The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous trc-4

by Jilly Cooper

  ‘Please be careful,’ she said, brushing crumbs off Lysander’s chin and handing him his sweat band.

  Gazing down a cliff face steep as a lift shaft, three-quarters of an hour later, Lysander wondered why the hell he’d come.

  Deliberately sitting two seats away from Lysander in the helicopter on the way up, Rupert hadn’t spoken a word. The putty-grey skies, liverishly tinged with yellow, presaged further heavy snow. A howling blizzard chucked glass splinters in their faces. Below, the skein of ski runs and the fir trees herring-boning the side of the valley blurred as the visibility grew worse. Far, far down, the houses of the village, one of them containing darling Kitty, lay like ants on the snow. Lysander’s yellow ski clothes were the only note of colour in the black-and-white magpie landscape. Rupert’s slit eyes through his dark glasses were anything but friendly.

  ‘OK?’ he asked Lysander.

  Lysander nodded, teeth chattering far more from terror than the bitter cold.

  ‘I’ll lead the way,’ and Rupert was off, hissing down the valley like a falling meteor, hidden in a permanent spray of snow.

  ‘I love you, Kitty,’ shouted Lysander to the whirling snowflakes. ‘Dear God, take me back safe to her.’

  And he was off, careering after Rupert, crouched like a jockey so low over his skis that his hands were higher than his face, furiously stabbing with his poles as he tried to recapture his old skill and adjust to the rhythm.

  Within seconds, as Lysander streaked past him, Rupert realized he was outclassed. Although once almost Olympic standard, he was now nearly twenty years older and lacked the boy’s suppleness, extreme fitness and split-second timing. Rupert really had to force himself to keep up and all the time was aware of going far too fast as trees rushed to meet him and crevasses loomed below. Only by straining every muscle did he avoid catapulting to his death. Almost more goading was that, once in his stride, Lysander started enjoying himself, showing off his miraculous control by going into a series of long, bounding jumps like a lurcher trying to see over the barley, each time landing perfectly. Going so fast round the final bend, he lost a ski and carried on with one, shooting straight into the bar three-quarters of the way down the mountain.

  He was waiting when Rupert arrived, giggling with nervous hysteria, his cheeks flushed, his hands round a glass of Kir.

  ‘Jesus, that was hairy. I thought the wind was going to pound me to bits. Thank Christ we’re in one piece. I got you a whisky.’

  Rupert was absolutely furious with himself. He might never have seen Taggie, the children or his dogs again — just because he wanted to scare the daffodil-yellow pants out of this cocky little sod.

  ‘You come down the Ghost Valley today?’ asked the barman incredulously, putting a bowl of pretzels between them. ‘Mad Englishmen and dogs! You know why eet called that?’

  Lysander shook his head.

  ‘Because so many people been keeled. At night their ghosts ski down mountain. Local people no go near it.’

  The sun was hot now, melting the snow which splodged every fir tree like soap suds. Rupert clutched his glass of whisky to stop his hand shaking. The boy’s languid beauty, his rumpled brown curls, his big, generous mouth emphasized by white lipsalve, his endless legs up on the wooden table, only increased Rupert’s dislike and jealousy.

  Not understanding why Rupert was looking marginally less friendly than a rattlesnake with a hangover, but desperate to placate him, Lysander said: ‘I thought Taggie, I mean Mrs Campbell-Black, was seriously beautiful.’

  ‘Which is more than can be said for Mrs Rannaldini.’

  Refusing to be goaded, Lysander gazed into his glass. Mistaking stillness for passivity, Rupert became almost chatty.

  ‘Your hotel’s dripping with gigolo fodder. Surely you could have found someone more glamorous than that cow to pick up your bills. I appreciate there’s a recession on and you have to take what you can get.’ Draining his glass, Rupert waved to the barman to refill their glasses, adding to Lysander, ‘It’s OK, the rest of the run’s a doddle. I’m amazed Rannaldini’s married,’ the drawl was becoming slower and bitchier, ‘to such a boot. Did her face get stuck in a lift door? No wonder he doesn’t let her out before sunset. Still I suppose there’s no accounting for lack of taste.’

  Next minute, Rupert found himself on his back on the floor of the bar.

  ‘Don’t ever speak about Kitty like that again,’ yelled Lysander. ‘She’s the nicest, sweetest, loveliest woman I’ve ever met.’

