The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

Remembering times past when he had, in public, studiously ignored women with whom he was having affaires in private, he construed Lysander’s total avoidance of Georgie as evidence of an ongoing affaire. His suspicions were fuelled that morning when Lysander marched in wearing his Free Forester’s jersey.

Matters were not helped by Flora’s return from Bagley Hall and then jumping on every telephone call. Because of her ravishing voice, Bob had persuaded her to give the play a homely touch by appearing from time to time to sing unaccompanied carols.

Flora had only agreed because she was so desperate to see Rannaldini again. All summer she had basked in the gold sunshine of his love, then as relentlessly and inevitably as leaves coming off the trees, after Boris’s success in the Requiem he had withheld it. Now she was stripped bare of all affection.

Rannaldini had never rung her again and apart from the few messages she had left with his London secretary, Flora had been too proud to pester him. She refused to become one of the distraught, tearful, pleading creatures whom Rannaldini got a sadistic charge out of listening to on his answering machine.

‘Think not for whom the lack of telephone bell tolls,’ sighed Flora.

Rannaldini, in fact, had not become bored with Flora. He still wanted to reduce her to such abject longing that she would take part in his fiendish games, but more importantly, the New World Phil in New York had come up for grabs. Rannaldini wanted the job of Musical Director very badly. He had never regained the same ascendancy over the London Met after the Lovely Black Eyes incident. Hermione was still giving him earache. He wanted to start a new life in a new country. Then, to his rage, he learnt that the New World Phil were also considering Boris Levitsky.

American orchestras, and their social benefactors, like their musical directors to live in the city and lead regular lives. It was vital for Rannaldini, therefore, to avoid any scandal and present a happily married front with Kitty, while doing everything he could to prevent Boris and Rachel getting together again — a challenge that appealed to his machiavellian nature. He had kicked off by ringing Boris with words of warm encouragement.

‘I will talk to the right people, Boris. I will smooth your path. I am right behind you.’

‘With a fleek knife,’ said Boris slamming down the receiver.

Although Rannaldini felt it prudent to soft-pedal his affaire with Rachel, he found himself more and more addicted to the demanding crosspatch. Her ability to massage essential oils into all parts of his body was beyond anything. Flora, who’d been trailing them in her father’s car, had also noticed Rachel’s increasing dominance over the play and was in a dangerous kamikaze mood.

Only Marigold was more miserable than Flora. She had wrapped all her Christmas presents, over-loaded the deep freeze, despatched her cards and decorated the house so early that the mistletoe was already shrivelling under the huge chandelier that was no longer switched on as it wasted precious energy. Larry was behaving in an increasingly suspicious fashion, coming home later and later, pouncing on the telephone, then shutting the door or going out to his car when he rang out, rising early to intercept the post and eating nothing.

In earlier years he had relished taking part in the Christmas play and never missed a rehearsal, conducting business in the wings on his mobile. This year, in the plum part of the innkeeper, he had hardly showed up. Marigold was sure he must be back with Nikki or having an affaire with Rachel who was looking utterly radiant. Marigold felt she was having a leg broken and reset without an anaesthetic.

47

Tempers were not improved during the dress rehearsal by the arrival of a film crew with a sleek, glamorous but very aggressive director from Venturer Television called Cameron Cook. The continual stopping to re-adjust cameras and microphones threw the entire cast — even such old hands as Georgie and Hermione. Lights fused, lines were forgotten, cues missed. Cameron decided to put two cameras on either side of the hall and one up in the minstrels’ gallery from which the vicar, as the Angel Gabriel, would descend to address Mary and later the shepherds. The technicians stood around yawning, looking bored and tripping over Mr Brimscombe as he peered into the chapel, which had been turned into a women’s changing room, while he pretended to fiddle with the fuse box.

Lysander had taken refuge at the back of the stalls. He was laboriously ploughing through a really sad piece in the Express about Rupert Campbell-Black and his wife who had just lost a test-tube baby at four months and were both utterly devastated.

Oh, poor Rupert, thought Lysander, and his wife was so beautiful and not much older than himself. He wished he could do something to help them.

The rows on stage were getting worse.

‘Don’t forget not to look at the camera,’ Hermione was hissing at the shepherds.

‘With so many cameras one can hardly help it,’ said Meredith fretfully.

The star fused again.

‘If it blows on the night, Larry can leap on to the roof and flash his medallion,’ said Flora.

‘If he turns up at all,’ said Natasha bitchily. ‘Talk about a never-in keeper.’

Marigold burst into tears again. Dropping a huge bunch of holly, Kitty ran to comfort her.

‘Lully, lully, breast is best,’ sang Hermione, nearly taking the vaulted roof off.

‘You can’t say that shit,’ said Cameron Cook, consulting her script. ‘And what’s a Christmas tree doing in the stable? They weren’t invented in those days. And why isn’t it decorated?’

‘Because it’s demeaning for trees to be hung with baubles,’ explained Rachel earnestly.

‘For God’s sake,’ snarled Cameron. ‘Now Holy Joe’s arrived, we better go back and do the Annunciation.’

Up in the gallery like some vast white bird in his Cavendish House nightgown, the vicar cleared his throat and straightened his halo.

‘Hi, Charismatic Mary,’ he called out in his fluting voice. ‘I’ve dropped in from heaven to tell you your pregnancy test is positive.’

‘How wonderful,’ cried Hermione, gazing down at her Harrods lily. ‘Joseph will be absolutely, absolutely—’ She turned to Meredith who, instead of prompting, was gazing at a butch cameraman.

‘Joseph will be absolutely?’ repeated Hermione, snapping her fingers.

‘Gobsmacked,’ suggested Lysander, who was still reading about Rupert.

‘Absolutely delighted.’ Meredith had found his place.

‘I’m afraid Joseph isn’t the father,’ said the vicar as he slowly descended on a wire attached to a buckling beam in the ceiling.

Hermione bowed her head. ‘It could be no other.’

‘It is — God Almighty!’ screamed the vicar as he landed on a free-range hen.

‘Well, I know Joseph will make a caring stepfather,’ said Hermione, launching loudly into ‘Behold a Virgin Shall Conceive’.

‘Stop, stop! Who wrote this shit?’ shouted Cameron Cook.

‘This bit, Handel and Jennings,’ said Bob helpfully. ‘The rest of it is Georgie’s.’

‘It is not,’ stormed Georgie. ‘Not a line of mine’s left in.’

‘I’d take your name off it sharpish then,’ advised Cameron.

A diversion was created by the arrival of Ferdie who had dropped in to discover if Natasha still had the power to hurt him and why Marigold’s last cheque for Lysander’s services had bounced twice and Georgie’s retainer not been paid at all. As Larry was still AWOL, Ferdie was promptly co-opted to play the innkeeper.

‘You’ve lost even more weight,’ said Lysander, coming through the big door at the back, leading Arthur — looking very smart in a jewelled bridle.

‘I’ve been working out and cleaning up,’ said Ferdie, giving Arthur a Polo. ‘The gym is packed with bored housewives walking very slowly around the running track so their make-up doesn’t run. I’m telling all of them I’m about to be sent to the Gulf and pulling everything in sight.’

‘Here’s the script.’ Bob handed it to Ferdie. ‘I don’t think Larry’s up to it, even if he does show. It’s not a huge