‘You will keep the garden taydy, won’t you, Lysander? Paradayse has won the Best-Kept Village award ten years runnin’.’

Marigold worked fast furnishing the cottage with, among other things, a large brass four-poster, blue-ticking sofas and chairs and a big wooden bishop’s chair she’d found in a jumble sale. Eight days later, Lysander, Arthur, Jack, Tiny and little Maggie moved in. Loot from grateful wives now included six polo ponies which Lysander was keeping over at Ricky France-Lynch’s yard at Eldercombe and Mrs Gunn’s promised yacht which Ferdie had already swapped for a new soft-top dark blue Ferrari. He felt it was important for people to be able to see Lysander driving round Paradise and, besides, he wanted to appropriate the red Ferrari himself.

After moving in, he and Lysander went out to The Heavenly Host where they dined outside under the stars in the buddleia-scented dusk. Taking off his jacket Ferdie noticed Lysander’s post which he’d left in his inside pocket.

‘I forgot to give you these. Fan mail still coming in for Arthur and three letters from your father.’

‘I don’t want to see Dad. He was so horrible last time.’

‘Well, at least open the one from your bank.’ Ferdie chucked a thick white envelope across the red-check tablecloth.

‘Are you determined to ruin my dinner? Gregor and I lost a hell of a lot of money in the casino at Palma. If only you’d let me come home straight away.’

‘Open it,’ said Ferdie, ‘I promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised.’

With shaking hands Lysander tore open the envelope and holding up a candle scanned the contents for a long time, his lips moving as he read, growing paler and paler.

‘My God,’ he whispered, ‘I’m £102,000 overdrawn and I’ve got to pay £750 interest. What am I going to do? The Ferrari’ll have to go and the ponies and what about Arthur’s vet bill? Oh Christ.’

‘It’s in credit, you jerk,’ said Ferdie. ‘And you made £750 in interest just last month. So you can bloody well buy me dinner.’

It took him several minutes to convince Lysander, who promptly suggested they went out later and blew some of it at the nearest casino.

‘We will not,’ said Ferdie tartly. ‘I’ll be fired if I don’t put in some work at the office and you’ve got to move in first thing on Georgie. Here’s the way I suggest you play it.’


28



A heavy dew silvered the parched fields. Invisible larks carolled joyously in a sky as blue as Mary’s robes. However, as Lysander drew up at Angel’s Reach the following morning, Georgie Maguire greeted him in a dressing gown and tears.

‘I thought Guy’d left me a little love note on the kitchen table,’ she sobbed, ‘but when I looked it just said: Don’t forget the dustbins. And even worse he’s written Julia’s number, without her name of course, on the inside of his Parish Council file.’

She waved a buff folder. ‘I felt so miserable I’ve written Cuckoo beside it in biro, and now I can’t rub it out.’

‘Pas de problème.’ Taking the folder, Lysander tore off the corner with Julia’s number and chucked it in the bin.

‘Guy will notice that even more,’ said Georgie aghast.

‘Say it’s mice, or better still, moths. The waitress at The Heavenly Host says there is a plague of moths because of the drought.’

‘There aren’t any clothes for them to eat because they’ve all gone to Marigold’s Nearly New Stall,’ said Georgie, but she stopped crying.

‘Go and have a nice long bath and get dressed,’ said Lysander, dumping several carrier bags on the kitchen table. ‘I’m going to make you porridge for breakfast. No, I promise it’s delicious, with cream and treacle, and then croissants with black-cherry jam.’

‘D’you know how to make porridge?’ asked Georgie.

‘I’ve made enough bran mashes in my life. You just read the directions. Then I’m going to take you to meet Arthur and then we’ll have lunch at The Pearly Gates to get people gossiping and then go shopping for lots of glamorous clothes. Bath’s better than Rutminster. Oh look, there’s a little green van going up Marigold’s drive.’

‘That van goes to all the big houses in Paradise every Monday,’ said Georgie sadly. ‘It takes away old plants and replaces them with shiny new ones with flowers. They ought to do the same with wives.’

‘Now, now,’ reproved Lysander. ‘You’ve got to stop sniping and cheer up.’

The ice was broken by Lysander reading all the directions wrong and making porridge so thick the spoon set in it like cement — so they had three croissants each and gave the porridge to Arthur. When they returned much later in the day they discovered that the video that Lysander’d thought was a jolly musical turned out to be an incredibly blue movie about rent boys.

