The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

‘Oh, bugger off,’ snarled Dinah. ‘I’m not likely to get up to anything with my nephew. No doubt you frisked him before he came in.’

As Mrs Bingham flounced out, the cat started to purr.

‘Common, isn’t she? Doesn’t like Thatcher,’ yelled Dinah over the television. ‘The one coming next week, according to the hand-out, has wide experience with handicapped children.’ She gave a cackle of laughter.

‘D’you mind if we turn the television down a bit?’

Jane Asher was in her kitchen talking about Christmas cake. She looked so fresh, pretty and alien to his current squalid surroundings that Lysander wished he could climb into the set with her. After turning her face bright orange and changing channels twice, Dinah found the mute button.

Ramming his hands between his knees to stop them trembling Lysander took a deep breath. ‘About Mum. I honestly don’t want to upset you, but basically Dad’s got a new woman.’

‘Mrs Colman. I’ve met her. That voice would drive me cuckoo.’

‘No, a newer one. Basically she’s been slagging Mum off, I don’t believe her, but I just wanted proof that she was lying.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘That, that — I’m really sorry — that she was having an affaire with Alastair.’

‘Ah.’ Dinah’s dirty-nailed fingers stopped stroking the cat.

‘And loads of other people.’

Outside he could see two gulls and a boat with a red sail battling desperately with the gale. The pause seemed to go on for ever.

‘She was rather unfaithful,’ said Dinah.

‘She was?’ Lysander was aghast. ‘Then Dad drove her to it. He’s such a shit.’

‘Your father put up with a lot. They were never suited. He brought her to stay when they were first engaged. He was dotty about her. The first afternoon he went to his room to write a review for The Spectator and Alastair offered to show her the garden. Looking down from my bedroom, I saw them kissing in the orchard. All the blossom was out. It was like a Barbara Cartland book jacket.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ hissed Lysander.

‘It’s true.’ Dinah’s words were slurring now. ‘I caught them out so many times. Christmas, birthdays, your grandfather’s funeral — even your christening. Some people even thought — no, forget that. Alastair and Pippa would be the life and soul of every party, but suddenly they’d vanish like gypsies’ lurchers.’

Lysander had put his head in his hands. Now he looked up, his eyes cavernous in horror and bewilderment.

‘It was a pity Alastair died so suddenly. Didn’t leave his affairs in very good order.’ Staggering to her feet, tipping the cat on to the carpet, Dinah lurched towards the desk and after pulling out several drawers, took out a salmon-pink file on which the words: TWO YEAR OLDS, 1983 had been crossed out.

‘It’s all here. When I want a masochistic charge of adrenalin late at night I go through it.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And wish they were both alive, so I could kill them.

‘Alastair was crazy about her,’ she went on. ‘In the beginning he blamed the male menopause. Twenty years later Pippa was an old man’s folly. But there were always others. She loved collecting scalps, then telling him about them.’

Opening the file, she emptied it out on to a nearby table, knocking over a dying cyclamen and a Staffordshire dog. Photographs, bills, letters fluttered everywhere all over the carpet.

With a stab of anguish, Lysander recognized his mother’s scrawl on a piece of blue writing paper.

‘Darling Alastair,’ he read laboriously. ‘That was the best fuck I’ve ever had.’

‘As your father got crosser and grimmer, your mother got wilder,’ mumbled Dinah picking up the Radio Times. ‘Nice lunch party I went to yesterday, with even numbers for a change. All the men were queer of course, but at my age, you have to expect queers.’

This isn’t happening to me, I can’t read any more, thought Lysander.

‘Here, give that back,’ said Dinah as he chucked the letter on the electric bars of the fire.

‘Time for your medication, young lady.’ Mrs Bingham, dying to know what was going on, marched in with a glass of water and two yellow pills on a plate.

Trying to shield his mother, Lysander hunched himself over the letters and photographs, as he frantically gathered them back into their file. For a second they were all distracted by the giant tabby cat lumbering into its earth box scattering cat litter as it rose like a Deux Chevaux, and noisily evacuated.

Then, as Lysander shoved the file viciously back into the drawer, he caught sight of a photograph that had fallen on to the floor and nearly blacked out. It showed Uncle Alastair with a great grin on his face, lounging in an armchair with a cigar in one hand, and his mother kneeling at his feet and laughing as she held his rampant cock towards her mouth between two fingers as though she were about to smoke it. They were both naked.

Lysander gave a sob. For a second his distress jolted Dinah out of her stupor. ‘Damn, I thought I’d burnt that one.’

Mrs Bingham gave a crow of triumph.

‘Why, you naughty, naughty girl,’ she gloated.

For scraping away in his earth box, the cat had revealed a green bottle of Gordon’s gin, three-quarters empty.

‘Turn up the telly,’ said Dinah airily. ‘There’s William Morris on The Animal Road Show.’

Lysander only just reached the lavatory in time, before he threw up and up and up.

Stumbling down three flights of stairs and rushing out into the street, narrowly avoiding being mown down by cars trying to get home before the rush hour, he took Maggie and Jack for a run on the beach at dusk. He was acutely conscious of the indifference of the sea, as it reared up in a long white wall of foam, then collapsed at his feet. The pier was already lit up against a darkening sky. Ahead the little fairground where Pippa had often taken him had closed down for the winter. The red train rested on its buffers. No children whizzed, shrieking with delight, down the blue-and-yellow helter-skelter. The merry-go-round horses had been zipped away in their leather covers. Even the ghouls on the ghost train had fled.

‘Oh no,’ pleaded Lysander, as he frantically wiped away the tears. ‘Oh please, Mum, oh no, no, no.’

But he knew that his childhood had gone for ever.

45

Wearily Kitty made lists for a Christmas she dreaded. All Rannaldini’s Christmas cards had to be sent off and presents bought for his numerous children and each member of the London Met. Rannaldini had to compensate for his chronic bloody-mindedness somehow. Even more lavish presents had to be bought for his multitude of mistresses, but the London secretary, who had better taste, dealt with that. Kitty wondered if Flora or Rachel had been added to the list. He’d been away so long, she wasn’t au fait with the latest developments. But the deep freezes still had to be filled. Rannaldini liked to have Cecilia and all his children for Christmas, and Hermione, Bob and little Cosmo came over for Christmas dinner. Kitty was also desperately trying to cover her screen with photographs of Rannaldini and the famous, and had just cut out one of him gazing admiringly up at Princess Michael.

It was nearly midnight on the wildest of nights. Everything rattled and creaked. Creepers clawed at the windows, the wind moaned down the chimneys like women desperate to get at Rannaldini. Kitty had already had three dropped telephone calls, and didn’t know if she’d rather it were burglars checking anyone was at home or mistresses checking Rannaldini’s whereabouts. She’d also had increasingly distraught calls from Georgie trying to trace Lysander.