The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Are you worried,’ Georgie had yelled back, ‘that your mistress might discover you actually sleep with your wife?’

  And Guy had retreated into his usual orgy of hurt outrage.

  It was 21 December and Georgie hadn’t bought a single present nor had she done any cooking. Guy, who’d taken three days off from the gallery, could bloody well do that. Only her bank statement cheered her. Opening it this morning she found she was an amazing fifty thousand pounds better off than she’d expected. It must be more forgotten foreign royalties.

  Guy, who had snooped and also read Georgie’s bank statement, was relieved they wouldn’t starve. Things were desperate at the gallery — another backer had gone belly-up last week — but, unlike Georgie, he had thumbed through the statement and found one dated 10 December for fifty thousand from Lysander and was racking his brains to work out what it was for.

  Remembering times past when he had, in public, studiously ignored women with whom he was having affaires in private, he construed Lysander’s total avoidance of Georgie as evidence of an ongoing affaire. His suspicions were fuelled that morning when Lysander marched in wearing his Free Forester’s jersey.

  Matters were not helped by Flora’s return from Bagley Hall and then jumping on every telephone call. Because of her ravishing voice, Bob had persuaded her to give the play a homely touch by appearing from time to time to sing unaccompanied carols.

  Flora had only agreed because she was so desperate to see Rannaldini again. All summer she had basked in the gold sunshine of his love, then as relentlessly and inevitably as leaves coming off the trees, after Boris’s success in the Requiem he had withheld it. Now she was stripped bare of all affection.

  Rannaldini had never rung her again and apart from the few messages she had left with his London secretary, Flora had been too proud to pester him. She refused to become one of the distraught, tearful, pleading creatures whom Rannaldini got a sadistic charge out of listening to on his answering machine.

  ‘Think not for whom the lack of telephone bell tolls,’ sighed Flora.

  Rannaldini, in fact, had not become bored with Flora. He still wanted to reduce her to such abject longing that she would take part in his fiendish games, but more importantly, the New World Phil in New York had come up for grabs. Rannaldini wanted the job of Musical Director very badly. He had never regained the same ascendancy over the London Met after the Lovely Black Eyes incident. Hermione was still giving him earache. He wanted to start a new life in a new country. Then, to his rage, he learnt that the New World Phil were also considering Boris Levitsky.

  American orchestras, and their social benefactors, like their musical directors to live in the city and lead regular lives. It was vital for Rannaldini, therefore, to avoid any scandal and present a happily married front with Kitty, while doing everything he could to prevent Boris and Rachel getting together again — a challenge that appealed to his machiavellian nature. He had kicked off by ringing Boris with words of warm encouragement.

  ‘I will talk to the right people, Boris. I will smooth your path. I am right behind you.’

  ‘With a fleek knife,’ said Boris slamming down the receiver.

  Although Rannaldini felt it prudent to soft-pedal his affaire with Rachel, he found himself more and more addicted to the demanding crosspatch. Her ability to massage essential oils into all parts of his body was beyond anything. Flora, who’d been trailing them in her father’s car, had also noticed Rachel’s increasing dominance over the play and was in a dangerous kamikaze mood.

  Only Marigold was more miserable than Flora. She had wrapped all her Christmas presents, over-loaded the deep freeze, despatched her cards and decorated the house so early that the mistletoe was already shrivelling under the huge chandelier that was no longer switched on as it wasted precious energy. Larry was behaving in an increasingly suspicious fashion, coming home later and later, pouncing on the telephone, then shutting the door or going out to his car when he rang out, rising early to intercept the post and eating nothing.

  In earlier years he had relished taking part in the Christmas play and never missed a rehearsal, conducting business in the wings on his mobile. This year, in the plum part of the innkeeper, he had hardly showed up. Marigold was sure he must be back with Nikki or having an affaire with Rachel who was looking utterly radiant. Marigold felt she was having a leg broken and reset without an anaesthetic.

