The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

The sun was setting as Rupert dropped Lysander off at the Hotel Versailles. The next moment he was knocked sideways by Kitty, blue with cold and hysterical with worry, shooting across the icy pavements into his arms.

‘I was so worried. You was so long. I fort you might have been killed. Fousands of people ’ave died in Ghost Valley.’ And she kissed him over and over again. ‘I was so worried Rupert took you there deliberately.’

‘No, no, he’s been wonderful and so are you.’

Delighted with her response, Lysander pulled Kitty through the revolving doors, kissing her on and on until the porters, the receptionists and all the glamorous people grouped round the tables stopped chattering and drinking and gave them a round of applause.

‘I should have rung.’ Oblivious of the attention they were causing, Lysander led her towards the lift. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. Let’s go and try out that Jacuzzi before I stiffen up.’

‘In a place that won’t let us feel,

in a life where nothing seems real

I have found you, I have found you,’ sang Lysander tunelessly as he lay in eighteen inches of warm, scented, churning water soaping Kitty’s breasts as they gently juddered above the surface. At first she had been desperately embarrassed because Rannaldini had shaved off her pubic hair.

‘I was the only person ’ere for ’im to sleep wiv,’ she confessed. ‘The au pair’s father works for Le Monde so he couldn’t risk it.’

Lysander hid his anger by saying she looked adorable and more like a little piglet than ever and Rannaldini was obviously obsessed with strimming paths to exciting places. Kitty then said Rachel would disapprove of such deforestation, and laughed and felt better. Glancing in the darkened mirrors lining the wall, she felt almost beautiful for the first time in her life and put her hand under the water.

‘It’s no good, I have stiffened up,’ admitted Lysander as his rampant cock reared above the surface.

‘It’s like a periscope,’ said Kitty, stroking it.

‘Looking for its target. Come on.’

Rising out of the bath, he carried her, dripping, next door, drenching the pink chintz roses as he dropped her gently on to the counterpane of the huge four-poster.

They didn’t bother to draw the curtains. Outside, duck-egg-green shadows lay on the snow, the stars were brilliant in the clear, frosty night. The ring of silent, blue mountains beyond seemed to protect them.

‘I love you,’ murmured Lysander as he slowly stroked her pink wet body into a state of ecstasy. Then, as he sat up and drew her between his thighs and slithered inside her, ‘A-a-a-ah, ooo — it’s heaven. Like the soft, pink fingers of a milkmaid squeezing me. Oh help,’ he wailed, ‘I can never hold out if I really fancy someone and I want you more than anyone ever. Oh God, oh help, I’m sorry, Kitty darling.’

The difference between Rannaldini and Lysander, reflected Kitty, was that although Rannaldini played with her and kept going for hours, she always felt he was like a pianist polishing his technique for a big concert which wouldn’t be with her. With Lysander she felt she was the big occasion he had practised for all his life.

‘Oh, Kitty,’ he echoed her thoughts, ‘I’ve fucked so many times in my life, but this is truly the first time I’ve ever made love. Now it’s my turn to give you pleasure. Promise to tell me exactly what you like.’ Then, when she was embarrassed, he said, ‘I always wanted to be a Brickie-layer when I grew up,’ and collapsed with such laughter that she joined in too, and started to relax.

Afterwards, she said truthfully, ‘That was ubsolutely mudgic, Lysunder.’

‘Let’s do it all over again at the gallop,’ he said, kissing her, ‘but if we’re not going to die of rheumatism we better sleep in one of the other beds. I’m just going to have a pee.’

Tottering, dizzy with love, into the bathroom five minutes later, Kitty saw that Lysander had taken the hideous crimson lipstick Cecilia had given her for Christmas and scrawled across the mirror: KITTY IS FOR LYFE NOT JUST FOR KRISTMASS.

Next door a five-eighth moon with a white, wistful nun’s face was peering in through the window at the sprawled naked beauty of a waiting Lysander. Running into the room, Kitty flung herself on him, burying her face in his silvery chest.

‘All my life,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve longed to have moonlight and someone I loved at the same time.’

‘I keep wanting to ring Mum and tell her how wonderful you are,’ said Lysander.

51

But as Shakespeare’s Lysander pointed out four hundred years before, ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’. The Press, trailing Rupert and clocking everyone who spent time with him, took photographs of Lysander kissing Kitty in the foyer. Plied with a fat bribe the hotel porter revealed that the President de Gaulle suite was now being paid for by a Mr L. Hawkley. The picture-desk promptly identified Lysander as the man making husbands jealous and Kitty, from her brief appearance at the airport, as Rannaldini’s wife.

Coming out of the Abbey Road recording studios with Rachel the following evening after they’d recorded the taxing first movement of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, Rannaldini was confronted by a reporter and a photographer.

‘Mr Rannaldini, we wondered what you thought about these photographs of your wife in France.’

A swift inspection was enough.

‘What paper are you from?’ exploded Rannaldini. ‘Today.’

Rannaldini raised his fist. ‘You’ll be from Yesterday if you’re not careful.’ Shoving them furiously aside, he dived into the waiting Mercedes. Clive, who’d had plenty of practice, slammed the doors and, racing round to the driving seat, took off into the night leaving Rachel with hardly a penny to get home.

In Monthaut, Kitty was reading Pigling Bland to Rannaldini’s children — very slowly — so they could understand the English. Lysander lounged at the end of the bed listening. He had always loved the story which his mother had often read him and he thought how alike were Kitty and Pig Wig, the little black pig heroine, with her double chin and her blue-flowered smock. How nice if he and Kitty could escape to freedom together away from Rannaldini over the county boundary. He wished he was as noble a character as Pigling Bland.

‘Over the hills and far away, she danced with Pigling Bland,’ read Kitty, closing the book. ‘Now you must all try and go to sleep.’

As she kissed each of them, Lysander wandered back into the sitting room and without thinking picked up a ringing telephone.

‘Who’s that?’ yelled Rannaldini.

Lysander hung up.

‘Who was that who answered?’ demanded Rannaldini when he rang a second time.

‘No-one. You must have dialled the wrong number.’

She’s learning, thought Lysander, but as he sloshed vodka into two glasses he could hear Rannaldini’s tantrum right across the room, and, as Kitty clumsily replaced the receiver and glared at him in anguish, he could hear the slither of magic carpet crashing back to earth.

‘I’ve got to go back. It’s all over the papers.’

‘So what? It doesn’t matter. We’re what matters.’

‘You’re Natasha’s boyfriend.’

‘Bullshit, I hate her. I’ve never paid her the slightest attention. That’s Rannaldini stirring it.’

‘And I am ‚is wife.’

‘You can’t stay with him.’ Aghast, Lysander bounded across the room but, as he took her in his arms he could feel her distancing.