The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  But Rachel was inveighing against Bob for not making Boris play one of his more ambitious compositions as an encore. ‘Instead of that sentimental, derivative crap, and did you see the way Cecilia was pawing him? Talk about cradle-snatching.’

  ‘That’s a very ageist remark,’ said Flora gently, as she removed a McDonald’s cardboard box out of the nearest carrier bag. ‘Your ex-husband is without doubt one of the sexiest men in the world. All he had to do this evening was stand up and women of both sexes would have swooned all over him. As it was, he produced the most exciting and beautiful Requiem people will probably ever be privileged to hear and Cecilia sang like an angel, too. Unlike you, Boris hears music with his heart, not his ears, and you’re such a bitch, I can see exactly why he left you.’

  ‘Darling,’ protested Georgie.

  ‘You have no idea the sacrifices we’ve made,’ went on Flora, getting out a burger and taking a large bite, ‘I haven’t had a cigarette for over an hour. You’ve wrecked my mother’s and my last evening together and poor Lysander’s had to miss EastEnders and The Bill and he can’t even watch it later because we were taping Boris for you.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Flora.’ Lysander leant forward to fill up Rachel’s glass. ‘Boris did so well, it’s a pity Richard Baker can’t interview him afterwards like rugger players.’

  ‘I know.’ Rachel’s stony face crumbled in an avalanche of grief. ‘He was absolutely miraculous, but I can’t ring and tell him because Chloe’ll be there.’

  Bob had spread the word before the concert and the green room was absolutely packed with Press.

  ‘Gimme a ring in the morning,’ said Larry, who’d actually stayed awake throughout, pressing his card on Boris. ‘I’ll record that folk-song and anything else you’ve got at home.’

  In the past interviewers had slit their throats because Boris had been so inarticulate, but tonight he had found his tongue.

  ‘Why haven’t you been discovered earlier?’ asked the Standard.

  ‘I didn’t know how to beat when I start. The reviews were so terrible they almost depart me. I became Rannaldini’s assistant. Rannaldini never go seek.’

  ‘What happened to Rannaldini this evening?’ asked the Mail.

  Boris grinned. ‘I think he ran into french window.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he programme more of your music?’

  ‘He don’t like eet. He no understand avant-garde music.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Rannaldini ees a vanker.’

  The Press howled with laughter.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Bob hastily. ‘Boris has had quite a night, give him a ring tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I geeve lecture on Mahler in the afternoon.’

  ‘Be the last you’ll have to give,’ said Bob.

  Having extracted Boris rather reluctantly from Cecilia’s clutches he took him out to dinner at The Chanterelle in Old Brompton Road. Boris’s wrist ached so much he could hardly cut up his steak — he wasn’t very hungry anyway — but he drank a lot of red wine and talked a lot about Rachel.

  ‘She geeve me a terrible cold shoulder. At zee end of our marriage she won’t sleep wiz me because she tink I was carrying on, and I carried on because she wouldn’t sleep with me. Is vicious triangle. She is beetch, but I love her. I ’ate Rannaldini living so near her. You know he ’ad Chloe at one time.’

  ‘She’s only a bitch because she’s insecure,’ said Bob.

  ‘Chloe come home as I was leaving,’ said Boris darkly. ‘She could have come, but she was tired and her ’air was dirty. Rachel would have drop everything. But she would ’ave given me hard time because she was frighten for me. I once zink grass is greener on other side, but now I find eet cover een pesticide. Tonight was wonderful. I zank you, Bob, but I weesh Rachel and the children had been there. My new symphony is dedicated to Chloe. When I write it down in pencil, Chloe went over it in ink for me and put in the bars.’

  ‘I should keep your options open,’ said Bob. ‘Why not dedicate it to Cecilia? I’ve read it,’ he went on. ‘There are fantastic things in that symphony. I didn’t know such sounds existed. I’d send it to Simon Rattle. Rachel is miserable and she loves you. Why don’t you try again? If you had money, and you certainly will after this evening, things would be very different.’

  ‘Can I borrow the score?’ said Boris as they went out a little unsteadily into the hot russet night. ‘I like to go through and ’ighlight my mistakes.’

  ‘You can keep it,’ said Bob. ‘You’ve made history, like the night Lennie Bernstein took over from Bruno Walter.’

