The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

the first old boy to make a million, David had never forgiven his son’s best friend for flogging booze, cigarettes and condoms on the black market to other boys.

‘I’ll leave Jack with you then,’ said Lysander. ‘Simonides always gives him a nervous breakdown, imitating his bark. Christ, I hope Dad’s in a good mood.’

David Hawkley ran one of the best schools in the country. Nicknamed ‘Hatchet’ by the boys for the sharpness of his tongue, he was as brilliant a teacher as administrator, but tended ruthlessly to suppress the romantic intuition which had made him the finest classical scholar of his generation. Extremely good-looking, pale, patrician, tight-lipped, like the first Duke of Wellington, with black Regency curls brushed flat and streaked with grey, he gave an impression of banked fires under colossal control — as though the battles of the Peninsula and Waterloo were being fought internally against despair and the powers of darkness.

Inflexible by nature, he had been particularly tough with his youngest son because Pippa, his late wife, had adored the boy so much. And Lysander was so agonizingly like Pippa with his wide-apart, blue-green eyes, which always opened wider when he was thinking what to say, the thick glossy brown hair falling over his forehead, and the sweet sleepy smile that totally transformed his face. Like Pippa he had the same air of helplessness, of not being responsible for his actions, of retreating into a dream world and laughing at all the wrong moments.

Lysander was so different from David’s older sons, Alexander and Hector, who, like their father, had got firsts at Cambridge, and were now doing brilliantly in the BBC and the Foreign Office. Both had made suitable marriages, and, unlike their father, hugged their children, cooked Sunday lunch, knew the difference between puff and shortcrust pastry, and changed nappies without any loss of masculinity. Like their father, however, they had endless discussions on what to do for and about Lysander.

Awaiting his son that morning, David Hawkley was in a particularly savage mood. Normally in January, he would have been basking in the glow of getting half the sixth form into Oxbridge. But such was the bias against public schools that this year only ten boys had scraped in and none of them with scholarships, resulting in endless recriminatory telephone calls from parents. Having been up most of the night, ruthlessly marking down Mocks papers, he didn’t think next year’s lot would fare any better.

His mood was even worse because a fox had killed his beloved parrot, Simonides, that morning. Simonides had barked at dogs, chattered away in Greek and Latin, and shouted ‘Fuck Off’, probably taught to him by Lysander, at parents who wouldn’t leave. He had also perched on David’s shoulders as he worked, hopped on to his bed, snuggling into his neck at dawn and been his only solace since Pippa died.

David was also livid because stories of Lysander’s Palm Beach exploits were plastered all over The Scorpion, which had been slyly left around by the boys — even on his pew in chapel.

Worst of all, Lysander in his vagueness had put the two letters he’d laboriously written in Palm Beach in the wrong envelopes. Thus instead of receiving a cheery note saying his son was getting on well and would visit him next month, David opened the letter Lysander had written to his highly dubious girlfriend, Dolly. This not only told her of the disgusting things Lysander was intending to do to her sexually when they met up again, but also how he would probably be forced to tap his battleaxe of a father and that he was sure his father in turn was keen on his secretary, ‘Mustard’, and what a dog she was.

David Hawkley was almost more outraged by the deterioration in Lysander’s spelling and grammar. But he was not prepared to hand the letter back with Sps in the margin, nor tell his son that the word ‘lick’ did not have two Ks, and that swuzzont-nerve certainly wasn’t spelt like that, nor ask what the hell was ‘growler guzzling’.

Icy with rage, David watched his youngest son getting out of a flash car, driven by that fat, deeply unsuitable friend, who should surely have been at work in some office. He then wandered up the path, wincing at the cacophony of the eleven-thirty bell, and stopped to stroke Hesiod, the school cat, who’d been shut out yet again by Mrs Colman, who didn’t approve of pets in the office.

It was Mrs Colman who had drawn David’s attention to The Scorpion first thing that morning.

‘I never read that beastly rag, but my Mrs Mop brought it in. I’m so sorry, David,’ — never ‘David’ except when they were alone.

