The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous (32 page)

    'Why don't you have a little train to get your drinks for you?' said Flora, unfolding an emerald-green napkin. 'Then Kitty wouldn't have had to run around like a barmaid in Happy Hour.'

    But Rannaldini was looking at The Times crossword which was normally faxed out to him wherever he was in the world, filling it in as easily as a passport form.

    'Who, Like a black swan as death came on, Poured forth her song in perfect calm? he asked the assembled company. 'Presumably none of you dolts know.'

    'St Cecilia,' said Flora, accepting a plate of sea trout from Kitty. 'Yum, that looks good.'

    'Correct,' said Rannaldini. 'Unlike my children, you read books.'

    'I'm doing Auden for A level.'

    Natasha was still studying the school photograph.

    'Nice one of Marcus Campbell-Black. Have you snogged him yet, Flora?'

    'Too shy. Wouldn't mind snogging his father though.''Rupert Campbell-Black was the man we voted we'd most like to lose our virginity to,' Natasha told Rannaldini. 'But you were second, Daddy,' she added hastily.

    Rannaldini's vile mood returned. Although the food was delectable, he immediately emptied a sootfall of black pepper and a pint of Tabasco over his sea trout before taking a bite. Then, when he had taken one mouthful, snapped at Kitty that the fish must have died of natural causes, and gave the whole lot to Tabloid who promptly gobbled it up, then yelped, his eyes spurting tears, as he encountered the Tabasco and pepper.

    'This sea trout's perfect,' protested Flora. 'You kept lunch waiting. You're lucky it's not old and tough, like certain people round here, and that was bloody cruel to

    that dog.'

    Ignoring her, Rannaldini started talking in German to Wolfie. Kitty said nothing throughout lunch, as still as an extra on stage, not wanting to attract a second's attention from the actor who is speaking. There was another explosion when Rannaldini found the Brie in the fridge.

    'I'm sorry, Rannaldini,' stammered Kitty, 'but it was running away in the 'eat.'

    'Don't blame it,' said Flora, 'if it gets shouted at like

    you do.'

    In the silence that followed, Natasha, Wolfie and Kitty gazed at their green ivy-patterned plates and shook.

    Rannaldini glared at Flora for a moment, then laughed. 'You have to practise this afternoon, Natasha. You have homework, Wolfie. I will show Flora the 'ouse.'

    Ducking unnecessarily so as to avoid hitting his sleek grey head on the low beams, Rannaldini whisked Flora through endless twisting and turning passages and dark-panelled rooms. Occasionally from the shadows grinned the white or yellowing teeth of a grand piano. On the way Rannaldini pointed out ancient tapestries, Tudor triptychs and family portraits, belonging to other people, because sadly, his left-wing mother had flogged off those of his own family. In the great hall with its minstrels' gallery, Rannaldini had commissioned a red-and-gold mural of trumpeters, harpists and fiddlers, and a bust of himself in front of the huge organ.

    'Something wrong there,' said Flora slyly. 'Surely you should be behind the huge organ?'

    Ignoring the crack, Rannaldini led her up the great stone staircase, where sunlight poured through the stained-glass window of St Cecilia at yet another organ.

    'Blessed Cecilia appear in visions, To all musicians,' murmured Flora. 'Is that Burne Jones?'

    'A copy,' said Rannaldini. 'The original's in Oxford.'

    Leading the way up to the attic, stepping over stray angels' wings and broken chalices left behind by the monks, Rannaldini pointed to a rope running down a groove in the thick stone wall.

    'What's that?' asked Flora.

    'The rope of the punishment bell,' said Rannaldini caressingly. 'The Abbot used to ring it from his study after vespers every Friday evening, telling the monks to return to their cells and flagellate themselves for the duration of the misericordia. This went on until a Father Dominic came up here and valiantly clung on to the rope, and the practice was finally stamped out.'

    'How gross!' Flora fingered the rope with a shudder.

    Through a narrow slit of window, she could see the valley lit by chestnut candles and beyond, green fields streaked with buttercups and dotted with red-and-white cows, like the backdrop to some medieval madonna. It was very cold in the attic. In some distant room, she could hear Natasha sulkily thumping out a Chopin Nocturne.

