by Jilly Cooper
‘Bernard looks more like a walrus than ever,’ Chloe whispered to Simone, as the crew were held back by the first assistant director’s ponderous breast-stroke.
Lucy, due to take over from Bernard, quivered on the edge of the pool, dying to hide her white body under the water. Having spent so much time on location in hot countries, however, she swam very well. Spurred on by the sight of Rannaldini, the crew’s last swimmer, poised to plunge into ferocious action, she streaked up the pool to roars of applause.
‘Bravo, Lucy.’ As she lurched forward to touch the brass rail, Rannaldini’s mahogany body flew over her head. Alas, Alpheus, the cast’s last swimmer, had had an Olympic trial and emerged like an otter at the other end, beating an enraged Rannaldini by yards. Vowing to take both Pushy and Cheryl off Alpheus, Rannaldini stormed off to change.
There was a chorus of wolf whistles as Lucy climbed panting out of the pool. ‘Pity you’re always hiding that gorgeous body under a shirt and jeans, Miss Latimer,’ yelled Ogborne, who was now wearing Hermione’s rose-trimmed sunhat on his shaved head. Already drunk, he was doing very well for presents.
Tab gave him a purple and white striped shirt from Harvie & Hudson, confessing that in her drinking days she had bought it four sizes too big for Isa.
‘Thank you,’ said Ogborne, kissing her. ‘Pity you’re off the booze. I was hoping to get a job carrying you home after parties.’
Tab giggled. All the men had gasped when she’d rolled up in Wolfie’s blue suede dress, then sighed in disappointment to see a lowering Isa in her wake. Chloe, however, spotting fresh talent, sidled up to Isa.
Alpheus, the hero of the evening after his winning swim, was having a wonderful time. Pushy, who he’d pleasured earlier in the long grass, was looking very lovely and so was Serena. But no-one outshone Tabitha. He was just edging towards her when he choked on a shrimp vol-au-vent. His wife, Cheryl, had swept in, a vision in cream lace, showing even more boob than Pushy.
‘You never told me you were coming,’ he hissed.
‘You never asked,’ hissed back Cheryl.
‘Meesus Shaw, you ’ave never look more enticing.’ Rannaldini, equally radiant in pale beige linen, clicked his fingers for Clive to bring Cheryl a glass of Krug. ‘Let me show you my garden.’ Then, seeing Serena moving in on him, desperate for a showdown, he grabbed a swaying hunk with fretted black Charles II hair. ‘Serena, my dear, you must remember Granny’s partner, Giuseppe,’ and shoving them together he whisked Cheryl into the shrubbery.
‘Where’s Tristan?’ asked Tab, who wanted him to see her in her beautiful new French dress.
‘Gone to London,’ said Simone. ‘In a way it’s easier when my uncle is not here – the women don’t compete for him, the men with him.’
Tab didn’t think so at all and was very disappointed. ‘That Giuseppe,’ she stormed, turning to Wolfie with all the disapproval of the reformed drinker, ‘has just thrown up in Rannaldini’s delphinium bed and blamed Maria’s paella.’
The party roared on. Ogborne, Sylvestre and even newly married Valentin were trying to get off with Jessica, Sexton’s ravishing new production secretary. Chloe was finding Isa desperately heavy-going.
‘Why are you known as the Black Cobra?’ she asked.
‘Because I’m lethal.’ Isa yawned and looked at his watch: he still hadn’t made his number with Rannaldini.
Neither had Serena. Desperate to win back Rannaldini, she flirted more and more outrageously with Giuseppe, until Granny, knitting quietly away under a walnut tree, wanted to plunge his needles into Rannaldini’s heart for setting the whole thing up.
The evening’s main topic of conversation, however, was George Hungerford’s flying visit, and whether Flora should have entered into the spirit of her part. Most of the crew said they would have been only too happy to grope Pushy. Soon Hermione was loudly putting her oar in.
‘I cannot understand why Flora Seymour made such a fuss. I have often made love to young women on stage.’
‘Can you get me some comps in the front row next time you’re at it?’ called out an excited Sexton, to guffaws all round.
Hermione flounced off. Trust such a common little man to lower the tone.
Emerging stars reflected milkily in the silken green water. The party was growing more raucous. Those with good bodies had started skinny-dipping.
