The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

‘Flora?’

Deliberately Natasha let the door into Miss Bottomley’s private apartment slam in the face of Kitty, who was panting to keep up with them on her high heels.

‘Flora got pissed at lunchtime,’ explained Natasha. ‘She’s got this massive crush on Boris Levitsky and she saw him French, or rather,’ Natasha giggled, ‘Russian-kissing some strange blonde — not Rachel his wife — outside the Nat West this morning. That was Boris’s trumpet Flora was sick into. Boris had lent it to Marcus.’

So Boris is back with Chloe the mezzo, thought Rannaldini. Certainly he didn’t regard Flora’s massive crush on the Russian as any competition.

Miss Bottomley’s large study was already packed with parents falling on drink and food like the vultures culture always seems to turn people into. Most of them, Rannaldini noticed scornfully, seemed to be gathering like flies on a cowpat round that ghastly, blousy Georgie Maguire, who kept throwing him hot glances. Ignoring her totally, but accepting a glass of orange juice — he never touched cheap wine — Rannaldini spoke briefly to Boris.

‘Well tried, my dear. Slightly too ambitious. They are still cheeldren, and was it wise to programme one of your own compositions in front of these Pheelistines?’

Boris, whose conducting arm was not aching too much to prevent him downing several glasses of red, wanted to smash Rannaldini’s cold, fleshless, but curiously sensual face, but then Rannaldini murmured something about having a pile of freelance work. Boris needed the money badly.

‘Now introduce me to Flora’s parents,’ he said to Natasha.

‘Oh, didn’t you twig, Papa? Flora’s Georgie Maguire’s daughter.’

Rannaldini didn’t miss a beat. Gliding forward, parting parents like the Red Sea by sheer force of personality, he stopped in front of Georgie, put his hands in the pockets of his soft brown suede jacket, bowed slightly and glared aggressively into her eyes. His trick was to unnerve women by staring them out, then suddenly to smile.

‘Senora Seymour,’ he said caressingly. ‘May I call you Georgie?’ Then raising her hand which was clutching a soggy Ritz cracker topped with tinned pate and chopped gherkin, he touched it with his lips.

Just one corny-etto, thought Guy.

‘I am sorry I mees your launching,’ went on Rannaldini, ‘I ’op it is not too late to say: welcome to Paradise.’

‘Oh, not at all. How lovely to meet you at last.’ Georgie was totally flustered, as though a great tiger had strolled out of the jungle and was rubbing his face against her cheek. Rannaldini was even more faint-making close up.

‘And I loff Rock Star. It is great music and your peecture don’t do you any justice.’

What could Rannaldini be playing at? Hermione, who’d joined them, was looking furious.

‘Oh, thank you,’ gasped Georgie, then remembering her manners, ‘This is Guy — my husband,’ she added almost regretfully.

‘I haff heard much of your gallery.’ Rannaldini switched his searchlight charm on to Guy. ‘You were first to exeebit Daisy France-Lynch when no-one else had ’eard of her. I ’ave several of her paintings.’

‘Oh, right,’ Guy was totally disarmed. ‘I’d love to see them.’

‘You shall,’ said Rannaldini. ‘First I want to get Bob over to talk about Flora.’

Seeing his endlessly compassionate and good-natured orchestra manager making too good a job of cheering up Boris Levitsky, Rannaldini clicked his fingers imperiously.

Refusing to be ruffled, Bob finished what he was saying and was fighting his way through the mob when Guy said to Rannaldini: ‘You may not have been here to welcome us, but Kitty has been an absolute brick, bringing us new-laid eggs and turning down curtains. You’re a lucky man,’ he added rather heartily, aware that the searchlight beam had dimmed a little.

Rannaldini, who detested Kitty furthering anyone’s interests but his own, much preferred it if she turned down invitations rather than curtains. He even begrudged her taking an hour off on Sunday to go to church.

Aware of a distinct chill but not understanding why, Georgie couldn’t bear to lose contact.

‘We wanted to take Kitty out to The Heavenly Host tonight,’ she stammered.

‘Why don’t we all go? We were planning to celebrate Flora’s first night home, although on second thoughts she seems to have pre-empted us rather too well already. Why don’t you both come to dinner at Angel’s Reach? How about Friday week? We should be a little less shambolic by then.’

Hermione, who was about to draw Georgie aside and explain that the protocol in Paradise was for long-term residents to invite first, awaited one of Rannaldini’s legendary put-downs.

Instead, to her amazement, he accepted with enthusiasm.

On four glasses of cheap wine, Georgie proceeded to invite Bob, who’d just brought Boris over to be introduced, and Hermione who only accepted because Rannaldini had. Then she asked Boris and his wife Rachel, if they were in the country, to make up for the sick trumpet, which Boris reassured Georgie would easily wash out. Then, to placate Miss Bottomley, she asked her as well.

‘Best time to have a house-warming party when it’s not all done up for people to ruin,’ said Georgie happily.

As they drove home, a moon one size up from new was winging its way like a white dove towards a dying flame-red sunset. Slumped in the back Flora was fast asleep.

‘I thought you wanted peace and quiet in the country,’ chided Guy.

‘I got carried away. I thought it would be good for Flora to meet Rannaldini. She needs an older man to direct her. One never listens to one’s parents at her age. He says she’s exceptional. Anyway I can’t cut myself off completely. We can have sausages and mash. People will only expect a picnic as we’ve just moved in.’

Guy, who knew he’d be lumbered with the cooking and the organization, put his mind to the menu.

Georgie lay back in a blissful haze, convinced Rannaldini had only accepted because he fancied her. It was years since she’d felt that loin-churning excitement.

‘Rannaldini’s lovely, isn’t he?’ she couldn’t help saying.

‘Not terribly,’ said Guy shortly. ‘Not to Kitty and he’s clearly terribly two-faced.’

But it was such a beautiful face, thought Georgie dreamily, you didn’t mind there being two of them.

18

Guy was an ace cook and a wonderful host, but Georgie had never known him make such a fuss about a dinner party. His nose had been in Anton Mosimann for days. As the dining room was still being wallpapered, he took the Friday of the dinner party off and set the big scrubbed table in the kitchen first thing in the morning. He then got enraged when Charity the cat did bending races in and out of the glasses, decanters and flowers, and with Flora when she drifted in at lunchtime with a group of friends and started making toasted sandwiches and leaving a trail of mugs, crumbs and overflowing ashtrays.

‘We met a crowd of spiders fleeing down the drive singing the theme from Exodus,’ Flora told her father. ‘You ought to put one in a glass case to remind us what they look like.’

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ snapped Guy, bashing a lobster claw with unusual violence.

When he wasn’t cooking Guy seemed to spend the whole day cleaning surfaces, tidying and re-arranging the house, and disappearing to get petrol for the mower.

Every superfluous blade of grass must be cut, like a woman waiting for her lover, thought Georgie, who, having been told she was more hindrance than help, retired to work.

She was enchanted with her new study, high up in the west tower and reached by a staircase so narrow they had to hoist her piano, her worktable and Dinsdale’s ancient chaise-longue in through the