The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous (25 page)

    'Well, I decided in for a penny in for a pound. There's Julia Armstrong and her husband Ben.' Going into the kitchen, he gave his raspberry puree, to go with the lobster mousseline, a stir.

    'Who's she?' asked Georgie.

    Guy sighed. 'Oh Panda, I've told you a hundred times. She's having an exhibition at the gallery next month. I thought people might enjoy a preview tonight. Ben and Julia live in Islington, but they've rented a weekend cottage in Eldercombe. They've got young children. Ben's in computers. I like him a lot. Leave those grapes alone, Flora,' he said sharply. 'And you were going to wash a couple of lettuces, Georgie, I've done the dressing. And for goodness' sake, do the placement before everyone arrives.'

    Oh God, placement was more taxing than A level maths! There was Julia and Ben, Rannaldini and Kitty, Annabel Hardman, another friend of Georgie's who lived in Paradise, and Valentine, her brilliant beast of a lawyer husband, who might not turn up. Boris and Rachel, Marigold and Lysander or Larry, and for Miss Bottomley Georgie had invited Meredith Whalen, an extremely expensive, gay interior designer, who was nicknamed the Ideal Homo, because he was so often asked to make up numbers at Paradise dinner parties.

    'I'll need log tables to work out this one,' grumbled Georgie.

    'Bottomley'd better go on your right, Mum,' advised Flora. 'She'll need two chairs.'

    'Don't be silly,' giggled Georgie. 'She goes on Daddy's right and Hermione on his left.'

    But Guy, who was spooning caviar on to each plate beside the lobster mousseline, was not in the mood for frivolity.

    'Put Julia Armstrong on my left. She won't know anyone, and I've got to talk shop to her, and put Ben on your left.'

    With alarm Georgie suddenly noticed a dozen bottles of Dom Perignon, a battalion of Nuits St George as well as the vat of caviar and four bottles of Barsac in the fridge. They were horrendously overdrawn at the moment, but she didn't feel she could remonstrate with Guy when he'd done all the cooking and her new grey velvet dress had cost a fortune.

    Following him into the drawing room she found him putting on a record. Next moment Mozart flooded the house from every speaker.

    'Oh, lovely,' sighed Georgie, 'Rannaldini's Cost.'

    'It's Mozart's Cost,' snapped Guy.

    He is uptight about Rannaldini, thought Georgie.

    Guy was wearing neither tie nor jacket, which was unusual. A cornflower-blue shirt which she hadn't seen before was tucked into very dark grey cords held up with a leather belt. He looked glowingly handsome, and Georgie told him so. 'And you're in great shape,' she added, putting her arms round his broad athletic back, and feeling his flat taut midriff.

    'Must be humping all that furniture.'

    'You've worked so hard,' murmured Georgie, 'particularly today. I am lucky. Love you, darling.'

    'Love you, Panda,' said Guy. 'Now do the placement, so you can relax and enjoy yourself.'

    The evening, in fact, was far from relaxed. By nine o'clock only Miss Bottomley had arrived, roaring up on a motor bike and in a foul mood because she'd got lost.

    Then at a quarter-past nine Boris rang full of tearful andmostly incomprehensible contrition. Rachel had found out that he'd been seeing his old mistress, Chloe, and issued an ultimatum. As a point of honour Boris felt he must resign from the marriage, so he couldn't make dinner, nor understandably could Rachel, which meant a frantic resetting of the table, and a rewrite of the placement -not easy when one was three Bacardis up.

    Even worse, Flora, on learning Boris wasn't coming, retired to her bedroom with a bottle of Barsac and the cordless telephone, and flatly refused to do any waitressing. Bob then arrived with Hermione, looking radiant in an olive-green Chanel suit braided with rose pink. Bringing up the rear, was Meredith, the Ideal Homo.

    'We're late because Rannaldini sacked two soloists this afternoon and Bob's got to find replacements by Monday,' said Hermione, handing her mink to Guy. 'Gracious, it looks different since the Jennings' day.'

    She then proceeded to go into ecstasies over the dark green wallpaper in the downstairs lavatory which they hadn't changed, and on peering into the study which had been papered in dark mulberry to set off Guy's Victorian paintings, said: 'What colour are you going to paint this dreadfully dark room?'

    Meredith, who looked like Christopher Robin with Shirley Temple's blond curls, and who was tiny, beautifully dressed, and a great giggler, made no comment, on the principle that any praise might do him out of a possible job.

    'I think it looks wonderful,' said Bob Harefield, hugging a disconsolate Georgie.

    By nine-thirty, they were still light on Rannaldini and Kitty, Julia and Ben Armstrong, Annabel and Valentine Hardman and Marigold and whoever. Georgie was so nervous and belted upstairs so often to check her face that Bob wondered if she was on something. Rannaldini's Der Rosenkavalier was now surging out of the speakers, and Hermione had started to sing along.

