‘Georgie!’ He tried to focus. ‘Oh Georgie, darling, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. When are you going to make your speech?’

Then Georgie flipped.

‘Piss off,’ she screamed, advancing on him with her bouquet. ‘Just piss off you little fucker to your playpen and never come back again.’

There was an appalled silence.

‘Georgie,’ wailed Lysander.

Desperate to reach her, he lunged forward, tripping over a guy rope and lumbering into the raffle table, sending everything flying with a deafening crash. The Copenhagen dinner service was in smithereens, as were the Waterford glass and the bottles from The Pearly Gates.

‘Put not your trust in princes,’ murmured Bob.

‘Time for a natural break,’ said Meredith who was quite hysterical with laughter.

Hermione, who had hysterics of a different kind, was whisked inside the vicarage by Joy Hillary. Guy seized control of the microphone telling people to leave now to avoid broken glass, assuring them that the raffle would be drawn at a later date and all the winners would get their prizes in due course.

‘And that little shit is going to pay for them,’ he said grimly as he switched off the microphone.

After the broken glass and china had been swept up, organizers and helpers retreated to the vicarage for a well-earned drink while the money was counted. Georgie, who was shaking with mortification, only wanted to slope off home but Guy insisted she came too.

‘You’ve made a complete fool of yourself, Panda. You owe it to the committee and to me to put in an appearance and show a bit of contrition.’ The moment they entered the vicarage, he was off congratulating stall holders.

Hermione, as a result of smelling salts, two large whiskies and a vat of buttering up, was recovered enough to draw Georgie aside. Having misinterpreted Georgie’s tight lips earlier, she said: ‘I want to put your mind at rest. Guy admires me — very much indeed — it was so caring of him to buy my posy, but I’m far too much of a friend of yours to encourage him. Anyway he’s not my type.’

‘Why d’you kiss him on the fucking mouth every time you see him?’ Georgie was appalled to hear herself saying.

‘Oh Georgie.’ Hermione put her head on one side. ‘I thought by showing you everything was in the open, you’d realize nothing was going on.’

This time misreading Georgie’s stunned silence for approval, Hermione went on: ‘We all feel so sorry for Guy, he’s such a darling man, so dependable and so different when you’re not around glowering at him like a wardress. He may have lied to you, but men do lie when they’re frightened. Anyway, any man of gumption keeps a mistress,’ Hermione lowered her voice. ‘You wouldn’t want to be married to a wimp. Take a leaf out of Kitty Rannaldini’s book and accept it. Brickie knows how to behave with dignity.’

‘Because she doesn’t kick against the lack of pricks,’ snarled Georgie.

‘Oh, I’m sure Rannaldini fulfils her every need.’

Stumbling away from Hermione, Georgie searched for a friendly face, but all the stall holders, holding their glasses of cheap wine like unexploded bombs, averted their eyes. Poor Guy to be lumbered with such a liability. Did liabilities always turn men into liars?

‘I wasn’t always like this,’ Georgie wanted to plead.

‘You all right?’ It was Marigold.

‘No, I’m not. That fucking Lysander!’

‘Hush.’ Marigold drew Georgie towards the window. The ledge was covered in dust. A vase of roses was dripping petals. Joy Hillary’s thoughts had been elsewhere this week.

‘And what were you doing letting Guy buy you drinks?’

‘I was thirsty,’ said Marigold apologetically, ‘and Ay do like him. Oh, Georgie, we’ve made six thousand pounds and Ferdie’s just given us a cheque for a thousand to pay for Lysander’s breakages.’

‘Where is the little beast?’

‘Passed out in the field next door.’

‘I hope they burn the stubble with him in it.’

But Marigold wasn’t listening. ‘We’ve made six thousand and, oh, Georgie, Lady Chisleden has asked me to call her Gwendolyn.’


33



Somehow, because Georgie was busy working out whether to kill Guy with a bread knife or a carving knife they managed to get home without a row. She had just fed Charity and Dinsdale when he came into the kitchen carrying a file.

‘I’m off, Panda. I told Joy and Percy I’d help clear up. Don’t bother with supper. I’ll grab a sandwich at The Pearly Gates. I’ve got a Best-Kept Village meeting later.’

‘Why don’t you enter Julia in the Best-Kept Mistress competition?’ screamed Georgie. ‘You might even beat Hermione.’