  As Rupert fingered his jaw and pondered whether to throw Lysander out of the window down the precipice, he decided there was no way Lysander could be after Taggie if he leapt to Kitty’s defence like that.

  After that, Rupert and Lysander skiied down the rest of the mountain and, in the course of getting rather drunk together, Rupert even confessed to his reservations about being a grandfather and cramping Taggie’s style.

  ‘I feel I’ve stolen her youth, but I hate any man that looks at her. I wanted to kill you this morning.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Lysander. ‘I’d have killed you if you’d gone on bitching about Kitty or tried to take her off me. Did you really think I was after Taggie?’

  ‘You couldn’t stop staring at her last night.’

  ‘I was staring at you.’ Lysander blushed furiously. ‘I’ve always hero-worshipped you — even more than Donald Duck. Look what Kitty made me.’ Proudly he unzipped his yellow jacket to show off his jersey.

  ‘Anyway, to go back to you, my parents had a terrible row because my father thought I was too young to be allowed to stay up and watch you win your bronze in the middle of the night at Colombia.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ said Rupert wryly.

  Swearing Rupert to secrecy, Lysander explained, in his confiding way, how he had amassed quite a fortune, admittedly totally masterminded by Ferdie, making husbands jealous.

  ‘But now I’m in love with Kitty I’ve got to find a proper job so I can support her.’

  ‘You could be a presenter at Venturer,’ said Rupert. ‘All you have to do is to read an autocue.’

  Lysander shook his head. ‘You’re really kind, but I’m dyslexic. It takes me all morning to read the runners in the Sun, or DO NOT DISTURB notices on hotel bedrooms.’

  Rupert was touched. Taggie was dyslexic and he knew what heroic efforts she had made to overcome it.

  ‘What I really want to do is work with horses,’ went on Lysander. ‘I’m going to get Arthur sound, and have one more crack at the Rutminster.’

  ‘Penscombe Pride’s going to win that,’ said Rupert. ‘But Arthur was a good horse, I remember him winning in Ireland.’

  ‘He still gets fan mail and Twix bars in the post.’

  The sun was setting as Rupert dropped Lysander off at the Hotel Versailles. The next moment he was knocked sideways by Kitty, blue with cold and hysterical with worry, shooting across the icy pavements into his arms.

  ‘I was so worried. You was so long. I fort you might have been killed. Fousands of people ’ave died in Ghost Valley.’ And she kissed him over and over again. ‘I was so worried Rupert took you there deliberately.’

  ‘No, no, he’s been wonderful and so are you.’

  Delighted with her response, Lysander pulled Kitty through the revolving doors, kissing her on and on until the porters, the receptionists and all the glamorous people grouped round the tables stopped chattering and drinking and gave them a round of applause.

  ‘I should have rung.’ Oblivious of the attention they were causing, Lysander led her towards the lift. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. Let’s go and try out that Jacuzzi before I stiffen up.’

  ‘In a place that won’t let us feel,

  in a life where nothing seems real

  I have found you, I have found you,’ sang Lysander tunelessly as he lay in eighteen inches of warm, scented, churning water soaping Kitty’s breasts as they gently juddered abo
ve the surface. At first she had been desperately embarrassed because Rannaldini had shaved off her pubic hair.

  ‘I was the only person ’ere for ’im to sleep wiv,’ she confessed. ‘The au pair’s father works for Le Monde so he couldn’t risk it.’

  Lysander hid his anger by saying she looked adorable and more like a little piglet than ever and Rannaldini was obviously obsessed with strimming paths to exciting places. Kitty then said Rachel would disapprove of such deforestation, and laughed and felt better. Glancing in the darkened mirrors lining the wall, she felt almost beautiful for the first time in her life and put her hand under the water.

  ‘It’s no good, I have stiffened up,’ admitted Lysander as his rampant cock reared above the surface.

  ‘It’s like a periscope,’ said Kitty, stroking it.

  ‘Looking for its target. Come on.’

  Rising out of the bath, he carried her, dripping, next door, drenching the pink chintz roses as he dropped her gently on to the counterpane of the huge four-poster.

  They didn’t bother to draw the curtains. Outside, duck-egg-green shadows lay on the snow, the stars were brilliant in the clear, frosty night. The ring of silent, blue mountains beyond seemed to protect them.