  This was confirmed by ecstatic reviews and news stories in all the papers the following day. The best notice came from The Times critic, whose wife Rannaldini had once taken to bed in revenge for a lousy review. Invitations to conduct, to compose, to appear on television and give press interviews poured in all day. Instead of lecturing his students about Mahler, Boris sat on the edge of a desk and told them about his night at the Albert Hall.

  Rannaldini, who watched the video with two very black eyes, was insane with jealousy. Ringing up Bob, he screamed at him for replacing him with such a hopeless amateur.

  ‘He was brilliant,’ argued Bob. ‘He had the longest ovation I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘Promenaders ’ave no discrimination. Eef Tabloid come on in a white tie they cheer their ’eads off.’

  Rannaldini was even crosser when the story, leaked by the bimbo next door, of the row with Cecilia and Hermione, was plastered all over The Scorpion.

  The next time he confronted the London Met to rehearse the Missa Solemnis they launched into ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’ and, when he screamed at them, they refused to be intimidated and played it again. When it came to the public performance the front-desk cellist, whose Strad Rannaldini had endangered, deliberately played ‘God Save the Queen’ in the wrong key.

  37

  Machiavellian as ever, Rannaldini decided to avenge himself on Boris by laying siege to Rachel. This would not only enrage Hermione and Cecilia, with whom he was still furious, but also Flora who refused to take the whole eye-blacking incident seriously. She insisted on calling him Panda II and had been cheeky enough to insist that Boris’s Requiem had been the best thing she had ever heard.

  Rannaldini was further turned on by Rachel’s animosity and the way she kept firing off incensed letters to the local papers complaining about his clay shoots, his closing of footpaths, and his spraying with pesticides.

  Ignoring such bombardment, Rannaldini started dropping in at Jasmine Cottage, occasionally at weekends encountering Lysander, who was at a loose end with Guy at home and the polo season over. Rannaldini had also persuaded Catchitune to sign up Rachel to record the Rachmaninov piano concertos in the autumn with himself conducting. He knew it was too big a break for her to refuse. He was amused that, despite his largesse, Rachel kept an icy distance. And just as the husbands of Paradise had tried to make the best chocolate cake for the fête, now following Rannaldini’s example, they vied, unknown to their wives, to be the first to comfort Rachel.

  Lysander thought the whole thing hilarious and promptly picked up the telephone.

  ‘Ferdie, Ferdie, you’ll never guess. Rachel, my eye-gel friend has emerged in Paradise, and all the husbands are mad about her. They’re all putting up shelves for her health foods and stalling their mowers with unleaded petrol. First they rolled up with trays of tomatoes for chutney, last week it was two-legged carrots, this week it’s apples. Her cottage looks like Harvest Festival, and Rachel chucks out most of it because it’s not organic enough, so Arthur and Tiny are doing terribly well.’

  ‘Who’s after her?’ asked Ferdie beadily.

  ‘Well, Rannaldini, Guy, Larry, Bob and the vicar for starters.’

  ‘Larry and Guy bloody shouldn’t be,’ snapped Ferdie, thinking of Marigold’s retainer and Georgie’s fat monthly cheque. ‘Your only justification for being down there is to keep them keen on their wives. You’d better come back to London and earn some seri
ous money. I’ve got a terrific job for you in Kenya, beautiful rich wife, shit-of-a-parasite husband, stacks of polo and racing.’

  ‘I’m happy in Paradise,’ bleated Lysander in a panic at the thought of leaving Georgie. ‘None of them is serious about Rachel. They just don’t want each other to get her. Rachel’s a crosspatch, but seriously good-looking. I wouldn’t mind giving her one myself.’

  ‘If you stopped at one, I wouldn’t mind,’ said Ferdie disapprovingly. ‘I had to cope with your father yesterday, rolled up in a strop because you hadn’t written. He’s left you a letter.’

  ‘I won’t read it. It’ll be just another lecture about getting a proper job. I’ve been working Rannaldini’s horses,’ said Lysander by way of mitigation. ‘He wants me to race ride for him in the winter.’

  ‘That won’t keep you in fags.’

  ‘Fags want to keep me; the vicar’s asked me to go to the Holy Land.’

  ‘Don’t be fatuous. How’s Natasha?’ asked Ferdie. Even her name still caused him pain.

