whole time, when he goes for petrol for the mower, when he’s having drinks with the vicar.’
Julia was hissing down a bobsleigh run now and couldn’t stop. ‘I saw Angel’s Reach before you did,’ she stammered. ‘We slept in the spare room when you were in London with the
Letting Dinsdale’s ears fall, Georgie shut her eyes and breathed in. The anaesthetic of shock was beginning to wear off. Getting to her feet, she tried to gather the shattered rags of dignity round her.
‘I don’t believe a word you’re saying. Guy isn’t like this.’
She felt strengthened by the sight of headlights in the drive and by Dinsdale’s thick tail whacking her thighs once again. Guy was home. She was so desperate to run to him, that the bad dream should be over.
‘He called me his second Peregrine,’ said Julia quietly.
Georgie stopped in her tracks. The knitting-needle dipped in acid plunged straight into her heart.
‘He what?’
‘His second Peregrine.’
Peregrine had been a schoolfriend Guy had loved at Wellington, the one great unconsummated passion of his life. When Peregrine had drowned falling out of a punt at some wild Cambridge party, Guy confessed that it was only his faith that had kept him from suicide. It was this sadness, and the fact that for ages he didn’t make a pass at her, that had drawn Georgie to him when they’d first met. Peregrine was sacrosanct, a love Georgie respected and of which she had never been jealous.
‘I’ve got letters to prove it and photographs Guy took of me in the nude,’ sobbed Julia.
‘Hardly conclusive evidence, unless he’s in them, too,’ said Georgie as Guy came through the door.
He looked sulky and aggressive, like a small boy caught stealing sweets.
‘It seems your affaire with Mrs Armstrong is more extended than you’ve admitted.’
Guy pursed his lips and looked proconsular.
‘Well, if she says it is.’
‘She does.’ Georgie moved towards the drinks table.
‘If you care to come upstairs with me, Ju Ju, and look into a suitcase under Guy-Guy’s bed, you’ll find a large folder of photographs Guy’s taken of me with nothing on. Some, I hate to tell you, with Angel’s Reach in the background.’
‘You said you never slept with her,’ Julia turned, screaming at Guy.
‘Ah, but then he told me he’d only been to bed with you once. I think you two ought to get your stories straight.’
Grabbing the Bacardi bottle Georgie turned to Guy. ‘You’re a fucking hypocrite, and I’m leaving you tomorrow. I’m going to sleep in the spare room.’
On the kitchen table, she discovered a note Mother Courage had left earlier.
‘
Upstairs in the spare room, Georgie felt boiling hot. She took off her clothes and crawled under the duvet. Then she remembered that this was where Guy had slept with Julia. It was the repository of all their worst furniture, even a china Alsatian which Flora had won at the fair on Hampstead Heath at the age of eight. On the windows were ghastly curtains put up by a previous occupant, which clashed with the equally ghastly wallpaper. Would Guy have explained that this room hadn’t been done yet, or had he been too busy bonking? She gave a groan and took a huge slug of Bacardi. She’d ring the Ideal Homo and order new curtains tomorrow morning — but what was the point when she was leaving anyway? Seeing the reflection of her flushed face on the pillow, she realized the mirror on the dressing table had been adjusted so that you could see what was going on in bed. Guy’d always liked watching himself. She heard a car starting up, and, rushing to the window, saw Julia’s car lighting up the little green beacons of the poplar colonnade.
‘Whore,’ she screamed after her, and was so plastered and furious that she rushed downstairs in the nude and went completely berserk. First she smashed Julia’s puppy and then she rushed into the kitchen and started breaking glasses.
‘Stop it!’ Guy came rushing in. ‘Don’t be infantile, Julia’s a complete fantasist. It’s all lies.’
‘She knows my diary better than I do, and what about fucking Peregrine, or rather fucking your second Peregrine, you bastard?’
Georgie’s yelling face was like a tomato that had been hurled at a rock. Guy ducked as a pint mug hurtled towards him. Finally, having taken down one of Julia’s paintings, and tried to smash it over Guy’s head, ‘It’s you in the pin-stripe suit, you disgusting lech,’ Georgie raced off into the night.
In panic, Guy rang Larry who was in the middle of making love to Marigold.
‘Julia came down and dumped.’
‘Christ,’ said Larry, who when he was with Nikki, had made up several foursomes at dinner with Julia and Guy. It was all much too close to home. ‘We’re off to Jamaica in a few hours,’ he added, ‘or I’d say come on over. Are you OK?’
‘No, I’m not. Georgie’s run off bollock-naked into the night.’
‘No sweat,’ said Larry. ‘Snow’s forecast. She’ll come home when she’s cold.’
‘But what if people in the village see her?’ spluttered Guy. ‘The road goes straight past the vicarage. There’s a meeting to discuss my election to the Parish Council on Friday.’
Larry tried not to laugh.
‘I’d put your feet up, watch the boxing and have a large Scotch.’
‘I can’t. Georgie’s broken every glass in the house, and plate, too, for that matter.’
‘People who live in Cotswold-stone houses shouldn’t throw glasses,’ said Larry. ‘At least it shows she cares. Take her away for a little holiday.’
‘Guy’s mistress has come down and dumped,’ he told Marigold as he switched off the telephone and took her in his arms.
‘Guy’s got a mistress?’ said Marigold, collapsing back on her ivory silk pillows in amazement. ‘Ay can’t believe it. Gay’s not laike that. He’s so upraight. Georgie must be shattered.’
‘It’s plates that are being shattered. She’s throwing them at Guy,’ said Larry, not displeased that Guy, who was always so sanctimonious, had been caught with his hand in the sexual till.
‘Oh, poor Georgie!’ Marigold climbed back on top of her husband, then gave a shriek of anguish as she impaled herself on his upright cock: ‘Oh, may God!’
‘What’s the matter, Princess?’ said Larry in alarm. ‘Are you still sore down there?’
‘No, they’re our plates,’ wailed Marigold. ‘They were a matchin’ set, Ay lent to Georgie for the dinner party.’
Sitting in the kitchen, Guy lined up all the milk bottles Mother Courage never put out on the kitchen table, so Georgie’d have something to smash when she came home.
Georgie actually burst out laughing when she saw them, then the laughter turned to tears, and although they rowed most of the night, in between sobbing on each other’s shoulders, Guy felt by morning that he had calmed Georgie down enough to go back to London.
‘I’ll call you the moment I get to London,’ he promised, but as she waved him off, Georgie felt like Demeter seeing Persephone disappear into the Underworld.
Slowly she began to piece together the horrors of the previous night. One moment she was freezing, the next boiling hot. She kept putting on and taking off jerseys. She still couldn’t get rid of the sick taste in her mouth.
Mother Courage had laid out a page from the
You don’t call a child who won’t leave you alone, your second Peregrine, thought Georgie, and felt so furious she rushed into Guy’s study and put a message on the ansaphone saying: ‘Go screw yourself.
Then she put on another jersey and cleaned her teeth again. She felt she was rotting inside. Half an hour later Mother Courage came storming up the drive.
‘I’ve just had Mr Seymour on the telephone. He can’t get through. Can you ring him urgent?’
Sulkily Georgie dialled Guy at the gallery.
‘What the hell are you playing at, Panda?’ thundered Guy. ‘You’re totally over-reacting. What happens if the Press ring, or, even worse, the vicar or Lady Chisleden?’
