The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

caught her, however long the chase.

On the other hand, Georgie wasn’t unattractive. She looked much better today. It would be an added frisson to play off mother and daughter.

So he turned the charm on Georgie, praising Flora’s looks and blazing talent which could only come from her mother. He then told Georgie about his guest-conducting and filming commitments all over the world, and Georgie didn’t take in a word he said, because, from the way he was looking at her, she felt he’d already taken a degree in the geography of her body without removing a single garment. And that voice, husky, slow, reverberating like the molten depths of a volcano pondering whether to wipe out a nearby town just for the hell of it, made his tritest utterance sound significant.

‘We are both on treadmill, my dear Georgie,’ he was saying now, softly, ‘I in my Lear Jet, you in your leetie study, both making music, but we will meet from time to time in Paradise.’

‘Oh yes.’ Georgie’s heart seemed to be beating between her legs.

Hermione, who detested Rannaldini chatting up anyone else, led the shrieks of praise for Guy’s lobster mousseline, followed by quails en croute in ginger and yoghurt.

With great difficulty, Georgie wrenched her attention away from Rannaldini to talk to the horrific Ben.

‘You have a very beautiful and talented wife,’ she said.

‘Julia is also a caring mother,’ said Ben complacently.

At the end of the table, against the sooty black of the uncurtained window, Julia, her pale skin glowing like pearl, was listening to Guy’s plans for the house.

‘I’ll knock this wall through into a conservatory, leading to an indoor pool,’ he was saying. ‘I mean, when does one get a chance to swim outside in Rutshire?’

And who the hell’s going to pay for it? Only if I write another smash hit, which they’re all so dismissive of, with their fucking classical music, thought Georgie.

Julia was telling Hermione how wonderfully she had sung in Der Rosenkavalier.

Having found out from Marigold the details of the Japanese record company Larry had bought into, Rannaldini was now discussing the sacked soloists across her with Bob. Georgie was dying to gossip to Marigold. How lovely if I had Rannaldini on the side, she thought dreamily, like Marigold had had Lysander.

As there was no broccoli, the salad was now being circulated. Alas, Hermione found half a slug in the lettuce; Georgie hadn’t bothered to wash because it was Iceberg.

‘I’m just worried that some poor person might get the other half,’ Hermione was stage-whispering to Guy.

After that no-one wanted any salad, and conversation moved on to universities, which Kitty took no part in having left school at sixteen. Sitting between Ben and Meredith, who had both turned their backs on her, Kitty wished she was sitting next to Bob — goodness, he looked tired — or to Guy who’d read the lesson so beautifully in church on Sunday and who was being so sweet to that lovely painter. Kitty noticed that Rannaldini, as the Guest of Honour, had been put on Georgie’s right, but did not feel slighted that she as his wife hadn’t been put next to Guy. That privilege was naturally accorded to Hermione, the maitresse en titre. Every night Kitty prayed not to hate Hermione, and to forgive those who trespassed against her. Georgie plainly had a crush on Rannaldini, too, but her demands on him, Kitty hoped, would be more rollicking, like a red setter wanting a long walk down the valley from time to time.

Rannaldini didn’t really like Georgie and Guy, decided Kitty. That’s why he had been subtly punishing her since the Bagley Hall concert, finding fault with everything, making her feel even more unsure of herself.

‘I don’t think one can beat the Backs at Cambridge,’ Hermione was now saying.

Glancing down the table, Guy noticed Kitty’s eyes were as red as her dress. Rannaldini’s work, he thought grimly.

‘Poor Kitty’s having to put up with the backs of Paradise,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Turn round and talk to her, Meredith.’

‘Sorry, love,’ the Ideal Homo swung round. ‘When’s your sexy husband going to let me loose on the Valhalla dungeons?’

Kitty blushed scarlet, but thought once again, how sweet Guy was.

‘I don’t know how you put up with it,’ she could now hear Hermione telling him, in her idea of an undertone, ‘being dragged into the limelight in a pop song, when you’re such a man of substance. I would never expose Bob to such publicity. My family is sacred.’

‘I agree,’ said Julia, leaving all her pastry and lighting a cigarette, at which Hermione looked pained, until the pudding of guava-and-mango ice-cream with kiwi-fruit puree reduced her almost to orgasm. Guy, however, was incensed that a bottle of Barsac had gone missing.

‘Flora whipped it,’ confessed Georgie. ‘It’s a good thing she’s going back to Bagley Hall next month to dry out. Whoops, sorry, Miss Bottomley.’

Ben pursed his red lips and said he thoroughly disapproved of teenage drinking. Miss Bottomley’s mouth was too full of guava and mango for her to do anything but nod in frenzied agreement.

‘Oh, Flora’s sixteen, going on a hundred,’ sighed Georgie to Rannaldini. ‘I get so worried about AIDS. I sat her down last week and said: “We must have a good talk about sex”.’

The room fell silent.

‘A good talk about sex, because I was worried,’ went on Georgie, ‘and Flora put her pretty head on one side, and said: “Oh, poor Mum, are you having trouble with Dad?”’

Georgie laughed so loudly at the sheer impossibility of such a thing that everyone joined in. But it was one of the few light moments of the evening. Georgie was dying to get into another heart-to-thumping-heart with Rannaldini, but, without a waitress, she seemed to spend her whole time leaping up to remove plates and filling glasses.

It was a relief finally to whisk the ladies off upstairs. On the way Miss Bottomley shot into the downstairs 100.

‘I’ll use this one.’ Julie disappeared into another loo on the landing, whereupon Hermione vanished into Georgie’s bathroom.

‘Three old ladies got stuck in the lavatory. I wish Hermione would stay there.’ Georgie collapsed on to her bed between Marigold and Kitty. ‘Now we’re alone, how are you?’ she asked.

‘Wonderful,’ said Marigold, fluffing on face-powder with a red brush. ‘Larry’s faynally given Nikki the push and Pelham Crescent, it cost over a million, can you imagine? But he’s bein’ magic to me. He bought me these.’ She turned her head to show off ruby earrings big as strawberries. ‘And he’s going to buy me a flat in London, and take me on a second honeymoon in Jamaica.’

‘Lucky you,’ said Georgie petulantly, thinking of herself nailed to the desk for months to come.

‘I’m so pleased for you, Marigold,’ said Kitty, who didn’t feel there was much point in repairing her face.

‘How’s Lysander?’ asked Georgie.

‘Never off the telephone, the sweetie-pay. He’s raydin’ in a point-to-point in Cheshire this weekend, and wants me to go. Ay must say, I’m sorely tempted.’

When they went downstairs, Larry, who normally liked nothing better than to cap other men’s achievements over a large glass of brandy, had already joined the ladies.

‘What recession?’ he was saying to Sabine Bottomley. ‘If you’re liquid, it’s bonanza time. You can pick up companies, like shopping in Oxford Street.’

‘Fed up with talking about wife avoidance?’ Marigold asked him teasingly.

‘Not at all. Rannaldini, Bob and Meredith all wanted to know what Guy had done to those quails. Not my board-game.’ He sat down on the arm of Marigold’s chair. ‘This is, though.’ He took her hand, then added to Georgie, ‘Don’t she look great? See the earrings I bought her?’

‘They’re lovely.’

‘How’s the album going?’

‘Good,’ said Georgie truthfully. ‘I wrote a song today.’

Looking at the big red scented candle flickering on a side table, she suddenly found the answer for her lyric: ‘Swept by tempests, drenched by rain, I’ll come burning back again.’

‘Could we play one of your old albums, Georgie?’ asked Kitty, as Der Rosenkavalier