The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto. The recording was not until late October. It was not a work Rachel approved of — too flash and overtly romantic — but she was obsessively determined the London Met, and Rannaldini in particular, should find no fault with her. She was also desperate for her career to take off again to keep pace with Boris whose Berlin Wall symphony was being premiered in the Mozart Hall in November, and even more with Chloe who’d just opened in Don Carlos at the ENO to rave reviews.

Rachel was still burying herself in work, because, apart from her children, who got increasingly on her nerves, there was little cheer in her life. Her longing for Boris made her vile to him every time he came to pick up the children. She couldn’t even bring herself to say anything nice about the Requiem, because Chloe had been sitting outside in the car. It was she, not the poor laboratory animals whom she was always campaigning to save, who should have had her vocal cords cut.

She had had high hopes of Lysander as the ideal dalliance, but, beyond kindness, he had shown no interest. She had hoped even more of Bob, who was on her wavelength intellectually. When Hermione was away, they’d taken the children for a picnic by the River Fleet. Bob was the only person who could control the appalling Cosmo, although yesterday the little fiend had disrupted all the wildlife along the river banks with a new toy speedboat.

When Rachel had tried to explain about noise pollution, Cosmo had told her to piss off, and her own disloyal children had roared with laughter, refusing to make daisy chains because they wanted to play with the boat, too. Realizing Rachel was worried about whirlpools, Bob had helped the children dam up one of the little tributaries still running into the Fleet, so they could paddle and sail their boat.

‘I’m not eating this crap,’ said Cosmo, when offered carrot cake and cauliflower quiche for tea.

Bob refused more politely. ‘Honestly, Rachel darling, I never eat tea.’ No wonder he kept that lean taut body.

Bob had also chucked away his cup of tea, flavoured with goats’ milk, when she wasn’t looking, and instead encouraged her to stretch out on the dusty bank with a cold bottle of Sancerre. After the second glass, seeing her children engrossed in their dam, Rachel had tried, over the appalling din of Cosmo’s speedboat to discuss the far more appalling behaviour of Rannaldini and Hermione.

But Bob had deflected her. ‘Not on such a lovely day. I truly don’t want to talk about it.’

‘But you must feel so humiliated. They’re so odiously public. You ought to have some outlet. You can’t dam the libido up for ever.’ Rachel started to cry. ‘I know I can’t. I’ve been celibate for seven months now. Come over to supper after the kids have gone to bed.’

As if they had a separate life of their own, her pale slim fingers walked across the burnt grass and crept into Bob’s.

‘Daddee,’ it was little Cosmo’s screech. ‘The boat’s stuck.’

‘Well, for Christ’s sake, unstick it,’ screeched back Rachel. But Bob’s fingers, which had not returned the pressure, were gently withdrawn as he got up to help.

Wandering home along the river, when their eyes weren’t meeting, Bob had said, ‘Sweet of you, Rachel dear, but I’ve got to go back to London.’ Then, smiling slightly to soften the snub, ‘Let’s take an acid-rain check on this one.’

And the hot flush of mortification had kept sweeping over Rachel ever since.

Even Rannaldini, who’d been so disgustingly suggestive at the tennis, hadn’t been in touch so that she could reject him.

Hoards of men used to run after me, thought Rachel despairingly as she sunk her sweating, aching fingers once more into the keys, banging out the doomed, infinitely sorrowful opening theme.

‘Dum, da-di-da, da-di-da, da,’ sang Rachel. No-one will ever chase me again except married lechers who get a buzz out of deceiving their wives.

If only she could transmit the depth of her sadness to her playing, but she was hampered by the colossal technical demands of the piece, the explosions of notes which must be perfect.

Boris had warned her of the viciousness of Rannaldini’s criticism. Horrible man. Rachel had a vision of his face, heartless, cold, yet the black eyes blazing with lust and sensuality. Despite the punishing airless heat, Rachel shivered.

The church clock striking three brought her back to earth. She must collect the children at four. Lysander had given her a litre of gin some time ago, which she’d never drunk because she loathed the stuff, but had been intending to turn into sloe gin. Walking over to the tennis tournament at Valhalla, she’d noticed a bumper crop of sloes still green along the footpath which Rannaldini had closed to the public. They should be ripe now. Rannaldini was away. If she were quick she could make a detour on her way to school.

She had been concentrating so hard. Only when she went outside did she realize that it had been raining, a brief violent shower, which flattened the bleached grass and drenched the trees, but made as much impact on the rock-hard ground as spitting on an iron. As she ran up the forbidden footpath, Rannaldini’s woods lay ahead pulsating and boiling like a jungle, incubating insects, dark greeny-grey beneath a white-hot sun which had already dried the tops of the trees.

‘Dum, da-di-da, da-di-da, da,’ sang Rachel, breathing in the rank stench of drying nettles, which had grown so tall they concealed the first PRIVATE — KEEP OUT notice. Blackberry fronds clawed her bare ankles and arms like importuning creditors. She could hear a rattle of distant thunder. Her head ached from gazing at little black notes all day.

Traveller’s joy draped acid green leaves and lemon-yellow flowers over the NO FOOTPATH: TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED sign. Nature doesn’t care about trespassers, thought Rachel. As she waded through waist-high grass, her shoes filled with water. Gretel had taken the children to school this morning, so Rachel had gone straight to the piano without bothering to wash. She supposed this was as good a bath as any.

To her joy, the blackthorn copse was groaning with sloes, shiny and dark like Rannaldini’s eyes, but softened by the palest powdery-blue bloom. Holding her shopping bag underneath to catch the loot, she systematically stripped each branch, swearing as the sharp thorns plunged into her fingers. She glanced at her watch, she must go in ten minutes. She only need fill half the bottle. The recipe said white sugar, but she’d get unrefined brown from The Apple Tree instead. Just as she was reaching up to a high branch, she heard voices and started violently, shrieking as a particularly sharp thorn stabbed her arm.

‘What was that?’ said Rannaldini’s voice sharply.

Rachel dropped to the ground, burying her face in the soaking grass, heart pounding, praying he’d go away. She cringed as a brown slug, big as a rat, edged towards her. How ghastly if Rannaldini caught her. Instead the sinister Clive jumped over a small wall just beyond the blackthorn clump and trained his rifle on her.

‘Don’t shoot,’ screamed Rachel.

Rannaldini followed at a more leisurely pace.

‘I might have guessed,’ he said softly. ‘Bugger off,’ he added to Clive. ‘I’ll handle this.’

Lying flat on her face, Rachel was aware of sloes scattered all round her.

‘Get up,’ ordered Rannaldini.

Leaping down like a great cat, he still made sure he was on higher ground, when she scrambled, raging with embarrassment, to her feet.

‘Can’t you read? This is private property, you stupid bitch. You’re trespassing as well as stealing.’ The words came out like rifle shots.

‘This is a public footpath.’

‘Was,’ snapped Rannaldini. ‘And the wall was always mine. I didn’t know you were a thief.’

Deliberately he stamped on half a dozen sloes, then, removing his shiny brown ankle boot, showed their wounded crimson flesh.

Rachel winced. ‘You bastard!’

Looking down, she was appalled to see how transparent the wet grass had made her muslin shift and her cheap white rose-patterned trousers. She could see the moulded line of her breasts and sticking-out nipples, the pink flesh of her legs, and the dark GIVE WAY sign of her pubic hair. Rannaldini, however, had no intention of giving way.

‘Today I not bastard. I forgeeve them who trespass.’

Rachel’s heart pounded even more painfully, but she couldn’t move as he reached out, testing the pudgy