The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous

9

Lysander, Arthur, Tiny, Jack and a red Ferrari with a top speed of 200 m.p.h. moved into a charming cottage seven miles from Paradise, and Lysander lost no time in getting Marigold into training. As they both jogged in track suits along punishingly steep footpaths, watching the first celandine and coltsfoot pushing their way through the leaf mould and the winter barley slowly turning the brown fields pale green, Lysander wished it was Arthur he was getting fit for the Rutminster Gold Cup rather than Marigold, but they made terrific progress.

Marigold was still desperately low and Lysander got bored as she endlessly bent his ear about Larry, but he began to realize the extent of her hurt and desolation, and how hard she had supported Larry in his rocket-like rise to the top.

‘Ay really trayed to be a social asset,’ she told Lysander one morning as they pounded up Paradise Hill. ‘For years Ay struggled with those dreadful elocution lessons.’ Pink from her exertions, Marigold went even pinker. ‘Ay was taught by a disgustin’ old Lezzie who kept touchin’ may bosom to make me project from the chest.’

‘How dreadful,’ Lysander shuddered.

‘Let’s stop and look at the vista,’ gasped Marigold, who was panting more from non-stop chatter than the one-in-five gradient.

Across the valley, softened by a pale sun, morning mist and the thickening buds of its army of trees, Paradise Grange rose like a fairy-tale castle.

‘Ay can’t bear to leave it,’ she sighed. ‘You should see it in summer when the Paradise Pearl is out. That’s a pinky-whaite wisteria Mr Brimscombe planted thirty years ago. We floodlaight it in the evenings. And that’s Lady Chisleden’s home to the left. Ay trayed so hard to dress laike Lady Chisleden.’

‘I don’t think that’s wise,’ said Lysander in alarm. ‘The old trout was blocking Paradise High Street this morning with her Bentley, bawling out Adam’s Pleasure for delivering manure that was more straw than shit. Perhaps she could give Arthur a job.’

Marigold smiled, but as they started off down the hill, she returned to the subject of Larry.

‘Talkin’ of horses, Ay always thought we had a good love laife,’ her voice trembled. ‘But one of the things Nikki screamed at me was that Larry told her Ay made love laike a dead horse, because Ay never moved.’

Although Marigold had told him this a dozen times, Lysander put his arm round her.

‘Alive horses don’t move very much,’ he said consolingly. ‘I’ve seen lots of them being covered. My Uncle Alastair ran a stud at one time, and someone always held the mare still. Anyway, men say anything to a girl when they want to get their leg over.’

To begin with Lysander used to escape to London as soon as he had supervised Marigold’s frugal supper, to party all night, returning yawning at breakfast and falling asleep in the afternoon on Larry’s sunbed. But gradually he spent more and more time at Paradise Grange. There was so much to do, working out in the gym, swimming in the heated pool, riding the hunters Larry abandoned after he’d been bucked off at the opening meet, watching all Larry’s Walt Disney tapes, playing with Larry’s bar.

‘What a pity you’re off the booze, Marigold. I could mix you some terrific cocktails.’

One of their first mutual projects was the restoration of Arthur, who’d been confined to box rest for three months by the vet. As soon as the old horse arrived, Lysander had driven Marigold over to his cottage to meet him.

It was a beautiful day after a night of heavy rain, the robins were singing their heads off, and the racing streams glittered in the sunshine. Marigold tried not to squeal with terror as Lysander stormed the red Ferrari along the winding country lanes, whose high hedges were filling up so quickly with buds and even leaves one had no idea who might be hurtling in the opposite direction. By contrast, barking his head off, and rattling back and forwards like a shaken dice, Jack seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

‘How did you acquire Arthur?’ asked Marigold faintly.

