by Jilly Cooper
‘It’s night-time, you berk.’
It seemed to be getting hotter and closer. Midges were assaulting their scalps and their ankles. The grass was covered in little cobwebs and swarmed with spiders.
‘Why are they called daddy-long-legs?’ asked Kitty, biting off a thread.
‘Because daddies need long legs to run away from all the trouble they cause,’ said Georgie bitterly, ‘and talking of trouble, Miss Bottomley is threatening to suspend Flora again. The moment Flora passed her test, she was caught driving four friends off to the pub in Rutminster. Miss Bottomley has invited me to lunch to discuss it. Oh well, Gomorrah is another day. I’ve never had a woman make a pass at me.’
‘Nor have I,’ said Ferdie wistfully.
Everyone giggled.
‘You will now,’ said Kitty warmly.
‘I never recognize lesbians,’ said Ferdie. ‘Do they have moustaches?’
‘No, it’s gays who have moustaches,’ said Georgie.
‘The technique with the opposite sex,’ announced Lysander, refilling everyone’s glasses, ‘is to tell beautiful really stupid people—’
‘Like you,’ said Ferdie.
‘Like me,’ agreed Lysander, ‘to tell beautiful, thick people how clever they are and tell clever plain ones how beautiful they are, then they always roll over.’
‘What ’appens if they’re both plain and fick like me?’ asked Kitty.
‘You’re not,’ said Georgie, Ferdie and Lysander in unison.
‘Lysander means you’ve got to find a person’s Achilles’ heel and then praise it,’ explained Ferdie. ‘You’ve got a wonderful heel, Mrs Rannaldini.’
‘And he’s called Rannaldini. Whoops, sorry Kitty,’ said Lysander.
They all grew hysterical with laughter at the stupidness of their own jokes. When the Dom Perignon ran out they moved on to peach schnapps. Having sewn on Ferdie’s buttons, Kitty was fooling around with him, trying to make Wolfie’s boomerang come back. Every time she threw it, it went up in the air. Once she nearly hit Arthur.
‘That’s a valuable horse. I don’t mind if you hit Tiny,’ shouted Lysander, who was now beached like a whale across two chairs with his head in Georgie’s lap.
Ferdie was laughing all the time now, looking like a Chinaman with slit eyes and a huge inane grin. Against the towering trees, their shadows danced like the naughty boys dipped in great Agrippa’s ink-well.
‘Look how we get smaller as we approach,’ cried Kitty, waving her arms.
‘Wish dieting was as easy,’ yelled Ferdie.
‘Aren’t they sweet together?’ said Georgie, stroking Lysander’s forehead. ‘Ferdie’s very taken. He’s as lonely as she is. Wouldn’t it be perfect if he took her off Rannaldini?’
Even in his present stupor, Lysander was conscious of a distinct disquiet. If Ferdie started looking after Kitty, and Kitty after Ferdie, who would look after him?
‘Even the boomerang looks stoned,’ he said sulkily.
‘Will it ever rain again?’ sighed Georgie.
They were all too preoccupied to realize it had clouded over and the stars had rushed in. The tape had worked its way round.
‘Take me dancing naked in the rain and cover me in ecstasy,’ sang Blue Pearl.
I’m under ten stone, thought Kitty, capering round to the music. I’m having fun for the first time in years.
‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since I went Sharon-shagging in Benidorm with the cricket XI after A levels,’ said Ferdie, lighting another joint.
‘You probably met me there,’ screamed Kitty. Suddenly she stopped laughing. ‘Listen everyone.’
At first it sounded like a faint rustle of silk, or a distant scream, then a rattle of machine-gun fire. Gradually they felt the first drops on their hair, soothing the midge bites. Suddenly as they turned their faces upwards, it was like stepping into the shower.
‘Rain,’ yelled Georgie, joyfully leaping to her feet. ‘It’s raining. Our little trees will be saved after all.’
Trying to hold her back, Lysander grabbed her sarong. Next moment she was naked, dancing wildly round the field, her writhing body glistening like a seal, her wild red mane flattened and dripping down her back.
‘See me naked dancing in the rain,’ the glorious husky voice echoed across the valley, ‘and cover me with ecstasy.’
