Lysander, who was already absolutely plastered, found himself between Hermione and a really ugly female double-bass player who’d come as Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia.
‘Wouldn’t get a chance to be anything else but above suspicion with a face like that,’ said Meredith, who was sitting opposite and sucking a lobster claw.
At the same table were Guy, Rachel, Natasha, whose cat’s eyes beneath her black fringe were devouring Lysander, and Ferdie on her right who was depressed that he still wanted her so desperately.
Rannaldini, who had deliberately put Kitty at his side, had also arranged it so that Lysander was gazing straight at the back of Kitty’s head with the evil, mocking Janus mask beside it. Throughout dinner Rannaldini deliberately caressed his wife, stroking her very clean neck as though he was an executioner pondering where to drop the axe, fondling her breasts and her back as though he were working in suntan oil, and all the time kissing her and whispering in her ear.
Lysander had to exert every ounce of self-control not to get up and hit Rannaldini across the room. Looking washed-out and not remotely pretty, Kitty moved him more than ever. Putting the Ecstasy pill in his mouth, he washed it down with half a pint of Krug.
‘You don’t seem very happy, Lysander,’ said Hermione, putting a hand on his leg.
‘I’m not,’ said Lysander, removing it. ‘Kitty’s gone back to Rannaldini and she’s the only truly good person, apart from Arthur, I’ve ever met.’
‘That’s because she’s young and hasn’t experienced life,’ said Hermione dismissively.
‘It isn’t.’ Furiously Lysander pulled off a piece of goose and gave it to Jack. ‘She’s good because she’s good.’
‘Your friend isn’t in a very cheerful mood,’ Hermione shouted across to Ferdie.
Not wanting to blow themselves out before orgying, people were drinking more than eating, already openly necking and beginning to undress one another. As the Ecstasy struck home Hermione engineered the conversation on to favourite fantasies.
‘I’d like to be playing Desdemona to Domingo’s Otello at Covent Garden,’ she began, ‘and to charm him into making love to me instead of killing me in front of a huge audience.’
‘That’s quite a rewrite,’ said Meredith. ‘I’d like to be raped by Mel Gibson — very slowly.’
‘I’d like to see three gorgeous women making love,’ Guy smiled at Hermione, Rachel and Natasha, ‘and be invited to join in.’
Natasha, who was chucking grapes at Lysander to rouse him from his black gloom, said she’d like to be abducted and seduced by a highwayman.
‘My name’s Turpin. Call me Dick,’ offered Ferdie, topping up her golden goblet.
Even Natasha laughed. ‘What’s yours then?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to have a woman in love with me,’ said Ferdie simply.
‘Aaaaah,’ said everyone at the table except Rachel, who now was staring at Rannaldini’s table with as much horror as Lysander.
‘What’s Chloe doing here?’ she whispered to Guy.
Although Rannaldini was publicly stroking Kitty with his left hand, his right hand had disappeared under the table.
‘And what’s your secret fantasy, Lysander?’ asked Hermione.
‘No secret. I want to marry Kitty,’ said Lysander flatly.
There was a pause. Then Natasha led the howls of derisive mirth.
‘You’re beautiful,’ sighed Ferdie, unable to keep his eyes off Natasha’s soft gold thighs.
‘Marry me then,’ taunted Natasha. ‘As Lysander only lusts after married women, it’s the one way I’ll get him into bed.’
Georgie got lower and lower. On her right Rudolpho and his boyfriend were busy pulling grey hairs out of each other’s heads like chimpanzees and the only man who’d come dressed as Anthony was a counter-tenor who displayed a cock the size of a three-year-old boy when his toga fell open. She was only too aware of the shrieks of laughter coming from Guy’s table. To her right the vicar was gazing at Lysander who was looking so grim that he reminded her for an agonizing second of David Hawkley. If only David would forgive her.
Across the table Lady Chisleden was getting very uncorked and had undone nearly all the buttons of her midnight-blue shirtwaister.
‘I want to go somewhere that will give me new horizons and widen my experience in life,’ she was telling Bob.
‘Why not try Bexley Heath?’ said Meredith, plonking himself down between them.
Drunken dining was followed by even more drunken dancing. Hermione opened the ball with Guy, rocking and rolling just to show the younger generation that they’d invented the dance, and when Guy hoisted Hermione in the air she clasped him with her body-stockinged legs.
Hermione’s smug smile was wiped off her face, however, when Rannaldini led Kitty on to the floor. A mesmerizing serpentine dancer, he was soon practically raping her, his body writhing against her, kissing her shoulders and then her mouth, sticking his tongue down her throat until she nearly gagged, letting his hands wander over her body, yet his feet never losing the rhythm of the music.
Deliberately he danced past Lysander, so close that the hem of Kitty’s pleated skirt brushed Lysander’s foot and he could smell her hot frightened body and caught a faint agonizing waft of the Diorissimo he had given her at the airport, a scent he would now associate even more with loss.
‘Oh Mum, oh Christ, oh Kitty, oh Maggie,’ he muttered hopelessly and drunkenly.
Daring to glance at him, Kitty thought how desperately ill and diminished he looked. His jeans were ripped everywhere. There were buttons off his shirt. The tip had been eaten off one of his shoes. He needs me, she thought in anguish, not feeling Rannaldini’s fingers until they were pinching really hard.
Unable to bear any more, Lysander stumbled from the room.
Now’s my chance, thought Natasha leaping up.
For a second Kitty dropped her guard.
‘You don’t think he’s going to blow his brains out?’
‘With that little brain,’ sneered Rannaldini, ‘he’d have to be a bloody good shot.’
54
The orgy roared on.
‘Toga, toga, burning bright,’ shrieked Marigold tossing her sheet into the morning-room fire and rushing pinkly up the stairs pursued by a man in a Neil Kinnock mask.
It didn’t occur to any of the guests as they charged in and out of bedrooms that there was something odd about Mr Brimscombe pruning the Valhalla honeysuckle in the middle of winter.
Downstairs Rannaldini was dancing with Rachel, bopping through the rose-petals and fixing her with his deadly stare. Utterly suicidal Kitty was being lugged round the floor by the vicar — the hostess with the leastest. If she’d known Lysander was coming she’d have tried to look prettier, but at least he’d brought her snowdrops. If she were truthful, what she dreaded most was his no longer loving her. Last thing at night when she lost control of her thoughts, she dreamt she was a little mole (with its blind eyes, pink hands and lack of waist — the two of them had a lot in common) and she was tunnelling under the gates of Valhalla, beneath the River Fleet, not stopping until she joined the other molehills on the lawn of Magpie Cottage.
Seeing Rannaldini had disappeared, Kitty left the vicar in mid-foxtrot and escaped to the summer parlour. Unable to find Lysander’s snowdrops to put them in water, she crept up the main stairs, tripping over entwined couples and her own long skirt, praying she might bump into Lysander.
Through a landing window she noticed the moon’s increasing halo, mother of pearl now and ringed with darkened rainbow colours. Kitty was reminded of Lysander who shone like an angel in her dreams. Next moment Lady Chisleden rushed shrieking past in her bra and roll-on pursued by a man wearing Lysander’s donkey head.