‘Well, it’s an extraordinary story. Basically my cousin Titus was in the Army in the Oman and during some skirmish he found Arthur wandering on the edge of the desert, thin as a rake and desperately dehydrated. Well, Titus had nowhere to stable him that night and no headcollar, so he and his men made a corral by parking four army lorries, nose to tail. Even in his desperately weakened condition, Arthur jumped straight over one of the bonnets after a passing mare.

‘Titus thought they’d lost him, but he was back nosing around for toast and marmalade the next morning. Anyway, he was such a distinctive-looking horse that his owner, some Arab sheik whom Titus was liberating, recognized him and was so grateful he let Titus keep him. Arthur’s got quite a good pedigree.

‘Titus brought him back to England, and gave him to his father, my Uncle Alastair, who was a trainer and who won a lot of races with him. I was left some money by an aunt and Alastair was in financial trouble — he was always bad with money — so I spent the lot buying Arthur from him. I’d always loved the horse. Dad was absolutely livid.’

‘Ay’m not surprised,’ said Marigold, shocked. ‘Your uncle shouldn’t have taken all your inheritance.’

‘You haven’t met Arthur,’ said Lysander fondly. ‘Anyway, poor Uncle Alastair died of a heart attack and Arthur fell first time out last September. The vet said rest him for a year, but Mum and I were determined to get him sound by next season. Then Mum died in October.’ For a second Lysander’s hands clenched on the wheel. Then, swinging off the road and destroying any hope that Marigold might have had that he might slow down on the stony track up to the cottage, he added, ‘So, I’m going to get him sound if it kills me.’

‘Yes, Ay can see that,’ said Marigold, only thankful to be alive amid so much death, as Lysander drew up with a jerk outside the stables behind the cottage. ‘Oh, how adorable,’ she squeaked.

For the great grey horse hanging out of his box was tugging hay from a net so untidily that Tiny, his black Shetland stable-mate, who was attacking another net hung below his, had nearly vanished under a thatch of dropped hay.

‘The sweet wee thing.’ Marigold rushed forward to hug the little pony.

‘I wouldn’t,’ warned Lysander.

As Tiny lashed out with a lightning off-hind, he pulled Marigold out of the way just in time.

‘Tiny,’ he added, giving the pony a sharp boot on the rump, ‘is an absolute bitch.’

‘She ought to meet Nikki,’ said Marigold with a sniff. ‘Nikki said—’

‘Basically I only keep Tiny,’ interrupted Lysander hastily, before Marigold could get into her stride, ‘because Arthur’s so bats about her. She henpecks him dreadfully, and she’s tried to kill Jack several times.’

Scooping Jack up, Lysander held him so he could lick Arthur’s nose, then plonked the little dog between the horse’s huge flopping ears. Immediately Jack tightroped down Arthur’s straggly mane and settled down into the small of his back.

‘How adorable,’ sighed Marigold, giving Tiny a very wide berth, as she stroked Arthur. ‘He’s ’uge, isn’t he?’

‘Eighteen hands,’ said Lysander proudly. ‘He was the biggest horse in training. The public still send him fan mail and Twix bars, because they know he loves them.’

Arthur was pure white except for his grey nose and dark eyes which were fringed with long, straight, white eyelashes and edged with white on the inside corners, as though some make-up artist had wanted to widen them.

‘Arthur looks as though he’s been around,’ said Marigold.

‘Basically he has,’ said Lysander. ‘He’s lived in back gardens in Fulham and on Dolly’s parents’ lawn; there was a row about that, and he spent three days in the orchard of a woman whose house I was — er — trying to sell.’

Not anxious to expand on that, Lysander pointed to the traffic cones and rubber tyres he’d hung over Arthur’s door to give him something to biff around and amuse himself with.

‘He’s so good about being inside.’ Lysander pulled Arthur’s ears. ‘He just adores being petted. He never bites Tiny back and if Jack attacks his ankles, he just looks down in amazement. If he were a human, he’d put on a smoking jacket and velvet-crested slippers every night. He’s such a gent.’

‘Like his master,’ said Marigold warmly.