Georgie cried and cried, had a large Bacardi, got down her suitcase and couldn’t think where to go. It was so hot she put on an old denim bikini scrumpled up in the ironing. Then she took a plum from the fruit bowl and found she’d put the stone in her mouth and chucked the fruit in the ashy muck-bucket. Everything turned to ashes. Poor Julia had looked devastated, too. Georgie found she didn’t hate her any more. And maybe Marigold, Hermione and all the ladies of Paradise were right and Guy was different and really nice when he wasn’t with her. Why had Lysander let her down? Because she simply wasn’t important enough to him. She jumped as the telephone rang. It was Flora.

‘Where are you?’

‘Lake Geneva — er — staying in a youth hostel. It’s great here.’

‘And where the hell is my white silk shirt? No doubt split across the back of one of your rugger-playing boyfriends, or being used to clean his car.’

There was a pause.

‘Look behind the spare-room door,’ said Flora huffily. ‘You’ll find it there. Go and look now.’

Belting upstairs Georgie found her white shirt, then remembered it was the spare room where Guy had adjusted the mirror to sleep with Julia, and started to cry again. By the time she got downstairs Flora had rung off. Georgie felt awful — poor darling Flora might jump in Lake Geneva.

I was beastly to her, said a small voice, because I was jealous of her and Lysander. She was overcome by a sick, heart-thumping, craving for information. She daren’t snoop in Guy’s study. She was a bit drunk and he’d notice if papers had been moved.

Loathing herself, she went into Flora’s room. The radio and the record player were still on. Clothes carpeted the floor. On the wall was a poster of a gorilla; underneath it someone had written: FLORA SEYMOUR ON A GOOD DAY. Here was Flora’s diary; Georgie’s hands were shaking so much that at first she couldn’t focus.

‘August 13: Read The Franklyn’s Tale (not bad for a set book) about a man who sleeps with a disgusting old woman who turns into a beautiful princess. I can really relate to the Franklyn.’

Would I turn into a princess if I went to bed with Lysander? wondered Georgie.

‘August 14: Sunday.’ Here it was. ‘Lunch at Valhalla, Lysander and Ferdie there and Hermione being a pain.’ Then followed a lot of guff about Lysander riding into the lake. ‘He’s gorgeous but quite old. He and Ferdie really sweet and invited me over to Magpie Cottage. Daddy really nice, too, gave me a lift. We had a good chat. Later we had fantastic sex in the wood. I’m terrified I’m falling in love.’

Giving a moan, Georgie turned the page. ‘August 15: X made me come by just talking to me over the telephone. He’s given me a tiny vibrator in the shape of a fountain-pen as a going-away present so I don’t miss him, but I know I will. At least he’s flying out lots to see me.’

Georgie was so transfixed with horror that at first she didn’t hear the telephone. Sobbing at the sickness that had made her pick the lock of Pandora’s box she reeled down the landing to her bedroom and snatched up the receiver.

‘Georgie, it’s Lysander. I’m sorry I got pissed. I want to come round.’

‘Fuck off,’ screamed Georgie.

‘I know I let you down. Ferdie’s just bawled me out. I’ll make it up to you.’

‘You won’t. Your bloody dog screwed up my speech, then you make a fool of me in front of everyone and finally you’re fucking my daughter. How dare you! Keep your rotten fee, but I don’t want to see you or Ferdie ever again and don’t you dare contact Flora.’ Slamming down the receiver she raced round the house pulling out telephones as though she were weeding tares out of her life.

She couldn’t believe it was only eleven o’clock. Out on the terrace the air was heavy with night-scented stock. In the moonlight Rannaldini’s strawbales encased in black shiny bags looked like great slugs coming to eat her.

Undressed in her lonely double bed, she looked in the big mirror over the fireplace and in her reflection, with her red hair flowing over her bare shoulders, she could only see Julia. Sobbing she swallowed two sleeping pills and crashed out.

Next day she woke, as always after taking pills, feeling calm and almost euphoric. What did a million mistresses matter? In one of those bewildering volte-faces, she didn’t shrug off Guy’s encroaching hands. Today she was going to be like Brickie, who would never spurn a husband.

‘Let’s make love outside. Oh, Panda, I’ve missed you,’ said Guy, taking her down to a corner of the lake hidden by willow trees and laying her on the scratchy yellow grass. But just as he’d put his hand between her legs, Dinsdale had barged through the willow fronds and was shoved aside so vociferously he had waddled off in a sulk to Mother Courage.

Georgie, needing the release so desperately, found herself wracked by sexual paralysis.

Too tense to reach orgasm that way, she started to cry and begged Guy to come inside her, but she was so tight down there, she nearly screamed out with pain.