The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

Lysander looked like some Bacchante strayed out of an all-night revel.

‘D’you want a drink?’ she said nervously.

‘No, I want you.’ Dropping the presents on the hall table which was so small that half the roses fell to the floor, he hugged her. ‘Let’s go to bed. God, I missed you.’

Looking down at her feet, bare on the flagstones, he felt weak with love. ‘You’ve got chilblains. You must wear slippers. I’ll buy you some. Chilblains means it’s going to snow. I’ll take you tobogganing. You don’t seem very pleased to see me,’ he added in bewilderment.

‘Of course I am. I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all, and Flora drives now, and — er — as she’s broken up, she might roll up at any minute. Come on, let’s have a drink.’

‘OK. You put on something warm. I’ll get a bottle.’

‘I’ll get it.’ Georgie’s eyes flickered.

But as she went towards the kitchen, there was a crash and the sound of a window being slammed. Jack bristled and barked.

‘What’s that?’ Pushing her aside, Lysander sprinted into the kitchen and froze.

For out of the banging window he could see a man in his trousers and socks, carrying his shoes and jacket and frantically buttoning up his shirt as he hotfooted across the garden round to the Rover.

Lysander couldn’t move. He would recognize that broad-shouldered, ramrod-straight back anywhere. Jumping into the Rover, David Hawkley drove off in a flurry of leaves, unaware that his son had seen him.

Lysander thought he was suffocating. On the kitchen table lay a copy of his father’s translation of Ovid. Flipping it open, he saw his father had written on the fly leaf: TO DEAREST GEORGIE, and followed by some incomprehensible Latin tag. By the recipe books he found three of his own letters unopened.

Georgie was sitting on the stairs, surrounded by pink roses, looking sulky, dead eyed, caught out, but not nearly sorry enough.

‘Tell me this is a bad dream.’

‘It’s a bad dream.’

‘How could you, Georgie?’ whispered Lysander, clutching the door for support. ‘How could you? You were so unhappy. I worked and worked to get you over Guy and I find you bonking my father — like a couple of bloody dinosaurs. He’s a geriatric, for Christ’s sake.’

‘He’s only five years older than me,’ said Georgie, flaring up.

‘He’s a bastard. Guy’s a saint by comparison. You’re revolting, Georgie. I don’t understand you.’

A combination of guilt at being caught out, or fierce protectiveness towards David, and blazing jealousy of the dead Pippa, unleashed Georgie’s legendary Irish temper.

‘Your father is the dearest man in the world, and what’s more he’s been a wonderful father to you.’

‘Bullshit,’ shouted Lysander, so loud that Maggie cringed terrified against the door, and Jack started to yap.

‘He’s incapable of love. He was diabolical to Mum.’

‘Rubbish,’ screamed Georgie. ‘Your mother was a whore. D’you know how many lovers she had when she was married to your father?’

At the top of her voice, saliva flying, face engorging and disintegrating like beetroot in the Moulinex, she proceeded to scream chapter and worse. Lysander couldn’t stop her, he’d never been quick enough for back chat. He just mouthed at her, utterly shattered, fists clenched, rigid but trembling.

‘Did you know,’ yelled Georgie finally, ‘your Uncle Alastair was her lover for years and she was having an affair with Tommy Westerham? His picture from Horse and Hound was found in her bag the day she died, galloping down the main road to plead with him not to dump her.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ whispered Lysander. ‘My father told you this to get you on his side, to poison you against me and Mum. The lying, lying bastard! I’m going to kill him when I catch up with him.’

For a second, as he grabbed Georgie’s shoulders, shaking her like a rat, his beautiful face contorted into frenzy, Georgie was terrified he was going to kill her as well.

Then he caught the reek of cod again, and recognized the smell of sex, and with his father, and threw her back against the stairs. As he stumbled out, trampling the roses underfoot and slamming the front door behind him, Georgie realized what she’d done. She tried frantically to trace David, who now would never forgive her. Nor would Lysander, who would probably kill either himself or his father.

Lysander’s only thought was to find someone who had known his parents well enough to refute Georgie’s horrific accusations. Hurtling out of Paradise with Jack and Maggie huddled together on the seat beside him, he frantically punched out numbers on his car telephone, repeatedly getting wrong people because he kept misreading his address book and misdialling. By the time he had narrowly avoided crashing into several stone walls, he had learnt that his brothers were both out of their offices, his grandmother was whooping it up at some bridge party and his mother’s sister was in the Seychelles. In despair, he decided to drive down to Brighton to see Uncle Alastair’s widow, Dinah, a tetchy old soak, who spent her life outwitting a succession of companions paid by the family to keep her off the booze. If he hurried, he might catch her while she was sober enough to make sense.

Brighton looked its least seductive. An icy wind savaged the tamarisk bushes along the front, a sullen grey sea pummelled the shingle. Aunt Dinah’s flat stank of torn cat, long-term dirt and stale booze. Lysander remembered how his mother had referred to her mockingly as an auntie-depressant. Mrs Bingham, the paid companion, tweed-suited and tight-lipped, had the same gaoler’s eyes as Mustard.

‘Mrs Hawkley’s in the lounge. Would you care for some refreshment?’

‘I’d love a drink.’

Mrs Bingham offered tea or coffee.

Lysander said he’d prefer a large whisky.

‘Oh, we don’t keep alcohol in the flat, I’m afraid.’

Looking at this wild-haired young man, totally inadequately dressed in a Foster’s Lager T-shirt and dirty white jeans, clutching a koala bear and with shakes even worse than his aunt, Mrs Bingham deduced alcohol must run in the family.

‘Who’s there?’ came Aunt Dinah’s gin-soaked yell.

Lysander found her in the sitting room, reading Dick Francis with a huge magnifying glass with the television roaring. She was wearing a grey wool dress so tight it had ridden up to reveal stocking tops and thighs like unbaked suet. Although her black wig was worn at a rakish angle, her once-fine features had collapsed with the booze. Beneath eyelids swollen like shiny white maggots, however, her bloodshot eyes had the craftiness of an old hippo.

A large tabby cat covered most of her lap. Fear of her dashing husband leaving her had kept her sober and reasonably attractive for thirty-five years, but when he did go, albeit to another world, she had given up. Even in his state of shock, Lysander felt huge pity, and wished he had brought her a box of chocolates.

‘It’s Lysander, Aunt Dinah.’

As he leant forward to kiss a cheek on which red veins tangled like candy floss, he caught a waft of stale sweat and Gordon’s. The paid companion wasn’t being as efficient as she thought.

‘Just been watching a flick called The Bengal Lancers.’ Aunt Dinah spoke in a very precise voice to conceal the slurring. ‘Everything wrong as usual. They never had pig-sticking on the Frontier, but Gary Cooper was certainly a dish. Sorry, I can’t get up — cat on lap.’

‘I’m sorry to barge in. I need to talk to you.’

‘She offered you a drink?’ said Aunt Dinah as the paid companion sidled in, plonked her tweed bottom on the sofa and got out her knitting.

‘I’m OK.’ Collapsing into the armchair nearest the electric fire, Lysander noticed a cat’s earth box beside his aunt’s chair. From the smell, it hadn’t been cleaned out recently. He suppressed a wave of nausea.

‘You get more and more like your mother.’

Glancing up, he was disconcerted to see both Dinah’s crossed eyes concentrating on him.

‘It’s Mum I came to talk about.’

A long sigh ruffled the tabby cat’s fur.

‘I wondered how long it would be.’

Lysander turned to Mrs Bingham. ‘Look, d’you mind awfully if we talk alone?’

‘My job is to stay with Mrs Hawkley.’