‘We had a stupid lovers’ tiff and he stormed off. You know how impulsive he is. Make him ring me at once if he rings or turns up.’
Kitty had been jumpy all evening. The wind was really wailing now. Suddenly she heard a jangling of bells and a distant pounding on the front door. Terrified, she seized a saucepan and crept along the dark, panelled passages, guided by the rough slither of a tapestry, or the sharp blade of a hanging sword, edging round cannon-balls and suits of armour, not daring to betray her identity by turning on a light. The pounding grew louder, and was now accompanied by terrible spine-chilling sobbing. Kitty gasped with terror as she saw an anguished shadowy face at the hall window.
‘Oh, God!’ Frantically she crossed herself — it was the Paradise Lad.
‘Go away,’ she screamed.
‘Kitty, Kitty, let me in.’
‘Oh, fank goodness.’
As she unbolted the door, Lysander fell inside, clutching a koala bear, followed by a very subdued Maggie and Jack. He was absolutely plastered and blue with cold beneath his suntan, his teeth chattering convulsively, his eyes crazy, his face drenched with sweat. Kitty had never seen anyone shake so much.
‘Help me, Kitty. Georgie, it’s her fault, not Mum’s. She’s a bitch, and Dad’s a bastard, and Uncle Alastair, oh Christ.’
Putting her arms round him, propping him up, Kitty steered him two steps forward, one step sideways or back until, knocking over several suits of armour and the screen, they finally reached the kitchen, where she steered him into an armchair by the Aga.
‘Why did she do it? Jack, Maggie, I haven’t fed them. Oh, Kitty,’ he started to cry.
‘There, there, my lambkin, I’ll see to them. Let me run and get one of Rannaldini’s jumpers, then I’ll make you somefink hot. Wherever ’ave you been?’
‘Don’t go.’
‘I won’t be a sec.’
But when she came back with jerseys, including Guy’s lost Free Forester’s cricket sweater, and blankets, he had passed out.
Tucking them round him, she fed the dogs, who appreciated the steak and kidney she was about to freeze for Boxing Day far more than Rannaldini’s faddy family ever would.
She then curled up on the window-seat. She didn’t want Lysander falling into the Aga, or waking terrified and not knowing where he was. He and Georgie had plainly had far more than a lovers’ tiff.
It was a good thing she stayed. Two hours later he was awake and screaming the house down, and she only got him to the 100 in time, where she had to hold his head for the next quarter of an hour until she thought he’d heave his entrails out. Somehow she managed to get him upstairs to bed, but he continued to rave and gabble incoherently, begging her to stay with him. Only when she gave him one of Rannaldini’s Mogadons did he finally fall asleep.
Next day Kitty abandoned the hundred and one things she had to do, including making a dozen sets of angels’ wings for the annual Valhalla nativity play, and nursed Lysander, feeding him dry toast and clear chicken soup, and letting him talk. She didn’t fill in the silences as he frantically tried to get his image of his mother into some kind of shape.
‘She was so kind, Kitty,’ said Lysander. ‘We had a really awful groom, who bullshitted her way into the job. She couldn’t even ride and she was vaguer than me. Mum finally screwed up courage to sack her, but four hours later Mum had said so many nice things to her to soften the blow that the groom thought she’d been promoted.’
‘Kind people find it ever so hard to say no,’ said Kitty who was cutting out a picture of Rannaldini shaking hands with Donald Duck. ‘Your mum was so beautiful, and so many men must ’ave wanted her, she must ’ave felt unkind refusing them.
‘I expect Georgie’s infatuated with your dad,’ she went on. ‘As he’s almost as ’andsome as you, I don’t blame ’er, and that makes her ever so jealous of your mum. I mean you know how huptight she was about Rachel and Julia. She’s worse than ’im.’ Kitty pointed to Jack who was sitting on the kitchen table glaring at Maggie who was now lying like a baby in Lysander’s arms.
‘I don’t ’spect she meant half the fings she told you. Some people just need extra frills in marriage,’ Kitty added sadly, as she dipped her brush in glue and pasted Donald Duck and Rannaldini under Princess Michael.
‘Christ, it’s a horrible world!’ Lysander, who was still wearing Guy’s cricket sweater, dipped a ginger biscuit in his tea and handed it to Jack. ‘I don’t understand why everyone plays games. I loved Georgie so much, we were having terrific sex, twice a day at least, but it wasn’t enough for her. She had to have Dad as well.’
As Kitty was reflecting that if Georgie were working really hard she might have preferred the perhaps lesser sexual demands of David Hawkley, Lysander noticed Donald Duck.
‘God, I’m jealous of Rannaldini meeting him. Did he get Donald’s autograph? This screen is lovely. You’re brilliant at cutting out. Can I have a go?’
‘What d’you really want from life?’ asked Kitty, passing him the scissors and a picture of Rannaldini laughing with Pavarotti.
‘I’d like Arthur to make a come-back and win the Rutminster with me riding him. I want a job with horses. I’d like a place of my own, a wife who loved me as much as I loved her, and,’ he added on reflection, ‘I’d like some kids. I’m bored with racketing around. D’you know, I asked Georgie to marry me, and she’s bonking my father.’ He started to shake violently again. ‘Oh Christ, I’ve cut Rannaldini’s head off. I’m sorry, I can’t do anything right. Can I possibly stay with you until I get myself together?’
In fact it was highly inconvenient. Kitty had so much to do and, instead, had to listen to Lysander banging on and on with all the egotism of utter despair and extreme youth. As a very truthful person, she hated having to lie so much on Rannaldini’s behalf, and now she had to lie for Lysander, as Ferdie, Marigold, an increasingly frantic Georgie, and even David Hawkley and Aunt Dinah (in the morning admittedly) rang or rolled up to ask if she’d seen or heard from him. And then Mrs Brimscombe, who’d had to be let into the secret, went down with flu so Kitty had to cope on her own.
Having hidden Lysander in an attic bedroom in the oldest part of the house, Kitty felt like the monks living at Valhalla harbouring some Cavalier during the Civil War: Astley perhaps, or Rupert of the Rhine, or even Charles I. With his flopping hair, his gentleness and his beauty, Lysander made the perfect Cavalier, and would certainly have been dashingly fearless in cavalry charges. No Cavalier seeking sanctuary, however, would have had the diversion of the sixty-two instalments of
He only left in the end — and then reluctantly — because Natasha was coming home from Bagley Hall; and that had been another of Georgie’s lies, that Flora had broken up the day he’d returned from Australia. Anyway he didn’t want that bitch Natasha drooling over him, and he felt he’d traded on Kitty’s hospitality enough.
Within a couple of hours of his departure, however, he was on the telephone.
‘Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, come and have dinner at Magpie Cottage tomorrow night.’
‘’Ow lovely. Shall I bring Natasha?’
‘God no! Don’t say a thing to her. I’m going to cook you a wonderful dinner.’
Alas, Lysander woke the next morning with a blinding headache and the shakes. In fact he ached all over. He must have caught Mrs Brimscombe’s flu. He wanted to collapse into bed, but he couldn’t let Kitty down.
What followed was not just a chapter but a whole book of accidents. The avocados he bought were harder than hand grenades. The
The sink was by this time blocked solid with the food he’d chucked out. There were saucepans all over the lawn and he’d singed his beautiful eyelashes when he realized Jack was missing and set out with Maggie, a spade and a torch into the freezing night to find him. After twenty minutes, with every fox, badger and rabbit for miles around rustling in the wood to distract them, a demented Maggie finally located some faint yapping, and Lysander
