‘And if that weren’t enough,’ went on Flora, ‘you’re utterly unselective. Natasha told me about Hermione and jumping on her mother every time she hits London, and bonking every female musician in the London Duodenal, not to mention choral sex with all those panting groupies in their — I LOVE RANNALDINI T-shirts. You just pick them off.’

They had reached a little bank, covered in pink-spotted orchids. A blushing sun was retreating behind the wood. Kicking off her espadrilles Flora cooled her dusty feet in the long wet grass. Like Rannaldini, his sprinklers went everywhere.

‘I am Don Juan,’ said Rannaldini, sticking to the path above which made him taller, ‘or, being Italian, Don Giovanni. I seek the perfect woman and always despair of finding her because all women are the same. You would be different. You are not classically beautiful, but you light up when you smile.’

‘Dad doesn’t smile when I light up.’

‘You shouldn’t smoke when God has given you a voice.’

‘I’d rather he gave me Boris Levitsky,’ taunted Flora, disappearing into the fringed depths of a weeping ash.

‘Boris not Goodenough,’ said Rannaldini chillingly.

‘Why did you marry Kitty?’ Flora emerged from the far side of the weeping ash. ‘Was it an act of deliberate sadism? Did they toll the punishment bell at your wedding? Did the Paradise Lad howl on the first night?’

Rannaldini gave a shrug. ‘Kitty run my life. She was brought up by elderly parents so I seem like spreeng chicken, and she help her mother look after other people’s children.’

‘So she has no problem with your brat-pack?’

‘Correct.’ Rannaldini moved off down the ride, pausing to caress the upturned face and breasts of a naked wood nymph, then letting his hands stray downwards.

‘Eef one is going to run more than one woman,’ he continued, ‘one must have a loving wife rather plain so one’s mistresses don’t get jealous, rather working class, so women think Keety is fortunate to be plucked from her humble origins and to have landed such a mesmerizing — ’ Rannaldini paused mockingly over the word — ‘husband that she cannot expect heem to be faithful to her.

‘Above all,’ he went on with a satanic smile, ‘Keety is the perfect alibi. Eef Hermione is being difficult and I want to see Cecilia, I tell Hermione that Keety is in town so I cannot get away. Eef I want to see someone else, you, for example’ — briefly he touched her cheek — ‘I tell both Hermione and Cecilia, Keety is in town. If I want to drop someone I say: “I am so sorry, my dear, Keety has found out, and I cannot ‘urt Keety.” If a woman suddenly refuses to get out of my bed or one of my ’ouses, I say: “Keety is due any minute, you must go.” Finally eef any of them are foolish enough to want to marry me I tell them I cannot leave Keety, she do nothing wrong, it would be like throwing a freshwater fish into the sea.’

He has got the most beautiful voice, thought Flora, husky, caressing, anodyne. Perhaps it was an essential of adulterers because so much of their campaigning was done on the telephone.

‘You’re such a shit,’ she said fascinated.

‘Like Byron.’ Gently Rannaldini fingered the crutch of the wood nymph. ‘We love our men of genius not because they are perfect but because they are great.’ Then, running his hand over the wood nymph’s bottom, ‘Still warm from the sun as though she has been given a spanking, I would love to spank all the bad temper out of you, leetle Flora.’

‘You bloody wouldn’t.’ Outraged, yet excited, Flora plunged back into another weeping ash. As she emerged Rannaldini drew two ropes of fronds round her neck, trapping her.

‘I ’ave a ’ole in my heart from Cupid’s arrow,’ he whispered, tightening the fronds. Aware that he could throttle her, Flora gazed into his mocking, sensual, infinitely cynical, face.

‘My father was a Spanish Captain,’ she sang softly,

‘Went to sea a month ago,

First he kissed me, then he left me,

Bid me always answer No.’

She paused so long on the high note that Rannaldini felt the hair rising on the back of his neck, then she smiled and went on:

‘Oh no Juan, no Juan, no Juan no.’

Rannaldini’s straight black eyebrows underlined a forehead almost without lines. Not a man who worries or who suffers from guilt, thought Flora. His lips were absolutely on a level with hers. She was sure he was going to kiss her and shut her eyes. Then he laughed and moved away.

‘Come and see my tower.’

Flora could hear the distant hum of a tractor trying to get the hay cut before the storm. The sun had set, but the heat was still murderous. As they moved through the wood Rannaldini held back nettles and brambles and, having climbed a stile overgrown with elder, turned to help her. The starry elderflowers that fell into her hair were as creamy as her skin. Overcome with lust, Rannaldini let his hand stray over her right breast testing its soft springiness.

