want to see Dolly and explain about
‘It is,’ said Ferdie, swinging the car round, ‘particularly for someone like Marigold Lockton. She loves that shit Larry to distraction, and that’s where you come in. You’re going to be her toy boy.’
‘How old is she?’
‘About thirty-eight.’
‘I can’t bonk an old wrinkly like that,’ said Lysander in outrage.
‘You’re not going to bonk her, just hang about and rattle her husband, and make him so jealous he’ll come roaring back. It worked with Boris Levitsky and Elmer Winterton. This time you’re going to get paid.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Lysander. ‘I can’t get a husband back if the marriage is dead. You can’t reheat baked potatoes.’
‘First you’ve got to look at the wife,’ said Ferdie. ‘If she’s gone to seed, you unseed her, and make her look like a mistress. Put back the gleam in her eye, let her taunt her husband with a scented body that’s quivering with lust for someone else.’ Ferdie rubbed the windscreen which was steaming up. ‘Get the weight off, get her some decent clothes (I bet there’s a raver lurking beneath Marigold’s polyester V-necks). Above all, make her stop nagging and act detached. No more flying leaps to catch the telephone on the first ring.’
‘You’ve really studied this.’ Lysander looked at Ferdie with new respect as they drew up outside the big electric gates of Paradise Grange.
‘We are about to repackage and remarket a product,’ said Ferdie. ‘Let’s go see Marigold.’
8
Up a long drive through splendid parkland dotted with noble trees, Paradise Grange reared up, a sprawling bulk of grey stone topped by turrets and battlements. On the perfect lawns still-frozen patches merged with great sheets of snowdrops and on the roof a flag flying the famous yellow-and-purple Catchitune colours was fretted by the bitter wind. Although it was still early afternoon, carriage lamps blazed on either side of the great oak front door. There was no answer when Ferdie rang the bell which played the Hallelujah Chorus. But as he pushed open the door he bumped into Marigold Lockton, deliriously excited that he might be a returning Larry and followed by an overweight, furiously barking, spaniel.
There’s no way I’m going to get Larry Lockton back for that, thought Lysander. Marigold looked absolutely dreadful, rather like a Beryl Cook lady masquerading as Mrs Thatcher. She was twenty pounds overweight, with red eyes and red veins criss-crossing her unhealthily white cheeks. An Alice band on her mousy permed hair emphasized a corrugated forehead. A V-necked polyester dress in overcooked-sprouts-green showed off a neck and arms as opaque and pudgy as the white chocolates with which she constantly stuffed herself. She had clearly also been stuck into the vodka for several hours.
Her first carefully elocuted words to Ferdie were that he could forget about the house he was finding her in Tregunter Road.
‘Even if Larry’s plannin’ to put Paradise Grange on the market, Ay’m not movin’. The kiddies love their ’ome; whay should they lose it and whay should Ay after all the work Ay’ve put into redecoratin’ it?’ She pointed to the oak panelling in the hall which had been painted a rather startling flamingo pink.
‘Larry wanted the kiddies brought up in the country.’ Her voice rattled like a sliver of bone in the Hoover as she led them into a vast drawing room. ‘So he stuck me down ’ere, mayles away from the shops. Now he’s packed them off to boardin’ school to get a posh accent and some smart friends, and he’s given may daily help and Mr and Mrs Brimscombe, our couple what live at the bottom of the drayve, a month’s notice to force me out.
‘Poor Mr B’s tended this garden for nearly forty years. Look at the poor old chap.’ Marigold pointed out of the window at an ancient gardener morosely clipping a yew hedge. ‘Ay can’t lay him off, it’d break his ’eart. Even more than mine’s broke.’
‘Marigold,’ interrupted Ferdie, ‘this is Lysander Hawkley.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Marigold unenthusiastically, then pulling herself together, ‘I suppose you want a noggin.’
‘Please,’ said Ferdie, then, seeing Lysander’s appalled face, whispered, ‘Hang about, I promise you it’s worth it.’
‘She’s gross,’ hissed Lysander. ‘I’d need serious beer goggles to get within a hundred yards.’
‘Lovely view,’ enthused Ferdie loudly, squeezing between a large harp and a wind-up gramophone to look out of the huge window stretching the length of the room. ‘You can see Valhalla and Angel’s Reach from here, and Rachel’s cottage behind those Wellingtonias.’
‘I don’t care,’ grumbled Lysander, ‘I want to go home.’
Despite several bright Persian rugs tossed over a pink wall-to-wall carpet, a matching pink dog basket, a superabundance of silk cushions on their points like a Kirov line-up and enough tartan chairs and sofas to do the Highland fling, the room was as cosy as the furniture department of an Oxford Street store. There were too many dark cumbersome pieces, too many chandeliers, too much gilt on the mirrors and too few logs bravely burning in the vast stone cave of a fireplace.
On the walls, equally disparate, were several gold discs won by Catchitune, a lugubrious Stubbs spaniel, a Hogarth etching of a musical evening, a framed manuscript of the first page of a Beethoven Sonata, and a Picasso of grapes and a violin. The grand piano was weighed down with various recording awards and photographs of Larry Lockton fratting with the famous — mostly Mrs Thatcher. All round the room, busts of the great composers looked dourly down from their pedestals at such a visual mishmash.
Poor Marigold was in a frightful state. First she forgot the water for the whisky, then going back to fetch it, she forgot what she wanted it for, and proceeded to water a bowl of lurid pink hyacinths, not even noticing when it overflowed.
‘At least you’ve got lots of flowers,’ said Lysander looking around at the massed bunches of salmon-pink gladioli.
‘Ay sent them to myself,’ confessed Marigold, and burst into tears.
While Ferdie shot off to refill the jug and collect some kitchen roll, Lysander, who was beginning to feel really sorry for Marigold, asked her how she had found out about Larry’s bimbo.
‘It was at the office party in December. Ay always used to be the prettiest girl at office parties.’ Grabbing a piece of kitchen roll, she thrust it into her eyes. ‘All the bosses chased after me when we were first married, now Ay’m the old trout, what everyone has to suck up to because Ay’m the boss’s waife.’
She blew her nose noisily and took a slug of the replenished vodka and tonic.
‘May word, that’s strong, Ferdie. Anyway, I was chattin’ to the company secretary’s wife when I looked across the room and there was Nikki — she’s Larry’s PA — sitting on a leather sofa. Larry was standin’ besaide her chattin’ to the financial director and she was rubbin’ his… er — the front of his trousers.’
‘Perhaps she was brushing off a bit of fluff,’ said Lysander.
‘She’s the bit of fluff,’ said Marigold disdainfully. ‘Then Larry saw Ay was looking and kicked her on the shins. When Ay tackled him, he shouted that Ay was imaginin’ things and should get some glasses. Next day Ay was so distraught, Ay’d just set off to the Distressed Gentlefolks AGM.’
Coals to Newcastle, thought Ferdie.
‘Lady Chisleden was in the chair, I recall,’ went on Marigold, ‘and I got all the way to Rutminster before I realized I’d forgotten the minutes. I always type them, I used to be a secretary, so I rushed home. Patch came running down the stairs, which is unusual, she always stays in her basket in the kitchen if we go out, so I ran upstairs. I’d just had the guest bedroom redecorated in peach Draylon, with peach damask curtains, and Ay thought Ay’d take another peek, it looked so lovely, and Ay caught them at it.’
‘How awful,’ said Lysander, appalled. ‘What did you do?’
‘Ay was so shocked, Ay said, “I’ve just had this room redecorated.” And Nikki asked why didn’t Ay have the