  ‘I love you,’ murmured Lysander as he slowly stroked her pink wet body into a state of ecstasy. Then, as he sat up and drew her between his thighs and slithered inside her, ‘A-a-a-ah, ooo — it’s heaven. Like the soft, pink fingers of a milkmaid squeezing me. Oh help,’ he wailed, ‘I can never hold out if I really fancy someone and I want you more than anyone ever. Oh God, oh help, I’m sorry, Kitty darling.’

  The difference between Rannaldini and Lysander, reflected Kitty, was that although Rannaldini played with her and kept going for hours, she always felt he was like a pianist polishing his technique for a big concert which wouldn’t be with her. With Lysander she felt she was the big occasion he had practised for all his life.

  ‘Oh, Kitty,’ he echoed her thoughts, ‘I’ve fucked so many times in my life, but this is truly the first time I’ve ever made love. Now it’s my turn to give you pleasure. Promise to tell me exactly what you like.’ Then, when she was embarrassed, he said, ‘I always wanted to be a Brickie-layer when I grew up,’ and collapsed with such laughter that she joined in too, and started to relax.

  Afterwards, she said truthfully, ‘That was ubsolutely mudgic, Lysunder.’

  ‘Let’s do it all over again at the gallop,’ he said, kissing her, ‘but if we’re not going to die of rheumatism we better sleep in one of the other beds. I’m just going to have a pee.’

  Tottering, dizzy with love, into the bathroom five minutes later, Kitty saw that Lysander had taken the hideous crimson lipstick Cecilia had given her for Christmas and scrawled across the mirror: KITTY IS FOR LYFE NOT JUST FOR KRISTMASS.

  Next door a five-eighth moon with a white, wistful nun’s face was peering in through the window at the sprawled naked beauty of a waiting Lysander. Running into the room, Kitty flung herself on him, burying her face in his silvery chest.

  ‘All my life,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve longed to have moonlight and someone I loved at the same time.’

  ‘I keep wanting to ring Mum and tell her how wonderful you are,’ said Lysander.

  51

  But as Shakespeare’s Lysander pointed out four hundred years before, ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’. The Press, trailing Rupert and clocking everyone who spent time with him, took photographs of Lysander kissing Kitty in the foyer. Plied with a fat bribe the hotel porter revealed that the President de Gaulle suite was now being paid for by a Mr L. Hawkley. The picture-desk promptly identified Lysander as the man making husbands jealous and Kitty, from her brief appearance at the airport, as Rannaldini’s wife.

  Coming out of the Abbey Road recording studios with Rachel the following evening after they’d recorded the taxing first movement of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, Rannaldini was confronted by a reporter and a photographer.

  ‘Mr Rannaldini, we wondered what you thought about these photographs of your wife in France.’

  A swift inspection was enough.

  ‘What paper are you from?’ exploded Rannaldini. ‘Today.’

  Rannaldini raised his fist. ‘You’ll be from Yesterday if you’re not careful.’ Shoving them furiously aside, he dived into the waiting Mercedes. Clive, who’d had plenty of practice, slammed the doors and, racing round to the driving seat, took off into the night leaving Rachel with hardly a penny to get home.

  In Monthaut, Kitty was reading Pigling Bland to Rannaldini’s children — very slowly — so they could understand the English. Lysander lounged at the end of the bed listening. He had always loved the story which his mother had often read him and he thought how alike were Kitty and Pig Wig, the little black pig heroine, with her double chin and her blue-flowered smock. How nice if he and Kitty could escape to freedom together away from Rannaldini over the county boundary. He wished he was as noble a character as Pigling Bland.

  ‘Over the hills and far away, she danced with Pigling Bland,’ read Kitty, closing the book. ‘Now you must all try and go to sleep.’

  As she kissed each of them, Lysander wandered back into the sitting room and without thinking picked up a ringing telephone.

  ‘Who’s that?’ yelled Rannaldini.

  Lysander hung up.

  ‘Who was that who answered?’ demanded Rannaldini when he rang a second time.

  ‘No-one. You must have dialled the wrong number.’

  She’s learning, thought Lysander, but as he sloshed vodka into two glasses he could hear Rannaldini’s tantrum right across the room, and, as Kitty clumsily replaced the receiver and glared at him in anguish, he could hear the slither of magic carpet crashing back to earth.

  ‘I’ve got to go back. It’s all over the papers.’

  ‘So what? It doesn’t matter. We’re what matters.’