‘I wish Dolly thought so,’ sighed Lysander. ‘She’s just sent me a really sarky card: CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR RETIREMENT. Now watch this.’

As he produced a tin of Fanta out of his Barbour pocket, Arthur gave a deep Vesuvius whicker. Pulling back the tab, Lysander put the tin between Arthur’s big yellow teeth and, with gurgles of ecstasy, Arthur tipped back his head and drained the lot.

‘He can’t get up in the morning without his bowl of coffee,’ said Lysander retrieving the tin, ‘but only if it has two spoonfuls of sugar.’

February 13th was a day for celebration. Marigold weighed in a stone lighter at nine stone four, and even Patch had shed five pounds and could wriggle through the cat door again. After a frugal lunch of clear soup, fennel-and-kiwi-fruit salad, Marigold was virtuously stuffing invitations to a Save the Children Bring and Buy into envelopes, instead of white chocolates into herself, and Lysander was sitting with his muddy booted legs up on the table, trying to compose a Valentine poem to Dolly who still hadn’t forgiven him for his exploits in Palm Beach.

‘Ferdie’s brilliant at writing poems, but he’s out and I must get it in the post. What rhymes with green?’

‘Keen, mean, been, my queen, sheen,’ suggested Marigold. ‘Did you know birds choose their mates on Valentine’s Day?’ She peered out at the crowded bird-table. ‘And that in the spring the chaffinch gets a pinker breast and the blackbird a more golden beak and look at that starlin’ his feathers are all purple and green in the sunshine.’

But Lysander was looking at Marigold. Her skin was glowing pink, not dead white laced with hectic red. Her eyes, no longer bloodshot, were the same hazel as the catkins dropping their pollen on the kitchen table. There was no resemblance now to a Beryl Cook lady.

‘Sod the birds! You’re the one looking terrific,’ he said, tipping back his chair.

‘Oh, get on with you,’ said Marigold, putting two invitations into the same envelope, and blushing crimson. ‘Look at those sweet little great tits, swingin’ on that coconut.’ Then her happiness evaporated. ‘That was the coconut Larry won at the village fête last year.’

‘How d’you know so much about birds?’ asked Lysander, anxious to distract her.

‘Ay thought Ay should study wildlaife when we moved to the country. Unfortunately Larry got interested in another kaind of bird.’ That’s a sort of joke, if a very weak one, Marigold thought in surprise. Perhaps I’m beginning to laugh again.

‘How are you getting on with your poem?’ she asked. Proudly Lysander handed it across the table.

‘The rose is red, the grarse is green,’ read Marigold. ‘Open your legs and i’le turn you to creem.’

‘Oh, Laysander!’ Marigold was shocked rigid. ‘Ay don’t think that’s in the raight spirit. Why don’t you pop down to The Apple Tree? They’ve got some beautiful floral cards, with such lovely sentiments inside, or even left blank to record your message. Ay weakened,’ Marigold hung her head, ‘and sent one with primroses on to Larry. Ay trayed to get it back, and nearly got my hand stuck in the letter-box. Anyway, Ay don’t think Nikki’ll let it through, she gets the kettle out for anythin’ marked prayvate and confidential.’

Lysander was so worried Marigold would get no Valentines that he rushed off to The Apple Tree and bought her the largest card in the shop, which he handed to her with a huge bunch of daffodils the next morning, so she wouldn’t get all excited and think it was from Larry.

‘Oh, that’s beautiful,’ said Marigold, deeply touched.

Inside Lysander had written: ‘To Marrygold who gets prittier eech day. love Lysander.’

I didn’t marry gold, she thought sadly. It’s Nikki that’s going to do that, as soon as Larry divorces me.

Seeing her face cloud over, Lysander handed her another present. More Sellotape than gift wrap, thought Marigold fondly as she broke her way in, and found a size ten pair of black-velvet shorts.

‘They’re lovely,’ she squeaked, ‘but you must be jokin’.’