‘Those roses need watering,’ said Valentin, emptying a bottle of red over Hermione’s sunhat, which was still on Ogborne’s head.
‘Where’s Flora?’ asked Simone.
‘Having dinner with Baby at the Pearly Gates,’ said Lucy.
‘No, she isn’t, they’ve just arrived,’ crowed Griselda, as, followed by Trevor the terrier, Flora and Baby drifted hand in hand through the buttercups. ‘I always said those two were an item.’
‘Oh, Grizel, when will you learn?’ sighed Meredith.
Ogborne, dripping red wine, and more delighted to have a stale Pearly Gates Scotch egg from Trevor than a magnum of Moët from Baby and Flora, patted the bemused little dog over and over again.
‘It’s the fort wot counts, Trevor, my lad.’
A snake in the water caused shrieks of horror, particularly when Baby fished it out by its tail and killed it with one crack on the side of the pool. It turned out to be an adder.
‘People eat snake in Australia,’ he informed his admiring audience. ‘It tastes just like fanny.’
‘How would you know?’ asked Ogborne pointedly.
‘My brother told me,’ said Baby, to howls of mirth.
‘Baby is so attractive,’ sighed Simone.
Crashing around, like a fretful moth, searching for Rannaldini, Hermione perked up when the singing started and she won first round in the not-so-friendly fight to hog the microphone.
‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ was soon blasting squirrels and pigeons out of the trees within a half-mile radius.
Baby, after several snorts of cocaine, was in a wicked mood, his eyes glittering, his bronze curls tangled round his handsome face. Griselda was thumping him on the back for being exactly the right weight at the moment, when Hermione charged up to them.
‘Please protect me from that common little man.’
‘Which one?’ Griselda stared around.
‘Sexton,’ hissed Hermione.
‘Oh, right,’ said Baby thoughtfully. ‘Not many people know Sexton went to Eton.’
‘Eton,’ said Hermione incredulously. ‘Eton?’
‘Certainly did. Sexton thought he’d get on better in the film business if he acquired an East End accent, so he took elocution lessons.’
‘He’s so modest, he doesn’t like to talk about his very grand family,’ murmured Griselda.
Five minutes later, she and Baby were crying with laughter as they watched Sexton, looking as delightedly bewildered by Hermione’s unexpected attentions as Trevor had over Ogborne’s Scotch egg.
‘You’re not to tease,’ Hermione was telling him roguishly. ‘One can always tell an Etonian from his air of quiet authority. I expect you played cricket against my very good friend Rupert Campbell-Black, who must have been at Harrow at around the same time.’
Baby was so entranced he could hardly be dragged away to sing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ with Granny and Mikhail.
‘Oh, I love this tune,’ sighed Flora.
She was just wondering where George was when Baby sang, ‘And when you stopped and smiled at me,’ and, looking straight across at her, jolted her with a lightning bolt of desire.
The moment the song was over, Baby launched into ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and, watched in amazement by the entire party, seized Flora’s hand and danced her off into the park, round and round under the stars through the foam of cow-parsley.
They were both so drunk they nearly fell over one of the set designer’s pots of paint near the cloisters. Seizing his brushes, they were busy writing ‘Death to Rannaldini’, with cackles of laughter, on the chapel walls when they saw evil, leat
her-clad Clive gliding up on the right and hastily changed it to ‘Death to Racism’ before running away.
‘“Gee, it’s great, after staying up late, walking my Baby back home,”’ Flora’s piercingly sweet voice echoed round the valley, as she bore Baby up the valley to her parents’ house, Angels’ Reach, because she’d promised to feed Charity the cat.
‘What was Rannaldini like in bed?’ asked Baby.
‘A genius. Mesmerizing, imaginative, with immense concentration, but utterly depraved. He’d have taken me down to hell.’
To their right was a long lake, even shorter of water than Rannaldini’s. White daisies spilt over a low stone wall, lilies poured forth scent out of a tangle of weeds.
‘What was his watch-tower like?’
‘The top floor’s all bed with a mural of wildly applauding crowds in evening dress.’
‘We’ll have applauding clouds,’ murmured Baby, idly stroking the nape of Flora’s long neck beneath her short back and sides.
Oh, help, thought Flora, I want to sleep with Baby so badly but it’s a cul-de-fucking-no-sack.