  47

  Tempers were not improved during the dress rehearsal by the arrival of a film crew with a sleek, glamorous but very aggressive director from Venturer Television called Cameron Cook. The continual stopping to re-adjust cameras and microphones threw the entire cast — even such old hands as Georgie and Hermione. Lights fused, lines were forgotten, cues missed. Cameron decided to put two cameras on either side of the hall and one up in the minstrels’ gallery from which the vicar, as the Angel Gabriel, would descend to address Mary and later the shepherds. The technicians stood around yawning, looking bored and tripping over Mr Brimscombe as he peered into the chapel, which had been turned into a women’s changing room, while he pretended to fiddle with the fuse box.

  Lysander had taken refuge at the back of the stalls. He was laboriously ploughing through a really sad piece in the Express about Rupert Campbell-Black and his wife who had just lost a test-tube baby at four months and were both utterly devastated.

  Oh, poor Rupert, thought Lysander, and his wife was so beautiful and not much older than himself. He wished he could do something to help them.

  The rows on stage were getting worse.

  ‘Don’t forget not to look at the camera,’ Hermione was hissing at the shepherds.

  ‘With so many cameras one can hardly help it,’ said Meredith fretfully.

  The star fused again.

  ‘If it blows on the night, Larry can leap on to the roof and flash his medallion,’ said Flora.

  ‘If he turns up at all,’ said Natasha bitchily. ‘Talk about a never-in keeper.’

  Marigold burst into tears again. Dropping a huge bunch of holly, Kitty ran to comfort her.

  ‘Lully, lully, breast is best,’ sang Hermione, nearly taking the vaulted roof off.

  ‘You can’t say that shit,’ said Cameron Cook, consulting her script. ‘And what’s a Christmas tree doing in the stable? They weren’t invented in those days. And why isn’t it decorated?’

  ‘Because it’s demeaning for trees to be hung with baubles,’ explained Rachel earnestly.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ snarled Cameron. ‘Now Holy Joe’s arrived, we better go back and do the Annunciation.’

  Up in the gallery like some vast white bird in his Cavendish House nightgown, the vicar cleared his throat and straightened his halo.

  ‘Hi, Charismatic Mary,’ he called out in his fluting voice. ‘I’ve dropped in from heaven to tell you your pregnancy test is positive.’

  ‘How wonderful,’ cried Hermione, gazing down at her Harrods lily. ‘Joseph will be absolutely, absolutely—’ She turned to Meredith who, instead of prompting, was gazing at a butch cameraman.

  ‘Joseph will be absolutely?’ repeated Hermione, snapping her fingers.

  ‘Gobsmacked,’ suggested Lysander, who was still reading about Rupert.

  ‘Absolutely delighted.’ Meredith had found his place.

  ‘I’m afraid Joseph isn’t the father,’ said the vicar as he slowly descended on a wire attached to a buckling beam in the ceiling.

  Hermione bowed her head. ‘It could be no other.’

  ‘It is — God Almighty!’ screamed the vicar as he landed on a free-range hen.

  ‘Well, I know Joseph will make a caring stepfather,’ said Hermione, launching loudly into ‘Behold a Virgin Shall Conceive’.

  ‘Stop, stop! Who wrote this shit?’ shouted Cameron Cook.

  ‘This bit, Handel and Jennings,’ said Bob helpfully. ‘The rest of it is Georgie’s.’

  ‘It is not,’ stormed Georgie. ‘Not a line of mine’s left in.’

 
‘I’d take your name off it sharpish then,’ advised Cameron.

  A diversion was created by the arrival of Ferdie who had dropped in to discover if Natasha still had the power to hurt him and why Marigold’s last cheque for Lysander’s services had bounced twice and Georgie’s retainer not been paid at all. As Larry was still AWOL, Ferdie was promptly co-opted to play the innkeeper.

  ‘You’ve lost even more weight,’ said Lysander, coming through the big door at the back, leading Arthur — looking very smart in a jewelled bridle.

  ‘I’ve been working out and cleaning up,’ said Ferdie, giving Arthur a Polo. ‘The gym is packed with bored housewives walking very slowly around the running track so their make-up doesn’t run. I’m telling all of them I’m about to be sent to the Gulf and pulling everything in sight.’

  ‘Here’s the script.’ Bob handed it to Ferdie. ‘I don’t think Larry’s up to it, even if he does show. It’s not a huge part, but key. Can you learn it by tomorrow? Ad lib if you like.’

  ‘Ferdie was brilliant as Shylock at school,’ Lysander told Kitty.