    'You better put on the broccoli,' muttered Guy as he opened another bottle of champagne. 'I can't do everything.'

    Not waiting for the water to boil, Georgie was returning from the kitchen when through the door came a girl with long hair, the red of springtime copper beeches, and a lot of dark make-up round her fox-brown eyes. She was wearing a cream midi-dress, which enhanced her very pale skin, as falling snowflakes whiten the sky. Her slender neck seemed almost too delicate to support a heavy metal scorpion which hung between unexpectedly full breasts.

    Lovely, thought Georgie with pleasure. Not unlike me twenty years ago, I must go on a diet.

    'Panda, this is Julia Armstrong,' said Guy, 'and this,' he added even more warmly, 'is Ben.'

    Ben in computers was bald with protruding eyes, full red lips emphasized by a straggling black beard, and a little frill of black hair flowing over his white collar like a draught extractor. Seeing Guy in a shirt, he promptly removed his jacket to show off a small waist and hips as wide as his shoulders. He then proceeded to explain, in his nasal, very common voice, that they were late because he'd been kept at the office on extremely important business.

    'What a lovely spot, Guy,' he went on, accepting a drink. 'How did you find it?'

    'With great difficulty if you had Georgie's directions,' boomed Sabine Bottomley, who was gazing in admiration at Julia.

    It is sod's law, thought Georgie irritably, as Julia clapped her hands in joy as she saw her paintings on the walls, that such an enchanting girl should be on Guy's left and I should be landed with her ghastly husband.

    But next moment the balance was redressed by the arrival of Rannaldini, who'd been kept on even more important business, some multi-billion Yen record deal with the Japs, and who was livid not to be the last to arrive. Heart-stopping in a dark blue velvet smoking-jacket, he was followed by poor Kitty looking unbelievably plainin burgundy polyester, with just the wrong gathers over he hips for her bean-bag figure.

    As Ben was nearest the door and shamefully because hey were the two most unattractive people in the room, Georgie introduced him to Kitty.

    'Do you play an instrument?' asked Ben.

    'She plays the word processor,' called out Rannaldini bitchily. 'Don't give her any other ideas.'

    Introduced to Julia, who, in her nervousness, Georgie called Juliet, Rannaldini was all-purring amiability, but grew less so on learning that Flora had pushed off upstairs.

    'Go and get your daughter,' Guy hissed at Georgie.

    Always my daughter, when she's acting up, thought Georgie, applying another layer of Clinique, and a squirt of Giorgio before banging on Flora's door.

    'Darling, please come out and be nice. Rannaldini's bought you tickets for the St Matthew Passion.'

    'I don't care,' sobbed Flora who'd drunk nearly a whole bottle of Barsac. 'The only passion I have is for Boris Levitsky and he's buggered off with that slag Chloe. My

    life is over.'

    Charging downstairs, Georgie found Guy pointing out the merits of one of Julia's enmeshed couples to Rannaldini, Bob and Meredith, the Ideal Homo.

    'They're very strong,' Guy said warmly. 'I'm certain Armstrong is going to be very big.'

    Meredith, who inveigled vast fees out of his clients with the innocence of a schoolboy touting for pocket money, raised his little grey flannel leg three inches off the ground in imitation of the Pin-stripe Lover.

    'I couldn't get myself into that position in a thousand years,' he giggled. 'He must be awfully fit.'

    Irritated he wasn't taking the painting seriously enough, Guy turned on Georgie. 'Annabel Hardman has just rung and bottled out,' he whispered furiously. 'Valentine's

    stuck in London.'

    'And in some blonde, oh, poor Annabel,' said Georgie. 'Says she can't face it on her own,' snarled Guy. 'And where's your friend Marigold? The quails will be totally ruined.'

    Next moment a disgusting smell of burnt rubber drifted in from the kitchen.

    'Oh God, I forgot the broccoli,' wailed Georgie.

    Guy's face tightened. Even worse, Dinsdale, fed up with being tripped over, had hoisted himself on to the big dark gold corduroy sofa in front of the fire and angrily refused to be evicted when Hermione wanted to sit down.

    'No, I won't have any more champagne. I'm looking forward to a glass of wine at dinner.' Hermione looked at her Cartier watch pointedly.

    She was fed up with fascinating Miss Bottomley who had even more beard than Julia's husband, with whom Kitty was making very heavy weather.

    'I'm starving,' muttered Meredith to Georgie. 'I had lunch with Bob and Hermione, and the old bat just served up stale bread and mousetrap, which would have been turned down by any self-respecting rat. "Hermione," I told her, "this mousetrap's been in your larder longer than Dame Agatha's play." She wasn't amused.'