Ahead, stone angels stretched up from each corner of the roof, plucking star daisies out of a grey suede sky. In protest against their being so late, Charity the cat had left a small disc of sick on the hall floorboards. Baby most resourcefully scraped it up with his platinum Amex card.
‘Seriously good pictures,’ he said, drifting from one big underfurnished room to another, as Flora opened a tin for Charity and a bottle of Moët.
‘My father owns a gallery.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In London and up to no good, probably. He’s very attractive.’
‘Like his daughter,’ said Baby. He led her out into the garden, waltzed her round and round until the stars joined in the dance, and they collapsed on the dewy grass, their hearts hammering.
For a second, Baby laughed down at her, his bland, brown, unrepentant face irresistibly young and beautiful, caught in the lights from the house. Then he kissed her.
Rigid with shock, Flora clamped her mouth shut, but such was the darting insistence of his tongue that her lips soon opened, and she was kissing him back with ecstatic enthusiasm.
‘I thought you only liked men,’ she gasped, when she finally drew breath.
‘No more Mr Nice Gay,’ crowed Baby. ‘I take the best of both sexes, and you are definitely the best. I fancy you absolutely squint-eyed.’
‘You’re drunk.’ Flora made a last attempt to keep control, but as he rolled her towards him to unzip her dress, the warmth of his body melted her resistance.
‘I love George,’ she mumbled, into his smooth, scented shoulder.
‘George has gone off like a prawn in the sun. Deserves all he gets. Oh, you little beaut.’
Baby was a master of the tease. Running his fingers round the side of one nipple until every nerve of her breast was crying out, stroking her belly over and over again, letting his hand creep up her inner thighs, just stopping short of her clitoris, until she was screaming to have his cock inside her, and even then he was totally in control.
When Charity came out, mewing in outrage that plastered humans had mistaken Pedigree Chum for Go-Cat, Baby just laughed and said, ‘Cattus interruptus.’
He was so relaxed.
There were daisies and little shimmering moths all over the lawn and stars all over the sky. Gradually they seemed to merge.
‘I’m having such a heavenly time,’ mumbled Flora, ‘but I’m far too drunk to come.’
‘Wanna bet.’ Sliding out of her, turning her over, Baby kissed each bump of her backbone, slowly, slowly progressing downwards.
‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’
‘Yes, I thought you’d enjoy that.’
‘Do I taste of snake?’ mumbled Flora.
‘No, only of Paradise.’
‘How d’you know so much about women?’ asked Flora, as they lay back, stupefied with pleasure, on the grass.
‘I used to be married.’
‘What?’ Flora sat bolt upright.
‘To a singer.’
‘Why did it break up?’
Baby took a slug of Moët. ‘She asked me what I thought of her in the Verdi Requiem. I was foolish enough to tell her. She never spoke to me again.’
‘Did you mind?’
‘Nope.’
‘Isn’t it rather immoral, pretending you’re gay when you’re not?’
‘Certainly not. However would I get rid of all those ugly cows if they suspected I was heterosexual?’
‘You are seriously degenerate,’ said Flora, as they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Waking cold, stiff and horribly hung over in the morning, Flora was demented. How could she have done this to George? He’d never forgive her if he found out. Rannaldini had spies everywhere and was bound to tell him. ‘I’m being punished for shortchanging that cat,’ she moaned, as she crunched around on the Go-Cat the furious Charity had up-ended all over the kitchen floor.
‘I will take care of you,’ said a totally unfazed Baby.
But when Flora returned, crawling with embarrassment, to her dressing room at Valhalla, she found her puppet fox had been cut to tiny pieces. Flora went berserk. She had had Foxie since she was a baby. He had always brought her luck. Without his protection, George would never come back. And who could have cut him up? Rannaldini, Helen, Hermione and Serena all hated her, so did Wolfie and probably Pushy, Bernard and Sexton, after yesterday’s débâcle. Or perhaps some admirer of Baby’s, outraged she’d got off with him last night. It was all dreadfully frightening.
Everyone was very sympathetic, particularly Rozzy, who gathered up fragments of orange fur and said she’d soon sew Foxie together again.
‘Rozzy’s so lovely,’ a tearful Flora told Baby. ‘If only she could get rid of that horrible husband and find some heavenly lover.’