  ‘Gone back to school. But she and Flora are home on Sunday for Rannaldini’s famous tennis tournament. Do you want to play?’

  ‘OK. I’ll come down for the weekend.’ It would be an excuse to see Natasha and protect his investment.

  Poor Kitty, meanwhile, had been having a dreadful summer. Increasingly desperate for a baby, she had spent nearly all the running-away money she had saved in case things became too awful, hawking herself from one gynaecologist to another, putting up with the embarrassment of endless tests and internal probings. But even when her tubes were blown, no-one could find anything wrong.

  ‘And it’s not my husband, he’s got loads of kids already,’ Kitty kept telling the doctors.

  Rannaldini, who bitterly resented any time Kitty took off, felt she should have been satisfied with her seven stepchildren — eight including little Cosmo.

  ‘Concentrate on being a mother to them, and a secretary to me.’

  But I’m almost the same age as your older children, thought Kitty, and the young ones, although very cute, made her feel guilty about longing so much for one of her own.

  Her chances seemed less and less likely as Rannaldini slept with her so seldom. She had put up with Rannaldini and Flora all summer, and she had been upset and had to fend off the Press over the eye-blacking furore, but it had given her a faint hope that with Hermione and Cecilia out of favour, and Flora back at Bagley Hall, Rannaldini might have more time for her.

  But immediately Cecilia, whom Rannaldini had to forgive because she was starring in Fidelio, turned up to use Valhalla as a base for the duration of filming, Hermione, who was still excluded from Maestro’s presence, became even more histrionic.

  Cecilia was easier than Hermione because she was less stupid and patronizing, and at least had a sense of humour. But she was just as demanding and narcissistic and there was also her total assumption that Rannaldini was still in love with her.

  ‘I cannot understand, Keety, why he is so obsessively jealous of all my admirers. He ripped out the telephone when I was talking to Carlo the other day, and I daren’t tell him Luigi wants to take me to Thailand.’

  Every time Cecilia went out she invited Kitty to her room pretending to ask her advice on what to wear, but really to show off how wonderful she looked in clothes. Often, to Kitty’s embarrassment, she would greet her in the nude, taunting her with a body that was full-breasted but wonderfully slender elsewhere, and magnificent for someone well over forty. How could Rannaldini ever notice Kitty with that around?

  It was the eve of Valhalla tennis tournament. Cecilia had mercifully disappeared to Paris in a ravishing pink shorts suit and Rannaldini’s helicopter. Rannaldini, who was at home for once, had retreated to look at rushes of Fidelio in his tower. Kitty had hoped for peace to make cakes and sandwich fillings for tomorrow and to give herself a perm, but alas Rachel turned up trailing two fretful children who found making fortresses out of egg boxes insufficiently amusing during a hot summer afternoon.

  Kitty had been very kind to Rachel, listening endlessly to her problems and looking after her children when Rachel needed to practise or see lawyers. Rachel felt it was only fair, in turn, to prevent Kitty poisoning herself and the environment.

  ‘Why make a strawberry flan,’ she was now complaining, ‘when strawberries are out of season and there’s a glut of apples? And tuna fish — tuna fish,’ shrieked Rachel. ‘Didn’t you know tuna congregate beneath schools of dolphin, and the tuna fleets haul up dolphin at the same time? Nearly a quarter of a million dolphin die in the Pacific.’

  ‘Poor fings,’ muttered Kitty, appalled. ‘I’ll remember next time.’

  ‘Good, though, to use brown flour,’ said Rachel, feeling she’d been a bit sharp. Then, catching sight of a packet of Tampax in Kitty’s shopping bag, ‘but I wish you’d use STs. Tampons floating round in the sea take a hundred and twenty days to biodegrade.’

  Shut up, Kitty wanted to scream. Normally as regular as clockwork, she was a week late and praying that at last she might be pregnant. Like taking an umbrella out on a sunny day, she had bought the Tampax.

  Rachel was now glaring at a screen Kitty was secretly covering with photographs of Rannaldini and the famous for his birthday in December.

  ‘Christ, look at him leering at Princess Di. Your husband is such a lech, Kitty. Why d’you put up with it?’

  ‘I love ’im.’