  ‘You’re Natasha’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Bullshit, I hate her. I’ve never paid her the slightest attention. That’s Rannaldini stirring it.’

  ‘And I am ‚is wife.’

  ‘You can’t stay with him.’ Aghast, Lysander bounded across the room but, as he took her in his arms he could feel her distancing.

  ‘He’s old and evil.’

  ‘He needs me.’ Kitty took a tangerine from the fruit bowl and having peeled it threw the pigs into the waste-paper basket and started to eat the peel.

  ‘You’re like that spare blanket in the cupboard.’ Taking the peel from her, Lysander shoved a vodka into her shaking hand. ‘Rannaldini gets you down when he’s cold. I’ll look after you, Kitty. We can run over the hills and far away. I know you love me.’ Her face, when he forced it upwards, was as pale and filled with longing as last night’s moon.

  ‘That was infatuation.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. Why did you waste an entire suitcase bringing Lassie out here?’ Triumphantly Lysander pulled a case from under the bed and unearthed the collie he’d bought her in Harrods toy department.

  Kitty went scarlet. ‘I fort the kids might like to play wiv her.’

  ‘Why haven’t they then?’

  ‘I’ve got to go home tomorrow,’ whispered Kitty.

  ‘Then I’m coming with you.’

  He wished Rupert hadn’t flown back to England, or he would have enlisted his help to persuade Kitty not to return.

  The journey home was crucifixion, worse than going back to school, worse than his mother dying. Surrounded by children incensed to be going home four days early, aware of the Press everywhere, Kitty and Lysander didn’t touch each other and exchanged not a word. Both grey beneath their suntan, neither had slept.

  In duty-free Lysander bought a large bottle of Diorissimo. Despite the number of times he’d bought it he still pronounced it ‘Diorimisso’, and the girl behind the counter smiled because he was so handsome.

  ‘It was Mum’s favourite scent,’ he said, handing it to Kitty. ‘I want you to wear it becaus
e,’ his voice broke, ‘because now I love you more even than I loved her.’

  After the champagne air and the dazzling white and blue of the mountains, Heathrow was grey and bitterly cold. A vicious wind whipped Kitty’s green dress over her head as she stepped out of the plane. She was trembling so badly Lysander gave her his coat.

  Worst of all, the customs men took one look at Lysander’s polo sticks and the mass of chattering Italian children and, opening everything, finally discovered Lassie.

  ‘Oh, please not,’ whispered Kitty.

  ‘Funny thing to hide in a suitcase,’ said a brutish-looking customs man.

  ‘I gave it to Mrs Rannaldini,’ snapped Lysander.

  ‘Pull the other leg.’

  ‘Leave it fucking alone.’

  ‘Don’t you get lippy with me, sunshine.’ The customs man took out a penknife, and with relish plunged it into Lassie’s defenceless fluffy white throat and proceeded slowly to rip her brown-and-white body to bits, finally even cutting off her shiny leather nose and gouging out her eyes.

  Rannaldini’s children were all screaming hysterically. Lysander thought Kitty was going to faint. Only her desperate pleading stopped him leaping across the table and beating the customs man to a pulp, particularly when without a word of apology he handed back Lassie’s remains.

  ‘I’ll get you another one to replace her, and I’ll get you, you bastard.’ Lysander was nearly in tears, too. ‘Oh, Kitty, please don’t go back to Rannaldini. Let’s get a taxi to Fountain Street.’

  Out in the airport they went slap into a cauldron of Press, seething for a story. But the ubiquitous Clive was waiting to pounce and soon had bundled Kitty and the children into a suitably funereal-black limousine and out on to the M4.

  Rannaldini had had a nasty shock. He had never imagined anyone fancying Kitty. But in the photographs plastered all over Today and in the later editions of most of the papers, he noticed her gazing up at that winsome little snake with such happiness that she looked almost pretty.

  He felt his publicity getting worse and worse. He was sure that shit Campbell-Black wouldn’t be able to resist circulating the pirate version of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. He knew he was favourite for the New York job but Boris Levitsky’s Symphony had just won a prize for the best-orchestral work of the year (and Boris had conducted it himself at the Mozart Hall to ecstatic reviews and puzzled, but enthusiastic, applause). While Rannaldini had been skiing, according to Clive, Boris had also been over twice to see Rachel and the children. The last thing Rannaldini wanted was these two getting together.