‘Rest your whole weight,’ encouraged Ferdie, taking a slug out of his bottle. ‘You’re as light as a fairy. Although, talking of fairies, the vicar must be over seventeen stone.’
Why the hell was Kitty suddenly finding Ferdie so funny? thought Lysander furiously. They were both being too silly and plastered for words. It must be tiredness and hangover that made him so down, and guilt about not putting flowers on his mother’s grave today.
Alone at Magpie Cottage, Georgie stepped out of the bath and, leaving cannibal footsteps, went in search of a towel. She found one curled up like a hedgehog under Lysander’s bed. Overwhelmed by another fiendish compulsion to snoop, she found herself going through the pockets of the trousers, shirts and blazer he was wearing last night. As a reward, she found dozens of cards girls must have slipped him with their telephone numbers with Home and Office written in brackets. One of them, Georgie noticed indignantly, belonged to the Catchitune publicity girl, another to the girlfriend of one of Georgie’s musicians.
She started to shake, frantically frisking his drawers and cupboards, but found nothing. I’m sick, she thought. I know Lysander isn’t the answer, but I can’t bear to think of him with someone else. But looking like he does and being so sweet, how could he not be propositioned wherever he goes? Would she always die of jealousy whoever she was with? Was that the heritage Guy had left her?
Detesting herself, she started on Lysander’s wallet and was gratified to find a nice picture of herself, and ones of Jack, Maggie and Arthur. Then she was brought up short by a photograph of a heartbreakingly pretty woman, laughing and sitting bareback on a big grey horse. She breathed again when she found Lysander had written: MUM AND ARTHUR, 1989 on the back. The leaves were turning in the photograph — it must have been taken just before she died. Oh, poor Lysander. Shoving the photograph back, Georgie, who was dry now, draped herself in a sarong covered in huge gold sunflowers, which Lysander had bought her on his way to London, and started to redo her face. How restful to return to pre-Julia days when, convinced Guy loved her for herself, she didn’t have to spend her time getting tarted up.
Thunder was rumbling round the hills, but despite the punishing heat, the smell of moulding leaves and bonfires drifted in through the dusty window. Season of mistresses, thought Georgie sadly. She could see Tiny and Arthur waiting by the gate for their master’s return. Standing head to tail, they were whisking the flies off each other’s faces and nibbling the itches out of each other’s necks. Symbol of a happy marriage, thought Georgie even more sadly.
Kitty had drunk enough champagne not to faint over Lysander’s cottage. You had to beat back the nettles to get to the front door. Inside the place was a shambles with a Snowdon of washing-up in the sink, and Maggie’s ripped-up victims — shoes, cushions and the fox fur Lysander had bought at the bric-a-brac stall — carpeting the floor. Kitty clutched on to her boomerang and her duck-billed platypus.
‘You must have the spider franchise for the West of England,’ said Ferdie, his arms full of Rannaldini’s Dom Perignon. ‘Hi, Georgie.’
‘Whatever are Marigold and the Best-Kept Village committee going to say?’ wondered Kitty as she tried to find a space to unload the goodies from her cardboard box. Stretched out on the sofa, Dinsdale opened a bloodshot eye as he smelt chicken. In the almost entirely frosted — up fridge, she found the three tins of pate Rachel had inveighed against when she came to supper.
‘Listeria leads to hysteria.’ Ferdie peered over her shoulder, thrusting bottles through the ice like an Antarctic dredger. ‘
‘
‘They popped off when I was fat,’ confessed Ferdi, ‘but I like the shirt.’
‘I’ll sew some on for you.’
Lysander was too irritated to praise them for losing all that weight, but Georgie was delighted.
‘I cannot get over how marvellous you both look.’
As the back garden was even more crowded with nettles, they dragged the garden table and chairs out into Arthur’s and Tiny’s field. The sun had set, leaving a primrose-yellow horizon, but to the east huge black clouds were gathering.
Putting an arm round Georgie’s shoulders, Lysander gazed down into Paradise.
‘If I had a line of coke, I’d fly across the valley.’
Instead Ferdie produced some really strong dope. He had also rigged up an angle-poise lamp with an equally strong bulb, which threw their shadows, like late arrivals at the cinema, on to the trees that reared up at the end of the field. Above the wood, the stars rose like a fountain. The radio was blaring out pop music. Sewing on Ferdie’s buttons between alternate swigs of Dom Perignon and puffs of Ferdie’s cigarette, Kitty found, for the first time in her life, that she wasn’t terrified when Arthur leant his great whiskery face over her shoulder.
‘It’s getting very dark,’ complained Lysander, drawing on a joint like a maiden aunt throwing up a window and breathing in the morning air.
‘It’s night-time, you berk.’
It seemed to be getting hotter and closer. Midges were assaulting their scalps and their ankles. The grass was covered in little cobwebs and swarmed with spiders.
‘Why are they called daddy-long-legs?’ asked Kitty, biting off a thread.
‘Because daddies need long legs to run away from all the trouble they cause,’ said Georgie bitterly, ‘and talking of trouble, Miss Bottomley is threatening to suspend Flora again. The moment Flora passed her test, she was caught driving four friends off to the pub in Rutminster. Miss Bottomley has invited me to lunch to discuss it. Oh well, Gomorrah is another day. I’ve never had a woman make a pass at me.’
‘Nor have I,’ said Ferdie wistfully.
Everyone giggled.
‘You will now,’ said Kitty warmly.
‘I never recognize lesbians,’ said Ferdie. ‘Do they have moustaches?’
‘No, it’s gays who have moustaches,’ said Georgie.
‘The technique with the opposite sex,’ announced Lysander, refilling everyone’s glasses, ‘is to tell beautiful really stupid people—’
‘Like you,’ said Ferdie.
‘Like me,’ agreed Lysander, ‘to tell beautiful, thick people how clever they are and tell clever plain ones how beautiful they are, then they always roll over.’
‘What ’appens if they’re both plain
‘You’re not,’ said Georgie, Ferdie and Lysander in unison.
‘Lysander means you’ve got to find a person’s Achilles’ heel and then praise it,’ explained Ferdie. ‘You’ve got a wonderful heel, Mrs Rannaldini.’
‘And he’s called Rannaldini. Whoops, sorry Kitty,’ said Lysander.
They all grew hysterical with laughter at the stupidness of their own jokes. When the Dom Perignon ran out they moved on to peach schnapps. Having sewn on Ferdie’s buttons, Kitty was fooling around with him, trying to make Wolfie’s boomerang come back. Every time she threw it, it went up in the air. Once she nearly hit Arthur.
‘That’s a valuable horse. I don’t mind if you hit Tiny,’ shouted Lysander, who was now beached like a whale across two chairs with his head in Georgie’s lap.
Ferdie was laughing all the time now, looking like a Chinaman with slit eyes and a huge inane grin. Against the towering trees, their shadows danced like the naughty boys dipped in great Agrippa’s ink-well.
‘Look how we get smaller as we approach,’ cried Kitty, waving her arms.
‘Wish dieting was as easy,’ yelled Ferdie.
‘Aren’t they sweet together?’ said Georgie, stroking Lysander’s forehead. ‘Ferdie’s very taken. He’s as lonely as she is. Wouldn’t it be perfect if he took her off Rannaldini?’
Even in his present stupor, Lysander was conscious of a distinct disquiet. If Ferdie started looking after Kitty, and Kitty after Ferdie, who would look after him?
‘Even the boomerang looks stoned,’ he said sulkily.
‘Will it ever rain again?’ sighed Georgie.
They were all too preoccupied to realize it had clouded over and the stars had rushed in. The tape had worked its way round.
