The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

anyway — but he drank a lot of red wine and talked a lot about Rachel.

‘She geeve me a terrible cold shoulder. At zee end of our marriage she won’t sleep wiz me because she tink I was carrying on, and I carried on because she wouldn’t sleep with me. Is vicious triangle. She is beetch, but I love her. I ’ate Rannaldini living so near her. You know he ’ad Chloe at one time.’

‘She’s only a bitch because she’s insecure,’ said Bob.

‘Chloe come home as I was leaving,’ said Boris darkly. ‘She could have come, but she was tired and her ’air was dirty. Rachel would have drop everything. But she would ’ave given me hard time because she was frighten for me. I once zink grass is greener on other side, but now I find eet cover een pesticide. Tonight was wonderful. I zank you, Bob, but I weesh Rachel and the children had been there. My new symphony is dedicated to Chloe. When I write it down in pencil, Chloe went over it in ink for me and put in the bars.’

‘I should keep your options open,’ said Bob. ‘Why not dedicate it to Cecilia? I’ve read it,’ he went on. ‘There are fantastic things in that symphony. I didn’t know such sounds existed. I’d send it to Simon Rattle. Rachel is miserable and she loves you. Why don’t you try again? If you had money, and you certainly will after this evening, things would be very different.’

‘Can I borrow the score?’ said Boris as they went out a little unsteadily into the hot russet night. ‘I like to go through and ’ighlight my mistakes.’

‘You can keep it,’ said Bob. ‘You’ve made history, like the night Lennie Bernstein took over from Bruno Walter.’

This was confirmed by ecstatic reviews and news stories in all the papers the following day. The best notice came from The Times critic, whose wife Rannaldini had once taken to bed in revenge for a lousy review. Invitations to conduct, to compose, to appear on television and give press interviews poured in all day. Instead of lecturing his students about Mahler, Boris sat on the edge of a desk and told them about his night at the Albert Hall.

Rannaldini, who watched the video with two very black eyes, was insane with jealousy. Ringing up Bob, he screamed at him for replacing him with such a hopeless amateur.

‘He was brilliant,’ argued Bob. ‘He had the longest ovation I’ve ever heard.’

‘Promenaders ’ave no discrimination. Eef Tabloid come on in a white tie they cheer their ’eads off.’

Rannaldini was even crosser when the story, leaked by the bimbo next door, of the row with Cecilia and Hermione, was plastered all over The Scorpion.

The next time he confronted the London Met to rehearse the Missa Solemnis they launched into ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’ and, when he screamed at them, they refused to be intimidated and played it again. When it came to the public performance the front-desk cellist, whose Strad Rannaldini had endangered, deliberately played ‘God Save the Queen’ in the wrong key.

37

Machiavellian as ever, Rannaldini decided to avenge himself on Boris by laying siege to Rachel. This would not only enrage Hermione and Cecilia, with whom he was still furious, but also Flora who refused to take the whole eye-blacking incident seriously. She insisted on calling him Panda II and had been cheeky enough to insist that Boris’s Requiem had been the best thing she had ever heard.

Rannaldini was further turned on by Rachel’s animosity and the way she kept firing off incensed letters to the local papers complaining about his clay shoots, his closing of footpaths, and his spraying with pesticides.

Ignoring such bombardment, Rannaldini started dropping in at Jasmine Cottage, occasionally at weekends encountering Lysander, who was at a loose end with Guy at home and the polo season over. Rannaldini had also persuaded Catchitune to sign up Rachel to record the Rachmaninov piano concertos in the autumn with himself conducting. He knew it was too big a break for her to refuse. He was amused that, despite his largesse, Rachel kept an icy distance. And just as the husbands of Paradise had tried to make the best chocolate cake for the fete, now following Rannaldini’s example, they vied, unknown to their wives, to be the first to comfort Rachel.

Lysander thought the whole thing hilarious and promptly picked up the telephone.

‘Ferdie, Ferdie, you’ll never guess. Rachel, my eye-gel friend has emerged in Paradise, and all the husbands are mad about her. They’re all putting up shelves for her health foods and stalling their mowers with unleaded petrol. First they rolled up with trays of tomatoes for chutney, last week it was two-legged carrots, this week it’s apples. Her cottage looks like Harvest Festival, and Rachel chucks out most of it because it’s not organic enough, so Arthur and Tiny are doing terribly well.’

‘Who’s after her?’ asked Ferdie beadily.

‘Well, Rannaldini, Guy, Larry, Bob and the vicar for starters.’

‘Larry and Guy bloody shouldn’t be,’ snapped Ferdie, thinking of Marigold’s retainer and Georgie’s fat monthly cheque. ‘Your only justification for being down there is to keep them keen on their wives. You’d better come back to London and earn some serious money. I’ve got a terrific job for you in Kenya, beautiful rich wife, shit-of-a-parasite husband, stacks of polo and racing.’

‘I’m happy in Paradise,’ bleated Lysander in a panic at the thought of leaving Georgie. ‘None of them is serious about Rachel. They just don’t want each other to get her. Rachel’s a crosspatch, but seriously good-looking. I wouldn’t mind giving her one myself.’

‘If you stopped at one, I wouldn’t mind,’ said Ferdie disapprovingly. ‘I had to cope with your father yesterday, rolled up in a strop because you hadn’t written. He’s left you a letter.’

‘I won’t read it. It’ll be just another lecture about getting a proper job. I’ve been working Rannaldini’s horses,’ said Lysander by way of mitigation. ‘He wants me to race ride for him in the winter.’

‘That won’t keep you in fags.’

‘Fags want to keep me; the vicar’s asked me to go to the Holy Land.’

‘Don’t be fatuous. How’s Natasha?’ asked Ferdie. Even her name still caused him pain.

‘Gone back to school. But she and Flora are home on Sunday for Rannaldini’s famous tennis tournament. Do you want to play?’

‘OK. I’ll come down for the weekend.’ It would be an excuse to see Natasha and protect his investment.

Poor Kitty, meanwhile, had been having a dreadful summer. Increasingly desperate for a baby, she had spent nearly all the running-away money she had saved in case things became too awful, hawking herself from one gynaecologist to another, putting up with the embarrassment of endless tests and internal probings. But even when her tubes were blown, no-one could find anything wrong.

‘And it’s not my husband, he’s got loads of kids already,’ Kitty kept telling the doctors.

Rannaldini, who bitterly resented any time Kitty took off, felt she should have been satisfied with her seven stepchildren — eight including little Cosmo.

‘Concentrate on being a mother to them, and a secretary to me.’

But I’m almost the same age as your older children, thought Kitty, and the young ones, although very cute, made her feel guilty about longing so much for one of her own.

Her chances seemed less and less likely as Rannaldini slept with her so seldom. She had put up with Rannaldini and Flora all summer, and she had been upset and had to fend off the Press over the eye-blacking furore, but it had given her a faint hope that with Hermione and Cecilia out of favour, and Flora back at Bagley Hall, Rannaldini might have more time for her.

But immediately Cecilia, whom Rannaldini had to forgive because she was starring in Fidelio, turned up to use Valhalla as a base for the duration of filming, Hermione, who was still excluded from Maestro’s presence, became even more histrionic.

Cecilia was easier than Hermione because she was less stupid and patronizing, and at least had a sense of humour. But she was just as demanding and narcissistic and there was also her total assumption that Rannaldini was still in love with her.

‘I cannot understand, Keety, why he is so obsessively jealous of all my admirers. He ripped out the telephone