For a second Lysander’s haggard face lit up.
‘He’s still alive! That must be an omen.’
‘It’s a bitch.’ Ferdie opened the fridge. ‘Christ, don’t you ever have any food? My mother’s got her this weekend. Bottle-feeding her on goat’s milk, but Mum’s got to go back to work on Monday.’
‘I’ll take her. I’ll give her to Kitty to replace—’ His voice faltered again. ‘Oh, Ferdie what am I going to do?’ And the story of his great love came pouring out.
‘Kitty and me are an item. It’s the real thing,’ he said finally.
‘You said that about Georgie,’ said Ferdie, reduced to putting the kettle on as there was no drink in the house.
‘Georgie!’ said Lysander, outraged. ‘That boring, self-pitying slag. I even remember Kitty’s postcode.’
‘It’s the same as yours,’ said Ferdie unimpressed.
‘Is it?’ asked Lysander in surprise. ‘I don’t know mine. I can’t concentrate on
‘My God,’ said Ferdie in alarm. ‘Ladbroke’s will go into receivership. I’ll give you my opinion of this situation after the orgy tonight. What are you going as?’
‘NFI,’ said Lysander sulkily. Then, when Ferdie raised his eyebrows, ‘Not fucking invited?’
‘You sure?’ Ferdie rifled through the post which Lysander hadn’t bothered to open because none of it contained Kitty’s neat round handwriting but which included several letters marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL from his bank and three marked URGENT from David Hawkley.
‘Here you are.’ Ferdie slit open the thick cream envelope: MRS ROBERTO RANNALDINI AT HOME.
‘No-one could feel at home at Valhalla,’ shuddered Lysander.
‘You’ve got to dress up as a Roman,’ said Ferdie, ‘preferably a decadent one. Most people’ll go in sheets and Duo-tan.’
‘I loathe fancy dress.’ Lysander had gone whiter than the snow outside at the thought of seeing Kitty again. ‘And I’ve got a zit.’
‘First time in your life. I can’t see it.’ Then, as Lysander lifted the curls off his forehead, ‘That’s nothing.’
‘It’s massive. If I stood in Paradise High Street, I’d stop the traffic.’
‘You better start eating.’
‘I can’t. I must go into Rutminster and get Kitty some flowers before the shops close.’
‘You could go in the buff as an Ancient Brit,’ suggested Ferdie. ‘You’ll be so blue with cold at Valhalla, you won’t have to bother with woad.’
53
The thunder and surge of Schoenberg could be heard all the way down the valley which glittered in the icy light of a moon hardly softened by a rusty halo presaging storm. Outside Valhalla the Press stamped their feet, desperate for the latest on Kitty and Lysander. But, determined to prevent any drawbridge crashers, Rannaldini had posted a fleet of minions and guard-dogs on every gate. Only guests with invitations were allowed in and, directed by Mr Brimscombe, who was almost more desperate to join the orgy than the Press, to park their cars and helicopters on the lawn.
Rannaldini had laid his plans with care. The scarlet morning room and the yellow summer parlour were radiant with candles and carpeted with pink rosepetals. The central heating, most uncharacteristically, was turned up to tropical, huge banked logs smouldered like the fires of hell in every grate so anyone who had turned up in anything hotter than a toga was soon stripping off.
Great vases of lilies, roses and jasmine poured forth their overpoweringly voluptuous scents, recalling Rannaldini’s garden during last summer’s heatwave. The air was blue with many kinds of smoke as soothsayers, slaves, emperors, Mercurys in tinhats and fig-leaves and goddesses, holding in their tummies and wishing they’d cut down on the turkey left-overs, got stuck into the Krug.
Having frozen at Rachel’s party, Larry had made the mistake of wearing a lion’s costume and was now twitching a yellow tail as he yelled into his mobile.
‘He’s trying to set up a new business with some Japs,’ explained Marigold, who’d come as Minerva. Having fallen asleep under the sun lamp she was redder in the face than Percival Hillary who, as Julius Caesar, had recycled his Cavendish House nightgown and put a laurel wreath on his wispy grey curls.
‘Julius Seize-him, more likely,’ giggled Meredith, lissom in a beige tunic. ‘Rannaldini is not promiscuous, Marigold, just terribly, terribly frightened of the dark, so he cannot sleep alone.’
‘What are you on about?’ said Marigold, adjusting the owl on her shoulder.
‘I’ve come as a Christian,’ said Meredith, folding his hands piously, ‘so I can’t bitch about anyone. Isn’t Hermione a sweet person? Hasn’t Percy got lovely breath? Doesn’t Rachel cheer one up? How the
‘Ay think Gwendolyn looks very dignified in that midnaight-blue shirtwaister,’ signed Marigold. ‘Ay wish Ay hadn’t bothered with fancy dress.’
Most chillingly sinister of all was Rannaldini as Janus, the two-faced Roman God, guardian of the gateways and appropriately of January. A best-selling item at music shops round the country was a Rannaldini mask, so lifelike that musicians crossed themselves when they suddenly encountered it. Tonight Rannaldini had attached this second face to the back of his head so wherever you were in the room the black hypnotic eyes seemed to follow you. With his smooth brown torso, black loincloth, and thick gold snake coiled round his arm, he looked menacing and terrifyingly sexy.
Belle of the ball, however, was definitely Hermione as the Botticelli Venus with her glorious figure barely disguised by a flesh-coloured body stocking and her serenely beautiful face framed by a long curling strawberry- blond wig looped back with a silver ribbon.
‘You can count every hair on her pubes, silly old tart,’ fumed Meredith, ‘I don’t know why she didn’t come as herself. She’s so lifted no-one would have recognized her. Doesn’t Bobby look divine as Brutus?’
‘The nobbliest Roman of them all,’ said Bob deprecatingly, looking down at his bare knees. ‘Christ, it’s hot in here. Shouldn’t someone open a window?’
Poor Georgie had felt absolutely stunning in gold robes and a black wig as Cleopatra until Natasha rolled up totally unexpectedly after ten days in Barbados, as an infinitely more seductive version in her mother’s Angel Gabriel gold tunic and with her own dark curls straightened and cut in a fringe.
‘Two Cleos! You should have come as Georgie’s daughter,’ said Hermione laughing heartily.
‘Bags I be your asp,’ said Guy, who was showing off his splendid legs as a centurion.
Unlike most fathers, Rannaldini was not remotely inhibited by his daughter’s presence. Seeing a miserable, utterly upstaged Georgie retreating into an alcove, he went over to fill up her glass: ‘Hallo, Georgie.’
‘Oh hi, Rannaldini. God, I’m unhappy. I screwed up courage to go to Relate in Rutminster last night and came home full of resolutions to be nicer to Guy only to find he’d gone round to see Rachel and what is more—’
‘Georgie,’ Rannaldini cut into her monologue mockingly, ‘I only came to say Hallo. Talk of zee devil.’
Leaving Georgie squirming with humiliation he sauntered across the room to kiss Rachel, who, having been to a candle-lit peace vigil to protest against the Gulf War, had arrived in an embattled mood. Dressed as Ben Hur, she was brandishing a large whip.
‘Ah, Dolores, Lady of Pain,’ he said softly, sliding a brief caressing hand inside her thighs just below her tunic, ‘let me pull your chariot.’
‘I loathe fancy dress,’ snarled Rachel, but she had lost her audience, because Lysander had just walked in and as usual brought the room to a halt.
He wore ripped jeans, a dark blue shirt and Kitty’s Donald Duck jersey. His deathly pallor set off by the dark stubble and the purple shadows beneath the cavernous eyes, which searched endlessly for Kitty, only made him