  ‘How are you anyway?’ he asked Ferdie.

  ‘Exhausted with electricity privatization, I’ve been stagging all week.’

  ‘I’ve been staggering all week, moving scenery,’ said Lysander. ‘But Rupert Campbell-Black’s turning up tomorrow and I know he and Arthur are going to get on. Aren’t you, boy?’ He gave Arthur a hug.

  ‘What’s happening?’ hissed Ferdie, drawing Lysander aside. ‘No-one’s paying. Not a bean out of Marigold, nor Georgie. If they don’t cough up soon, we should cut our losses and pull out. The Brazil job’s still open — and that’s serious dosh.’

  But Lysander was watching Kitty who had climbed up a ladder to put pieces of holly around a huge oil of one of Rannaldini’s alleged ancestors. She was wearing the black leggings and huge black-and-purple sloppy jersey he’d bought her in Way-In. He’d never seen her in trousers before. There was something infinitely touching about her plump little legs. As she stretched up he could see three-inch gaps of white calf above her Father Christmas socks. He suddenly longed to touch them. Just as he always wanted to stroke Arthur, Jack and Maggie, who was now chewing up a stray shepherd’s crook, he told himself firmly.

  Putting down the Express he walked over to hold her ladder.

  ‘It’s Lysander, not electricity, who ought to be privatized,’ drawled Flora. ‘Having exhausted the other ladies of Paradise, he’s moved on to Kitty.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Rachel, Hermione and Natasha in unison. With their deep involvement in Rannaldini and Lysander, they found it impossible, as well as unbearable, to concede that Kitty had any pulling power.

  However often Lysander banked up the fire in the great hall it was definitely getting colder. People’s breath rose in thick white plumes.

  ‘Cameron will be able to send up smoke signals from the back of the hall,’ said Meredith to his pal Flora. ‘I do hope she gets the script back to your mother’s version.’

  But Flora was glaring at a new and splendid fur coat which Hermione had put on over her blue robes, which could only be a Christmas present from Rannaldini.

  ‘I’m going to report her to Animal Rights,’ she said furiously. She also noticed Rachel had disappeared and Cameron was yelling into a telephone in the summer parlour which was a good thing, as neither of them would have enjoyed Ferdie’s début as he welcomed Mary and Joseph to the Inn, script in one hand, litre of red in the other.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he was saying cosily. ‘Of course we take Amex. Just give me the keys to your donkey and I’ll park him. Sign in here.’

  The orchestra, all in their overcoats, were in stitches. Kitty nearly fell off her ladder laughing.

  ‘I’ve got the video of Dirty Dancing,’ murmured Lysander, handing her up another branch of holly.

  ‘There’s a lot of shepherds in the next room who keep ordering pie on room service,’ Ferdie was now saying. ‘Bang on the wall if they get too noisy.’ Then, handing two room keys to a very disapproving St Joseph, ‘Oh, well, I better go back to watering the wine.’

  ‘Oh, please, don’t waste precious water,’ interjected Hermione, who was revving up for the birth of her Harrods doll.

  Bob, who’d been laughing a lot, told Ferdie in future he’d better stick to the script.

  ‘And it’s about time for you to sing “Oh, come all ye faithful”,’ he shouted to Flora.

  ‘No-one’s faithful in Paradise except you and Kitty,’ shouted back Flora. ‘As we’re heavily into realism I better sing, “Come both ye faithful”.’

  ‘That is quite uncalled for,’ thundered Guy, turning brick red above his blond beard.

  Flora strolled towards the stage, hands in her pockets. ‘Oh, come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant,’ she sang softly.

  ‘Oh wow,’ murmured the leader of the orchestra to a neighbouring oboist, ’eat your stony heart out, Hermione.’

  They had reached the part when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the shepherds abiding in the fields.

  ‘You ready, Perce?’ called Bob to the vicar in the gallery.

  ‘Ready,’ called the vicar, adjusting his halo in the window.

  Outside it was snowing. How very appropriate in the bleak midwinter. He was glad he was wearing his thermals under his nightgown.

  ‘Chat amongst yourselves, shepherds,’ said Bob consulting his script.

