The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

‘Are we staging St Francis of Assisi as well?’ grumbled Meredith as he trod in a cowpat.

Sacked as the front of the donkey, Lysander was relegated to turning Rachel’s pages when she played the piano for early rehearsals. But he was so distracted by the sight of Kitty in the green dress he’d bought her that he totally ignored Rachel’s repeated nods and was demoted to shifting scenery.

Bob admired the green dress, too.

‘Kitty’s getting prettier,’ he observed.

‘Where?’ said Natasha, who was fed up with her tiny part in the angelic choir.

Suddenly Georgie realized that Kitty hadn’t got a part.

‘I’ll write you in as the innkeeper’s wife.’

‘Kitty’s forte is being a back-room girl,’ said Hermione firmly. ‘Who else could play the innkeeper’s wife? Natasha’s too young and pretty.’

‘What about Mother Courage?’ suggested Georgie. ‘She so longs to get on telly.’

‘Certainly not,’ Hermione was shocked. ‘Let’s keep it simple. Just our set. We don’t need an innkeeper’s wife. Your daily can sit in the audience, because the crew are bound to cut to them some time during the play. I hope Rupert Campbell-Black’s been invited to stay on for supper after the performance,’ she added to Bob.

‘Rupert won’t be able to refuse once he sees Brickie’s spread,’ said Guy, smiling warmly at Kitty.

‘Lully, lully, breast is best, lully, lully, baby rest,’ sang Hermione, flashing a blue-veined boob at her sleeping Harrods doll.

‘I still think Kitty should be in it,’ said Georgie stubbornly.

‘Kitty is needed at home,’ hissed Rannaldini, who was trying on a totally anachronistic purple velvet doublet. ‘Theengs are getting very slack ’ere. There are lights on everywhere, plants go unwatered.’ He pressed the earth of a huge ficus. ‘The second post hasn’t even been opened and I hardly think my study is the right place for a roll of lavatory paper.’

Lysander’s face tightened with anger.

‘As you talk so much shit, sir, I would have thought it was very appropriate.’

Rannaldini looked at Lysander in amazement as though the manger had spoken.

‘Particularly white lavatory paper,’ he went on. ‘I told you not to buy white any more, Keety. You know bleach pollutes the rivers.’

Hearing Rachel-speak coming straight out of his mouth, everyone exchanged uneasy glances. Kitty had gone puce with mortification.

‘I’m sorry, Rannaldini,’ she stammered.

‘Don’t apologize. Do better next time,’ said Rannaldini chillingly.

‘And you still haven’t sewn up my robes where the ox trod on them,’ grumbled Hermione.

‘Perhaps the Kings could give Mary a year’s subscription to the Nappy Service,’ suggested Rachel.

‘Then they could all wish the Holy Family a very Nappy Christmas,’ giggled Meredith, ‘except it’s Epiphany by the time they roll up.’

‘Stop taking the piss,’ howled Rachel.

‘Shut up, Meredith,’ ordered Rannaldini.

From the summer parlour next door, Larry could be heard yelling: ‘Someone else must have guaranteed the loan, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Nice if your husband could put in an appearance except to use my telephone,’ snarled Rannaldini.

‘Nice if you could put in an appearance except to bully everyone — sir,’ said Lysander, putting an arm round a sobbing Marigold.

Kitty was amazed how much less she minded Rannaldini’s tantrums. Lysander might have been passed up as the Angel Gabriel but, suddenly, he seemed to have drawn a halo around her life, which became increasingly brighter as he brought in logs for the great hall fire, carried her shopping in from the car and nipped down to Paradise to get her some Anadin Extra when she got her period. Lysander also helped her staple together the retyped scripts, even if he did put them all in the wrong order because he was chatting so much and she had to retreat discreetly into the larder to restaple them when he wasn’t looking.

And it was bliss to have someone to amuse everyone’s children when they were dumped on her, and to giggle with when Hermione complained Kitty had mended her robes with the wrong blue thread or Natasha hit the roof about shrunk washing.

Natasha wasn’t the only one who noticed how Lysander’s face and voice softened when he was with Kitty.

‘You don’t need to pay her so much attention when Rannaldini isn’t here,’ snapped Marigold. ‘It’s him you’re being paid to rattle.’

Two days before D-Day, Lysander sat in the back row of the stalls, pointedly reading a porn mag to discourage Natasha and the vicar, who was gallumping around in a long white nightgown from Cavendish House trying to secure his halo with Velcro.

Hermione, about to do the Annunciation scene, was making a very short list of Christmas presents she simply had to get.

‘What can I give Bob? Men are so difficult,’ she asked Lysander. Then, suddenly remembering her visit to Fleetley, ‘I forgot to tell you I met your father last term.’

Across the gangway, Georgie, clad in the unglamorous robes of chief shepherd, stopped writing her Christmas cards.

‘Rather a charmer,’ went on Hermione. ‘What are you going to give him?’

‘A bottle of arsenic,’ snapped Lysander, returning to Chantelle 42–22–35.

‘Good idea,’ said Hermione who wasn’t listening because Kitty had staggered in with a tray of coffee and home-made flapjacks, which Lysander leapt up to carry for her.

Huddling back in her robes Georgie returned to her Christmas cards. She was fed up with the number of Guy’s parents’ friends — who’d all been shown The Scorpion by their dailies — who sent Christmas cards addressed solely to Guy with tender messages inside about how they were praying for him.

Wistfully, Georgie remembered Christmases earlier in her marriage when she had signed every card: Love from Guy and Georgie with Guy’s name first because men should be deferred to. Now she just signed her own name. Under the lining paper in her desk at Angel’s Reach was a pretty little Victorian card that she was dickering whether to send to David Hawkley.

Although Lysander totally froze her out now, he had behaved honourably. He had never sneaked to David — admittedly because he couldn’t bear to repeat the horrific things Georgie had said about Pippa — but he had bawled David out for stealing Georgie, the woman he loved, and David had been shattered. He was mortified that Lysander had caught him and Georgie virtually in flagrante. He had risked bringing scandal on Fleetley by dallying with a pop star, but, worst of all, Georgie had lied to him — as Pippa had so often before — that her relationship with Lysander was platonic, thus luring him into cheating on his own son. At whatever heartbreak to himself, David had refused to see Georgie again.

Utterly devastated, Georgie had thrown herself into work. Ant and Cleo was nearly done and, to her great relief, Larry had stopped nagging her to finish the album. Guy, on the other hand, was playing her up again. Only last night she caught him cleaning St Joseph’s sandals with non-toxic shoe polish and, later, when she had been so carried away at the moment of orgasm that she’d ripped his back with her long nails, he’d yelled: ‘Don’t do that, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Are you worried,’ Georgie had yelled back, ‘that your mistress might discover you actually sleep with your wife?’

And Guy had retreated into his usual orgy of hurt outrage.

It was 21 December and Georgie hadn’t bought a single present nor had she done any cooking. Guy, who’d taken three days off from the gallery, could bloody well do that. Only her bank statement cheered her. Opening it this morning she found she was an amazing fifty thousand pounds better off than she’d expected. It must be more forgotten foreign royalties.

Guy, who had snooped and also read Georgie’s bank statement, was relieved they wouldn’t starve. Things were desperate at the gallery — another backer had gone belly-up last week — but, unlike Georgie, he had thumbed through the statement and found one dated 10 December for fifty thousand from Lysander and was racking his brains to work out what it was for.