by Jilly Cooper
Bewildered that he hadn’t satisfied her properly, Lysander took her face in his hands.
‘Georgie darling, please leave Guy and marry me.’
Georgie smiled. ‘That is the sweetest offer I’ve ever had, but can you imagine what The Scorpion would make of me and my child bridegroom?’
The concert was a massive success. Georgie sang all her old sixties songs which had just been issued as a CD and were racing up the charts, and then ended with ‘Rock Star’. Having got well tanked up beforehand and during the interval in the private Catchitune box, Lysander nearly died of pride. Here was his darling Georgie, who had lain warm and naked in his arms a few hours ago, caressed now by thousands of coloured lights, skipping, dancing round the stage, with a great waving cornfield of clapping hands saluting her. It was so sexy the way her red hair tumbled down her bare back each time she threw back her head and how she seemed to suck, lick and even drink out of the microphone as she belted out these glorious heartbreaking songs in her yelping, husky, smoke-filled voice. In his diamonds, with her lovely suntanned shoulders rising out of his black dress, she looked stunningly beautiful and about twentyfive.
She was backed by the same musicians who’d made Rock Star and a good deal of money in the past six months, and who were delighted to be on stage with her again.
Lysander liked it least when she sang ‘Rock Star’. He barracked noisily and had to be shushed when Guy’s handsome manly face was blown up on a screen for Georgie to sing to. The audience, however, cheered and yelled so much she had to sing it again — and still they wouldn’t let her go.
Here is a talent that can cradle an audience in its hands, and hold them spellbound and captive for two hours, thought Lysander. How dare Rannaldini, Hermione and most of all, Rachel, patronize her.
She was going to do an encore. As she sat down on the edge of the stage with a guitar slung round her neck, a hush fell on the hall. One spotlight illuminated her; everywhere else was in darkness.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ began Georgie in her soft voice with its faint trace of Irish, ‘I’d like to try out a new song I’ve just written this week, which I hope will be part of my new album. At home I have an old dog, whom I love dearly. Like anyone in this situation, I dread the day he dies — so I dedicate this song to Dinsdale.’
Oh, she’s so clever, thought Lysander, downing another glass of Moët. ‘I never knew she could play the guitar so well.’
‘Old Dog,’ began Georgie, in her husky voice, ‘you break my heart.
How many days have I left with you?
Your muzzle whitens, your steps go slow,
But your tail still wags and your heart beats true.
Lie in in the morning, guard your strength,
Live as long as you possibly can,
For guys have come and guys will go,
But you’ve loved me more than any man.’
The haunting beauty of the melody redeemed the sentimentality of the words, and at the end, when Georgie bowed her head and waited for the storm of cheering, Lysander wasn’t the only one who mopped his eyes.
It was after midnight before Georgie managed to tear herself away from the well-wishers in the green room. Larry was particularly ecstatic.
‘“Old Dog” is going to be bigger than “Rock Star”,’ he said, chewing on his cigar. ‘Naughty girl to jump the gun, but if that’s anything like the rest of the album, we’ll make a killing. We could rush it out as a single. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Pity Guy wasn’t here, he’d be so proud,’ said Marigold.
‘Better change that bit about Guys have come and Guys will go,’ said Larry sardonically.
‘That was my best bit,’ muttered Lysander. ‘Substitute the word “boy” or “man”,’ said Larry. ‘But it’s a great number.’
‘And just the way Ay feel about Patch,’ said Marigold, whose mascara had run.
After a concert, Georgie felt absolutely drained and preferred to go out for a gentle dinner with her agent, or people from the record company who’d talk shop, praise her, and go through every note of her performance, just as Lysander went through every stroke after a polo game. Instead, because she felt momentarily sky-high on adrenalin, adulation and champagne on a very empty stomach, she let Lysander bear her off to a party given by some of his friends.
‘Won’t it be over?’ said Georgie as they drove through a recession-darkened Knightsbridge.
‘It won’t have started till after the pubs close,’ said Lysander, noticing the full moon like a satellite dish topping Brompton Oratory. Was it only a month since he’d taken Kitty on? He hoped she was OK in her lonely fortress.