Letting out Tarzan howls, Lysander and Ferdie whipped off their clothes and raced after her. They were followed by Kitty, who removed her shirtwaister, but kept on her bra and knickers, which bobbed in the half-darkness like white rabbits.
Off they all charged into the deluge and an ecstatic conga round the field, leaping to avoid the thistles. Jack and Maggie frisked round their heels yapping hysterically, with Dinsdale working off Kitty’s cold chicken, which he’d just eaten whole, waddling behind them. Arthur and Tiny cantered alongside, snorting, with their tails in the air.
‘I’m not frightened of Arthur,’ sang Kitty, swaying in front of him, stroking his whiskery nose. ‘See me naked dancing in the rain, boo-be-doo.’
Lysander was just noticing what a surprisingly good dancer she was, and how sweetly her plump body bounced along — like Pigwig in Pigling Bland — and how he could see her nipples now her bra had become see-through, when a car screeched up to the cottage.
‘It’s the fuzz,’ giggled Georgie.
‘No, you’re the fuzz,’ said Lysander, tugging at her sodden bush, and they all collapsed again.
Finding the house unlocked, David Hawkley walked straight in. The sight that greeted him compounded his worst fears, a drunken orgy, possibly bestiality and witchcraft, led by that decadent hippy, Georgie Maguire, who was now bopping with a basset, and with that degenerate, overweight ruffian Ferdie Fitzgerald bringing up the rear.
Nor were matters improved by a second car roaring up decanting a deputation from the Best-Kept Village committee, including Marigold, Lady Chisleden and the vicar, to do a spot check on Magpie Cottage.
Glimpsing naked dancers, Lady Chisleden clapped her hands over the vicar’s eyes, crying: ‘Don’t look, Percy,’ in a ringing voice.
Whereupon the vicar, having seen Lysander and a much-improved Ferdie in the buff, and being convinced he’d finally arrived in heaven, tore down Lady Chisleden’s fingers, crying in an equally ringing voice that the Church must face up to its obligations.
‘See me naked dancing in the rain,’ sang Ferdie waving a nearly empty bottle of peach schnapps. ‘Come and party, you guys.’
‘And cover me with ecstasee-ee-ee,’ joined in Kitty.
‘Put on your clothes at once,’ ordered Lady Chisleden. ‘Your vicar is present.’
‘Oh, piss off,’ said Lysander in a bored voice.
Painfully reminded of little Cosmo earlier, David Hawkley lost his temper.
‘Lysander,’ he thundered, ‘stop this disgraceful pantomime at once.’
It was a voice that chilled Lysander’s blood. For a second he froze, then gathering up his junior dog and holding her in front of himself like a fig-leaf, he turned to Georgie.
‘Darling, I don’t think you’ve met my father.’
43
The party broke up very quickly after that. A frantically giggling Kitty, Ferdie, Georgie and Dinsdale spitting out splinters of boomerang were driven away by a very irate Marigold.
‘You’ve really let the sayde down, Georgie, conductin’ black-magic orgies. You must have realized what a pigstay Lysander had reduced Magpie Cottage to, probably contributed to it yourself. And you and Lysander are plastered all over The Scorpion. Gay’s been on the phone all day, trying to faind you. He’s standin’ bay you, bay the way. Ay can’t think way, and all the Press are doorsteppin’ Paradise Grange to get the Catchitune angle from Larry.’
‘It’s all Larry’s fault,’ screamed Georgie, ‘for putting out mugs and T-shirts with Guy and me looking lovey-dovey. I’ll get him under the Trade Descriptions Act. And what’s all this about The Scorpion?’
She cou
ldn’t take in what Marigold was saying. She could only think how embarrassing it was that such a handsome man as David Hawkley should have caught her running around all wobbling and naked.
Having discovered that his youngest son was far too drunk to make any sense and refused to explain how he’d come by any of these amazing perks, David Hawkley drove off into the deluge. After a few minutes he calmed down and decided to put up at a nearby hotel and try a different tack in the morning. As every room within ten miles of Paradise was double-booked by reporters, he ended up at The Bell in Rutminster, an old coaching inn overlooking the River Fleet. The kitchen was closed, but noting his pallor and good looks, the landlord’s wife insisted on sending up to his room a bottle of whisky and a plate of Welsh rarebit, which gave him outlandish dreams of naked ladies frolicking in meadows.
