The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous (65 page)

    '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, Lair? 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 ina 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 or 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.'

    '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 hurl outrage.

    It was 21 December and Georgie hadn't bought a single present nor had she done any cooking. Guy, who'd taker three days off from the gallery, could bloody well dc 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 affairesin 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 fleck 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.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.

    Tor 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.