Now orgasmic with disapproval, Mrs Colman was ushering Lysander into the study. Handsome, big nosed, high complexioned and hearty, she got quite skittish when Alexander or Hector visited their father: ‘Mr Hawkley, Mr Hector Hawkley to see you.’ But Lysander was too hauntingly like his mother, of whom Mrs Colman had been inordinately jealous.

Lysander noticed that ‘Mustard’ was very glammed up in cherry-red lambswool with matching colour on what could be seen of her pursed lips. Catching a discreet waft of Chanel № 5, he afforded her equal coolness.

‘Hi, Dad.’ He dumped the carrier bag on his father’s vast green-leather desk beside the neatly stacked Mocks papers. ‘The Swoop’s for Simonides.’

Timeo Danaos, thought David, peering into the bag. Unable to trust his voice not to quiver, he didn’t tell Lysander about Simonides, and merely said: ‘Thank you. You’d better sit down.’

For a man outwardly as bleak as the day, his study was an unexpectedly charming and welcoming room. Most of the wallspace was covered with books, well worn and thumbed in faded crimsons, blues, dark greens and browns, mostly in the original Greek and Latin, with their gold lettering glinting in the flames that glowed from the apple logs in the grate. Within reach were Aristotle’s Ethics and the seven volumes of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. And because David Hawkley was not a vain man, tucked away on a top shelf were his own much-admired translations of Plato, Ovid and Euripides. He had been translating Catullus when Pippa died and had done no work on it since.

On the remaining walls were some good English water-colours, exquisite French engravings of Aesop’s fables, a photograph of the Headmasters’ Conference last year in Aberdeen, and yet another far more faded photograph of himself winning his blue at Cambridge, breast against the tape, dark head thrown back.

Over the fireplace was the Poussin of rioting nymphs and shepherds left to him by Aunt Amy, who had also left twenty thousand pounds to Lysander rather than his elder brothers because she felt the boy needed a helping hand. Lysander, to his father’s fury, had instantly blued the lot on a steeplechaser called King Arthur, who had promptly gone lame and not run since.

Unlike Elmer Winterton, David Hawkley believed in longevity, so the holes in the carpet were mostly covered by good rugs. The springs had completely gone in the ancient sofa upholstered in a dark green Liberty print to match the wallpaper. Mrs Colman kept urging him to replace the sofa with something modern, and relaxing, but David didn’t want parents to linger, particularly the beautiful, divorced or separated mothers — God, there were enough of them — who came to talk about their sons and ended up talking about themselves, their eyes pleading for a chance to find comfort in comforting him.

And now Lysander was sprawled on the same low sofa, huddled in Ferdie’s long, dark blue overcoat, re- adjusting his long legs, yet as seductive in his drooping passivity as Narcissus or Balder the Beautiful. But, modest like his father, he always seemed unaware of his miraculous looks.

David didn’t offer Lysander a glass of the medium-dry sherry he kept for parents, although he could have done with one himself, because he didn’t want any conviviality to creep in.

Lysander, who always had difficulty meeting his father’s cold, penetrating grey eyes, noticed he was wearing a new Hawkes tie, and that his black scholar’s gown, now green with age, was no longer full of holes where it had kept catching on door handles. His mother had only used needles to remove rose thorns, so the invisible stitches must be Mustard’s work, as was the posy of mauve and blue freesias on his father’s desk, whose sweet, delicate scent fought with the blasts of lunchtime curry drifting from the school kitchens.

There was a long, awkward pause. Lysander tried not to yawn. Noticing how the lines had deepened round his father’s mouth and how the dark rings beneath his eyes nearly joined his arched black brows, as though he was wearing glasses, Lysander felt a wave of compassion.

‘How are you, Dad?’

‘Coping,’ snapped David.

Then a pigeon landed on the window-sill and for a blissful second, David thought it was Simonides. Then, as reality reasserted itself, he channelled his misery into a furious attack on Lysander for sending the wrong letter.

‘How dare you refer to Mrs Colman in those offensive terms,’ he said finally, ‘after all she’s done for the school? Quite by chance, recognizing your illiterate scrawl, I opened the letter. Imagine the hurt it would have