The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘I wish you weren’t so terrified of horses, then we could ride together.’

  ‘I’m not frightened of Arfur,’ said Kitty, tucking into her cottage cheese salad. ‘But the way he drinks coffee, and snores wiv one eye open, and gets hisself dirty, he’s not really an ’orse, he’s more of a ’uman.’

  ‘I think that’s the nicest compliment Arthur’s ever been paid,’ said Lysander gravely. ‘Thank you, Kitty.’

  They talked so long and drank so many cups of coffee, Kitty suddenly realized they’d missed the last train.

  ‘We’ll go back to my old pad,’ said Lysander. ‘I’ve still got a key. Ferdie’s away this evening. It’s all right,’ he added, seeing the look of panic on Kitty’s face, ‘you’re quite safe with me and there are two bedrooms.’

  I’m chaperoned by my own plainness, thought Kitty sadly. No-one looking like me could cause talk.

  ‘No-one will see us,’ said Lysander as the taxi turned into Fountain Street. But as he rushed in to switch off the burglar alarm, the gays opposite parted their damask curtains and started waving frantically.

  ‘What a lovely little ’ouse,’ said Kitty, thinking how easy it would be to keep a place like this nice, ‘and you could put camellias in tubs in the little patio at the back.’

  Lysander put Kitty in Ferdie’s room with the big bay window looking over the street. She could see the gays peering in as she drew the curtains. Lysander had found her a glamorous cream silk nightdress left behind by one of his girlfriends. It slithered over her like a skin. If only she could take on the beauty of its original owner.

  All the same, she thought, as she set Ferdie’s alarm clock for six-thirty and snuggled down in bed with the toy Lassie stiff-legged beside her, it had been the nicest day of her life. Lysander had made her feel like one of the romantic heroines she so loved reading about, not a drag, nor a dog, nor even a brick. With a guilty start, as she was falling asleep, she realized she’d forgotten to say her prayers. Perhaps for once God would forgive her if she did it lying down.

  ‘Please God, bring Lysander happiness and find him a nice girl who’ll look after him and not take advantage of his sweet nature.’

  Unused to London traffic crashing along the end of the street, Lysander woke at six, and was horrified to hear Ferdie coming in from a night on the tiles. Not wanting to get shouted at and still half-asleep, he pulled the duvet over his head, hoping the trouble would go away. He heard Ferdie’s bedroom door open, then after a long pause while he waited for an explosion, it shut again. Relieved, Lysander went back to sleep.

  A couple of hours later, aware that they were supposed to get an early train back, he staggered downstairs, nursing his hangover, expecting to find Ferdie furious at having to sleep on the sofa, probably frozen stiff from not having a duvet. But to his horror there was no-one there; the cushions of the sofa were still smugly plumped up. Ferdie must have gone to work. But, opening the sitting-room curtains, Lysander saw the red Ferrari, which he’d bloody earned for Ferdie, and Ferdie’s black brogues were sitting on the kitchen table, together with the Ferrari’s car keys.

  Lysander was appalled. Kitty was an innocent girl in his care. How terrible if Ferdie, in his new slimline sexual awareness, had come home tanked up and taken advantage. He remembered how he’d caught them half-dressed and giggling together over the weigh-in at Valhalla. Ferdie had always liked Kitty. In a fury, Lysander pinched one of Ferdie’s Marlboros and put the kettle on. His worst fears were confirmed when his old flatmate came down in a towel, showing off a still suntanned and increasingly svelte torso and smirking worse than Rannaldini emerging from Jasmine Cottage.

  ‘Black and no sugar for me,’ said Ferdie, getting a carton of unsweetened grapefruit juice out of the fridge. ‘I’ve got a terrific job coming up for you in Brazil in a couple of weeks.’

  Lysander refused to admit how furious he felt.

  Kitty was not the kind of person one got jealous about. He was even more irritated at the relief which overwhelmed him when Kitty rushed downstairs ten minutes later.

  ‘I feel shockin’. Poor Ferdie ’ad to sleep in the armchair in his room, an’ he must have turned off his alarm clock, because we’ve really overslept.’

  When they finally got back to Valhalla around midday, she found the tape on the answering machine exhausted by increasingly outraged calls from Rannaldini.

  ‘Where zee fuck are you, Keety? Ring me at the Beverley Wilshire the eenstant you get in. Zee next time you rush off to your mother’s, leave a number.’

