Clambering on to Ferdie’s broad shoulders, Lysander straightened up and nearly fell off. He must be seeing things. For there in the centre, wearing shiny black riding-boots and the tightest buff breeches, stood Rannaldini. With one hand he held a hunting whip which he was cracking like a rattlesnake, with the other a leading rein, which was attached to a studded dog-collar round Hermione’s neck.

Hermione was totally naked except for tight-fitting high-heeled boots. Her body ran with sweat. Her large, wonderfully firm breasts bounced as she trotted round in a circle, her big curved bottom was already slightly pink, her eyes glistened in terror and excitement.

‘You’re not going fast enough,’ snapped Rannaldini, cracking the whip again, so the wicked thong caught her left buttock. With a neighing scream, Hermione broke into a canter.

Wrong leg, thought Lysander.

She was panting hard now; Rannaldini smiled, but his eyes were dead.

‘Are you sorry for the way you behaved?’

‘Oh yes, Rannaldini.’

‘Sorry you made scenes?’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘What are you going to do about it? Head up, straighten your back.’ With another vicious flick he caught the underside of her breast.

‘I’m sorry,’ shrieked Hermione.

‘I said, “What are you going to do about it?”’ Yanking her towards him, nearly toppling her, he put a hand between her legs. ‘You’re getting bloody excited. Loving it, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Rannaldini.’

‘Then we’ll try a few jumps. Come on, bitch.’

At this moment Lysander tumbled off Ferdie’s shoulders and sent a yard broom flying.

‘Who’s there?’ called out Rannaldini.

Just in time, Ferdie and Lysander leapt behind the mounting block. At least the Ferrari was parked round the corner. As Rannaldini came out they flattened in terror. Fortunately lust drew him back again.

‘Must have been a horse,’ they heard him say, as the key turned in the lock.

‘What was going on?’ hissed Ferdie. Lysander, bright red with shock, trying not to laugh, mouth wide open in amazement, couldn’t utter, until they had hurtled to the boundaries of Rannaldini’s land, and turned into the road up to Angel’s Reach.

‘Oh, Ferd, you never saw such a thing in your life! Talk about undressage. He was schooling her and she was bollock-naked except for her boots. She’s got the most fantastic body! You can see exactly why he stays with her. She was giving excited little squeaks like Maggie when she gets on a rabbit trail. Give me a cigarette — and they were obviously about to have the most enormous bonk. God, it was gross, but seriously sexy. Wow! I’ve never seen anything like that.’

‘You must have in a porn mag.’

‘Dearie me, I’ll never get rid of this erection.’

He took a cigarette from Ferdie, gave a long drag, and gasped in horror. ‘You don’t suppose he schools poor darling Kitty, do you?’

‘She’d be a lot thinner if he did.’

Georgie looked better, really wonderful, thought Ferdie, as he and Lysander went into the kitchen at Angel’s Reach. He felt distinctly envious, when, after pecking him on the cheek, she turned to Lysander, wrapping him in a warm, voluptuous embrace and kissed him quite openly on the mouth. She was wearing a torn grey T-shirt of Flora’s and a pair of Guy’s boxer shorts covered with bonking alligators. Despite chunkier legs, she looked twice as sexy as Marigold, who was all done up in a pleated white tennis dress with her hair in a pink bow.

‘Ay’m afraid Ay always maintain the discipline of wearin’ whayte,’ she said apologetically.

Lysander wouldn’t let anyone hit a ball until they’d drunk a bottle of Muscadet and he’d relayed every detail of his adventure.

The grass court was tucked away behind the house. Marigold was a good player. Having spent her youth aspiring to join a tennis club, she had been much coached in later life and as a non-working wife played all summer. Ferdie was overweight, but he had a good eye, and got most things back. Georgie had no backhand and was out of practice but she played with Lysander who was so soaringly better than anyone else that they beat Marigold and Ferdie 6–0, 6–1.

After that they started fooling around, pretending the ball was Hermione and saying: ‘You’ve been a naughty girl, whack,’ and giving a shriek, and getting so weak with laughter, that Maggie got excited and ran off with all the balls, with Jack yapping encouragement, so they packed it in.

Georgie seemed so happy that, as they walked back to the house, Ferdie dropped back and asked Lysander if she knew anything about Guy pursuing Rachel.

‘No, I’m sure not. Why upset her?’

‘God, this weather’s bliss. If this is the greenhouse effect, long may it last,’ said Georgie, emptying a watering-can over a panting Dinsdale.

‘Don’t let Rachel hear you,’ said Marigold nervously, ‘and don’t let her see you wastin’ water laike that. She’s given me hell about Larry’s floodlaightin’ and our chandeliers in the lounge.’

