.’

  Giving a moan, Georgie turned the page. ‘August 15: X made me come by just talking to me over the telephone. He’s given me a tiny vibrator in the shape of a fountain-pen as a going-away present so I don’t miss him, but I know I will. At least he’s flying out lots to see me.’

  Georgie was so transfixed with horror that at first she didn’t hear the telephone. Sobbing at the sickness that had made her pick the lock of Pandora’s box she reeled down the landing to her bedroom and snatched up the receiver.

  ‘Georgie, it’s Lysander. I’m sorry I got pissed. I want to come round.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ screamed Georgie.

  ‘I know I let you down. Ferdie’s just bawled me out. I’ll make it up to you.’

  ‘You won’t. Your bloody dog screwed up my speech, then you make a fool of me in front of everyone and finally you’re fucking my daughter. How dare you! Keep your rotten fee, but I don’t want to see you or Ferdie ever again and don’t you dare contact Flora.’ Slamming down the receiver she raced round the house pulling out telephones as though she were weeding tares out of her life.

  She couldn’t believe it was only eleven o’clock. Out on the terrace the air was heavy with night-scented stock. In the moonlight Rannaldini’s strawbales encased in black shiny bags looked like great slugs coming to eat her.

  Undressed in her lonely double bed, she looked in the big mirror over the fireplace and in her reflection, with her red hair flowing over her bare shoulders, she could only see Julia. Sobbing she swallowed two sleeping pills and crashed out.

  Next day she woke, as always after taking pills, feeling calm and almost euphoric. What did a million mistresses matter? In one of those bewildering volte-faces, she didn’t shrug off Guy’s encroaching hands. Today she was going to be like Brickie, who would never spurn a husband.

  ‘Let’s make love outside. Oh, Panda, I’ve missed you,’ said Guy, taking her down to a corner of the lake hidden by willow trees and laying her on the scratchy yellow grass. But just as he’d put his hand between her legs, Dinsdale had barged through the willow fronds and was shoved aside so vociferously he had waddled off in a sulk to Mother Courage.

  Georgie, needing the release so desperately, found herself wracked by sexual paralysis.

  Too tense to reach orgasm that way, she started to cry and begged Guy to come inside her, but she was so tight down there, she nearly screamed out with pain.

  ‘That was lovely, darling,’ she mumbled afterwards, ‘thank you so much.’

  But as she got out of her bath, Guy came out of his dressing room with a cricket bag, kissing her on the cheek and announcing he was off to Oxford.

  ‘You’re always complaining you can’t work, Panda, so I thought I’d give you a clear day.’

  No doubt he and Julia would meet up in Ricky France-Lynch’s woods and Guy would say, ‘Things can’t go on. Georgie’s being so awful.’

  It was terribly hot. The smell of dew drying on a nearby clump of fennel reminded Georgie of Wheeler’s, London and fun. Whooping across the valley, Larry’s farm boy was moving weary cattle in search of grazing. The bells of All Saints rang out, no doubt in grateful anticipation of a rebuilt spire. A young vixen sat motionless in the stubble awaiting victims disorientated by the combine harvesters — rabbits and field-mice so desperate for water that they lost their instinct for survival. Like me, thought Georgie with a sob. Oh please God, help me, she dropped to her knees.

  God told her to get down to work. Getting into her bikini she took manuscript paper, pens and biscuits for Dinsdale, who’d come back but was still sulking, out on to the terrace.

  Scraping back her hair in an elasticated band to get her forehead brown she whipped off her bikini top, coated her pale breasts with Ambre Solaire and started to think. Cleopatra was always ranting and raving at Anthony, who was charming, self-indulgent and adored by his men: a tower of strength with his willing helpers. To the west she could see a red glow beneath a mushroom-brown spiral of cloud. They were burning the stubble like Anthony’s funeral pyre.

  Georgie shut her eyes and hummed. Slowly a tune that her brain had been chasing for days took form in her head, almost as fast the words followed: ‘I want to blaze with love once more before I die.’ Joyfully she started to write, but her biro refused to function where the paper was soaked with suntan oil. She took a fresh sheet; somehow she must capture the doomed folly of their love.

  She didn’t know how long she wrote, only that music was singing in her head and words racing as though the streams of Angel’s Reach were carrying the rains off the hills once again. Like Hemingway, she was about to stop when she was ‘going good’ and make a cup of coffee when Dinsdale’s bay rang out and Jack and Maggie raced across the lawn. Maggie was carrying an envelope which she dropped in her excitement. Georgie only had time to whip off her elastic band, fluff out her hair and clutch her bikini top to her sweating breasts when Lysander crept round the corner.