‘Give it three weeks,’ said Lysander, ‘and we’ll be there.’

‘We,’ mumbled Marigold. How very nice.

‘As we can’t celebrate your great weight loss by getting pissed this evening,’ added Lysander, ‘I bought some magic mushrooms in Rutminster.’

‘Ay can’t take drugs,’ said Marigold, appalled. ‘Ay’m hoping to become a JP.’

‘It’s just a natural product,’ said Lysander airily. ‘We can make tea out of them, you’ll love it and you won’t put on an ounce.’

‘Ay’m supposed to be going to a Best-Kept Village committee.’

‘Cancel it. Crocodile Dundee’s on television.’

‘Ay really shouldn’t,’ said Marigold. That was the third committee meeting she’d cancelled that week.

What a very sweet boy, thought Marigold. When they were jogging he helped her over stiles and caught her elbow if she slipped in the mud or on the icy roads, and he always opened doors and helped her on with her coat. He was probably doing it because he thought of her as a pathetic old wrinkly, she told herself sternly, but Larry had never done any of these things in eighteen years. And Lysander never got cross.

She loved the elegant way he draped himself over sofas and window seats, and suddenly dropped off to sleep like a puppy. And he was so appreciative of her cooking even if it was clear soup, fennel and kiwi fruit.

‘I got a tip-off about some seriously good dope, in Cathedral Lane in Rutminster of all unlikely places,’ Lysander told Marigold as they jogged up the north side of Paradise a fortnight later, ‘and this nutter pressed his face against the car window and said “Are you looking for Jesus?” I said, “No, I’m looking for No. 37.” Anyway, they’re offering an eighth of an ounce for the price of a sixteenth. If they’re discounting drugs, the recession must be biting.’

He was trying to cheer up Marigold, who, despite the beauty and incredible mildness of the day, had been thrown into black gloom by the display of crocuses on the lawn below the house. Specially planted by herself and Mr Brimscombe, it spelled out the word: CATCHITUNE in the record company’s purple-and-yellow colours.

‘It was the sort of gesture Larry adored. Ay was going to floodlight them as a surpraise, so he could see them from his helicopter when he landed on Frayday neight.’

And now bees were humming in the crocuses which were arching back their petals and thrusting forward their orange stamens to welcome the sun, if not a returning Larry.

‘Where’s Rannaldini?’ asked Lysander, as they pounded past the secretive grey abbey shrouded in its conspirator’s cowl of woods.

‘Whizzin’ round the world avoiding ex-waives and tax,’ said Marigold sourly. ‘Rannaldini plays on people’s weaknesses. He realized Larry was socially insecure. He made us go ex-directory for a start, said bein’ unlisted was the done thing. Just meant that no-one could phone us. Then he told Larry it was common to put up the name of one’s house. Ay’d just had a board carved in poker work for Larry’s birthday. Larry put it in the attic. So no-one can faind the house to drop in. Then he encouraged Larry to ’ave electric gates to keep out the public, so if people could faind the house, they couldn’t get in anyway. Phew, it’s hot.’

Marigold’s green track suit was dark with sweat.

‘Is he attractive, Rannaldini?’

‘In a horrid sort of way,’ said Marigold disapprovingly. ‘Not may taype, far too edgy makin’. Doesn’t Angel’s Reach look lovely in the sunshine?’

Stopping to rest on a mossy stile, they gazed down at the big Georgian house which was to be the future home of pop star Georgie Maguire. As well as the stone angels guarding the roof and the gates at the bottom of the drive, more angels had been clipped out of the lowering yew battlements which protected the house from the east wind. And, tossing their yellow locks, a row of weeping willows seemed about to tumble into the lake like glorious Swedish blondes racing down to bathe.

‘It’ll be lovely having another celeb in the village to vie with Hermione and Rannaldini,’ said Marigold. ‘I must make sure Georgie opens the church fête this summer to irritate Hermione. Georgie’s my best friend,’ she went on proudly. ‘She and Guy bought the house so she’d know someone near by in the country. Ay don’t know what she’ll say when she comes back from the States and fainds out Larry’s trying to chuck me out.

