The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

in that strong right hand that had given her so much pleasure, pounding up to the crease on those strong muscular legs that had once been nightly wrapped round her. Georgie gave a wail of misery.

A moment later, as if to avenge her, Lysander had hit the ball in the air, soaring like a lark into the rippling gold wheat fields, sending the London Met Players searching among the wild oats.

Paradise were in heaven. They’d never made a decent showing against the London Met before. Soon the London Met musicians, who relied on their hands, too, for their livelihood, had moved to the outfield and Guy, Larry, Bob and the big-hitting tenor were nervously surrounding the wicket. But to no avail. Whack, whack, whack went the ball over the boundary, and each time Lysander scored runs the cheers increased until even the London Met Players abandoned themselves to the voluptuous pleasure of watching a mortal become a God.

Having played ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’, the band swung into ‘The British Grenadiers’.

‘Some talk of Alexander and some of Hercules.

Of Hector and Lysander

And such brave men as these,’ sang the hard-hitting tenor, and all the crowd, particularly the vicar, joined in the chorus.

After fifty-five minutes Paradise were 130 for no wicket. Lysander had made a century, shaken hands with the opposition players and the two umpires and waved his bat at the ecstatic crowd. Then, almost contemptuously, as though he was saying: ‘Now I’m off to romp with your wife,’ he hit the easiest catch in the world to a crimson- faced, dripping Guy and sauntered, grinning, back to the pavilion before Mr Brimscombe had even given him out.

The local reporter was so busy racing back to the office to re-set the huge headline: PARADISE LOST, that he forgot to ring Dempster. Guy then had to field impotently in the deep for the next forty minutes, while Paradise somewhat laboriously made the remaining runs and Lysander wandered off into the woods with Georgie, trailing dogs. Both Georgie and Guy were far too preoccupied to notice that Flora had disappeared with Rannaldini.

‘I wish Georgie Maguire hadn’t left so early. I was hoping to brief her about opening the fete,’ complained Percival Hillary, who was actually much more interested in getting a closer look at Lysander.

‘The sun must have unhinged her,’ said Joy. ‘First she rudely refused to give me any Rock Star albums; then I approached her again and asked her most politely for some very personal item that she doesn’t want any more that we could raffle and she said: “How about my husband?” and flounced off.’

‘I’m sure she was joking.’

‘I’m not — and when you think what a tower of strength Guy has been. I didn’t take to her — and as for that dreadful thieving dog—’

31

One of the hottest Augusts of this century resulted in Paradise drying up and the fields cracking open like vast jigsaw puzzles. Even the evenings were stifling as the music of the promenade concerts drifted down the valley. On the rare occasions Rannaldini was home to listen to a prom, he criticized non-stop, measuring the applause which would certainly never be as deafening nor as long as the ecstatic tearful ovation he would receive when he conducted the London Met in Verdi’s Requiem at the beginning of September.

As Rannaldini was now perfectly confident of Flora’s affection he decided to irritate Guy and Larry and distract Natasha from his own affaire, by inviting Lysander and Ferdie to lunch on the Sunday after the cricket match. Lysander, who wanted to go to the Gatcombe horse trials, only accepted for Ferdie’s sake. Not that Ferdie was making any progress with Natasha. It was plain from the way she was gazing at Lysander, as he lounged on the terrace before lunch, drinking Bloodies and laboriously reading Mystic Meg in the News of the World, that it was him she was after.

By comparison Ferdie looked awful. There were black rings under his normally merry, calculating brown eyes. He had several spots, his gruelling schedule allowed him no time to sunbathe or take exercise. His ankles had swelled up in the heat and his chin spilled over the collar of his Hawaiian shirt worn outside his trousers to cover his gut. His chief asset — his fast line of patter — had dried up like the Paradise streams. He could only gaze and blush.

Piggy in Lord of the Flies, thought Rannaldini, then letting his hand stray briefly across Lysander’s flawless, brown cheek-bones, he murmured: ‘I’m amazed you’ve got so far in life without duelling scars.’

Lunch, laid out under a spreading chestnut tree, almost made up for missing Gatcombe: spinach roulade, lobster, vast langoustine and a huge plate of oysters ferried in from Bristol that morning by Rannaldini’s helicopter.

‘I’ve never had oysters before. They look like poached dishcloth,’ said Flora, as Rannaldini tipped half a dozen on to her plate, and sprinkled them with lemon juice. ‘Ugh! It’s like swallowing one’s own phlegm.’

‘An acquired taste.’ Rannaldini’s leg moved against hers.

On his right sat Hermione, who, with Bob, were the only wrinklies invited and who spent most of the lunch happily reading out faxes from New York of her Salome reviews, which, despite Meredith’s sniping, had been excellent. Bob, who never ate much, spent his time cracking lobster claws and peeling langoustine for Hermione and trying to bring Ferdie, and even more Kitty, into the conversation. This left Lysander at the mercy of Natasha who went on and on about her famous mother and the famous people she knew and how embarrassing it was having the name Rannaldini on her suitcases because everyone knew whose daughter she was and how Lysander must come and stay in the villa in Como.

Only when they’d eaten most of an incredibly light glazed-apricot tart made by Rannaldini and were drinking coffee and brandy did Lysander feel able to escape to watch the last horses at Gatcombe on television. But he found when he switched on that the competition was over and the leading riders were waiting for the presentation.

After the appalling heat and the terrible spills and thrills, they seemed blissfully happy to be alive. Lysander wistfully thought how young they looked in their dusty boots and breeches, many of them now wearing nothing above the waist but their coats and their white stocks. There was Lysander’s hero, David Green, so much the most handsome, his red coat not clashing remotely with his suntan, and there was Mark Todd, towering above the others with his charming lugubrious lived-in face. And there was the winner, Mary Thomson, crying with joy and hugging her brave horse in gratitude. Lysander wiped his eyes. What the fuck was he doing wasting his life hanging round rich bitches, who were far too self-obsessed to care about anything else? He started as he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Rannaldini. For once his cruel sensual face was surprisingly gentle.

‘Poor boy, you mees zee real work with horses. Come and see mine.’

The sun had lost its fiercest heat, so they’d decided to go for a ride, except Kitty who was petrified of horses and who would anyway be better employed clearing up.

‘Leave her,’ whispered Hermione, when Lysander tried to persuade her to come too. ‘She’s only sulking because I’m here.’

Lysander hoped the bloody bitch would fall off, but, irritatingly, Hermione, who had been brought up on a farm in South Africa, rode beautifully and as she rode she sang: ‘Boot, saddle, to horse and away,’ with her lovely voice echoing round the woods.

Rannaldini obviously enjoyed dominating the vicious big black Prince of Darkness. A brilliant steeplechaser who had won many races, he had come second to his greatest rival Penscombe Pride, Rupert Campbell-Black’s top National Hunt horse in last year’s Rutminster Gold Cup. Having spent a summer resting and terrorizing any rambler, and particularly Kitty, who strayed into his field, he was being slowly got fit for the next season. He was now having a battle of wills with Rannaldini, who wanted to rub his leg against Flora’s without The Prince of Darkness savaging the old gymkhana pony of Natasha’s she was riding bareback. Lysander noticed Rannaldini put his hand right up Flora’s skirt when he gave her a leg up.

Bob, who was competent, and Ferdie, who was petrified but determined not to show it, had been given two of Rannaldini’s hunters, who were also getting fit, and who were less blown out with grass than in more fertile