‘Whatever are Marigold and the Best-Kept Village committee going to say?’ wondered Kitty as she tried to find a space to unload the goodies from her cardboard box. Stretched out on the sofa, Dinsdale opened a bloodshot eye as he smelt chicken. In the almost entirely frosted — up fridge, she found the three tins of pâté Rachel had inveighed against when she came to supper.

‘Listeria leads to hysteria.’ Ferdie peered over her shoulder, thrusting bottles through the ice like an Antarctic dredger. ‘Come away from this squalor and join me dancing naked in the rain.’

‘And cover me in ecstasy,’ sang back Kitty. At least she could replace Rannaldini’s champagne with Ferdie’s cheque. ‘You haven’t got any buttons on that shirt.’

‘They popped off when I was fat,’ confessed Ferdi, ‘but I like the shirt.’

‘I’ll sew some on for you.’

Lysander was too irritated to praise them for losing all that weight, but Georgie was delighted.

‘I cannot get over how marvellous you both look.’

As the back garden was even more crowded with nettles, they dragged the garden table and chairs out into Arthur’s and Tiny’s field. The sun had set, leaving a primrose-yellow horizon, but to the east huge black clouds were gathering.

Putting an arm round Georgie’s shoulders, Lysander gazed down into Paradise.

‘If I had a line of coke, I’d fly across the valley.’

Instead Ferdie produced some really strong dope. He had also rigged up an angle-poise lamp with an equally strong bulb, which threw their shadows, like late arrivals at the cinema, on to the trees that reared up at the end of the field. Above the wood, the stars rose like a fountain. The radio was blaring out pop music. Sewing on Ferdie’s buttons between alternate swigs of Dom Perignon and puffs of Ferdie’s cigarette, Kitty found, for the first time in her life, that she wasn’t terrified when Arthur leant his great whiskery face over her shoulder.

‘It’s getting very dark,’ complained Lysander, drawing on a joint like a maiden aunt throwing up a window and breathing in the morning air.

‘It’s night-time, you berk.’

It seemed to be getting hotter and closer. Midges were assaulting their scalps and their ankles. The grass was covered in little cobwebs and swarmed with spiders.

‘Why are they called daddy-long-legs?’ asked Kitty, biting off a thread.

‘Because daddies need long legs to run away from all the trouble they cause,’ said Georgie bitterly, ‘and talking of trouble, Miss Bottomley is threatening to suspend Flora again. The moment Flora passed her test, she was caught driving four friends off to the pub in Rutminster. Miss Bottomley has invited me to lunch to discuss it. Oh well, Gomorrah is another day. I’ve never had a woman make a pass at me.’

‘Nor have I,’ said Ferdie wistfully.

Everyone giggled.

‘You will now,’ said Kitty warmly.

‘I never recognize lesbians,’ said Ferdie. ‘Do they have moustaches?’

‘No, it’s gays who have moustaches,’ said Georgie.

‘The technique with the opposite sex,’ announced Lysander, refilling everyone’s glasses, ‘is to tell beautiful really stupid people—’

‘Like you,’ said Ferdie.

‘Like me,’ agreed Lysander, ‘to tell beautiful, thick people how clever they are and tell clever plain ones how beautiful they are, then they always roll over.’

‘What ’appens if they’re both plain and fick like me?’ asked Kitty.

‘You’re not,’ said Georgie, Ferdie and Lysander in unison.

‘Lysander means you’ve got to find a person’s Achilles’ heel and then praise it,’ explained Ferdie. ‘You’ve got a wonderful heel, Mrs Rannaldini.’

‘And he’s called Rannaldini. Whoops, sorry Kitty,’ said Lysander.

They all grew hysterical with laughter at the stupidness of their own jokes. When the Dom Perignon ran out they moved on to peach schnapps. Having sewn on Ferdie’s buttons, Kitty was fooling around with him, trying to make Wolfie’s boomerang come back. Every time she threw it, it went up in the air. Once she nearly hit Arthur.

‘That’s a valuable horse. I don’t mind if you hit Tiny,’ shouted Lysander, who was now beached like a whale across two chairs with his head in Georgie’s lap.

Ferdie was laughing all the time now, looking like a Chinaman with slit eyes and a huge inane grin. Against the towering trees, their shadows danced like the naughty boys dipped in great Agrippa’s ink-well.

‘Look how we get smaller as we approach,’ cried Kitty, waving her arms.

‘Wish dieting was as easy,’ yelled Ferdie.

‘Aren’t they sweet together?’ said Georgie, stroking Lysander’s forehead. ‘Ferdie’s very taken. He’s as lonely as she is. Wouldn’t it be perfect if he took her off Rannaldini?’