‘People are so competitive round here,’ sighed Marigold, breathing in the faint sweet heady smell of damp earth, burgeoning leaves and violets. ‘Rannaldini was jealous of Larry’s executive jet, so he got a bigger one. Then Larry got a Land-Rover with three telephones, so Rannaldini got a Range Rover with four.’

Below them the River Fleet lay like mother of pearl along the bottom of the valley. Black-headed gulls congregated on its banks.

‘Our grounds extend to the river,’ said Marigold, ‘so Rannaldini bought another twenty acres so he could have a mooring, too. Then Rannaldini had Hermione and God knows who else so Larry had to have Nikki.’

‘Who’s Rannaldini married to at the moment?’ asked Lysander, watching the gulls rising and resettling on the opposite bank like a snowstorm.

‘Well, his second wife, Cecilia, was an incredibly glamorous Italian soprano, but she made scenes rather than beds, and Rannaldini likes an ordered life. And not meanin’ to boast, I think he was a bit jealous that Larry’s home ran more smoothly than his did.’

‘I bet he was.’ Lysander squeezed Marigold’s shoulder. ‘Basically you know how to make a man happy.’

‘Well, Ay don’t know, but anyway, Rannaldini divorced Cecilia and married Kitty, his PA. In her case it stands for permanently available. She’s a poppet, an absolute gem, runs Rannaldini’s houses, sorts out his finances, checks his contracts, protects him from importunate fans and ex-mistresses, looks after his hoards of fraightful kiddies, and whisks up supper whenever he invaites entire orchestras home without any warning.’

‘I could do with someone like that,’ said Lysander. ‘I don’t understand the poll tax at all.’

‘And she puts up with Hermione treating her laike a housemaid. Oh sugar, talk of the devil.’

There was a whirl and chug like the last spin of a huge washing-machine, as a helicopter appeared over the woods.

‘That’s Hermione coming home,’ said Marigold furiously. ‘She’s also been on tour. No doubt she’ll be over in a flash, boastin’ what a success she’s been and how many men have fallen madly in love with her — “One can never have too many men in love with one, Marigold” — and bringing me her latest tape to cheer me up, which my husband has already produced in its thousands, and saying, “How are you? How are you?” when she doesn’t give a shit. Whoops, penny in the swear box. Hermione must be the most irritating person since the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.’

Next moment, the helicopter landed on the lawn of the big yellow house with beckoning chimneys, which lay between Valhalla and Paradise Village. They could see a tiny figure getting out and people running across the lawn to meet her and could hear voices and laughter echoing round the wood.

‘Let’s stop off at The Apple Tree and get some Mars bars,’ said Marigold, through gritted teeth.

‘Better not. Ferdie’s coming down to weigh you tomorrow.’

Back home, Marigold changed out of her track suit and had a long, comforting bath. When she came very apprehensively into the kitchen, wearing some new jeans, Lysander gave a Tarzan howl of joy.

‘My God, they’re great. You’ve got such a terrific ass — I mean figure.’

‘Not so good with all this flesh spillin’ over like uncooked pastry,’ said Marigold, raising her dark blue cardigan above the waistband.

‘That’ll be gone in a week,’ said Lysander, thinking what a lovely mouth Marigold had when it was laughing and not hidden in a hard line brooding about Larry. She looked ever less like a Beryl Cook lady now the regimented curls had been straightened and streaked and fell in a shiny blond bob over one eye. The hot bath had unleashed the Arpège she had splashed all over her body.

‘If Ferdie’s comin’ tomorrow, I better take a ton of Ex-Lax tonaight,’ said Marigold.

Heavens, who would have thought she’d ever discuss laxatives with a man? But having ridden races, Lysander knew all about getting weight off. He really was a very sweet boy.