It was the most perfect evening. Night-scented stock and tobacco plants mingled their sweet scents with the first autumnal waft of the poplars. A pale blue-and-cherry-red air-balloon drifted home into a rose-pink sunset passing the bright star Arcturus which had just appeared above the wood.

‘Rannaldini’s going to be livid Lysander’s so good,’

said Marigold. ‘He’s so used to being the best player by miles.’

‘You and I might beat him,’ said Georgie fondly.

‘Aren’t you going to play with Guy?’

‘No, I’m not. He gets so cross if I serve double faults.’

Lysander couldn’t get the scene in the riding school out of his mind. It was the act of a seriously depraved man.

‘Why doesn’t Kitty leave him?’

Georgie shrugged, her face in shadow. ‘Why doesn’t anyone leave anyone? Mental paralysis, a belief in fidelity? Kitty’s awfully religious. She worships the bastard, and he’s sapped her confidence. Anyway, where would she go? Her mother’s in a home.’

‘Rannaldini won’t let her go. She’s far too useful,’ said Marigold.

An owl hooted, pigeons cooed. Across the valley they were shooting clays. Georgie topped up everyone’s glass and took another bottle out of the ice bucket for Lysander to open.

‘I’ve had a brainwave,’ she said patronizingly. ‘Kitty’s got a birthday this month. She’s a Virgo, wouldn’t you know. Why don’t we club together and give Lysander to her as a present?’

She turned to Lysander. Her sludge-green eyes dark brown and mocking in the half-light. ‘You’re always talking about the need for a real challenge. Forget the Rutminster, try Kitty.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Lysander with rare ill temper. ‘It’d be a farce. There’s no way I could get Rannaldini back for Kitty. He was never hers in the first place. For Marigold, for you, for Hermione, not that she needs it, for Rachel even, no problem. But not poor little Kitty, for Christ’s sake.’

With her sad, round, formless face, Kitty reminded him of the huge white moon hanging like a plate above Larry’s woods, hardly discernible in the pale azure sky of the first dusk.

‘Go on,’ urged Ferdie, scenting more cash. ‘Give it a try.’

If Lysander was refusing to leave Paradise and Georgie, this seemed a good way to supplement his income.

Lysander scooped up Maggie who was trembling at the bangs of the clay shoot, cuddling her to his chest.

‘You just collect the ten per cent,’ he said crossly. ‘You get Rannaldini back if you feel so strongly. I’m having none of it.’

The others proceeded to get drunk and noisy. Lysander sat in silence, watching the moon rising, turning from a pale pinky-orange to butter-gold like one of Miss Cricklade’s sunflowers, to incandescent mother-of-pearl, and then flooding the whole valley while the sky deepened from smoky-blue to sapphire as the doomed, menacing notes of Rachmaninov’s third and most difficult piano concerto floated up from Jasmine Cottage.

‘Rachel plays wonderfully well,’ said Marigold. ‘Larry says she’s going to be a big star.’

‘Might cheer her up,’ said Georgie. ‘Better than grumbling about junk food and fending off passes from Rannaldini.’

‘You’d be a true knaight in shining armour if you rattled Rannaldini and made him naicer to Kitty,’ said Marigold.


38



At six o’clock the following morning, Kitty was woken by the hiss of illicit sprinklers defying the hose-pipe ban. The floodlights of Paradise Grange across the valley had been switched off, which would delight Rachel, but to the left Venus blazed golden, and as Orion, followed by his yawning dogs, pulled on his boots and climbed up the sky, Kitty could see Mr Brimscombe wearily picking up discarded underclothes round the pool. Natasha and a crowd of friends had gone skinny-dipping in the middle of the night. Their shrieks must have roused the whole neighbourhood.

Glancing in the mirror, Kitty gave a wail. Desperate at the lankness of her hair, in her tiredness she had misread the home-perm directions and left the mix on too long. The result was a scorched, frizzy mass. If only she could hide behind the tea urn this afternoon, but, at the last moment, Rannaldini had asked the vicar, whose wife was away, and would expect Kitty to make up the numbers.

Falling to her knees, Kitty prayed to God to make her less vain.

‘And let me not let my partner down too badly this afternoon and please don’t let anyone find out it’s my birthday or they’ll be embarrassed.’

It was already hot and airless as she crept downstairs. Amid the chaos of dirty glasses, mugs, beer cans and overflowing ashtrays, there was a note from Natasha about not singeing her tennis dress. Kitty wanted to scream, but at least she hadn’t got the curse and Mrs Brimscombe was coming to help with tea.