    In panic, feeling as if all her guests were set in gelatine, Georgie had another drink. It was plain from the bored expression on Rannaldini's face that he wasn't remotely interested in her, and if Marigold didn't show they'd need speaking trumpets to hear each other at dinner. Her heart lifted as lights came up the drive, but they went round to the back of the house. It was Mrs Piggott, Georgie's cleaner, whom Flora had nicknamed Mother Courage, because she drank so much beer and who had already arrived to wash up.

    We should never have moved to the country and got embroiled in such grandiose entertaining, thought Georgie. But just as they were seated round the kitchen table, and Ben, to his horror, found himself next to dowdy Kitty yet again, the curtainless windows were filled with flashing lights and a helicopter landed on the lawn spewingut Larry and Marigold who was looking stunning in a scarlet satin suit. Clasping hands, they ran across the lawn, early tripping over a molehill.

    'Fraightfully sorry we're late,' said Marigold as Georgie hastily wrote Larry's name on a place card instead of Lysander's. 'Larry was closing a deal.'

    'Anyone we know?' asked Bob Harefield.

    After some coaxing, Larry admitted that he'd just bought 8 per cent of a vast Japanese record company.

    'He also found taime to make love to me on the office carpet,' whispered Marigold to Georgie.

    The dinner party perked up a bit after this as Larry and Marigold affected everyone with their high spirits. Idly flipping over the piece of paper on which Georgie had worked out the placement, Rannaldini found his cv, which Georgie had had faxed down from the London Met Press Office, so she would be able to talk knowledgeably about his career at dinner. Rannaldini smirked. If Georgie had the hots for him, he'd gain access to her house and Flora more easily. A gaze-hound who hunted by sight rather than scent, having once seen Flora, he wouldn't rest until he caught her, however long the chase.

    On the other hand, Georgie wasn't unattractive. She looked much better today. It would be an added frisson to play off mother and daughter.

    So he turned the charm on Georgie, praising Flora's looks and blazing talent which could only come from her mother. He then told Georgie about his guest-conducting and filming commitments all over the world, and Georgie didn't take in a word he said, because, from the way he was looking at her, she felt he'd already taken a degree in the geography of her body without removing a single garment. And that voice, husky, slow, reverberating like the molten depths of a volcano pondering whether to wipe out a nearby town just for the hell of it, made his tritest utterance sound significant.

    'We are both on treadmill, my dear Georgie,' he was saying now, softly, 'I in my Lear Jet, you in your leetle study, both making music, but we will meet from time to time in Paradise.''Oh yes.' Georgie's heart seemed to be beating between her legs.

    Hermione, who detested Rannaldini chatting up anyone else, led the shrieks of praise for Guy's lobster mousseline, followed by quails en croute in ginger and yoghurt.

    With great difficulty, Georgie wrenched her attention away from Rannaldini to talk to the horrific Ben.

    'You have a very beautiful and talented wife,' she said.

    'Julia is also a caring mother,' said Ben complacently.

    At the end of the table, against the sooty black of the uncurtained window, Julia, her pale skin glowing like pearl, was listening to Guy's plans for the house.

    'I'll knock this wall through into a conservatory, leading to an indoor pool,' he was saying. 'I mean, when does one get a chance to swim outside in Rutshire?'

    And who the hell's going to pay for it? Only if I write another smash hit, which they're all so dismissive of, with their fucking classical music, thought Georgie.

    Julia was telling Hermione how wonderfully she had sung in Der Rosenkavalier.

    Having found out from Marigold the details of the Japanese record company Larry had bought into, Rannaldini was now discussing the sacked soloists across her with Bob. Georgie was dying to gossip to Marigold. How lovely if I had Rannaldini on the side, she thought dreamily, like Marigold had had Lysander.

    As there was no broccoli, the salad was now being circulated. Alas, Hermione found half a slug in the lettuce; Georgie hadn't bothered to wash because it was Iceberg.

    'I'm just worried that some poor person might get the other half,' Hermione was stage-whispering to Guy.

    After that no-one wanted any salad, and conversation moved on to universities, which Kitty took no part in having left school at sixteen. Sitting between Ben and Meredith, who had both turned their backs on her, Kitty wished she was sitting next to Bob goodness,

    he looked tired or

    to Guy who'd read the lesson so beautifully in church on Sunday and who was being so sweet to that lovely painter. Kitty noticed that Rannaldini, as the Guest of Honour, had been put on Georgie's right, but did not feel slighted that she as his wife hadn't been put next to Guy. That privilege was naturally accorded to Hermione, the maitresse en litre. Every night Kitty prayed not to hate Hermione, and to forgive those who trespassed against her. Georgie plainly had a crush on Rannaldini, too, but her demands on him, Kitty hoped, would be more rollicking, like a red setter wanting a long walk down the valley from time to time.

    Rannaldini didn't really like Georgie and Guy, decided Kitty. That's why he had been subtly punishing her since the Bagley Hall concert, finding fault with everything, making her feel even more unsure of herself.

