‘Christ, it’s a horrible world!’ Lysander, who was still wearing Guy’s cricket sweater, dipped a ginger biscuit in his tea and handed it to Jack. ‘I don’t understand why everyone plays games. I loved Georgie so much, we were having terrific sex, twice a day at least, but it wasn’t enough for her. She had to have Dad as well.’
As Kitty was reflecting that if Georgie were working really hard she might have preferred the perhaps lesser sexual demands of David Hawkley, Lysander noticed Donald Duck.
‘God, I’m jealous of Rannaldini meeting him. Did he get Donald’s autograph? This screen is lovely. You’re brilliant at cutting out. Can I have a go?’
‘What d’you really want from life?’ asked Kitty, passing him the scissors and a picture of Rannaldini laughing with Pavarotti.
‘I’d like Arthur to make a come-back and win the Rutminster with me riding him. I want a job with horses. I’d like a place of my own, a wife who loved me as much as I loved her, and,’ he added on reflection, ‘I’d like some kids. I’m bored with racketing around. D’you know, I asked Georgie to marry me, and she’s bonking my father.’ He started to shake violently again. ‘Oh Christ, I’ve cut Rannaldini’s head off. I’m sorry, I can’t do anything right. Can I possibly stay with you until I get myself together?’
In fact it was highly inconvenient. Kitty had so much to do and, instead, had to listen to Lysander banging on and on with all the egotism of utter despair and extreme youth. As a very truthful person, she hated having to lie so much on Rannaldini’s behalf, and now she had to lie for Lysander, as Ferdie, Marigold, an increasingly frantic Georgie, and even David Hawkley and Aunt Dinah (in the morning admittedly) rang or rolled up to ask if she’d seen or heard from him. And then Mrs Brimscombe, who’d had to be let into the secret, went down with flu so Kitty had to cope on her own.
Having hidden Lysander in an attic bedroom in the oldest part of the house, Kitty felt like the monks living at Valhalla harbouring some Cavalier during the Civil War: Astley perhaps, or Rupert of the Rhine, or even Charles I. With his flopping hair, his gentleness and his beauty, Lysander made the perfect Cavalier, and would certainly have been dashingly fearless in cavalry charges. No Cavalier seeking sanctuary, however, would have had the diversion of the sixty-two instalments of EastEnders and Neighbours, which Kitty had taped for him while he was away. After four days almost concentrated viewing, some excellent plain cooking, and a very good 100-1 win at Lingfield, Lysander was beginning to perk up. At least Kitty managed to finish the screen and the angels’ wings as she listened to him.
He only left in the end — and then reluctantly — because Natasha was coming home from Bagley Hall; and that had been another of Georgie’s lies, that Flora had broken up the day he’d returned from Australia. Anyway he didn’t want that bitch Natasha drooling over him, and he felt he’d traded on Kitty’s hospitality enough.
Within a couple of hours of his departure, however, he was on the telephone.
‘Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, come and have dinner at Magpie Cottage tomorrow night.’
‘’Ow lovely. Shall I bring Natasha?’
‘God no! Don’t say a thing to her. I’m going to cook you a wonderful dinner.’
Alas, Lysander woke the next morning with a blinding headache and the shakes. In fact he ached all over. He must have caught Mrs Brimscombe’s flu. He wanted to collapse into bed, but he couldn’t let Kitty down.
What followed was not just a chapter but a whole book of accidents. The avocados he bought were harder than hand grenades. The coq au vin took five hours and tasted disgusting. He cooked the spinach early and boiled it away to a grit purée. For pudding, he tried to make syllabub. One just followed a recipe, but after hours of whisking and even more hours in the fridge, the syllabub separated — like everything else in Paradise, he thought sourly.
The sink was by this time blocked solid with the food he’d chucked out. There were saucepans all over the lawn and he’d singed his beautiful eyelashes when he realized Jack was missing and set out with Maggie, a spade and a torch into the freezing night to find him. After twenty minutes, with every fox, badger and rabbit for miles around rustling in the wood to distract them, a demented Maggie finally located some faint yapping, and Lysander and she spent a further twenty minutes digging Jack out, after which the little sod wasn’t remotely grateful and tried to shoot back down the hole again.
Hearing her master’s language, Maggie fled home in terror. Following her, Lysander found the chicken burnt out. How did people run restaurants? He’d have to take Kitty out. He was feeling so shivery, he better have a hot bath. All his problems that day had stemmed from feeling he ought not to ring Kitty every five minutes to ask her how to do things.
Unfortunately a frantic Georgie had just returned from London and, seeing lights in Magpie Cottage, chose that moment to ring. By the time Lysander had told her to fuck off, and his father had rung and been told roughly the same thing, and Ferdie had rung and been told Lysander was pushed for time, the bath had run over and flooded the light fitting below. Getting electric shocks every time he touched a switch, Lysander tried to mend the fuse and blew the lights.
Kitty was so behind with her Christmas preparations that she felt dreadfully guilty going out, particularly as she was abandoning Natasha on her first night home. To her amazement, Natasha couldn’t have been more amenable, even when they met on the landing, both reeking of scented bath oil with their bodies and their newly washed hair wrapped in towels.
‘I’m just popping out, Natasha.’
‘Have you got a meeting?’
‘Sort of.’ Kitty stood on one pink leg.
‘Have a nice time. Don’t hurry back.’
Natasha was also unbelievably complimentary about her appearance, saying, ‘You’ve lost so much weight. Papa won’t recognize you,’ that when Kitty found Magpie Cottage in total darkness, she suspected some fiendish practical joke to get her out of the house. As she stumbled up the overgrown path, she was knocked sideways with relief and by the stench of burnt chicken.
‘Oh Kitty, Kitty, talk about coq-up au vin!’ Nearly in tears, Lysander greeted her with a candle and was just thinking how sweet she looked despite the awful beige dress, when the wind blew the candle out. They had just groped their way to the fuse box when the telephone rang.
‘I’ll get it,’ said Lysander, knocking over a stool. ‘It’s bound to be Natasha.’
‘I’m desperately sorry, I can’t make it,’ Kitty could hear him saying. ‘Basically I’ve got the flu. Honestly, I’m best on my own. I’m really infectious. I’ll just crash out with a dozen Anadin Extra. See you in a bit.’
‘You are awful,’ said Kitty, who had found some matches and was pushing in plugs.
As the lights came on, she saw Lysander was once more pouring with sweat and shaking. Thinking it was probably delayed shock, she tucked him up in bed once more.
‘I’ll make it up to you, Kitty, I’ll take you to Miss Saigon, I know a bloke who can get tickets.’ And he drifted off to sleep, but spent most of the night crying out for his mother.
Staggering down the following afternoon, he felt woolly legged, drained, but normal. It was as though the devil had left his body. The cottage was unrecognizable. Kitty had unblocked the sink and cleaned everything. As Jack had been muddy after his tunnelling, she had even given him a bath, and was drying him in front of a glowing crackling fire, as she chatted to Arthur who was peering in through the window. A delicious smell of shepherd’s pie reminded Lysander he hadn’t eaten for two days.
‘Oh, you angel. God, it looks wonderful and smells even better.’ Lysander hugged her. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, but please don’t get too thin.’