Most of all he wanted Georgie to romp with him in the big blue Jacuzzi and take advantage of a huge double bed, flanked by walls of darkened mirrors. But all Georgie wanted to do before a concert was to crash out with cold eye-pads, then spend an hour in trance-like silence making herself beautiful.
Bewildered that he hadn’t satisfied her properly, Lysander took her face in his hands.
‘Georgie darling, please leave Guy and marry me.’
Georgie smiled. ‘That is the sweetest offer I’ve ever had, but can you imagine what
The concert was a massive success. Georgie sang all her old sixties songs which had just been issued as a CD and were racing up the charts, and then ended with ‘Rock Star’. Having got well tanked up beforehand and during the interval in the private Catchitune box, Lysander nearly died of pride. Here was his darling Georgie, who had lain warm and naked in his arms a few hours ago, caressed now by thousands of coloured lights, skipping, dancing round the stage, with a great waving cornfield of clapping hands saluting her. It was so sexy the way her red hair tumbled down her bare back each time she threw back her head and how she seemed to suck, lick and even drink out of the microphone as she belted out these glorious heartbreaking songs in her yelping, husky, smoke-filled voice. In his diamonds, with her lovely suntanned shoulders rising out of his black dress, she looked stunningly beautiful and about twentyfive.
She was backed by the same musicians who’d made
Lysander liked it least when she sang ‘Rock Star’. He barracked noisily and had to be shushed when Guy’s handsome manly face was blown up on a screen for Georgie to sing to. The audience, however, cheered and yelled so much she had to sing it again — and still they wouldn’t let her go.
Here is a talent that can cradle an audience in its hands, and hold them spellbound and captive for two hours, thought Lysander. How dare Rannaldini, Hermione and most of all, Rachel, patronize her.
She was going to do an encore. As she sat down on the edge of the stage with a guitar slung round her neck, a hush fell on the hall. One spotlight illuminated her; everywhere else was in darkness.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ began Georgie in her soft voice with its faint trace of Irish, ‘I’d like to try out a new song I’ve just written this week, which I hope will be part of my new album. At home I have an old dog, whom I love dearly. Like anyone in this situation, I dread the day he dies — so I dedicate this song to Dinsdale.’
Oh, she’s so clever, thought Lysander, downing another glass of Moet. ‘I never knew she could play the guitar so well.’
‘
How many days have I left with you?
The haunting beauty of the melody redeemed the sentimentality of the words, and at the end, when Georgie bowed her head and waited for the storm of cheering, Lysander wasn’t the only one who mopped his eyes.
It was after midnight before Georgie managed to tear herself away from the well-wishers in the green room. Larry was particularly ecstatic.
‘“Old Dog” is going to be bigger than “Rock Star”,’ he said, chewing on his cigar. ‘Naughty girl to jump the gun, but if that’s anything like the rest of the album, we’ll make a killing. We could rush it out as a single. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘Pity Guy wasn’t here, he’d be so proud,’ said Marigold.
‘Better change that bit about Guys have come and Guys will go,’ said Larry sardonically.
‘That was my best bit,’ muttered Lysander. ‘Substitute the word “boy” or “man”,’ said Larry. ‘But it’s a great number.’
‘And just the way Ay feel about Patch,’ said Marigold, whose mascara had run.
After a concert, Georgie felt absolutely drained and preferred to go out for a gentle dinner with her agent, or people from the record company who’d talk shop, praise her, and go through every note of her performance, just as Lysander went through every stroke after a polo game. Instead, because she felt momentarily sky-high on adrenalin, adulation and champagne on a very empty stomach, she let Lysander bear her off to a party given by some of his friends.
‘Won’t it be over?’ said Georgie as they drove through a recession-darkened Knightsbridge.
‘It won’t have started till after the pubs close,’ said Lysander, noticing the full moon like a satellite dish topping Brompton Oratory. Was it only a month since he’d taken Kitty on? He hoped she was OK in her lonely fortress.
You could hear the din of the party six hundred yards away. The moment Georgie entered the big terraced house with its yelling jostling crowd hanging out of every window, she knew she had made a dreadful mistake. Still in her thick stage make-up, her diamonds and her backless dress, the halter neckline of which barely covered her breasts, she was ludicrously overdressed. Beside all the utterly ravishing girls in their T-shirts, leggings or occasional micro-skirt, she felt like boiled mutton dressed as lamb without even the aid of caper sauce.
And if she had been the star of the concert, Lysander was undeniably the star of the party. Everyone, particularly the girls, converged on him shrieking with joy.
‘Where have you been?’, ‘We thought you were dead’, ‘London’s dire without you’, ‘Lysander’s back, everyone!’
‘This is Georgie,’ Lysander told them all proudly.
But although he stuck as close as he could, friends never stopped fighting their way over to talk to him, and whenever he fought his way to the kitchen, where a huge table groaned with every drink known to man, to fill up their glasses, it took him half an hour because everyone waylaid him.
It was a very wild party; most people were wasted with drink or drugs, and were already graffiting the walls. Seizing the aerosol can, Lysander wrote: I LUV GORGY, and everyone screamed with laughter.
Others were singing along to a Karaoke machine and videoing each other. Everyone wanted to video Georgie. They were charming to her, but in the same way they might gaze in wonder at the Taj Mahal, tick the guide book, and move on.
Georgie tried to get into the spirit of things, but drink only made her more tired. At the end of the sitting room, a group round a table were playing a game called Cardinal Puff, in which you recited a very complicated verse with endless subclauses. Every time you went wrong, you had to down a glass of booze. Lysander, being dyslexic and very drunk, couldn’t get the hang of it at all, and kept making mistakes and reducing himself and everyone to hysterical laughter.
Georgie tried to match their mirth, but found her jaw aching. She longed to go back to her hotel, but didn’t want to spoil Lysander’s fun. Shrieks grew louder next door, as a blonde in a bright yellow sequined jacket and not much else rushed in.
‘I’ve just emptied a saucepan of chilli con carne over the complete geek giving the party for not playing our kind of music,’ she shouted, then seeing Lysander, ‘
‘Anyone would think he was fucking Helen of Troy,’ said a very suntanned stocky blond boy, who was drinking out of a bottle of vodka and taking alternate slugs out of a carton of orange juice.
‘Seb!’ In drunken delight, Lysander tipped the blonde off his knee. ‘Oh, Seb, this is Georgie Maguire. Get her a drink and look after her for a sec while I crack this stupid game. Seb plays polo for England, Georgie, so does his twin brother Dommie. Where is Dommie?’
‘Bonking some slapper upstairs.’ Seb filled up Georgie’s glass with vodka and orange juice. ‘Love your album.’
‘Thanks. Who owns this house?’
‘Bloke called Mark Waterlane or rather his father does — Mark’s a ghastly host: passed out by two in the morning. Where’s Ferdie?’ he asked Lysander.