Leaping away, livid with her heart for pounding like the hoof-beats of Rannaldini’s horses, Flora hurled a clump of goosegrass at him to lower the tension.

‘Clinging but instantly detachable, like the perfect woman,’ said Rannaldini, peeling it off his silk shirt and throwing it back at Flora who ducked and ran down the path. As she reached the clearing a crack of lightning lit up Rannaldini’s tower, then thunder boomed like a twelve pounder. The Rottweilers collided against their master’s legs in terror. Rannaldini just had time to kick them into their kennel and bustle Flora into the tower when the heavens opened.

The ground floor, where Rannaldini worked, was completely walled by records, tapes and editing equipment.

‘It’s soundproof, so however much you scream—’

‘It won’t sound as awful as Hermione,’ mocked Flora.

As the soundtrack of Rannaldini’s film of Don Giovanni flooded the tower and its surrounding woodland, Flora bounded up a sprial staircase into a sitting room furnished with pale grey sofas and chairs and two high footstools covered in buttercup-yellow and crimson silk.

Flora looked up at the bright scarlet walls and ceiling. ‘Like being wrapped in the flames of Don Giovanni’s hell,’ she said.

On a side table beside a shoal of silver photographs of Rannaldini being congratulated by the famous, including Gorbachov and Princess Diana, stood a big yellow bowl overflowing with pink-and-green grapes, peaches, mangoes, persimmons and fruit so exotic Flora had never seen it before. A yellow Aubusson carpet swimming with roses and oak leaves caressed her bare feet. The only pictures were an Eric Gill panel of an ambiguous-looking madonna offering a perfect breast to a rather too-knowing and adult baby and a Picasso girl whose eye squinted over Rannaldini’s ivory-silk shoulder as he opened another bottle of Krug.

The bathroom, also in pale grey and scarlet with a mirrored ceiling and walls, was dominated by a vast Jacuzzi.

‘Mother Courage’s famous Ju-Jitzu bath,’ giggled Flora. ‘I can’t tell you how much I admire her, she makes my father’s shirts look as though Dinsdale’s slept in them and she told Mum that Mrs ‘Arefield ’ad just had her back passage painted bottle green. You should know presumably.’

Even though a faint smile flickered at the corner of Rannaldini’s mouth Flora decided not to tell him about Rattledicky.

‘I could listen to her for hours.’

‘Unlike Boris Levitsky’s compositions,’ said Rannaldini handing her a glass. ‘To us.’

‘To my guardian devil.’ Trying to suppress her surging excitement Flora sauntered next door into a bedroom which was all bed, with a mural above it of an endlessly applauding opera audience, beautiful bare-shouldered women in wonderful jewels, handsome men in dinner-jackets, all cheering and clapping so realistically you could smell the carnations in their buttonholes and hear the bravoes ringing out.

‘Christ, you’re a narcissist,’ snapped Flora. ‘Do you delay your entrance even here? How’d you take out your teeth without a bedside table?’

She jumped as a huge clap of thunder burst overhead. Her heart was beating almost as loudly. Any moment Rannaldini would pounce.

‘Vile seducer,’ sang Hermione, ‘like a fury I’ll pursue you, haunt you to your dying day.’

‘Exquisite,’ sighed Rannaldini and, going downstairs, he turned on Wimbledon to watch a replay of an excruciatingly boring women’s singles match.

Feeling absurdly let down Flora slumped on one of the silk footstools, sulkily consuming an entire bunch of green grapes, pips and all, by which time Leporelló was listing Don Giovanni’s conquests to a distraught Donna Elvira.

Dark, blond, fat, thin, tall, tiny, all were fair game to the Don.

‘But his favourite form of sinning,

Is with one who’s just beginning,’ sang Leporelló.

Realizing that the rain was no longer machine-gunning the roof and windows Flora knocked back her Krug.

‘Well, I can’t stay here all night gazing up Miss Sabatini’s knickers.’

‘I’ll walk you home. Are you tired?’ Rannaldini switched off the television and the soundtrack.

‘No, bored.’

‘Ees the same thing.’

As they were leaving he flicked on his answering machine. Suddenly the tower was filled with desperate weeping.

‘Rannaldini, it’s Beatrice, I must see you, I love you so much.’

With an irritable shrug Rannaldini turned off the machine. ‘Some stupeed flautist want her job back.’

‘And you, too, by the sound of it,’ reproved Flora. ‘How can you hang a cross round your neck and behave so horribly?’

‘Theenk how much worse I would behave if I didn’t wear it. Women make such a fuss. As a sex, you will soon be expendable. The Japanese invent a robot that makes exquisite love. Afterwards you sweetch it off.’