Even in his present stupor, Lysander was conscious of a distinct disquiet. If Ferdie started looking after Kitty, and Kitty after Ferdie, who would look after him?

‘Even the boomerang looks stoned,’ he said sulkily.

‘Will it ever rain again?’ sighed Georgie.

They were all too preoccupied to realize it had clouded over and the stars had rushed in. The tape had worked its way round.

‘Take me dancing naked in the rain and cover me in ecstasy,’ sang Blue Pearl.

I’m under ten stone, thought Kitty, capering round to the music. I’m having fun for the first time in years.

‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since I went Sharon-shagging in Benidorm with the cricket XI after A levels,’ said Ferdie, lighting another joint.

‘You probably met me there,’ screamed Kitty. Suddenly she stopped laughing. ‘Listen everyone.’

At first it sounded like a faint rustle of silk, or a distant scream, then a rattle of machine-gun fire. Gradually they felt the first drops on their hair, soothing the midge bites. Suddenly as they turned their faces upwards, it was like stepping into the shower.

‘Rain,’ yelled Georgie, joyfully leaping to her feet. ‘It’s raining. Our little trees will be saved after all.’

Trying to hold her back, Lysander grabbed her sarong. Next moment she was naked, dancing wildly round the field, her writhing body glistening like a seal, her wild red mane flattened and dripping down her back.

‘See me naked dancing in the rain,’ the glorious husky voice echoed across the valley, ‘and cover me with ecstasy.’

Letting out Tarzan howls, Lysander and Ferdie whipped off their clothes and raced after her. They were followed by Kitty, who removed her shirtwaister, but kept on her bra and knickers, which bobbed in the half-darkness like white rabbits.

Off they all charged into the deluge and an ecstatic conga round the field, leaping to avoid the thistles. Jack and Maggie frisked round their heels yapping hysterically, with Dinsdale working off Kitty’s cold chicken, which he’d just eaten whole, waddling behind them. Arthur and Tiny cantered alongside, snorting, with their tails in the air.

‘I’m not frightened of Arthur,’ sang Kitty, swaying in front of him, stroking his whiskery nose. ‘See me naked dancing in the rain, boo-be-doo.’

Lysander was just noticing what a surprisingly good dancer she was, and how sweetly her plump body bounced along — like Pigwig in Pigling Bland — and how he could see her nipples now her bra had become see-through, when a car screeched up to the cottage.

‘It’s the fuzz,’ giggled Georgie.

‘No, you’re the fuzz,’ said Lysander, tugging at her sodden bush, and they all collapsed again.

Finding the house unlocked, David Hawkley walked straight in. The sight that greeted him compounded his worst fears, a drunken orgy, possibly bestiality and witchcraft, led by that decadent hippy, Georgie Maguire, who was now bopping with a basset, and with that degenerate, overweight ruffian Ferdie Fitzgerald bringing up the rear.

Nor were matters improved by a second car roaring up decanting a deputation from the Best-Kept Village committee, including Marigold, Lady Chisleden and the vicar, to do a spot check on Magpie Cottage.

Glimpsing naked dancers, Lady Chisleden clapped her hands over the vicar’s eyes, crying: ‘Don’t look, Percy,’ in a ringing voice.

Whereupon the vicar, having seen Lysander and a much-improved Ferdie in the buff, and being convinced he’d finally arrived in heaven, tore down Lady Chisleden’s fingers, crying in an equally ringing voice that the Church must face up to its obligations.

‘See me naked dancing in the rain,’ sang Ferdie waving a nearly empty bottle of peach schnapps. ‘Come and party, you guys.’

‘And cover me with ecstasee-ee-ee,’ joined in Kitty.

‘Put on your clothes at once,’ ordered Lady Chisleden. ‘Your vicar is present.’

‘Oh, piss off,’ said Lysander in a bored voice.

Painfully reminded of little Cosmo earlier, David Hawkley lost his temper.

‘Lysander,’ he thundered, ‘stop this disgraceful pantomime at once.’

It was a voice that chilled Lysander’s blood. For a second he froze, then gathering up his junior dog and holding her in front of himself like a fig-leaf, he turned to Georgie.

‘Darling, I don’t think you’ve met my father.’


43



The party broke up very quickly after that. A frantically giggling Kitty, Ferdie, Georgie and Dinsdale spitting out splinters of boomerang were driven away by a very irate Marigold.

‘You’ve really let the sayde down, Georgie, conductin’ black-magic orgies. You must have realized what a pigstay Lysander had reduced Magpie Cottage to, probably contributed to it yourself. And you and Lysander are plastered all over The Scorpion. Gay’s been on the phone all day, trying to faind you. He’s standin’ bay you, bay the way. Ay can’t think way, and all the Press are doorsteppin’ Paradise Grange to get the Catchitune angle from Larry.’