  Even thousands of miles away, he terrorizes her, thought Lysander angrily, watching the frantically fluttering pages as Kitty fumbled through the Los Angeles telephone directory. Then she stopped, remembering it would be 2 a.m. in LA and Rannaldini would be asleep or more likely coiled round some female musician.

  The last message on the machine, however, made Lysander forget everything. The voice was clipped, light, drawling and decidedly amused: ‘This is Rupert Campbell-Black ringing from Venturer Television for Rannaldini. We gather you’re doing a nativity play at Valhalla. We were wondering if we could come and film and put it out on Christmas Eve?’

  Lysander gave a Tarzan howl of joy. ‘At last Rupert will have a chance to meet Arthur.’

  46

  Paradise was thrown into a complete tizz. Suddenly, at the prospect of millions of viewers and Rupert Campbell-Black in the audience, what Hermione airily described as ‘Making sweet sacred music together for the delight of a few friends’ had become a Steven Spielberg spectacular. Rannaldini, who’d always been insanely jealous of Rupert’s success both with money and women, was driven to a frenzy of rivalry. The rows were pyrotechnic.

  ‘You cannot put hanging baskets outside the Inn in the middle of winter. Bethlehem’s not competing for the Best-Kept Village,’ screamed Meredith who, in charge of sets, was now dragging the manger an exciting shade of raspberry pink.

  ‘Well, your stable’s more like the braidle suite at the Ritz,’ screamed back Marigold who’d been unusually ratty of late.

  ‘This play is supposed to be topical. With a recession on, Mary and Joseph would have been able to get into any hotel they chose,’ snapped Meredith, twitching the pink damask curtains flanking the stable window into place. ‘But we’re not having those,’ he went on, tugging down a washing-line and four towelling nappies Rachel had strung across the set. ‘Baby Jesus has only just been born in this scene. There’s no way he’d have got through four nappies.’

  ‘Put those back,’ shouted Rachel furiously. ‘We’ve got a chance to tell millions of viewers, perhaps twelve million if it’s networked, that disposable nappies take five hundred years to biodegrade, whereas cotton towelling ones can be—’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ screamed Marigold and Meredith in unison.

  Kitty, who as usual had to do everything, had retreated to the kitchen to retype, on recycled paper, Georgie’s script which everyone kept changing.

  Ten minutes later Lysander rushed in hidden inside the front half of the donkey with Jack and Maggie hanging, furiously growling, on the uninhabited back half.

  ‘Oh Kitty, Kitty,’ he cried despairingly from his furry depths, ‘the vicar and Meredith and Natasha all want to play my back half. I don’t want to be groped by any of them.’

  Wrenching off the donkey’s head he fumbled for a cigarette. Even scarlet with indignation, his hair all ruffled, he looked adorable.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Kitty handed him a lump of sugar on the flat palm of her hand as he had taught her. ‘Rannaldini’s due back tonight and he’ll change everyfink.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Lysander’s face fell. ‘Then it won’t be nearly such fun.’

  There had also been furious spats over the casting, with all the Paradise ladies angling for the coveted role of the Virgin Mary in order to wow Rupert Campbell-Black. Hermione got the part — natch — and insisted on four changes of blue silk robe and a becoming gold halo designed by David Shilling. In the only moment durin
g the entire production when Hermione was in agreement with Rachel, they decided Mary must be seen to breast-feed the doll which had been flown down from Harrods with the Christmas caviar, to play Baby Jesus.

  ‘Trust the old tart to grab any chance to flash those great tits in public,’ grumbled Meredith.

  Rannaldini had turned down the suggested role of Herod and was leaving the conducting of the orchestra (hand-picked members of the London Met) to Bob. Instead, he insisted on riding in on the viciously volatile Prince of Darkness as the First of the Three Kings.

  He had co-opted Rachel, because of her long legs and because she looked disturbingly sexy with a cork moustache and beard, to play the Second King, but had vetoed Rachel’s suggestion that she should hand over a free-range turkey instead of frankincense. Lysander was able temporarily to forgive Rannaldini who, having cast Marigold, also because of her great legs, as the Third King, then because of Marigold’s nervous disposition, had signed up Arthur to play her horse.

  Guy, who had a fine bass voice and a lifetime of singing loudly in the church choirs, was cast as St Joseph, which gave him a legitimate excuse to grow a beard and no longer use plastic razors, which took even longer than nappies to biodegrade.