  ‘God knows why. I wish he’d stop dropping in on Jasmine Cottage. I wish all the husbands would. One’s so defenceless being so close to the road. Everyone can see lights, or hear the radio.’

  Not Rachel as well, thought Kitty hopelessly. On the dresser was a letter from her mother enclosing a postal order for three pounds and a card with a printed message wishing a wonderful daughter many happy returns tomorrow. Rannaldini was sure to forget it was her birthday.

  As it was Mr Brimscombe’s day off, she’d better water the new plants. The roots of older plants were supposed to go down far enough to find water. Emptying an entire watering-can over a bluey-mauve clematis against the wall, she reflected that new plants, like new or potential mistresses, required attention. Was this why Rannaldini was giving Rachel all this work, and insisting she came to the tournament tomorrow, and making sure Gretel looked after her children?

  Dear God, help me to stop grumbling, pleaded Kitty. If I’m pregnant, I’ll never, never grumble again, and at least Rannaldini hasn’t taken Hermione back.

  As Rannaldini’s tournaments were so unbelievably competitive, Marigold and Georgie had arranged to play a warm-up foursome with Ferdie and Lysander the evening before. Guy had gone to Salisbury to look at a private collection. Larry wasn’t due back from London until later, so the coast was clear.

  On the way over to Angel’s Reach, Lysander had to pop in to Rannaldini’s yard to pick up some worming tablets for Tiny and Arthur.

  There had been no let-up in the weather. The authorities were even muttering about standpipes. Traveller’s joy fell in creamy festoons over the hedgerows, which were weighed down with haws and shining scarlet hips. Ferdie could have leant out of the Ferrari and helped himself to huge ripe blackberries if Lysander hadn’t driven so fast. A glut of crab-apples crunched beneath the wheels.

  Lysander was unsettled by the tang of bonfires. In October his mother would have been dead a year. He clenched the steering-wheel to ease the pain. He must put some flowers on her grave. Perhaps he should make it up with his father.

  Autumn had been daubing Rannaldini’s woods yellow and orange. The Virginia creeper smothering the grooms’ cottage had already turned crimson. Walking into the immaculate but deserted yard, Lysander heard a blood-curdling scream, like a rabbit caught in a snare. Whipping round, he was relieved to see Maggie and Jack still sitting beside Ferdie in the car.

  ‘No, please, please no,’ screamed a female voice.

  For a horrified second Lysander thought it might be Kitty being savaged by The Prince of Darkness, but no,
he was safely muzzled in his box.

  There it was again. Another dreadful wail coming from the indoor school in which Rannaldini enjoyed being left alone to dominate difficult horses. His methods were very cruel, according to Janice the head groom, but, being well paid, she let well alone.

  Beckoning frantically for Ferdie, Lysander loped round the corner and found the door of the indoor school locked.

  ‘No more, please.’ The moaning voice was too deep and throaty for Kitty’s.

  ‘You agreed to do everything I asked.’ It was Rannaldini, spine-chillingly cold.

  Clambering on to Ferdie’s broad shoulders, Lysander straightened up and nearly fell off. He must be seeing things. For there in the centre, wearing shiny black riding-boots and the tightest buff breeches, stood Rannaldini. With one hand he held a hunting whip which he was cracking like a rattlesnake, with the other a leading rein, which was attached to a studded dog-collar round Hermione’s neck.

  Hermione was totally naked except for tight-fitting high-heeled boots. Her body ran with sweat. Her large, wonderfully firm breasts bounced as she trotted round in a circle, her big curved bottom was already slightly pink, her eyes glistened in terror and excitement.

  ‘You’re not going fast enough,’ snapped Rannaldini, cracking the whip again, so the wicked thong caught her left buttock. With a neighing scream, Hermione broke into a canter.

  Wrong leg, thought Lysander.

  She was panting hard now; Rannaldini smiled, but his eyes were dead.

  ‘Are you sorry for the way you behaved?’

  ‘Oh yes, Rannaldini.’

  ‘Sorry you made scenes?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it? Head up, straighten your back.’ With another vicious flick he caught the underside of her breast.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ shrieked Hermione.

  ‘I said, “What are you going to do about it?”’ Yanking her towards him, nearly toppling her, he put a hand between her legs. ‘You’re getting bloody excited. Loving it, aren’t you?’