‘Take me dancing naked in the rain,’ roared the loud speaker, ‘and cover me in ecstasy.’
Suddenly it was October again and she was dancing round the field at Magpie Cottage. It was no good. She’d have to find Lysander.
‘Mrs Rannaldini,’ a defeated-looking caterer called up the stairs, ‘there’s a policeman down here come to complain about the noise.’
‘Hooray, a spare man at last,’ called back Kitty. ‘If he’s handsome introduce him to Rachel or the vicar.’
Giggling hysterically, she felt light with happiness. She and Lysander loved each other — nothing else mattered.
‘Take me dancing naked in the rain,’ sang Kitty as she rocked down the gloomy landing.
She could hear terrible sobbing but to hell with people’s problems. Then she realized it was coming from Natasha’s room. Tiptoeing to the doorway she found her stepdaughter crying so hysterically that her whole bed seemed to heave.
‘Sweet’eart, what’s the matter?’
‘Everything. I’m going to die. You’ll be pleased because it means Dad and Hermione are caput.’ As Natasha looked up, Cleopatra’s kohl and mascara were streaked down her face like a yashmak. ‘Oh, Kitty, I can’t bear it. I love him so much.’
‘Poor lambkin.’ Seizing a handful of pink tissues, Kitty put an arm round Natasha’s shuddering shoulders, drying her eyes and glad to be allowed for once to comfort.
‘What is it? Tell me.’
‘Lysander’s fucking Hermione.’
‘What did you say?’ The pink tissues fell like rose-petals from Kitty’s hand.
‘Making love, if you prefer it,’ howled Natasha.
‘I don’t believe it.’ Kitty sat down very suddenly on the bed, her lips were trembling so much she could only mumble, ‘L-l-lysander l-loathes H-h-h-ermione.’
‘Funny way of showing it. Go into Papa’s dressing room. They’re all watching him.’
Narrowly avoiding crashing into the open door, sending a big vase of dried poppies flying, Kitty stumbled along endless winding passages up and down stone steps, cold beneath her bare feet.
‘The Ride of The Valkyrie’ was now pounding out of a different set of speakers, more and more menacing.
It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t.
For a terrifying second she thought Rannaldini was defying her to enter his dressing room. Then she realized it was his mask and that he and Bob, who was using a video camera, and Meredith, who was dabbing Maestro behind his ears, and Rudolpho and his boyfriend, who were both down to their boxer shorts, were all gazing excitedly through a two-way mirror. Moving closer, clinging on to a bust of Schubert, Kitty could now see Lysander and Hermione both naked in Rannaldini’s big pale grey four-poster with the little Renoir and Watteau girls looking indifferently down from the faded cherry-red damask walls. Jack, beadily glaring at his master, had taken up sentry duty in an armchair.
Rannaldini turned smiling viciously.
‘Come een, Kitty.’
‘Two-way mirror on the wall,’ giggled Meredith, ‘who is the fairest of us all?’
‘No doubt about that,’ said Rudolpho, taking hold of his boyfriend’s cock. ‘Can we have him next, Rannaldini? Hell, did you ever see anything so beautiful?’
Collapsing against the mirror Kitty was amazed her anguish didn’t shatter the glass. How could Lysander not see her? Although entwined with Hermione there was a slumped, utterly defeated look about his pale body on those silken red sheets.
‘Oh God, please help me,’ she whispered.
‘Peety, you mees a wonderful performance,’ said Rannaldini, ‘your boyfriend make love with all the brio of a youth orchestra. A few wrong notes but such energy.’
It’s the Paradise Lad, thought Kitty in horror, as Hermione slid down Lysander’s still body and took his limp cock between her beautiful, smiling lips.
Screaming, Kitty fled to her bedroom where she found Lady Chisleden lying on her flower-patterned duvet doing exactly the same thing to a man in a donkey’s headdress.
Slamming the door, Kitty leant against it for a second, trying to ride the pain, which was far, far worse than anything she’d suffered from Rannaldini’s infidelities. Of all his mistresses, Hermione had used, abused, patronized and humiliated her the most and now she had calmly stolen Lysander, the only man, Kitty knew now, that she had ever loved. You could stop torturers by telling them what they wanted, but there was no way to end this agony.
‘I’ve never known such breakages!’ One of the caterers was scratching her head over the broken glass which glittered among the trampled rose-petals, as Kitty rushed out into the snow. She was dimly aware of the vicar, followed by a trail of screaming Bacchantes, chasing a panic-stricken police constable, naked except for his helmet, into the Valhalla Maze. But as she looked up at the moon, howling in anguish, she noticed that, like Lysander, it had lost its halo.
The party showed no sign of abating. Salt lay like patches of snow over the wine stains. Even worse howls came from Lady Chisleden when she discovered that the man in the donkey’s head, whom she’d enjoyed for the last hour, was none other than a leering Mr Brimscombe.
Joy Hillary, who’d been kept very busy failing to stop couples coupling, stiffened with delight as she saw Marigold disappear giggling into the broom cupboard followed by the naked man in a Neil Kinnock mask.
Wrenching open the door she chucked the contents of a rusty fire bucket over them, crying: ‘How can you bring such disrepute on the Parish Council, Marigold?’
‘Ay’m makin’ love to may husband, you stupid cow,’ shrieked Marigold, who was straddling a drenched Larry, who’d received most of the deluge.
‘But he came in as a lion,’ said Joy in bewilderment.
‘And he’s not goin’ out laike a lamb,’ said Marigold, and throwing a dustpan at Joy, kicked the door shut.
‘I want my mother,’ sobbed Natasha.
‘Where is she?’ said Ferdie, stroking her tear-drenched hair.
‘In New York, I think,’
‘I’ll take you to her,’ said Ferdie. ‘The moment I’ve shown Rudolpho over Paradise Grange.’
‘If I were you, Gwendolyn,’ said Joy Hillary, trying to regain some ascendancy, ‘I’d get that nice shirtwaister dry cleaned.’
Over in his tower, lying in his other huge bed surrounded by cheering opera crowds as he listened to his own recording of Salome, Rannaldini drew heavily on a joint.
‘According to Sade,’ he murmured, ‘enjoyment increases in proportion to the intensity of the sensations the imagination receives. The most intense sensation’ — he groaned in ecstasy, as Chloe plunged a long-nailed finger deep inside him — ‘ees produced by pain. The true voluptuary will impose the greatest amount of pain.’
He smiled round at Chloe, drawing on the joint until it glowed, then placing its burning end within a millimetre of her smooth brown face.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said softly as she winced away. ‘Listen.’
Straining her ears, Chloe could hear the faint tolling of a bell.
‘How would you like to play Lady Macbeth, Chloe?’ asked Rannaldini.
Lysander woke around ten with a murderous headache. Groaning, he tried to focus on a strawberry-blond wig flowing down from one of the posts of a big double bed.
There was Jack asleep on his Donald Duck jersey, and several pink nude girls looking down at him from the pictures, and a strong scent that boded evil. Slowly his aching eyes took in scarlet toenails, smooth brown waxed legs swelling to plump cushiony thighs and glossy brown pubic hair trimmed in the shape of a heart.