‘Where is the little beast?’
‘Passed out in the field next door.’
‘I hope they burn the stubble with him in it.’
But Marigold wasn’t listening. ‘We’ve made six thousand and, oh, Georgie, Lady Chisleden has asked me to call her Gwendolyn.’
33
Somehow, because Georgie was busy working out whether to kill Guy with a bread knife or a carving knife they managed to get home without a row. She had just fed Charity and Dinsdale when he came into the kitchen carrying a file.
‘I’m off, Panda. I told Joy and Percy I’d help clear up. Don’t bother with supper. I’ll grab a sandwich at The Pearly Gates. I’ve got a Best-Kept Village meeting later.’
‘Why don’t you enter Julia in the Best-Kept Mistress competition?’ screamed Georgie. ‘You might even beat Hermione.’
Georgie cried and cried, had a large Bacardi, got down her suitcase and couldn’t think where to go. It was so hot she put on an old denim bikini scrumpled up in the ironing. Then she took a plum from the fruit bowl and found she’d put the stone in her mouth and chucked the fruit in the ashy muck-bucket. Everything turned to ashes. Poor Julia had looked devastated, too. Georgie found she didn’t hate her any more. And maybe Marigold, Hermione and all the ladies of Paradise were right and Guy was different and really nice when he wasn’t with her. Why had Lysander let her down? Because she simply wasn’t important enough to him. She jumped as the telephone rang. It was Flora.
‘Where are you?’
‘Lake Geneva — er — staying in a youth hostel. It’s great here.’
‘And where the hell is my white silk shirt? No doubt split across the back of one of your rugger-playing boyfriends, or being used to clean his car.’
There was a pause.
‘Look behind the spare-room door,’ said Flora huffily. ‘You’ll find it there. Go and look
Belting upstairs Georgie found her white shirt, then remembered it was the spare room where Guy had adjusted the mirror to sleep with Julia, and started to cry again. By the time she got downstairs Flora had rung off. Georgie felt awful — poor darling Flora might jump in Lake Geneva.
I was beastly to her, said a small voice, because I was jealous of her and Lysander. She was overcome by a sick, heart-thumping, craving for information. She daren’t snoop in Guy’s study. She was a bit drunk and he’d notice if papers had been moved.
Loathing herself, she went into Flora’s room. The radio and the record player were still on. Clothes carpeted the floor. On the wall was a poster of a gorilla; underneath it someone had written: FLORA SEYMOUR ON A GOOD DAY. Here was Flora’s diary; Georgie’s hands were shaking so much that at first she couldn’t focus.
‘August 13: Read The Franklyn’s Tale (not bad for a set book) about a man who sleeps with a disgusting old woman who turns into a beautiful princess. I can really relate to the Franklyn.’
Would I turn into a princess if I went to bed with Lysander? wondered Georgie.
Giving a moan, Georgie turned the page.
Georgie was so transfixed with horror that at first she didn’t hear the telephone. Sobbing at the sickness that had made her pick the lock of Pandora’s box she reeled down the landing to her bedroom and snatched up the receiver.
‘Georgie, it’s Lysander. I’m sorry I got pissed. I want to come round.’
‘Fuck off,’ screamed Georgie.
‘I know I let you down. Ferdie’s just bawled me out. I’ll make it up to you.’
‘You won’t. Your bloody dog screwed up my speech, then you make a fool of me in front of everyone and finally you’re fucking my daughter. How
She couldn’t believe it was only eleven o’clock. Out on the terrace the air was heavy with night-scented stock. In the moonlight Rannaldini’s strawbales encased in black shiny bags looked like great slugs coming to eat her.
Undressed in her lonely double bed, she looked in the big mirror over the fireplace and in her reflection, with her red hair flowing over her bare shoulders, she could only see Julia. Sobbing she swallowed two sleeping pills and crashed out.
Next day she woke, as always after taking pills, feeling calm and almost euphoric. What did a million mistresses matter? In one of those bewildering volte-faces, she didn’t shrug off Guy’s encroaching hands. Today she was going to be like Brickie, who would never spurn a husband.
‘Let’s make love outside. Oh, Panda, I’ve missed you,’ said Guy, taking her down to a corner of the lake hidden by willow trees and laying her on the scratchy yellow grass. But just as he’d put his hand between her legs, Dinsdale had barged through the willow fronds and was shoved aside so vociferously he had waddled off in a sulk to Mother Courage.
Georgie, needing the release so desperately, found herself wracked by sexual paralysis.
Too tense to reach orgasm that way, she started to cry and begged Guy to come inside her, but she was so tight down there, she nearly screamed out with pain.
‘That was lovely, darling,’ she mumbled afterwards, ‘thank you so much.’
But as she got out of her bath, Guy came out of his dressing room with a cricket bag, kissing her on the cheek and announcing he was off to Oxford.
‘You’re always complaining you can’t work, Panda, so I thought I’d give you a clear day.’
No doubt he and Julia would meet up in Ricky France-Lynch’s woods and Guy would say, ‘Things can’t go on. Georgie’s being so awful.’
It was terribly hot. The smell of dew drying on a nearby clump of fennel reminded Georgie of Wheeler’s, London and fun. Whooping across the valley, Larry’s farm boy was moving weary cattle in search of grazing. The bells of All Saints rang out, no doubt in grateful anticipation of a rebuilt spire. A young vixen sat motionless in the stubble awaiting victims disorientated by the combine harvesters — rabbits and field-mice so desperate for water that they lost their instinct for survival. Like me, thought Georgie with a sob. Oh please God, help me, she dropped to her knees.
God told her to get down to work. Getting into her bikini she took manuscript paper, pens and biscuits for Dinsdale, who’d come back but was still sulking, out on to the terrace.
Scraping back her hair in an elasticated band to get her forehead brown she whipped off her bikini top, coated her pale breasts with Ambre Solaire and started to think. Cleopatra was always ranting and raving at Anthony, who was charming, self-indulgent and adored by his men: a tower of strength with his willing helpers. To the west she could see a red glow beneath a mushroom-brown spiral of cloud. They were burning the stubble like Anthony’s funeral pyre.