One of them was Georgie Maguire, white feet dancing on the greensward, red hair flying like a maenad, but close up she turned into Mustard wearing nothing but a pie-frill collar, and he woke up drenched in sweat, shaking in horror.
Next morning the papers were full of the chinks in Georgie’s marriage with lots of jokes about Paradise Lust and On-the-Rocks-Star. ‘Caring Guy’ was much quoted from the South of France, insisting that there was no question of divorce and that Lysander Hawkley was a friend of the family, particularly his daughter Flora. At least Lysander wasn’t going to be dragged through some messy court case.
Feeling slightly more cheerful, particularly after some excellent kippers and three slices of toast and Oxford marmalade, David decided to have it out with Lysander. He found Magpie Cottage locked and deserted, except for Arthur and Tiny who were standing gloomily by the gate in the continuing downpour. Paradise Village swarmed with reporters splashing round in the flooded High Street, desperate to find Lysander and a story. More of them were doorstepping Angel’s Reach waiting for Georgie to emerge.
Receiving a tip-off from Miss Cricklade, who was unblocking a drain clogged with leaves outside her cottage, David approached Angel’s Reach from the south side, crossing the Fleet a mile upstream and walking through the woods. The rain had stopped, but the downpour continued as the water sifted and worked its way through twigs, leaves, traveller’s joy and dog mercury to the leafy floor below. The weather was still in the seventies, but not stifling like yesterday. Robins were singing, beech masks and acorns crunched beneath his feet like shingle, but a drenched blackberry he picked was as tasteless as his life.
Reaching the edge of Georgie’s land, he could see the house with its soaring angels turned amber by the rain, and the lake flanked with bulrushes, glinting in the sunshine. Beech trees, stingingly red as Georgie’s hair after yesterday’s deluge, trailed their leaves in the water. Statues gleamed seal-like, red hips glittered on rose bushes puffed out by their weight of water like enraged tomcats. Saffron and sea-green lichen on the flagstones as he walked up the path were almost luminous. The rain seemed to have given the garden back its youth.
In a clump of drying lavender, he found a page of pink flimsy on which Georgie had scribbled some lyrics.
‘You’re a snake on the make, a minx of a sphinx
You’re a wog, I’m a wop, but I can’t give you up,’ he read, then jumped at a Baskerville bay. Dinsdale trying to look fierce at the front, but waving his tail, kept looking back at the potting shed. Here David found Georgie. She was perched on a garden roller, wearing a grey T-shirt and yellow trousers, reading Antony and Cleopatra. Yesterday’s downpour had brightened her pale cheeks (David thought of Lavinia in The Aeneid) and fluffed up her hair, which was tied back with a yellow ribbon.
‘How did you get in here?’
‘Miss Cricklade, rather a fan of Lysander’s, told me a short cut,’ said David, removing his flat cap. Even a red rim across his forehead didn’t diminish his fierce, dark glamour.
‘You don’t know where he is?’
‘Over the hills and far away. Ferdie’s packed him off to Australia on a job. We thought it better to get him out of the country until the dust, and there’s plenty of that in Magpie Cottage, settled. He’s distraught at going — leaving the horses and the dogs.’
And you, too, presumably, thought David. ‘Look,’ he added brusquely, ‘I need your help. I beg you to lay off him. We’ve got to get him back and into some drug rehabilitation centre before it’s too late and with all due respect, you’re much too old for him.’
‘That doesn’t show respect, due or otherwise.’
‘It isn’t funny.’
The deeply etched lines on either side of David Hawkley’s tightly clamped mouth reminded Georgie of an H-block. For a second she dickered, then said: ‘Can you keep a huge secret? Lysander’s not peddling drugs. He hardly smokes dope at all. You cut off his allowance and ordered him to get a job, so he got one. He’s employed by women like me to make their erring husbands jealous and he’s making a bomb.’
‘You mean a sort of gigolo?’ asked David with a shudder.
‘No, no, he just hangs around looking heavenly and rattles our husbands. They’re such an unfaithful bunch, but they don’t like their wives playing the same game, so they come to heel.’ Georgie’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘He’s such a sweet, kind boy, you should be really proud of him. He’s saved far more marriages than Relate.
