The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

‘In the Aglarve,’ Lysander never got the word right. ‘Due home any minute. I thought he might be here.’

‘He sent me a postcard saying he’d got off with a thirty-year-old wrinkly,’ said the blonde, clambering back on to Lysander’s knee. ‘Must be pushed.’

Georgie tried to be a good sport, and return Lysander’s apologetic grin round the blonde’s jutting bosom. But when she escaped to the 100 to check her own wrinkles, it was occupied.

‘Someone’s either bonking, throwing up, or passed out,’ said a brunette in a crimson body-stocking who was painting her mouth rose-red in the landing mirror. ‘They’re organizing a search-party to climb in through the window, and get whoever it is out.’

Joining the girl at the mirror, Georgie gave a wail of despair. Beside that smooth fresh face, she looked like a raddled old tart of a hundred. Her heavy make-up sank into the lines round her mouth, and emphasized the weary red-veined eyes, and when she rubbed away a blob of mascara, the skin stayed pleated.

‘Love your album,’ said the brunette. ‘I hope I meet a guy like your Guy one day. He’s lush. He’s not here, is he?’

‘If he was, he’d adore you,’ said Georgie wearily.

There was a crash and a tinkling of glass as a boy, climbing the creeper to rip down the satellite dish, put his biker boot through a window. The music was deafening. To stop complaints the telephones had all been pulled out.

Lysander waited in the hall with his arms out as Georgie came downstairs: ‘Georgie! Let’s get naked.’

A wild boy wearing a baseball cap back to front suddenly rushed up, squeezed both her breasts and shouted: ‘Yippee, six, the big one!’

‘What the hell are you doing?’ said Georgie crossly.

‘Tit cricket,’ said the boy with an inane laugh. ‘When you squeeze both you get a six.’

‘Leave my woman alone,’ howled Lysander, his right fist sending the boy crashing to the floor.

‘Is he all right?’ said Georgie anxiously when the boy didn’t move.

‘Fine.’ Seb Carlisle kicked him gently out of the way. ‘He was about due to pass out.’

‘Just going to have a slash in the garden.’ Lysander staggered out, cannoning off walls.

‘Mrs Seymour?’

Georgie jumped out of her skin as she saw her husband staring at her. Beside him was herself looking twenty years younger. Then she realized yet another stunning girl was wearing one of Catchitune’s new Guy and Georgie T-shirts.

‘I bought it from Tower Records, Piccadilly, this evening,’ she said. ‘Will you sign it?’

‘Will you sign mine, too?’ said her even prettier red-haired friend. ‘I temped for your husband last year,’ she added. ‘He’s really sweet. Every morning he made the same joke: “Bring your book in, Lottie, and do your longhand, I want to look at your legs”.’

‘That’s my husband,’ said Georgie bleakly.

Much later, she was having great difficulty holding Lysander up on the dance floor, when over the din of the record player, she heard the wail of sirens.

‘Quick, the pigs!’ Seb Carlisle seized Georgie’s arm. ‘I’ll get Dommie!’

Having retrieved his twin brother from upstairs, he led Georgie and a tottering Lysander through a kitchen three inches deep in beer out into a garden. The fresh air hit them like a fist. The twins had just given Georgie a leg-up over the wall when a policeman ran through the french windows, frantically blowing his whistle. Straddling an old rambler rose that ripped her tights to shreds, Georgie knew that he knew who she was.

‘Now, where’s my car?’ said Lysander, scratching his head as he joined them on the pavement.

‘You said you’d left it in Rosary Road,’ said Seb.

As they rushed across the road, Georgie felt an unidentifiable pain.

‘I can’t see it,’ went on Lysander.

‘It’s that BMW, you idiot,’ screamed Georgie. ‘The Ferrari’s being serviced.’

‘I was scoring with that brunette,’ grumbled Dommie Carlisle, climbing sulkily into the back.

‘Of all the ungrateful sods,’ said Seb, climbing in beside him. ‘Not sure Lysander’s safe to drive,’ he muttered to Georgie.

‘I bloody am,’ said Lysander, backing briskly into a parked Mercedes.

‘I’ll drive,’ said Georgie, panicking the police would catch up with them, triggering off some frightful scandal. ‘For God’s sake, move over, Lysander.’

The twins were now having a punch-up in the back.

‘I would’ve scored.’

‘Bloody wouldn’t.’

‘Would.’

‘She was a slapper.’

‘She was not.’

‘For God’s sake, stop them,’ Georgie screamed at Lysander, as she set off with a jerk and furious revving.

‘I can’t. I’m navigating.’ Lysander stared fixedly ahead. ‘I’ll be sick if I look round.’

‘I’m going back to score.’ Dommie leapt defiantly out, running straight into the arms of the police.

As Georgie drove towards Knightsbridge, the gutters were filled with brown plane leaves and the gardens with Japanese anemones and shaggy yellow chrysanthemums. Then she twigged. Rosary Road was where Julia had lived in London. How often Guy must have bowled down the Fulham Road in excitement and told the taxi to turn left.

She dropped Seb off at Sloane Square. Lysander, slumped beside her, was too far gone to notice the tears streaming down her cheeks all the way back to the hotel.

‘Just walk in, don’t look to left or right,’ she hissed as she steered a buckling Lysander twice round the swing door.

‘Good morning, Miss Maguire,’ said the doorman.

As soon as his head hit the pillow, Lysander passed out. Georgie removed her hellish make-up and, suddenly icy cold, had a long, hot bath, waving two metaphorical fingers at Rachel as she wasted a great deal of water. Then she removed Lysander’s flowered tie and took off his only pair of Guccis Maggie hadn’t eaten. His brown lashes nearly covered the shadows beneath his eyes, there was a sprinkling of freckles on his sunburnt nose, and his big mouth was smiling as he reached out in his sleep for her. As Georgie nuzzled into his neck, he smelled as sweet and fresh as violets.

Too exhausted to sleep, she saw her bare shoulders, her long red hair and pale sad face reflected in the mirror opposite. Once again it was as though Julia was gazing back at her.

The next day, after a leisurely lunch and several Alka-Seltzers, as they set out for Angel’s Reach in the BMW, Lysander handed her a copy of Hello!.

‘To distract you on the journey. I used to buy one for Mum. She was so terrified of my driving.’

He didn’t add that it was the anniversary of his mother’s death. In their separate anguish, they didn’t confide in each other. Despite Hello! Georgie had to bite her lip and cling on to the seat as the speedometer reached 120 m.p.h. The radio was playing the new tape of her sixties songs. Turned up fortissimo, it gave her a blinding headache. Even with all the windows open and in spite of the time of year, the day was impossibly hot and sticky.

Lysander, thought Georgie with infinite sadness, was adorable, but he needed children his own age to play with. Nor could she transfer her love to him. She lacked skins.

Back at Angel’s Reach, longing to have a bath and change, she found a note from Mother Courage: Cat’s been sick, downstairs toilet blocked and water packed up. Got Debenham. See you later.

‘That’s all I bloody need.’

‘Hurrah, you can come and stay at Magpie Cottage,’ said Lysander.

‘I’ll join you when I’ve got things together this end,’ said Georgie, leafing through the post. ‘Guy’s sent me a postcard of a ruined abbey. Is that supposed to symbolize the state he’s reduced me to?’

Upstairs, she turned on the ansaphone.

‘Hallo, Panda,’ said Guy’s deep voice. ‘Been thinking of you, hope everything went all right. Give me a ring.