    'I don't think one can beat the Backs at Cambridge,' Hermione was now saying.

    Glancing down the table, Guy noticed Kitty's eyes were as red as her dress. Rannaldini's work, he thought grimly.

    'Poor Kitty's having to put up with the backs of Paradise,' he said reprovingly. 'Turn round and talk to her, Meredith.'

    'Sorry, love,' the Ideal Homo swung round. 'When's your sexy husband going to let me loose on the Valhalla dungeons?'

    Kitty blushed scarlet, but thought once again, how sweet Guy was.

    'I don't know how you put up with it,' she could now hear Hermione telling him, in her idea of an undertone, 'being dragged into the limelight in a pop song, when you're such a man of substance. I would never expose Bob to such publicity. My family is sacred.'

    'I agree,' said Julia, leaving all her pastry and lighting a cigarette, at which Hermione looked pained, until the pudding of guava-and-mango ice-cream with kiwi-fruit puree reduced her almost to orgasm. Guy, however, was incensed that a bottle of Barsac had gone missing.'Flora whipped it,' confessed Georgie. 'It's a good thing she's going back to Bagley Hall next month to dry out. Whoops, sorry, Miss Bottomley.'

    Ben pursed his red lips and said he thoroughly disapproved of teenage drinking. Miss Bottomley's mouth was too full of guava and mango for her to do anything but nod in frenzied agreement.

    'Oh, Flora's sixteen, going on a hundred,' sighed Georgie to Rannaldini. 'I get so worried about AIDS. I sat her down last week and said: "We must have a good talk about sex".'

    The room fell silent.

    'A good talk about sex, because I was worried,' went on Georgie, 'and Flora put her pretty head on one side, and said: "Oh, poor Mum, are you having trouble with Dad?"

    Georgie laughed so loudly at the sheer impossibility of such a thing that everyone joined in. But it was one of the few light moments of the evening. Georgie was dying to get into another heart-to-thumping-heart with Rannaldini, but, without a waitress, she seemed to spend her whole tune leaping up to remove plates and filling glasses.

    It was a relief finally to whisk the ladies off upstairs. On the way Miss Bottomley shot into the downstairs loo.

    'I'll use this one.' Julie disappeared into another loo on the landing, whereupon Hermione vanished into Georgie's bathroom.

    'Three old ladies got stuck in the lavatory. I wish Hermione would stay there.' Georgie collapsed on to her bed between Marigold and Kitty. 'Now we're alone, how are you?' she asked.

    'Wonderful,' said Marigold, fluffing on face-powder with a red brush. 'Larry's faynally given Nikki the push and Pelham Crescent, it cost over a million, can you imagine? But he's being' magic to me. He bought me these.' She turned her head to show off ruby earrings big as strawberries. 'And he's going to buy me a flat in London, and take me on a second honeymoon in Jamaica.'

    'Lucky you,' said Georgie petulantly, thinking of herself nailed to the desk for months to come.

    'I'm so pleased for you, Marigold,' said Kitty, who didn't feel there was much point in repairing her face.

    'How's Lysander?' asked Georgie.

    'Never off the telephone, the sweetie-pay. He's raydin' in a point-to-point in Cheshire this weekend, and wants me to go. Ay must say, I'm sorely tempted.'

    When they went downstairs, Larry, who normally liked nothing better than to cap other men's achievements over a large glass of brandy, had already joined the ladies.

    'What recession?' he was saying to Sabine Bottomley. 'If you're liquid, it's bonanza time. You can pick up companies, like shopping in Oxford Street.'

    'Fed up with talking about wife avoidance?' Marigold asked him teasingly.

    'Not at all. Rannaldini, Bob and Meredith all wanted to know what Guy had done to those quails. Not my board-game.' He sat down on the arm of Marigold's chair. 'This is, though.' He took her hand, then added to Georgie, 'Don't she look great? See the earrings I bought her?'

    They're lovely.'

    'How's the album going?'

    'Good,' said Georgie truthfully. 'I wrote a song today.'

    Looking at the big red scented candle flickering on a side table, she suddenly found the answer for her lyric: 'Swept by tempests, drenched by rain, I'll come burning back again.'

    'Could we play one of your old albums, Georgie?' asked Kitty, as Der Rosenkavalier finally ended. 'Wait till Rannaldini goes,' said Hermione. Georgie gritted her teeth.

    To gain the ascendancy before he left, Larry bought three of Julia's paintings, and actually wrote Guy a large cheque. Bob, egged on by the Most Beautiful Voice in the World, put down a deposit on one of the smaller ones. Rannaldini bought the most erotic and said he'd talk toGuy about money later. Proudly Guy went round putting red stickers on them. Julia was in heaven. She didn't say much, but her skin flushed faintly like the crimsoning on the underside of a wood anemone.