‘I’m really sorry the Press picked on him and me,’ she went on humbly, ‘it must be awful having your name dragged in. Schoolboys so love that sort of thing. I feel desperate about my own children as well.’
She’s beautiful, thought David, touched by her concern. Pity her eyes were obscured by that thick fringe. He itched to trim it with a pair of secateurs.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘I’m in hot water,’ sighed Georgie, ‘but I have none. I hoped you were the plumber, but at least you’re not Guy. All that sanctimonious claptrap about standing by me, particularly when he’s out in France bonking his brains out.’ She didn’t know for sure but why else would Rachel be in France? ‘I hope The Scorpion catches him.’ She lobbed a Bonio at Dinsdale.
‘I found this.’ David handed her the soaked bit of paper.
‘Oh, lovely! I wondered where it had got to.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘A musical called Ant and Cleo. I’m trying to think of a word to rhyme with “asp”. Look, I know that party last night must have looked the last word in decadence, but it’s the first time anything like that’s happened.’ And she explained about Ferdie and Kitty celebrating losing weight, and then Ferdie producing this amazing dope.
‘That boy’s always been a pernicious influence.’
‘He is not,’ protested Georgie. ‘He’s saved Lysander’s life. He fusses over him like an old nanny and he’s got two horses and two dogs to look after now.’
Unable to banish the memory of Georgie’s rain-soaked body, David suddenly said: ‘I’m staying at The Bell in Rutminster. You’re very welcome to come and have a bath, then we could have lunch. If you’re worried about the Press, I’m sure they could fix a private room. I’d like to talk about Lysander.’
‘I’m not going to bore him by banging on about my marriage,’ vowed Georgie half an hour later, as she lay in a foot of scented water, shaving her legs and downing a large Bacardi and Coke.
David was drinking whisky and soda in the lounge when she came down and reading a small black leather-bound book. Georgie peered at the spine. It was Catullus.
‘Odi et amo,’ she said bitterly. ‘Just like my marriage. How’ve you translated it?’
‘Loving and hating someone at the same time is excruciatingly painful,’ said David, ‘but I’ll have to improve on that.’
The dining room was practically empty. The head waiter gave them a table overlooking the river and flooded water meadows. Like the black tassels of a widow’s shawl, rain was pouring out of approaching clouds, people were running over the bridge under buckling umbrellas. On the far bank hawthorns, groaning with berries, rinsed their bloodstained fingers in
the water. Georgie felt heady, detached and very much in need of the second Bacardi and Coke he ordered her. She didn’t want the mood to slip. Guy got furious when she dithered over menus, so she quickly chose hors-d’oeuvres and a Dover sole because they were the things she saw. As she gouged out pink mayonnaise with bits of raw carrot and cauliflower and gazed at the river, David noticed her eyes were the same sludgy green as the water and her nipples which had been sticking up through her grey T-shirt had retreated after a hot bath.
Unable to stop himself touching her freckled cheek, he said: ‘Why do you look so young?’
‘Because I thought I was loved,’ said Georgie sadly, and proceeded to tell him all about Guy, Julia and Rachel.
Melba toast stiffened in a cooled pink napkin, rollmops, asparagus, egg mayonnaise and tiny sweet corn lay untouched on her plate half an hour later.
‘I married a bishop’s son who’s turned into a chess bishop always sliding off at angles,’ sighed Georgie. ‘Now I’ve been caught out, he’ll feel more justified in catting around than ever.’
David, who’d finished his oysters ages ago, waved to the waiter to remove her plate and fill up their glasses.
‘And Lysander didn’t help?’
‘Not really. He jolted Guy to begin with, but it was like putting Band-Aid over a boil. Guy still has the capacity to make me more suicidally unhappy than anyone else.’
‘Then you’d better get out.’ David leant back as the waiter placed two huge soles in front of them with the green-flecked pats of butter already melting.
‘Guy won’t change,’ he said when they were alone again. ‘He may still love you, but he’s lost that unqualified adulation he’s so dependent on, and he won’t rest in his search to find it again. And you’ve lost your hero. It needn’t be the end of the world,’ he added gently. ‘Divorce may not guarantee you happiness, but it might be an end to unhappiness.’
‘It’s the duty of prisoners of war to escape.’