You could hear the din of the party six hundred yards away. The moment Georgie entered the big terraced house with its yelling jostling crowd hanging out of every window, she knew she had made a dreadful mistake. Still in her thick stage make-up, her diamonds and her backless dress, the halter neckline of which barely covered her breasts, she was ludicrously overdressed. Beside all the utterly ravishing girls in their T-shirts, leggings or occasional micro-skirt, she felt like boiled mutton dressed as lamb without even the aid of caper sauce.
And if she had been the star of the concert, Lysander was undeniably the star of the party. Everyone, particularly the girls, converged on him shrieking with joy.
‘Where have you been?’, ‘We thought you were dead’, ‘London’s dire without you’, ‘Lysander’s back, everyone!’
‘This is Georgie,’ Lysander told them all proudly.
But although he stuck as close as he could, friends never stopped fighting their way over to talk to him, and whenever he fought his way to the kitchen, where a huge table groaned with every drink known to man, to fill up their glasses, it took him half an hour because everyone waylaid him.
It was a very wild party; most people were wasted with drink or drugs, and were already graffiting the walls. Seizing the aerosol can, Lysander wrote: I LUV GORGY, and everyone screamed with laughter.
Others were singing along to a Karaoke machine and videoing each other. Everyone wanted to video Georgie. They were charming to her, but in the same way they might gaze in wonder at the Taj Mahal, tick the guide book, and move on.
Georgie tried to get into the spirit of things, but drink only made her more tired. At the end of the sitting room, a group round a table were playing a game called Cardinal Puff, in which you recited a very complicated verse with endless subclauses. Every time you went wrong, you had to down a glass of booze. Lysander, being dyslexic and very drunk, couldn’t get the hang of it at all, and kept making mistakes and reducing himself and everyone to hysterical laughter.
Georgie tried to match their mirth, but found her jaw aching. She longed to go back to her hotel, but didn’t want to spoil Lysander’s fun. Shrieks grew louder next door, as a blonde in a bright yellow sequined jacket and not much else rushed in.
‘I’ve just emptied a saucepan of chilli con carne over the complete geek giving the party for not playing our kind of music,’ she shouted, then seeing Lysander, ‘Hallo, sweet pea,’ and grabbing him, she kissed him on the mouth, on and on to wild cheers.
‘Anyone would think he was fucking Helen of Troy,’ said a very suntanned stocky blond boy, who was drinking out of a bottle of vodka and taking alternate slugs out of a carton of orange juice.
‘Seb!’ In drunken delight, Lysander tipped the blonde off his knee. ‘Oh, Seb, this is Georgie Maguire. Get her a drink and look after her for a sec while I crack this stupid game. Seb plays polo for England, Georgie, so does his twin brother Dommie. Where is Dommie?’
‘Bonking some slapper upstairs.’ Seb filled up Georgie’s glass with vodka and orange juice. ‘Love your album.’
‘Thanks. Who owns this house?’
‘Bloke called Mark Waterlane or rather his father does — Mark’s a ghastly host: passed out by two in the morning. Where’s Ferdie?’ he asked Lysander.
‘In the Aglarve,’ Lysander never got the word right. �
��Due home any minute. I thought he might be here.’
‘He sent me a postcard saying he’d got off with a thirty-year-old wrinkly,’ said the blonde, clambering back on to Lysander’s knee. ‘Must be pushed.’
Georgie tried to be a good sport, and return Lysander’s apologetic grin round the blonde’s jutting bosom. But when she escaped to the 100 to check her own wrinkles, it was occupied.
‘Someone’s either bonking, throwing up, or passed out,’ said a brunette in a crimson body-stocking who was painting her mouth rose-red in the landing mirror. ‘They’re organizing a search-party to climb in through the window, and get whoever it is out.’
Joining the girl at the mirror, Georgie gave a wail of despair. Beside that smooth fresh face, she looked like a raddled old tart of a hundred. Her heavy make-up sank into the lines round her mouth, and emphasized the weary red-veined eyes, and when she rubbed away a blob of mascara, the skin stayed pleated.
‘Love your album,’ said the brunette. ‘I hope I meet a guy like your Guy one day. He’s lush. He’s not here, is he?’
‘If he was, he’d adore you,’ said Georgie wearily.
There was a crash and a tinkling of glass as a boy, climbing the creeper to rip down the satellite dish, put his biker boot through a window. The music was deafening. To stop complaints the telephones had all been pulled out.
