The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous (28 page)

    so sorry.'

    'Don't touch me!' Julia thrust her violently away.

    'Well, at least let's have a drink.'

    Only as they went into the drawing room did Georgie remember Julia's faceless pin-stripe lover in the paintings. Two of the paintings were still on the wall.

    'I don't want a drink.' Julia was shuddering as though she had malaria, her eyes staring. 'How much has Guy

    told you?'

    'That he went to bed with you for the first time last night, that he's taken you out one or twice in London. Guy's a kind man. Girls are always getting crushes on him.'

    'A crush?' Julia collapsed on the gold corduroy sofa. 'Guy and I have been having an affaire for nearly two years. Since you moved to Angel's Reach we've spent virtually every night together when he's up in London.'

    'Virtue doesn't seem to have much to do with it,' said Georgie, pouring herself such a massive Bacardi that there was only room for an inch of Coke.

    'He loves me,' said Julia flatly. 'He's never had another woman since he's been married to you.'

    'I know,' admitted Georgie. 'He's been a wonderful husband.'

    'And you've totally neglected him. All you did at that dinner party,' reproved Julia, 'was burn the broccoli and leave slugs in the lettuce.'

    Guy's been sneaking, thought Georgie, taking her drink to the window and admiring the pale green of the wood against the navy-blue thunderclouds.

    'You don't take any interest in the gallery. You didn't even know my Christian name.'

    'I hope now I may call you Ju Ju,' said Georgie gravely; she was getting rather a charge out of being bitchy. The Bacardi was beginning to put fire in her empty belly.

    'You don't share any of his interests,' said Julia, flushing.

    'Well, I certainly didn't share his interest in you.'

    'And you had endless affaires.'

    'I did not. I had the odd one-night stand when we were first married years ago,' said Georgie, thinking that Tancredi had been going on so long and so infrequently that he didn't count.

    Dinsdale was slumped on a coral-pink chair on the other side of the empty fireplace, which still contained the ashes from the dinner party. Georgie crossed the room to sit on the arm.

    'I had a wonderfully happy marriage with Ben,' Julia was saying bitterly. 'Guy pestered and pestered me to sleep with him. Ben used to joke about it and call him my Dirty Old Man. Finally I gave in, because I felt sorry for him, he seemed so lonely and bored with hismarriage, and now I've fallen in love with him, and it's totally fucked my marriage.'

    'And you too, by all accounts.' Georgie was nettled by the DOM reference. She was the only person allowed to slag off Guy. 'I can't imagine him pestering anyone. Guy and I love each other. Bored husbands don't police their wives' every moment.'

    'You stupid idiot,' said Julia almost pityingly. 'The reason why Guy polices your every move when you're in London is because he doesn't want you to bump into him and me.'

    Fumbling in the back pocket of her jeans, Julia brought

    out a red diary.

    'Look!' She turned the pages. 'Georgie recording, Georgie Promo, Georgie recording, Georgie in America that

    was a bonus.' The green pentelled arrow went through two weeks in February and into March.

    'Guy told you he couldn't leave the gallery. It was me he couldn't bear to leave. Here's the key to Guy's flat.' Like a hypnotist, she swung it in front of Georgie's nose.

    'Do you need a key?' said Georgie, taking another great gulp of Bacardi to fortify herself. 'I would have expected you to come in through the cat flap.'

    'Stop taking the piss,' screamed Julia.

    'And how does Ben fit into this?' asked Georgie, taking Dinsdale's ginger ears and putting them on top of his head like a Second World War pin-up. 'Is his software not hard enough for you?'

    'Ben works in Chelmsford,' said Julia through gritted teeth, 'and he's abroad selling computers all week. It wasn't difficult.'

    'The writing on the pink envelope.' Georgie examined the diary again. 'It's yours.'

    'Of course. And I gave him the china puppy for his birthday, and when he's in the country he rings me the whole time, when he goes for petrol for the mower, when he's having drinks with the vicar.'