  ‘What are you doing on New Year’s Eve, Reuben?’ asked Meredith who, as second shepherd, was holding Maggie.

  ‘That’s not in the script,’ hissed Georgie, burnous askew as she clung for grim death on to a terrified ewe.

  Suddenly, like sulphur and brimstone, a waft of Maestro swept through the great hall, far stronger than frankincense or droppings of sheep or donkey.

  Instantly the nearest flautist whipped the curly blond wig off Rannaldini’s bust. Georgie let go of her ewe, which bolted into the wings sending a peeping Mr Brimscombe flying. The star fused again.

  Rannaldini, the astrakhan collar of his black coat turned up, framing a face white with barely controlled fury, strolled towards the stage.

  ‘I thought I told you all to be word and note perfect by the time I came back.’

  ‘My fault.’ Ferdie stubbed out his cigar and stood up in the stalls. ‘I was standing in for Larry and thought I’d jazz things up a bit.’

  ‘Well, don’t,’ said Rannaldini witheringly. ‘Hermione?’

  ‘Maestro?’ Hermione smiled at him, awaiting praise.

  ‘Piano, for God’s sake,’ snarled Rannaldini. ‘That lullaby would have woken every bambino in Judea and babies are fed every four hours not every four minutes, so put those boobs away. You’re playing the Virgin not Delilah.’

  Then, not giving Hermione time to scream at him, he turned on Guy who was eating a flapjack in the stalls.

  ‘You’re even more wooden than that ludicrously overdecorated manger, Joseph. Your young wife’s having a baby, then everyone rolls up bringing him presents and ignoring you. Show some pride or some jealousy, and as for you, Percy,’ he looked up at the vicar who was still swaying helplessly from his beam, ‘talk about Fat Tum of the Opera.

  ‘Your belly’s too large and your voice too small. You’re being drowned by Hermione and Georgie and you couldn’t instil mighty dread into any mind, troubled or otherwise. I’m afraid you’ll have to join the angelic choir instead.’

  Normally suntanned, Rannaldini’s extreme pallor was infinitely more sinister. The jet-black eyes glittered like holes into hell, but there was an air of purring satisfaction about him, not just due to the pleasure of bawling people out. Ignoring the equal hysterics of the vicar and Hermione, Rannaldini picked up Cameron Cook’s mobile and punched out long distance.

  ‘Carissima,’ he launched into a flood of Italian, only the occasional word like ‘network’ being comprehensible. Then, with a vicious smile, he changed to English so everyone could hear over Hermione’s squawking.


  ‘It only means arriving a day early for Chreestmas. The script? Eees excellent. I’ll get Keety to fax you a copy so you can learn it tonight. Ciao.’

  Switching off his telephone, he turned evilly to face the cast. ‘Cecilia arrive tomorrow to take over Gabriel.’

  Artistic integrity overcoming terror, Georgie tore off her head-dress.

  ‘The script is not excellent, Rannaldini,’ she protested. ‘We’ll be a laughing stock. Rachel’s wrecked it, Cameron Cook agrees with me. Someone’s got to tell Rachel.’

  ‘I will, my dear Georgie,’ said Rannaldini gently. ‘To me the scripts are much improved, more topical, more relevant, less trite.’ He turned to the back of the hall. ‘Well done, Rachel.’

  Everyone, particularly Georgie who thought Rachel was miles away, jumped out of their skins as Rachel drifted through the door.

  She was wearing a very new-looking, pale fawn cashmere jersey, softer than the belly of a Persian kitten and she looked absolutely beautiful, as though all her anger had been ironed out.

  ‘Christ,’ murmured Meredith, letting Maggie off her lead so she shot back to Lysander, ‘if Rannaldini likes that script, he must be hooked.’

  ‘I shall be working late in the tower,’ Rannaldini called to Kitty who, up on her ladder, was now filling the window-ledge with big branches of yew. ‘I do not weesh to be disturbed.’

  As he walked past Rachel, like a bat in his black coat, he shielded her from the others’ view. Only Flora, stiller than a shadow in the window-seat, saw him reach out for Rachel’s breast as Rachel put a quick hand on his crotch.

  ‘My leetle Quaker,’ whispered Rannaldini, ‘my leetle earthquaker. You will come soon to the tower?’