‘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.’
‘It’s all Larry’s fault,’ screamed Georgie, ‘for putting out mugs and T-shirts with Guy and me looking lovey-dovey. I’ll get him under the Trade Descriptions Act. And what’s all this about The Scorpion?’
She couldn’t take in what Marigold was saying. She could only think how embarrassing it was that such a handsome man as David Hawkley should have caught her running around all wobbling and naked.
Having discovered that his youngest son was far too drunk to make any sense and refused to explain how he’d come by any of these amazing perks, David Hawkley drove off into the deluge. After a few minutes he calmed down and decided to put up at a nearby hotel and try a different tack in the morning. As every room within ten miles of Paradise was double-booked by reporters, he ended up at The Bell in Rutminster, an old coaching inn overlooking the River Fleet. The kitchen was closed, but noting his pallor and good looks, the landlord’s wife insisted on sending up to his room a bottle of whisky and a plate of Welsh rarebit, which gave him outlandish dreams of naked ladies frolicking in meadows.