    Julia was hissing down a bobsleigh run now and couldn't stop. 'I saw Angel's Reach before you did,' she stammered. 'We slept in the spare room when you were in London with the Mail on Sunday.'

    Letting Dinsdale's ears fall, Georgie shut her eyes and breathed in. The anaesthetic of shock was beginning to wear off. Getting to her feet, she tried to gather the shattered rags of dignity round her.

    'I don't believe a word you're saying. Guy isn't like this.'

    She felt strengthened by the sight of headlights in the drive and by Dinsdale's thick tail whacking her thighs once again. Guy was home. She was so desperate to run to him, that the bad dream should be over. 'He called me his second Peregrine,' said Julia quietly. Georgie stopped in her tracks. The knitting-needle dipped in acid plunged straight into her heart. 'He what?'

    'His second Peregrine.'

    Peregrine had been a schoolfriend Guy had loved at Wellington, the one great unconsummated passion of his life. When Peregrine had drowned falling out of a punt at some wild Cambridge party, Guy confessed that it was only his faith that had kept him from suicide. It was-this sadness, and the fact that for ages he didn't make a pass at her, that had drawn Georgie to him when they'd first met. Peregrine was sacrosanct, a love Georgie respected and of which she had never been jealous.

    'I've got letters to prove it and photographs Guy took of me in the nude,' sobbed Julia.

    'Hardly conclusive evidence, unless he's in them, too,' said Georgie as Guy came through the door.

    He looked sulky and aggressive, like a small boy caught stealing sweets.

    'It seems your affaire with Mrs Armstrong is more extended than you've admitted.' Guy pursed his lips and looked proconsular. 'Well, if she says it is.'

    'She does.' Georgie moved towards the drinks table.'If you care to come upstairs with me, Ju Ju, and look into a suitcase under Guy-Guy's bed, you'll find a large folder of photographs Guy's taken of me with nothing on. Some, I hate to tell you, with Angel's Reach in the background.'

    'You said you never slept with her,' Julia turned, screaming at Guy.

    'Ah, but then he told me he'd only been to bed with you once. I think you two ought to get your stories straight.'

    Grabbing the Bacardi bottle Georgie turned to Guy. 'You're a fucking hypocrite, and I'm leaving you tomorrow. I'm going to sleep in the spare room.'

    On the kitchen table, she discovered a note Mother Courage had left earlier.

    'Georgie -change

    in the envelope, heart in the deepfreeze.'

    Upstairs in the spare room, Georgie felt boiling hot. She took off her clothes and crawled under the duvet. Then she remembered that this was where Guy had slept with Julia. It was the repository of all their worst furniture, even a china Alsatian which Flora had won at the fair on Hampstead Heath at the age of eight. On the windows were ghastly curtains put up by a previous occupant, which clashed with the equally ghastly wallpaper. Would Guy have explained that this room hadn't been done yet, or had he been too busy bonking? She gave a groan and took a huge slug of Bacardi. She'd ring the Ideal Homo and order new curtains tomorrow morning -but

    what was the point when she was leaving anyway? Seeing the reflection of her flushed face on the pillow, she realized the mirror on the dressing table had been adjusted so that you could see what was going on in bed. Guy'd always liked watching himself. She heard a car starting up, and, rushing to the window, saw Julia's car lighting up the little green beacons of the poplar colonnade.

    'Whore,' she screamed after her, and was so plastered and furious that she rushed downstairs in the nude and went completely berserk. First she smashed Julia's puppy and then she rushed into the kitchen and started breaking glasses.

    'Stop it!' Guy came rushing in. 'Don't be infantile, Julia's a complete fantasist. It's all lies.'

    'She knows my diary better than I do, and what about fucking Peregrine, or rather fucking your second Peregrine, you bastard?'

    Georgie's yelling face was like a tomato that had been hurled at a rock. Guy ducked as a pint mug hurtled towards him. Finally, having taken down one of Julia's paintings, and tried to smash it over Guy's head, 'It's you in the pin-stripe suit, you disgusting lech,' Georgie raced off into the night.