    'I suppose you use the punishment bell on Kitty,' blurted out Flora.

    'Only when she needs it,' said Rannaldini silkily.

    Flora shivered, but was determined not to appear afraid.

    'Mum said Kitty's terrified of a ghost here.'

    The Paradise Lad,' murmured Rannaldini softly. 'He was a very beautiful young boy. A novice here, and very loving and charming and not entirely sure of his vocation. Then he fell in love with a village girl, and decided he wanted to leave the order. Denied this, he was caught with the girl. The Abbot loved the boy, and was so insane with jealousy that he threw him down in the dungeons before ordering him to be flogged and rang the punishment bell on and on, until finally the monks grew quite out of control and flogged the boy to death. Many people say they 'ave heard his ghost sobbing at night.'

    Rannaldini's face was enigmatic, but there was a throb of excitement in his deep voice.

    'That's horrific,' said Flora, utterly revolted. 'And probably apocryphal,' said Rannaldini, idly examining a battered cherub, wondering if it could be restored. 'The wind howl down the chimneys 'ere. That's probably all the screaming people 'ear. Let's go and play tennis.'

    Rannaldini's passion for Flora was severely tested on the tennis court. Unaware of the honour of being his partner, she simply didn't try, and ducked, collapsing with laughter, each time Wolfie and Natasha, both powerful, much-coached players, hit the shocking pink balls straight at her. She and Rannaldini ended up in a screaming match.

    'Your father's insanely competitive,' she grumbled, as she and Wolfie cooled off in the big blue swimming-pool which was tiled like a Roman bath.

    When he simmered down, Rannaldini was reduced to watching her through binoculars while she sunbathed topless, envying the Ambre Solaire Wolfie was rubbing into her high freckled breasts. At bedtime, peering through the montana, he caught a tantalizing glimpse of her undressing before she slipped on the outsize pyjamas which had come into fashion that summer. He imagined his hand stealing under the trouser elastic. With her cropped red hair, she'd be just like a schoolboy. Next moment he heard Wolfie's door open and shut, followed by creaking floorboards, then Flora's door opening and shutting. Then the light went out. Rannaldini was demented.

    Stalking along the landing, he barged into Kitty's bedroom without knocking. She was wearing a high-necked white cotton nightgown and knitting a custard-yellow jersey for her mother's Christmas present. On the shelf were little bottles of shampoo, moisturizers and transparent bathcaps in cardboard packs which Rannaldini brought her from hotel bedrooms on trips abroad. She never threw out anything he gave her. Looking up at her husband in fear and longing, she waited for the next hammer blow.

    'Time for the real thing,' said Rannaldini, dropping Danielle Steel on the floor.

    Returning to the kitchen after waving goodbye to Natasha, Wolfie and Flora the following evening, Kitty gasped in horror. Flora had added a moustache, a squint, some long earrings and a mass of tight curls to Rannaldini's poster on the cork board. Underneath she had written: stop being shitty to kitty. Kitty removed it only just in time.Over the next few weeks the heat wave intensified and so did Rannaldini's obsessive passion; but whenever he flew home he found Wolfie and Flora wrapped round each other like Labrador puppies. He was in despair. Then, on the last Saturday in June, in the middle of Wimbledon fortnight, having despatched Kitty to stay with her excruciatingly dull, suburban mother, so he could install a two-way mirror between his dressing room and the spare room into which Flora had been moved, Rannaldini dropped in for a drink with Georgie and Guy.

    As the sun had lost a little of its heat they sat out on the terrace, gazing down on a valley lit by white elderflower discs and garlanded by wild roses that shrivelled in an afternoon. Only docks, nettles and ragwort had been left by the ravenous sheep and cows. Both lake and river below it were dangerously low. Dinsdale panted gloomily under Georgie's deckchair.

    Georgie, in a pair of oatmeal Bermuda shorts and a sage-green T-shirt, which showed the skin falling away from her upper arms and thighs, gazed into space. She had dried up like the valley around her. Great cracks split the footpaths. The ivy round the house was showering down yellow leaves and the lawns of Angel's Reach, because Guy, unlike Rannaldini, observed the hose-pipe ban, had already turned brown.