  At Hermione’s suggestion, the script had been rewritten to portray Joseph as ‘deeply in love with his young wife’ and now included several long clinches under the mistletoe and Guy’s repeatedly professed delight at being present at the birth.

  ‘Why don’t you have a bonk and make it really authentic?’ snapped Georgie, who was playing the chief shepherd and was fed up with her script being messed about. If Guy was absolutely not Hermione’s type, as Hermione had told Georgie after the church fête, she was concealing her prejudice extremely well.

  Larry, who’d been cast in the key role as the innkeeper, kept cutting rehearsals due to the ‘pressure of work’ which explained Marigold’s increasing twitchiness.

  The casting of the vicar reduced Meredith to more hysterics.

  ‘You can’t let that fat queen play Gabriel. Give Lysander the part. He’s got the angel’s face.’

  ‘Lysander’s tone-deaf and he really can’t act,’ said Georgie kindly.

  ‘Then he can play one of your shepherds,’ said Hermione pointedly. ‘He and you are such friends.’

  ‘Not any more,’ spat Lysander, glaring at Georgie.

  It was at this point that he was demoted to the front legs of the donkey. Lysander, in fact, was feeling as though his life had been churned up like a ploughed field. After the things Georgie had said about his mother, he couldn’t bear to be in the same room with her, but he was desperate for Rupert to meet Arthur and increasingly felt the need to protect Kitty from everyone.

  As Kitty had predicted, Rannaldini breezed in that evening, completely rewrote the script, re-arranged the music and, taking one look at the furry ox and the donkey, whose front legs were doing a soft-shoe shuffle at the time, replaced them with real animals to give the play authenticity. By the following day there were also live sheep. Maggie, Jack and Dinsdale had got parts as sheepdogs and even Tabloid was enrolled to guard the Inn. At Rachel’s prompting, chickens and a fearsome turkey were freely ranging the set.

  ‘Are we staging St Francis of Assisi as well?’ grumbled Meredith as he trod in a cowpat.

  Sacked as the front of the donkey, Lysander was relegated to turning Rachel’s pages when she played the piano for early rehearsals. But he was so distracted by the sight of Kitty in the green dress he’d bought her that he totally ignored Rachel’s repeated nods and was demoted to shifting scenery.

  Bob admired the green dress, too.

  ‘Kitty’s getting prettier,’ he observed.

  ‘Where?’ said Natasha, who was fed up with her tiny part in the angelic choir.

  Suddenly Georgie realized that Kitty hadn’t got a part.

  ‘I’ll write you in as the innkeeper’s wife.’

  ‘Kitty’s forte is being a back-room girl,’ said Hermione firmly. ‘Who else could play the innkeeper’s wife? Natasha’s too young and pretty.’

  ‘What about Mother Courage?’ suggested Georgie. ‘She so longs to get on telly.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Hermione was shocked. ‘Let’s keep it simple. Just our set. We don’t need an innkeeper’s wife. Your daily can sit in the audience, because the crew are bound to cut to them some time during the play. I hope Rupert Campbell-Black’s been invited to stay on for supper after the performance,’ she added to Bob.

  ‘Rupert won’t be able to refuse once he sees Brickie’s spread,’ said Guy, smiling warmly at Kitty.

  ‘Lully, lully, breast is best, lully, lully, baby rest,’ sang Hermione, flashing a blue-veined boob at her sleeping Harrods doll.

  ‘I still think Kitty should be in it,’ said Georgie stubbornly.

  ‘Kitty is needed at home,’ hissed Rannaldini, who was trying on a totally anachronistic purple velvet doublet. ‘Theengs are getting very slack ’ere. There are lights on everywhere, plants go unwatered.’ He pressed the earth of a huge ficus. ‘The second post hasn’t even been opened and I hardly think my study is the right place for a roll of lavatory paper.’

  Lysander’s face tightened with anger.

  ‘As you talk so much shit, sir, I would have thought it was very appropriate.’

  Rannaldini looked at Lysander in amazement as though the manger had spoken.

  ‘Particularly white lavatory paper,’ he went on. ‘I told you not to buy white any more, Keety. You know bleach pollutes the rivers.’

  Hearing Rachel-speak coming straight out of his mouth, everyone exchanged uneasy glances. Kitty had gone puce with mortification.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rannaldini,’ she stammered.

