The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

‘Take me dancing naked in the rain and cover me in ecstasy,’ sang Blue Pearl.

I’m under ten stone, thought Kitty, capering round to the music. I’m having fun for the first time in years.

‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since I went Sharon-shagging in Benidorm with the cricket XI after A levels,’ said Ferdie, lighting another joint.

‘You probably met me there,’ screamed Kitty. Suddenly she stopped laughing. ‘Listen everyone.’

At first it sounded like a faint rustle of silk, or a distant scream, then a rattle of machine-gun fire. Gradually they felt the first drops on their hair, soothing the midge bites. Suddenly as they turned their faces upwards, it was like stepping into the shower.

‘Rain,’ yelled Georgie, joyfully leaping to her feet. ‘It’s raining. Our little trees will be saved after all.’

Trying to hold her back, Lysander grabbed her sarong. Next moment she was naked, dancing wildly round the field, her writhing body glistening like a seal, her wild red mane flattened and dripping down her back.

‘See me naked dancing in the rain,’ the glorious husky voice echoed across the valley, ‘and cover me with ecstasy.’

Letting out Tarzan howls, Lysander and Ferdie whipped off their clothes and raced after her. They were followed by Kitty, who removed her shirtwaister, but kept on her bra and knickers, which bobbed in the half- darkness like white rabbits.

Off they all charged into the deluge and an ecstatic conga round the field, leaping to avoid the thistles. Jack and Maggie frisked round their heels yapping hysterically, with Dinsdale working off Kitty’s cold chicken, which he’d just eaten whole, waddling behind them. Arthur and Tiny cantered alongside, snorting, with their tails in the air.

‘I’m not frightened of Arthur,’ sang Kitty, swaying in front of him, stroking his whiskery nose. ‘See me naked dancing in the rain, boo-be-doo.’

Lysander was just noticing what a surprisingly good dancer she was, and how sweetly her plump body bounced along — like Pigwig in Pigling Bland — and how he could see her nipples now her bra had become see- through, when a car screeched up to the cottage.

‘It’s the fuzz,’ giggled Georgie.

‘No, you’re the fuzz,’ said Lysander, tugging at her sodden bush, and they all collapsed again.

Finding the house unlocked, David Hawkley walked straight in. The sight that greeted him compounded his worst fears, a drunken orgy, possibly bestiality and witchcraft, led by that decadent hippy, Georgie Maguire, who was now bopping with a basset, and with that degenerate, overweight ruffian Ferdie Fitzgerald bringing up the rear.

Nor were matters improved by a second car roaring up decanting a deputation from the Best-Kept Village committee, including Marigold, Lady Chisleden and the vicar, to do a spot check on Magpie Cottage.

Glimpsing naked dancers, Lady Chisleden clapped her hands over the vicar’s eyes, crying: ‘Don’t look, Percy,’ in a ringing voice.

Whereupon the vicar, having seen Lysander and a much-improved Ferdie in the buff, and being convinced he’d finally arrived in heaven, tore down Lady Chisleden’s fingers, crying in an equally ringing voice that the Church must face up to its obligations.

‘See me naked dancing in the rain,’ sang Ferdie waving a nearly empty bottle of peach schnapps. ‘Come and party, you guys.’

‘And cover me with ecstasee-ee-ee,’ joined in Kitty.

‘Put on your clothes at once,’ ordered Lady Chisleden. ‘Your vicar is present.’

‘Oh, piss off,’ said Lysander in a bored voice.

Painfully reminded of little Cosmo earlier, David Hawkley lost his temper.

‘Lysander,’ he thundered, ‘stop this disgraceful pantomime at once.’

It was a voice that chilled Lysander’s blood. For a second he froze, then gathering up his junior dog and holding her in front of himself like a fig-leaf, he turned to Georgie.

‘Darling, I don’t think you’ve met my father.’

43

The party broke up very quickly after that. A frantically giggling Kitty, Ferdie, Georgie and Dinsdale spitting out splinters of boomerang were driven away by a very irate Marigold.

‘You’ve really let the sayde down, Georgie, conductin’ black-magic orgies. You must have realized what a pigstay Lysander had reduced Magpie Cottage to, probably contributed to it yourself. And you and Lysander are plastered all over The Scorpion. Gay’s been on the phone all day, trying to faind you. He’s standin’ bay you, bay the way. Ay can’t think way, and all the Press are doorsteppin’ Paradise Grange to get the Catchitune angle from Larry.’

‘It’s all Larry’s fault,’ screamed Georgie, ‘for putting out mugs and T-shirts with Guy and me looking lovey- dovey. I’ll get him under the Trade Descriptions Act. And what’s all this about The Scorpion?’

She couldn’t take in what Marigold was saying. She could only think how embarrassing it was that such a handsome man as David Hawkley should have caught her running around all wobbling and naked.

Having discovered that his youngest son was far too drunk to make any sense and refused to explain how he’d come by any of these amazing perks, David Hawkley drove off into the deluge. After a few minutes he calmed down and decided to put up at a nearby hotel and try a different tack in the morning. As every room within ten miles of Paradise was double-booked by reporters, he ended up at The Bell in Rutminster, an old coaching inn overlooking the River Fleet. The kitchen was closed, but noting his pallor and good looks, the landlord’s wife insisted on sending up to his room a bottle of whisky and a plate of Welsh rarebit, which gave him outlandish dreams of naked ladies frolicking in meadows.

One of them was Georgie Maguire, white feet dancing on the greensward, red hair flying like a maenad, but close up she turned into Mustard wearing nothing but a pie-frill collar, and he woke up drenched in sweat, shaking in horror.

Next morning the papers were full of the chinks in Georgie’s marriage with lots of jokes about Paradise Lust and On-the-Rocks-Star. ‘Caring Guy’ was much quoted from the South of France, insisting that there was no question of divorce and that Lysander Hawkley was a friend of the family, particularly his daughter Flora. At least Lysander wasn’t going to be dragged through some messy court case.

Feeling slightly more cheerful, particularly after some excellent kippers and three slices of toast and Oxford marmalade, David decided to have it out with Lysander. He found Magpie Cottage locked and deserted, except for Arthur and Tiny who were standing gloomily by the gate in the continuing downpour. Paradise Village swarmed with reporters splashing round in the flooded High Street, desperate to find Lysander and a story. More of them were doorstepping Angel’s Reach waiting for Georgie to emerge.

Receiving a tip-off from Miss Cricklade, who was unblocking a drain clogged with leaves outside her cottage, David approached Angel’s Reach from the south side, crossing the Fleet a mile upstream and walking through the woods. The rain had stopped, but the downpour continued as the water sifted and worked its way through twigs, leaves, traveller’s joy and dog mercury to the leafy floor below. The weather was still in the seventies, but not stifling like yesterday. Robins were singing, beech masks and acorns crunched beneath his feet like shingle, but a drenched blackberry he picked was as tasteless as his life.

Reaching the edge of Georgie’s land, he could see the house with its soaring angels turned amber by the rain, and the lake flanked with bulrushes, glinting in the sunshine. Beech trees, stingingly red as Georgie’s hair after yesterday’s deluge, trailed their leaves in the water. Statues gleamed seal-like, red hips glittered on rose bushes puffed out by their weight of water like enraged tomcats. Saffron and sea-green lichen on the flagstones as he walked up the path were almost luminous. The rain seemed to have given the garden back its youth.