As a result Lysander sat through the entire video in mounting horror with his T-shirt neck pulled up over his eyes, only lowering it occasionally when Georgie, in fits of laughter, said it was safe to look or when he wanted another drag at his joint.

‘I really like gays,’ he kept saying in bewilderment. ‘Who would have thought my friend Gregor could do things like that? I’m sorry, Georgie.’

He’s still only a child, thought Georgie, but certainly a very endearing one.

When Guy returned on Friday he was relieved to find the house a lot tidier and flowers in the downstairs rooms — but no little posy to welcome him in his dressing room. Nor any whisky, nor dinner on, nor any sign of Georgie. Usually the sniping started as he crossed the threshold. When she drifted down the backstairs from her study half an hour later she looked noticeably better, as though an iron had smoothed out her face.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked in amazement.

‘I usually come home on Friday,’ said Guy nettled.

‘Is it Friday? I didn’t realize. O God, I haven’t done anything for supper.’

‘Work must be going well!’ Guy was nonplussed. Coming home had recently been like being parachuted into an effing mine field.

Next morning Georgie rose early insisting she must walk a surprised and intensely irritated Dinsdale before it grew too hot. She put on a new and becoming T-shirt, and lots of lipstick and scent before she left, then stayed away for two hours reading Billboard and The Face under a chestnut tree. On the way home she carefully removed her lipstick with a Kleenex and rubbed into Dinsdale’s fur some of Lysander’s Eau Sauvage, which they’d hidden in an oak tree on the edge of the wood. This made her giggle so much she walked into the house looking happy for the first time in months.

Returning from a Sunday afternoon trip to get more petrol for the mower and ring Julia, Guy was disconcerted to find a note from Georgie: ‘Just popped down to The Apple Tree to get some milk.’

‘You’ve lived here for over four months,’ reproved Guy when she returned an hour later, ‘and you hadn’t realized The Apple Tree is shut on Sunday afternoon. They have to have some time off.’

‘Aren’t I stupid?’ said Georgie blithely.

‘And we’ve got plenty of milk.’ Opening the fridge door, Guy confronted her with a regiment of white bottles.

‘I must be going senile.’

On Sunday night Guy, who was getting edgy, heard Georgie singing ‘Stranger in Paradise’ in her bath. Christ, the whole village must be able to hear that raw, thrilling, yelping voice ringing round the valley. Georgie hadn’t sung in her bath since Julia came down.

One of the great set-backs to Guy’s amorous career had been having to sell the BMW to appease the bank and other creditors. Going to the station in a battered Golf which had no air-conditioning didn’t have the same kudos and the loss of his car telephone had really clipped Cupid’s wings. At least he’d got a phone card with his own personal number so he could put any calls made from telephone boxes or from home on the gallery number. The new monitoring of calls was an awful bore.

He and Julia had made plans to travel up to London together the following morning, but it would mean him getting a later train than usual because Julia’s babysitter couldn’t reach her until half-past eight. Terrified of rousing suspicion he waited until Georgie emerged pink and reeking of Floris from her bath before announcing that he intended catching the nine o’clock train instead of the seven.

After a perceptible pause, Georgie said: ‘I wouldn’t. At least you’ll get a seat on the seven. The nine’s packed out on a Monday.’

‘At least it gives me another hour in bed with you,’ said Guy gallantly.

Thinking how much better Georgie looked as she slithered into her cream satin nightdress and climbed into bed, Guy edged up and slid a hand round her left breast. Feeling his cock stiffening, drowsy from a Mogadon taken half an hour ago, Georgie curled up like an armadillo, elbows on her hip bones, knees up to her wrists, shutting him out.

‘Night, darling,’ she murmured and was asleep.

Going into the bathroom next morning, after a sweatily sleepless night trying to suppress that churning guilty excitement which overwhelmed him whenever he was going to see Julia, Guy was brought up by a rim of fox-brown hairs round the bath. Why the hell was Georgie shaving her legs to write songs up in her turret? After bathing and dressing at lightning speed, a skill learnt through adultery, Guy tracked Georgie down in another bathroom. Thinking how vulnerable she looked with her water-darkened hair streaming away from her thin white neck and far-too-bumpy backbone, he asked her what on earth she was washing her hair for.

‘Radio Paradise are coming to interview me at eleven.’