    Georgie and Guy were just reeling from another frightful row. While Guy was fussing around making Pimm's, Georgie unbuttoned to Rannaldini.

    'Guy says he hasn't seen Julia since her exhibition. Then he buggers off for two hours this afternoon and returns with poor Dinsdale utterly exhausted and reeking of Je Reviens. The shoe-maker's children may be the worst shod, but adulterer's dogs have the sorest paws.'

    'My dear, I cannot theenk why you're upset.' Rannaldini put a soothing hand on her razor-sharp shoulder. 'You are cross with Guy so he seeks approval elsewhere. Having an affaire is like going on television, one gets the chance to talk at length about oneself in front of an admiring audience.'

    'But I don't understand,' pleaded Georgie. 'If he needs her, why does he insist on sleeping with me all the time? I locked myself in the spare room last night and he broke the door down.'

    'Quite seemple,' Rannaldini smiled. 'He feel guilty and he know eef he stop fucking you, you will suspect something, and if he ees thinking so much of Julia, he needs the release.'

    'Opo!' said Georgie in anguish. 'Is that the reason?'

    'My dear child, Guy will only really want you again when you find yourself a new man.' He paused as Guy came out with a clinking tray.

    'Sorry, Rannaldini, I'd forgotten Pimm's takes such a long time. Do you think Becker's going to win?'

    Guy, who always became more military when he sensed combat, had had a too short haircut. Rannaldini noticed with a stab of pain that Guy's newly revealed, rather pointed, ears were very like Flora's, as were his flat cheek-bones and square jaw. But Flora's luminous white skin, her earthy animal features and big sulky mouth were all Georgie's.

    'How's my friend Kitty?' asked Guy, putting a piece of mint in everyone's glass.

    'Staying with her mother, a pair of clacking false teeth in an armchair, and sorting out my VAT,' said Rannaldini.

    'Kitty's a saint,' said Guy heartily. 'They always say behind every famous man there's a clockwork wife.''And behind every famous woman there's a wildly unfaithful husband,' snarled Georgie.

    Turning puce, Guy shot a see-what-I-have-to-put-up-with glance at Rannaldini. Fortunately the telephone rang and Guy bounded in to answer it.

    'I found a bill for Janet Reger under the lining paper of his pants' drawer,' hissed Georgie. 'Do you think he'll claim VAT virtue

    annihilated tax on

    that? When in silks, paid for by Guy, my Julia goes, Christ!'

    'You are on form this evening,' murmured Rannaldini noticing Georgie go quiet, trying to work out if Guy was talking in code.

    'Hallo, Sabine,' he was saying. 'Did you beat Radley yesterday?'

    'Single-handed, I should think,' said Rannaldini. Guy returned looking absolutely furious. 'Sabine's had to suspend Flora until the end of term for three offences: drinking in a pub, smoking in church in church, and

    being caught half-naked behind a combine harvester this afternoon with your son, I'm afraid, Rannaldini.'

    'L'apres-midi d'unfomicator,' said Rannaldini, enviously. 'Hell, it's only a few fags, half a bottle of Sancerre and a roll in the hay,' said Georgie, who thought it was funny. 'At least she's gone astray with the right sort of chap.' She clinked her glass against Rannaldini's. 'Has Wolfie been suspended, too?'

    'Evidently not. He wasn't caught smoking and drinking and the XI's got a needle match against Marlborough tomorrow and Wolfgang still has two A levels to take. Flora shouldn't have got caught,' said Guy disapprovingly. 'That's always been your attitude,' said Georgie flaring up.

    'I never did anything wrong,' snapped back Guy.

    Rannaldini was ecstatic. At last a chance to get Flora on

    her own while Wolfie and Natasha were still incarcerated.

    'And Sabine says Flora's got a singing exam in ten

    days,' said Guy, taking such a large gulp of Pimm's he tipped cucumber and apple over his face. 'I'd better go and collect her.'

    And pop in on Julia on the way, thought Georgie despairingly. She shouldn't have made those bitchy remarks, she'd have to crawl later.

    'Send Flora over to me,' said Rannaldini. 'I'll go through her songs and give her a bit of coaching.'