‘Hard to kiss a woman whose mouth’s always full of pins.’
Flora was far too miserable to have dinner with Tristan that night.
Tab, too, was absolutely miserable. Isa was back in Australia so Wolfie came and watched the Derby with her at Magpie Cottage. Then she had the exquisite but agonizing pleasure of seeing Rupert and his entourage in their grey top hats streaming, solemn as warlords, into the paddock to watch Peppy Koala saddling up.
‘Look, there’s Lysander, and Declan, Daddy’s partner,’ she told Wolfie, ‘and Billy Lloyd-Foxe, who was his great show-jumping mate, and Ricky France-Lynch and Bas Baddingham, his old polo friends.’
‘Who’s that blonde?’ asked Wolfie, thinking she was beautiful.
‘My half-sister, Perdita, uptight bitch. That’s her husband, Luke Alderton, he’s a saint. Heavens! Marcus has flown back from Moscow. That must be Nemerovsky, his boyfriend. Look at the stupid poof showing off,’ Tab added furiously, as a smiling Nemerovsky waved his top hat to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd. Wolfie, who’d been at boarding school with Marcus, thought how happy he looked.
‘Here comes Taggie,’ hissed Tabitha, as her stepmother, ravishing in a fuchsia-pink silk suit and a big violet hat, was towed into the paddock by a thoroughly overexcited Xav and Bianca.
‘Bloody hell.’ Tab took a long slug of Perrier, splashing her face. ‘Children shouldn’t be allowed in the paddock, particularly loose,’ she added angrily, as Xav and Bianca rushed forward to hug Peppy Koala. ‘And that geek with his hat on the back of his head is Peppy’s owner, Mr Brown.’
Mr Brown apart, thought Wolfie wistfully, they were the most glamorous, self-assured bunch: Tab’s world. How presumptuous to hope he could ever be part of it.
‘God, what a beautiful horse.’ Another slug of Perrier spilt over Tab’s face, as Rupert’s jockey, wearing Mr Brown’s colours, bright blue dotted with white stars like the Australian flag, mounted a dancing Peppy.
The little colt gave all his supporters a heart attack by dawdling at the back until the last furlong then, putting on a staggering burst of speed, he bounded pas
t the toiling field to win by three lengths.
Having screamed her head off with excitement, Tab proceeded to sob so wildly Wolfie couldn’t help her.
‘I miss them all so much. Mr Brown refused to give Peppy to Isa because he thought Isa was cruel to me. That’s what Isa will never forgive.’
Neither did the Derby result please Rannaldini. How could Isa have let Peppy Koala slip through his fingers?
To goad Tab, Rannaldini summoned her to his study a week later to watch a big Australian race on cable. Isa was riding a dark brown mare, who won as effortlessly as Peppy Koala. As usual, he was mobbed by groupies. Tab, on the other hand, was more upset to see his deadpan face break into a smile as Martie, his allegedly ex-girlfriend, looking scruffier and shinier than any of the grooms, ran forward to hug him after the race.
‘Very well ridden,’ said Rannaldini softly, ‘but he could spend a leetle more time in England training my horses.’ Then, seeing Tab gnawing her lower lip, ‘And I don’t think he is paying you quite enough attention, my angel, to justify a free rent in that lovely cottage.’
‘Put him in the debtor’s chair. Where is it by the way?’
‘Somewhere much more exciting. Remind me to show you some time.’
But Tab had fled sobbing from the room.
Tristan, meanwhile, was spending more and more evenings in Lucy’s caravan. He was obviously not sleeping and everyone was draining him with their insecurities and petty rivalries, as he heroically battled to keep within budget and Rannaldini at bay. He was trying to smoke less, which made him very uptight and, unwillingly yielding to Hype-along’s pleas, he had finally agreed to talk to Valerie Grove of The Times, in the hope that some good publicity might calm the backers.
In the past he had stuck up for Rannaldini, but as Lucy cut his hair for the interview he repeatedly returned to the attack.
‘He’s like evil octopus with tentacles everywhere.’
Thinking how thickly and beautifully Tristan’s hair curled into his neck, Lucy struggled against the temptation to stroke it. Then he nearly lost an ear as he switched to the subject of Tabitha.