Lysander waited in the hall with his arms out as Georgie came downstairs: ‘Georgie! Let’s get naked.’
A wild boy wearing a baseball cap back to front suddenly rushed up, squeezed both her breasts and shouted: ‘Yippee, six, the big one!’
‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Georgie crossly.
‘Tit cricket,’ said the boy with an inane laugh. ‘When you squeeze both you get a six.’
‘Leave my woman alone,’ howled Lysander, his right fist sending the boy crashing to the floor.
‘Is he all right?’ said Georgie anxiously when the boy didn’t move.
‘Fine.’ Seb Carlisle kicked him gently out of the way. ‘He was about due to pass out.’
‘Just going to have a slash in the garden.’ Lysander staggered out, cannoning off walls.
‘Mrs Seymour?’
Georgie jumped out of her skin as she saw her husband staring at her. Beside him was herself looking twenty years younger. Then she realized yet another stunning girl was wearing one of Catchitune’s new Guy and Georgie T-shirts.
‘I bought it from Tower Records, Piccadilly, this evening,’ she said. ‘Will you sign it?’
‘Will you sign mine, too?’ said her even prettier red-haired friend. ‘I temped for your husband last year,’ she added. ‘He’s really sweet. Every morning he made the same joke: “Bring your book in, Lottie, and do your longhand, I want to look at your legs”.’
‘That’s my husband,’ said Georgie bleakly.
Much later, she was having great difficulty holding Lysander up on the dance floor, when over the din of the record player, she heard the wail of sirens.
‘Quick, the pigs!’ Seb Carlisle seized Georgie’s arm. ‘I’ll get Dommie!’
Having retrieved his twin brother from upstairs, he led Georgie and a tottering Lysander through a kitchen three inches deep in beer out into a garden. The fresh air hit them like a fist. The twins had just given Georgie a leg-up over the wall when a policeman ran through the french windows, frantically blowing his whistle. Straddling an old rambler rose that ripped her tights to shreds, Georgie knew that he knew who she was.
‘Now, where’s my car?’ said Lysander, scratching his head as he joined them on the pavement.
‘You said you’d left it in Rosary Road,’ said Seb.
As they rushed across the road, Georgie felt an unidentifiable pain.
‘I can’t see it,’ went on Lysander.
‘It’s that BMW, you idiot,’ screamed Georgie. ‘The Ferrari’s being serviced.’
‘I was scoring with that brunette,’ grumbled Dommie Carlisle, climbing sulkily into the back.
‘Of all the ungrateful sods,’ said Seb, climbing in beside him. ‘Not sure Lysander’s safe to drive,’ he muttered to Georgie.
‘I bloody am,’ said Lysander, backing briskly into a parked Mercedes.
‘I’ll drive,’ said Georgie, panicking the police would catch up with them, triggering off some frightful scandal. ‘For God’s sake, move over, Lysander.’
The twins were now having a punch-up in the back.
‘I would’ve scored.’
‘Bloody wouldn’t.’
‘Would.’
‘She was a slapper.’
‘She was not.’
‘For God’s sake, stop them,’ Georgie screamed at Lysander, as she set off with a jerk and furious revving.
‘I can’t. I’m navigating.’ Lysander stared fixedly ahead. ‘I’ll be sick if I look round.’
‘I’m going back to score.’ Dommie leapt defiantly out, running straight into the arms of the police.
As Georgie drove towards Knightsbridge, the gutters were filled with brown plane leaves and the gardens with Japanese anemones and shaggy yellow chrysanthemums. Then she twigged. Rosary Road was where Julia had lived in London. How often Guy must have bowled down the Fulham Road in excitement and told the taxi to turn left.
She dropped Seb off at Sloane Square. Lysander, slumped beside her, was too far gone to notice the tears streaming down her cheeks all the way back to the hotel.
‘Just walk in, don’t look to left or right,’ she hissed as she steered a buckling Lysander twice round the swing door.
‘Good morning, Miss Maguire,’ said the doorman.