  He was wearing Ferdie’s dark glasses and carrying a bottle of champagne and a bunch of clashing pink-and-purple asters. It was hard to tell if he was shaking more from nerves or from hangover.

  ‘Get out,’ said Georgie.

  ‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, but basically I got pissed and Jack’s desperately sorry, too.’ He reached down to pick up the envelope which Maggie had dropped. ‘Jesus, my poor head! I can promise you there’s nothing sham about this pain.’

  As he handed over the bottle of Moët, he looked at Georgie under his lashes and was disappointed to see no flicker of amusement.

  ‘Why aren’t you playing in that polo final?’ she snapped.

  ‘I pulled out. You’re more important and I’m not bonking your daughter.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Georgie, wishing she wasn’t so conscious of being hot, sweaty and middle-aged, when all she should be thinking about was Flora’s honour. ‘She didn’t get back till four in the morning last Sunday, and I overheard her talking on the telephone.’

  There was no way she was going to own up to reading Flora’s diary.

  ‘Flora stayed half an hour last Sunday and had one drink,’ said Lysander, ‘and what is more,’ he went on indignantly, ‘she wasn’t remotely interested in Arthur, even when he lay on his side and snored and shook hands for a Twix bar and drank a can of Fanta. I was appalled.’

  Not exactly the way, thought Georgie thawing slightly, to Lysander’s heart.

  ‘And she kept looking at her watch,’ he went on. ‘Then a car came to the bottom of our lane and she was off like a rat up a drain. You ask Ferdie.’

  ‘He always covers for you.’

  ‘He does not. He’s just given me another bollocking.’

  ‘Any idea who was in the car?’

  ‘No,’ lied Lysander. ‘Where’s the Ace Carer?’

  ‘Gone to Oxford for an end-away fixture.’

  ‘Am I interrupting you?’ Lysander glanced at her paper. ‘You have written a lot.’

  ‘I’ve had a good morning.’ Georgie suddenly felt absurdly happy. ‘D’you want some lunch?’

  ‘Don’t think I could keep it down. Oh, Georgie, thank you for not being cross any more. I’ve been so miserable.’ He followed her into the kitchen which was as cool and dark as a cave.

  ‘I ought to get dressed,’ said Georgie, putting the asters in the sink.

  ‘Please don’t. You’re overdressed as it is.’

  ‘How about some cold chicken or a bit of sea trout?’ Georgie opened the fridge door.

  ‘Unless you’re starving. I’m honestly not hungry. Let’s watch EastEnders first.’

  ‘You ought to cook for me,’ said Georgie, ‘since you beat everyone in the cho
colate-cake competition.’

  Lysander opened his bloodshot eyes wide, then roared with laughter. ‘I stuffed it with hash. No wonder the judges finished every scrap and couldn’t identify the special flavour. Ferdie got livid because I kept taking spoonfuls while he was mixing it. Cakes are so much nicer before they’re made.’

  ‘Like women,’ said Georgie acidly.

  ‘Not all women,’ said Lysander, handing her a glass.

  Collapsing on to the dark gold sofa in the drawing room, Georgie wished Guy hadn’t just cut back the rambler rose which had obscured the window. Now the bright sunlight streamed in showing up all her bags and wrinkles.

  Dinsdale promptly heaved himself up beside her and refused to budge, so Lysander was reduced to sprawling on the shaggy rug at her feet, as her children so often did. From now on she must regard him as one of Flora’s cricketing friends — delectable but out of bounds.

  It was a gripping instalment of EastEnders and Georgie was so involved in Michelle’s conversation with Sharon that she suddenly found to her horror she was stroking Lysander’s hair.

  ‘I thought you were Dinsdale,’ she said aghast.

  ‘If only I were,’ Lysander trapped her hand, ‘I’d like to climb into your bed every morning. Oh, Georgie, I’ve had my binoculars trained on Angel’s Reach since first thing waiting for Guy to go out. And I stood watching you this afternoon while you were writing, you looked so gorgeous. I really fancy you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Georgie swelled with all the outrage of a cat startled by a dog.

  ‘I nearly kissed you in the woods during the cricket match — and I know you fancy me.’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘You do, too, or you wouldn’t have been so furious about me and Flora.’ Sliding his other hand round her neck he drew her towards him until their lips touched and he kissed her with such alacrity that she fell off the sofa on top of him.

  ‘No, we really shouldn’t.’

  For a moment they were all deliciously sprawling limbs, then his tongue slid inside her mouth and as she struggled with increasing half-heartedness to escape, the safety-pin holding her bikini top gave way and she was naked except for her faded-blue denim bikini pants with her red-gold hair flowing over her golden shoulders and youthful rounded breasts.