  ‘Don’t apologize. Do better next time,’ said Rannaldini chillingly.

  ‘And you still haven’t sewn up my robes where the ox trod on them,’ grumbled Hermione.

  ‘Perhaps the Kings could give Mary a year’s subscription to the Nappy Service,’ suggested Rachel.

  ‘Then they could all wish the Holy Family a very Nappy Christmas,’ giggled Meredith, ‘except it’s Epiphany by the time they roll up.’

  ‘Stop taking the piss,’ howled Rachel.

  ‘Shut up, Meredith,’ ordered Rannaldini.

  From the summer parlour next door, Larry could be heard yelling: ‘Someone else must have guaranteed the loan, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Nice if your husband could put in an appearance except to use my telephone,’ snarled Rannaldini.

  ‘Nice if you could put in an appearance except to bully everyone — sir,’ said Lysander, putting an arm round a sobbing Marigold.

  Kitty was amazed how much less she minded Rannaldini’s tantrums. Lysander might have been passed up as the Angel Gabriel but, suddenly, he seemed to have drawn a halo around her life, which became increasingly brighter as he brought in logs for the great hall fire, carried her shopping in from the car and nipped down to Paradise to get her some Anadin Extra when she got her period. Lysander also helped her staple together the retyped scripts, even if he did put them all in the wrong order because he was chatting so much and she had to retreat discreetly into the larder to restaple them when he wasn’t looking.

  And it was bliss to have someone to amuse everyone’s children when they were dumped on her, and to giggle with when Hermione complained Kitty had mended her robes with the wrong blue thread or Natasha hit the roof about shrunk washing.

  Natasha wasn’t the only one who noticed how Lysander’s face and voice softened when he was with Kitty.

  ‘You don’t need to pay her so much attention when Rannaldini isn’t here,’ snapped Marigold. ‘It’s him you’re being paid to rattle.’

  Two days before D-Day, Lysander sat in the back row of the stalls, pointedly reading a porn mag to discourage Natasha and the vicar, who was gallumping around in a long white nightgown from Cavendish House trying to secure his halo with Velcro.

  Hermione, about to do the Annunciation
scene, was making a very short list of Christmas presents she simply had to get.

  ‘What can I give Bob? Men are so difficult,’ she asked Lysander. Then, suddenly remembering her visit to Fleetley, ‘I forgot to tell you I met your father last term.’

  Across the gangway, Georgie, clad in the unglamorous robes of chief shepherd, stopped writing her Christmas cards.

  ‘Rather a charmer,’ went on Hermione. ‘What are you going to give him?’

  ‘A bottle of arsenic,’ snapped Lysander, returning to Chantelle 42–22–35.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Hermione who wasn’t listening because Kitty had staggered in with a tray of coffee and home-made flapjacks, which Lysander leapt up to carry for her.

  Huddling back in her robes Georgie returned to her Christmas cards. She was fed up with the number of Guy’s parents’ friends — who’d all been shown The Scorpion by their dailies — who sent Christmas cards addressed solely to Guy with tender messages inside about how they were praying for him.

  Wistfully, Georgie remembered Christmases earlier in her marriage when she had signed every card: Love from Guy and Georgie with Guy’s name first because men should be deferred to. Now she just signed her own name. Under the lining paper in her desk at Angel’s Reach was a pretty little Victorian card that she was dickering whether to send to David Hawkley.

  Although Lysander totally froze her out now, he had behaved honourably. He had never sneaked to David — admittedly because he couldn’t bear to repeat the horrific things Georgie had said about Pippa — but he had bawled David out for stealing Georgie, the woman he loved, and David had been shattered. He was mortified that Lysander had caught him and Georgie virtually in flagrante. He had risked bringing scandal on Fleetley by dallying with a pop star, but, worst of all, Georgie had lied to him — as Pippa had so often before — that her relationship with Lysander was platonic, thus luring him into cheating on his own son. At whatever heartbreak to himself, David had refused to see Georgie again.

  Utterly devastated, Georgie had thrown herself into work. Ant and Cleo was nearly done and, to her great relief, Larry had stopped nagging her to finish the album. Guy, on the other hand, was playing her up again. Only last night she caught him cleaning St Joseph’s sandals with non-toxic shoe polish and, later, when she had been so carried away at the moment of orgasm that she’d ripped his back with her long nails, he’d yelled: ‘Don’t do that, for Christ’s sake.’