    In panic, Guy rang Larry who was in the middle of making love to Marigold.

    'Julia came down and dumped.'

    'Christ,' said Larry, who when he was with Nikki, had made up several foursomes at dinner with Julia and Guy. It was all much too close to home. 'We're off to Jamaica in a few hours,' he added, 'or I'd say come on over. Are you OK?'

    'No, I'm not. Georgie's run off bollock-naked into the night.'

    'No sweat,' said Larry. 'Snow's forecast. She'll come home when she's cold.'

    'But what if people in the village see her?' spluttered Guy. 'The road goes straight past the vicarage. There's a meeting to discuss my election to the Parish Council on Friday.'

    Larry tried not to laugh.

    'I'd put your feet up, watch the boxing and have a large Scotch.'

    'I can't. Georgie's broken every glass in the house, and plate, too, for that matter.'

    'People who live in Cotswold-stone houses shouldn't throw glasses,' said Larry. 'At least it shows she cares. Take her away for a little holiday.''Guy's mistress has come down and dumped,' he told Marigold as he switched off the telephone and took her

    in his arms.

    'Guy's got a mistress?' said Marigold, collapsing back on her ivory silk pillows in amazement. 'Ay can't believe it. Gay's not laike that. He's so upraight. Georgie must

    be shattered.'

    'It's plates that are being shattered. She's throwing them at Guy,' said Larry, not displeased that Guy, who was always so sanctimonious, had been caught with his hand in the sexual till.

    'Oh, poor Georgie!' Marigold climbed back on top of her husband, then gave a shriek of anguish as she impaled herself on his upright cock: 'Oh, may God!'

    'What's the matter, Princess?' said Larry in alarm. 'Are you still sore down there?'

    'No, they're our plates,' wailed Marigold. 'They were a matchin' set, Ay lent to Georgie for the dinner party.'

    Sitting in the kitchen, Guy lined up all the milk bottles Mother Courage never put out on the kitchen table, so Georgie'd have something to smash when she came

    home.

    Georgie actually burst out laughing when she saw them, then the laughter turned to tears, and although they rowed most of the night, in between sobbing on each other's shoulders, Guy felt by morning that he had calmed Georgie down enough to go back to London.

    'I'll call you the moment I get to London,' he promised, but as she waved him off, Georgie felt like Demeter seeing Persephone disappear into the Underworld.

    Slowly she began to piece together the horrors of the previous night. One moment she was freezing, the next boiling hot. She kept putting on and taking off jerseys. She still couldn't get rid of the sick taste in her

    mouth.

    Mother Courage had laid out a page from the Sunday Telegraph under the cat's plate. As Georgie emptied a tin of Choosy on to it, she noticed a large piece by Peregrine Worsthorne about John Major.

    You don't call a child who won't leave you alone, your second Peregrine, thought Georgie, and felt so furious she rushed into Guy's study and put a message on the ansaphone saying: 'Go screw yourself.

    Then she put on another jersey and cleaned her teeth again. She felt she was rotting inside. Half an hour later Mother Courage came storming up the drive.

    'I've just had Mr Seymour on the telephone. He can't get through. Can you ring him urgent?'

    Sulkily Georgie dialled Guy at the gallery.

    'What the hell are you playing at, Panda?' thundered Guy. 'You're totally over-reacting. What happens if the Press ring, or, even worse, the vicar or Lady Chisleden?'

    'I don't care,' screamed Georgie.

    Out of the window she saw that a sudden fall of snow had covered the sweet spring promise of the primroses, and burst into tears.The marriage limped on full of spats. Guy came down at midday on Good Friday looking wretched and carrying a box of glasses. 'To replace the ones you threw at me,' he said heavily, then, priding himself on his frugality: 'From the Reject Shop.'

    'Why don't you put me in the window,' snarled Georgie.

    Unable to suppress a craving for information that Guy was plainly not going to volunteer, Georgie asked if he'd