As soon as his head hit the pillow, Lysander passed out. Georgie removed her hellish make-up and, suddenly icy cold, had a long, hot bath, waving two metaphorical fingers at Rachel as she wasted a great deal of water. Then she removed Lysander’s flowered tie and took off his only pair of Guccis Maggie hadn’t eaten. His brown lashes nearly covered the shadows beneath his eyes, there was a sprinkling of freckles on his sunburnt nose, and his big mouth was smiling as he reached out in his sleep for her. As Georgie nuzzled into his neck, he smelled as sweet and fresh as violets.
Too exhausted to sleep, she saw her bare shoulders, her long red hair and pale sad face reflected in the mirror opposite. Once again it was as though Julia was gazing back at her.
The next day, after a leisurely lunch and several Alka-Seltzers, as they set out for Angel’s Reach in the BMW, Lysander handed her a copy of Hello!.
‘To distract you on the journey. I used to buy one for Mum. She was so terrified of my driving.’
He didn’t add that it was the anniversary of his mother’s death. In their separate anguish, they didn’t confide in each other. Despite Hello! Georgie had to bite her lip and cling on to the seat as the speedometer reached 120 m.p.h. The radio was playing the new tape of her sixties songs. Turned up fortissimo, it gave her a blinding headache. Even with all the windows open and in spite of the time of year, the day was impossibly hot and sticky.
Lysander, thought Georgie with infinite sadness, was adorable, but he needed children his own age to play with. Nor could she transfer her love to him. She lacked skins.
Back at Angel’s Reach, longing to have a bath and change, she found a note from Mother Courage: Cat’s been sick, downstairs toilet blocked and water packed up. Got Debenham. See you later.
‘That’s all I bloody need.’
‘Hurrah, you can come and stay at Magpie Cottage,’ said Lysander.
‘I’ll join you when I’ve got things together this end,’ said Georgie, leafing through the post. ‘Guy’s sent me a postcard of a ruined abbey. Is that supposed to symbolize the state he’s reduced me to?’
Upstairs, she turned on the ansaphone.
‘Hallo, Panda,’ said Guy’s deep voice. ‘Been thinking of you, hope everything went all right. Give me a ring. Miss you.’
The next call was from a jubilant Flora, who’d passed her driving test. Clever little duck, thought
Georgie fondly, but it was going to complicate things having her rolling up unannounced at any time of day. The third call was from Sabine Bottomley saying Flora wasn’t working. The fourth was from Guy again saying he missed her and would she ring him back.
Perhaps I’m imagining things, Georgie felt suddenly happier. Then she went into the bathroom and saw Guy’s organic toothpaste.
Craving truth, she dialled Rachel’s number. If she was at home there was no need to worry. She was about to ring off when the telephone was picked up. Hell, thought Georgie, I’ll have to ask her to something now.
‘Hallo, Rachel.’
‘No, it’s Gretel. I’m just feeding the cat.’
‘When’s Rachel coming back?’
‘Tomorrow, she’s abroad.’
Georgie slammed down the telephone, hands shaking, heart pounding, body drenched in sweat. She was out of the house in ten minutes. Then the telephone started ringing and ringing.
42
The other man whose mind was very much on the late Pippa Hawkley on that heavy, thundery, suffocatingly close afternoon was her husband, David. Putting a bunch of tiger lilies, flowers as beautiful and exotic as Pippa herself, on her grave, he had prayed she was resting more in peace than he was in life. A year on he was still wracked by anguish and confusion. Despite overt offers from Mrs Colman and half the mothers who came to discuss their sons, he had remained celibate. But a couple of porn magazines, confiscated from a boy that morning and shoved in his desk drawer to burn later, had reminded him what he was missing. Glancing at the wanton, knowing girls with their tangled hair, hillocks of breast and buttock, and pink, glistening lips, he felt as parched sexually as the dusty dried-up pitches outside his window.
Slamming the desk drawer shut, he grimly turned to Catullus. A kindly letter from his publisher earlier in the week reminded him that his translation should have been delivered in January.
An earlier translator had written: ‘Hard it is to put aside long-standing love.’ His sixth form would have probably put: ‘It’s a bitch to get over a long-standing relationship.’
‘How can I forget someone I have loved for ever?’ wrote David Hawkley. Catullus might have written the poem specially for him. He was roused from his sad dreams by a knock on the door. It was ‘Mustard’ with a vase of bronze chrysanthemums.